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Torque
"Dabide! What are you doing here so late?"
"Time flies, when you fling a clock." Dabide smirked, but his heart wasn't really in it. Bane smacked him and he made a noisy protest. It didn't really hurt, though Dabide wanted it to. A few stars came out over the otherwise empty Rokkaku playground.
Bane moved to the other end of the stationary seesaw that Dabide was perched on. Bane took his bookbag from his shoulder, dropped it to the dirt, and plopped himself on the opposite seat. "Haven't done this in a while," he warned. "The kids are always using it during the day." The seesaw tipped alarmingly; Dabide, however, was ready for it and lifted up easily. They went up and down for a few beats. He enjoyed the feeling of being nine years old.
"Are you walking home? It's kinda cold," Bane said, finally.
Dabide nodded, then realized nodding might be difficult to distinguish against the motion of the seesaw, so he said, "Yeah. You know I live close by."
"Yeah. Still."
"You're here late too," Dabide noted, curiously.
"Yeah, I was helping some kid study for a test tomorrow."
Dabide was silent, just because they didn't need to speak. Well, he'd had the urge to say I hope your tutoring skills make the grade, ha ha, which wasn't as terrible as it should have been, and Bane couldn't very well effect swift retribution if he was on the other end of the seesaw.
Bane looked abstractedly at the school building. He laughed, suddenly, and said, "D'you remember that time when the third year home ec class decided to build their own outdoor oven and bake brownies for the class? And it exploded one day when no one was around-"
"-luckily-"
"-yeah, and no one ever found out why? And no one was punished?"
"The playground still smells like chocolate," Dabide replied. Of course Dabide remembered it. That incident had assumed mythic proportions among the entire school, though it had happened only last year. He recalled the day, the mixture of shock and hilarity, and the relief of the teachers when no one had been hurt. Afterwards the teachers laughed about the situation, made harmless by luck. When it was breezy the air smelled more like ocean. Only on still days the chocolate smell came out.
"Slightly burned chocolate," Bane chuckled. "I love this school." The seesawing made conversation slightly difficult, but they laughed together over the memories.
"Where are you going for high school, Bane?" Dabide asked, eventually. The question had been on his mind for a long time now.
His friend considered for a long moment, looking at him across the way. Without really planning it that way, the seesaw slowed in increments, and neither did anything to start it again. "Hmm," said Bane reluctantly, like it was pulled from his lips. "I don't know. I'll most likely just stick around Chiba. Well... I don't know."
Dabide sighed. It felt like a vast space had opened between his friend and himself, but it was only a year's difference. They balanced shakily on the seesaw. A little way off, the streetlights snapped on, illuminating the playground in dim light. You decide what kind of light to use by a process of illumination, he thought to himself, smirked, and restrained himself from saying it out loud. He felt something else entirely.
"I wish you'd make up your mind," he told Bane. It was definitely, he thought, the uncertainty that bothered him. He felt uncomfortable with the future, though he couldn't come up with a reason why. All he could think of was that so many things could happen. Like in books, he watched an ant crawl on the ground, spared it instead of stepping on it, wondered what would have been different. "It hurts my head thinking about what could maybe happen." Ugh, that wasn't really what he meant at all. The puns worked beautifully in his head, but other words sometimes struggled.
Bane nodded, slowly. "You know, Dabide?" He spoke like he was telling a secret. "I'm excited about high school. I am, but sometimes it's like-" He struggled. "I'm too happy here. What kind of high school is going to have a playground filled with elementary school kids and smells like chocolate brownies all the time?" They both laughed, a little. Bane, unreadable, said, "Things have to get worse, and it's going to happen anyway. You don't stop time. I wouldn't want to."
Dabide stared at the third-year. He'd heard about parallel universes. Incomprehensibly many of them seemed to lay over the world in his mind, filled with ghosts enacting every single course, unaware of the others. In some of them he'd stepped on ants, and his and Bane's ghosts were doing something different at that very moment. Some scenarios were better, some were worse.
"It'd be nice to have a time machine," he said, thoughtfully.
"Except for the paradoxes and maybe the end of the universe," joked Bane.
"Well, it's like ghosts," Dabide said, oblivious to explanation.
"Huh?"
Ghosts... "If you stop believing in ghosts, you'll grow dispirited," Dabide noted. It was obviously too brilliant not to say out loud. The smirk was definitely not his fault, he couldn't help it!
Bane stood up, in a second disrupting the seesaw's balance. Dabide's side of the seesaw descended rapidly and he hit the ground with a thump. A second later Bane smacked the side of Dabide's head harder than usual, and Dabide actually felt better afterwards. "Ow," he said, nonetheless. He grinned at Bane.
"Anyway. I shouldn't be pessimistic," Bane said, helping Dabide up. "Anything can happen, right?"
"Yeah." It was past six o' clock. Dabide picked up his backpack.
"Ah, well, let's go. I'll walk you home."
They alone left the playground and stepped onto the street.