Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply.
Author's Notes: Enjoy the last chapter of Makoto's childhood. We're moving on to junior high school after this. So sit back, relax and pet the kitties on the way out.
Vision
It was the first day of class, and the students were sitting attentively, and the teacher was teaching very teacher-like because that's what he was. The man was somewhat tall and lean, and his eyebrows were perpetually scrunched together so that he always looked confused or angry. On this particular day, he was wearing a pink shirt and a blue tie matched by khaki pants and leather shoes.
Now, the students didn't know it yet, but this teacher was qualified to be a lawyer, he used to be a bicycle racer, and he didn't have his left thumb—he lost that appendage to skin cancer.
This was the type of teacher he was. He was weird and eccentric, and odd thoughts liked to come into his head. He was just that sort of man. He was a perfect literature teacher.
And while the students were pondering on the summer reading they did—and did not do—the teacher went about saying the first few pearls of wisdom he hoped to bestow upon them.
This is what he said: "Today we'll be talking about literature."
It wasn't a surprise really, seeing that it was a literature class.
He then paused for dramatic effect. The man being so wise and experienced, knew that silence, like water, cleanses the palate best only except with the brain. So, he waited. He paused.
He began again and said: "Have we really asked ourselves what literature really means? Forget about what you have been spoon fed—forget what your teachers know—because they don't really know anything. Yes, I just said it, we don't know anything.
"All we do is regurgitate the same bits of truth and taste that all our forbearers passed on to our fathers, and our fathers to us, and us to you, and etcetera, etcetera. It's all the same, but what do you think? Why do people keep on writing? What makes certain things good, great, and downright detestable? What is literature? What's the point?
"That's the million dollar question, isn't it kiddies? What's the point?"
And then he pointed and words came out at the same time: "YOU! Answer the question."
He pointed with the index finger that was connected to his thumb-less hand. It was aimed at a little Asian girl of Japanese decent, who spoke English pretty damn well if she could say anything about it. She was a genius with words and that was that.
So she paused. She thought. And this is what she said:
"Well is there a 'point' in the first place? Think about it. The 'point' can be anything that any person wishes it to be. The 'point' is always ambiguous, elusive and created entirely by the feeble human mind. 'And how so,' you say?"
She paused, and then picked up a paperback book.
"Well, imagine that this piece of literature is equivalent to an ink-blot, and imagine again that three people have examined it. What do they see? To Bob that blob of ink might just look like an elephant, to Mary-Ann it might just look like a butterfly, and to Edmund it might just look like his bloody father holding a bloody axe."
She put the book down.
"Every person will see something different in a story, but just because the 'point' isn't a single clear cut dot, doesn't mean that literature isn't important. We are what we eat, and we think how we read. So every time a person reads, chews, and digests a piece of literature; chances are that they've changed a little bit in the process.
"Just think of literature as a bad, murky messed up still-shot of life. People write because they can't help it. They just have this urge to. Their dreams, and hopes, and fears, and feelings overflow onto paper. And just because we're so human and curious, we can't resist the temptation of reading. Literature is just another medium for information and experience to be passed from one person to another. We're social creatures. It's what we do."
"Now is there a point to Literature? I don't know, but I think it would be a scary world without it. We need it—just because. Just because. That's it. We need it just because. And I'll leave it up to all of your talented brains to fill in the blanks."
She closed her mouth and silence entered the hall. It was a stately silence, the type that dreams are made of. The words passed through open ears and then the gears and motors in the eccentric teacher's mind turned. Click-clack-click. He rubbed his stubbly beard and he asked: "What's your name?"
The small girl replied: "Makoto."
And the teacher flashed a smile before he pointed at his next victim.
It turns out that it was special of him to ask for her name because he was a professor, not just a teacher. There were at least three-hundred people crammed into one dinky room with a professor in a pink shirt gabbling about literature. They were attending the first term of the year sitting in a class that was required for graduation.
And where was she exactly?
She was in America. She was in college. This is where Makoto ended up.
And stuff happened between then and now; so listen.
x
x
x
In the last chapter Makoto moved to Tokyo and got two cats for her birthday.
She was eight and there were only a few things that happened because she was eight.
Children at that age spent all their time wanting to grow up faster. Of course, all that did was ensure that time slowed down. It was like waiting for water to boil. If a person stared at it, it would take an eternity.
Makoto was doing this. She was staring at each tick and tock that passed her way. She took each sound of her little clock and categorized it away and checked it off. It was one less tick or tock in her way. It was taking an eternity for them to pass. She wanted to grow up, because being grown up meant that there was no pain at all. She wanted to be strong.
But in that mess of wishing and wanting and waiting, there was something else that happened.
She began to look—really look—and that made all the difference in the world.
And Makoto's clock went: Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock and Makoto's heart went: Doki-doki, Doki-doki, Doki-doki.
And time sped up.
x
x
x
Now take a few steps back, because something like that is very fun to do, and see that some ten years ago it was the first day of class too.
Actually, it was the first day of class for Makoto. She was expelled for pounding a little boy's face black and blue, and as such, had to transfer in the middle of the year. When she moved to Tokyo, she was expecting a fresh start and something new to do.
It was sort of sad when she saw what her new school looked like. It was like some evil and dull man had decided to design all of the schools in Japan. The same tired looking gates. The same tired looking buildings.
New school, old school, all the same school. How sad. How boring.
And this particular learning facility wasn't an architectural wonder. It was barely decent. The thing was a squat rectangular box. It had a grayish tinge to it, just some boxes inside more boxes really. There was even a rumor that the school was made by a prison designer. If Makoto didn't know better, she could have thought her new school was a prison too.
In prison they clothed and fed and enlightened convicts behind bars.
At school they fed and educated children behind an iron gate.
Makoto thought about it again. And school was prison. It was a part time prison, from sunrise to sunset, or at least for a good time between—schools was where small children were brainwashed for the good of society.
So, she kept this in mind, as she took her old sweet time, and moseyed on down to classroom B-2.
As she walked, Makoto noticed that the hallways here looked just like death row—they were pale and empty and devoid of hope.
Dead girl walking.She called out in her head. Her shoes echoed in the hallways.
Click—clack. Click—clack.
Dead girl walking.She called out in her head again. Dead girl walking.
Death row was a place in America where they shot people up with drugs. Their hearts would stop after that, because other's hearts had stopped beating for them. This is what people in America did when they didn't care anymore. This is what happened when they got upset. Just a few pricks are all it takes. A few injections, and time stops beating. It was the final destination for true delinquents.
The school reminded her of a scene in a movie.
Dead girl walking, she repeated.
And her shoes click-clacked in response.
Makoto tried counting the number of steps that it took to reach her classroom. She stopped counting after the number reached forty-four.
It wasn't much of a trek, but here she was, classroom B-2.
This was her classroom, her new home away from home for a good portion of the day.
When she laid her eyes on it, Makoto realized that her room wasn't very special either. B-2 was like any other classroom. It had a teacher and students and desks. Here, the children were sitting not quite so attentively. It was in their nature to squirm and jump and giggle and play.
The teacher in classroom B-2 was a Japanese middle-aged woman, and that wasn't such a surprise either. The country was full of Japanese people, and middle-aged people were abundant too. She looked like she could be someone's mother. She had that type of look.
When Makoto entered the room, the class kept on conversing because school hadn't started yet, and Makoto noticed that the children looked all very similar. They all had black hair, and all had eyes that were different shades of brown. They all wore uniforms too. The clothes were all the same color and everyone looked all very much the same.
Her new classmates reminded her of cookies. Her mother showed her how to make sugar cookies once. They would take the dough, and roll it out, and they would use a cookie-cutter to cut gingerbread man shapes out of it.
They all were alike. Save for a few defects here and there. Makoto remembered that her mother let her eat the defects first.
They tasted the same. They were just a bit deformed here or there.
Makoto wondered if she tasted the same too.
x
x
x
So on her first day of school Makoto stood in the doorway thinking about cookies. Fortunately for her it was only a few minutes before the bell rang. It was a long sort of melodious bell. It was the sort of thing people would play before a PA announcement.
After the bell rang, the Japanese middle-aged woman clapped her hands and the twenty-six students, dressed in the same type of uniforms, looked up.
"Oh yes." The woman looked at Makoto, "Class, today we have a new transfer student."
The teacher's mother-like tone quieted the room of whispers and giggles. She smiled to her flock and pointed to the little girl standing by the chalkboard.
And Makoto knew that pointing was her cue to introduce herself, because she had seen things similar to this on TV. Usually the new girls or guys in those soap operas were the ones to shake things up. Those people on TV met new people and got accepted into different social groups, and often times they would fall in love, or other people wouldn't like them so much, because things like that made TV more interesting. It was a pattern she saw often.
The little girl, dressed in a slightly different uniform, bowed to the class and said: "It's a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Kino Makoto." It was a phrase that all those other new students on TV said, so Makoto said it too. It was just another lie.
She took a good look at her sugar-cookie classmates. They all had the same beady eyes and the same types of frosting. There were rows upon rows of similar cookie shapes, and yet she didn't see any flaws. Was she the single defect in a batch of cookies?
Makoto wondered if someone had purposely messed up her cookie shape. That they had purposely burned her sugar-cookie parents to ashes, and left her defective. She thought her sugar-cookie shape had a hole in it. It was where her heart was supposed to be.
She imagined her cookie shape, but no one but Makoto knew what the new transfer student was thinking. So, the Japanese middle-aged woman showed the little girl to an empty desk, oblivious to the wound that was profusely bleeding where the little girl's heart was.
The teacher taught. Boring words came out of the boring Japanese middle-aged woman's mouth. Makoto found it much easier staring out the window. She stared at little specks in the sky. They twirled and circled against the background of never-ending blue.
And here, Makoto wondered if the birds knew the true meaning of freedom.
x
x
x
Time passed because it does.
Makoto had her birthday. Two cats came into her life. Her birthday wish didn't come true.
And other things happened, but they weren't that interesting because she was eight. Memories are picky things. Most of the time memories only record the traumatic events in life. Normal everyday life gets blurred as time marches forward. Things get forgotten. Things get lost.
A lot of her memories were blurred, but Makoto clearly remembered that her cats were very fuzzy.
x
x
x
Scientists believe that having a pet relieves stress.
A cat is a pooping-peeing-eating machine, and millions upon millions of people own them. It is general knowledge that cats have this great ability to be standoffish and loving at once, so that they're treated as superior rather than inferior to people. And still millions upon millions of people own them. People tolerate this trait because cats are fuzzy and warm and make cool meowing noises.
Makoto found this out early in her life.
She was eight. She had two kittens, and they thought they owned her and she thought she owned them. In the end though, everything turned all right because she loved them and they loved her back unconditionally.
They were fuzzy and they meowed in the morning to wake her up, and they purred when she pet them. Sometimes she would put her ear to their side when petting them and the purring would fill up her entire world.
It sounded like this: "PUURR-URRR, PUUUR-URRR."
Makoto once heard monks chanting "OOOOMMMMM" on TV. It was a sound that filled everything. A cat's purr was just that. It was the word "om" but in their cat language.
It was the most perfect sound in the world.
She had two cats. One cat was black and one cat was white, and Makoto still had to name them.
At first Makoto decided to name her cats after the moon, but she didn't think it would be nice to name them Moon1 and Moon2. She decided to do research instead.
In this age of information, the knowledge of a thousand-thousand books came to her beck and call, with just the use of her small fingers. Information from all over the globe was transmitted to a beige box.
The box was useful for her cats to sit on.
On the internet, there was a search engine. It was an engine that searched. It had a little blank box that ate up words and spat out links to new and faraway places.
So Makoto fed the search engine a word. This is what she typed: "M-O-O-N."
The search engine gobbled down the four letters and the little search engine chugged and chugged because it thought it could—and then it spat out links to new and faraway places. Makoto clicked on the links, and surfed the web, and learned all sorts of things.
Earth was the third rock from the sun. There were other rocks and balls of gas that floated around the sun. There were nine of them, and they were named after Roman gods.
In particular, she found lots of names for the moon. They were moon Goddesses, in Roman and Greek flavors.
And her cats were a pair. It was like the dark side of the moon, and the light side.
Luna and Artemis.
They were the smartest things in the world. They were angels.
x
x
x
Children are monsters.
Children are angels too.
Sometimes they're both.
Take the time to look, really look, and see that one second a child can be the warmest and loving creature on Earth, and in another moment become demon-spawn whose job is to torment other's souls and rip hearts out. They have the capacity to be both, because humans have the ability to be both.
And one day, a little boy, who had the potential to be both angel and demon, was curious about the new transfer student. She stared out the window all day and watched the birds go by.
She didn't shake things up. She wasn't integrated into social groups. She didn't fall in love.
She was nobody.
But something drew him to her. Maybe he knew that she had a hole in her heart that was still bleeding. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he forgot that at this age, girls were gross and yucky.
Still the little boy went.
One day he walked to the window and said "Hello."
"Hello."
Makoto looked up. The sound came from a little boy standing by the side of her desk. Sounds tended to tickle her mind sometimes. She hadn't been expecting any sort of noise directed to her personally, so it took her a while to form the appropriate response.
Her tongue and mouth moved just so, to create this sound: "Hello."
Then, the little boy smiled and Makoto looked at him.
He was Japanese and had short black hair and his eyes were a light brown. She had seen him around school a couple of times before, but it didn't help that his face could be forgotten in an instant. Sugar-cookie classmates. Every last one of them.
There was a pause. It was somewhat awkward, but short lived.
The awkward moment died because the pink stuff between the little boy's ears sent certain signals to his mouth and tongue so that these sounds were created:
"Have you ever had a vision before?"
"Vision?"
"Oh sorry. My dad tells this to me every day: 'Son, you need to have a strong vision of what you're going to be.'" He thoughtfully rephrased the question, "So, have you ever wondered what you're going to be when you grow up?
"What I want to be when I grow up?" Makoto shook her head. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
"Well then, did you ever wonder why the sky is a light-blue, instead of a navy blue, or green, or purplish-yellow?
It was an odd question. Makoto replied, "No."
"Oh, so you're a bird watcher then?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "Hmm, well…" Makoto noticed his eyes flicked toward the left corner as the little boy accessed memories from the pink matter in his skull.
"I have two birds. One of them is yellowish-green and the other is bluish-white. They like to make a lot of noise, and they don't do so much because they're in a cage." He swiped his hand through his hair. It was his nervous twitch. "Do you have any pets?"
Makoto looked at the boy strangely. "I have two cats."
"Oh cats." His eyes locked onto the left corner. "Well, I also have a tortoise, an aquarium with seahorses, and a lizard." He paused. "My mom has allergies. Allergic to anything with fur, so Dad says we can't have anything furry." He paused again. "Cats would be pretty cool though. I've always wanted something soft to pet. Must be nice."
"Yeah, it is."
He smiled at her.
And Makoto smiled back at the strange little boy. He was certainly strange, but he didn't talk about schoolwork or her blown-up parents. This little boy wasn't out to throw sharp and pointy words at her heart. So she smiled back because it was a nice thing to do.
"So what's your name?" Makoto asked. She asked because that was a nice thing to do too.
The little boy grinned again out of embarrassment. He forgot to introduce himself.
"The name's Shinozaki."
"Mine's Makoto."
And that was her first boy-friend.
x
x
x
Makoto eventually had a vision. It wasn't a vision of her future; no, it was just a vision of her new story. She picked up bits and pieces from her life, and lied about them. Thoughts and feelings and emotions overflowed, so her story now went like this:
Once upon a time there was a kingdom on the moon. There weren't any rabbits. There was a princess that lived on the moon. Her name was Serenity. Her mother was named Serenity too.
Princess Serenity didn't like school that much because it was boring. Her mother sent her two best advisers to help her. They were cats. Their names were Artemis and Luna.
Artemis was a boy. He was a white cat. Luna was a girl. She was a black cat.
They had crescent moons on their foreheads because they lived on the moon. These cats could talk.
Princess Serenity had a lot of friends too. Their names were Sailor Mars, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, and Sailor Jupiter. Princess Serenity also had a boy-friend.
And together, they had all sorts of adventures on the moon. They were superheroes. They fought for love and justice.