Author's Notes: Well, that's good enough. For the new readers, I would like to remind you that every event in this story means something and that all of these will add up into the end. Palahniuk made his Fight Club short story as an experiment to try and see if he could go as random as he could on progression while NOT losing the reader... looks like I've failed that at first bat! But I'll just shake it off and stop talking and just give you the damn story now. So here we go.
And can you guess what this story's a crossover of? Oh come on, like it hasn't been blantantly obvious in the first chapter...
F . L . C . L. : How To Start A Fight
Bad Ronald
Two.
Hate Me A Lullaby.
I can't help but wonder why Mamimi writes those stupid little quotes on her cigarettes. Yesterday, it was "Ferocious Impotent". The day before that, it was "Transmogrifier". And this whole thing, all of it, started because of her. I think. I'm not very sure at this point.
The gun was Haruko Haruhara, but Mamimi Samejimi was the gunpowder. It's not Mamimi's fault, really. She just didn't know.
Are high school girls supposed to smoke?
She puts the cigarette out. Big lips, puckery and pink rub across my cheek. I'm trying to ignore her. I didn't like it then, I don't like it now. I can't stop her, though. If she doesn't do this, she'll overflow. Whatever that means.
By all means, Mamimi isn't unattractive. She's actually quite the opposite. Big, puckering pink lips, her kind brown eyes, her cute little upturned nose, fresh, rosy-cheeked face and her slim but healthy body. Any guy my age would die to be in my position, with her entire attention, her small hugs and kisses.
Not me. I'm too busy feeling hurt and dejected, in spite of all her soft, smooching kisses. Her cute nose rubbing across my neck. She's looking for Takkun and I don't know where he is. She won't find him with me.
That feeling, again. That tightening feeling in your chest when you realize the person you kind of like is only using you as a replacement for the person they like a lot, I have it. Right now. That little feeling that makes you mad, make you sad, makes you feel all right. I have that feeling now, and I don't feel all right.
It's not fair.
I like her. Not a lot, but I like her.
And she doesn't see me as she hugs me, kisses me on the cheek, buries her face in my hair. She only sees Takkun.
That analogy of Haruko being a gun, what I really mean is this. If Haruko pins you with one of her insane grins, you already know you're in deep shit. That's just how it works. She used me in the past but I was the one who was so love struck with her. Right now, I don't know if I still am.
Thiskaleidoscope of all the hellish things that I've been through, rapid-taken pictures of my horrified face, she set it off. Just by being here, she made me happy, and just by leaving, she made me sad.
She came one day exactly the same as she left, with her stark blue Rickenbacker bass guitar, with her yellow Vespa, with her manic attitude towards human life. Getting a guitar smashed across my head was not how I'd want to meet anyone, but here we go; Naota Nandaba, meet Haruko Haruhara.
She was the first to turn my life upside down. Even if I complained about her presence every minute of the day, I still couldn't shake off that feeling in my chest. The tightening feeling in the chest, except this time it feels good. Because I liked her. Haruko was interesting and she barged her way into my life and nothing in my life was ever interesting. Not school, not my family, not Mamimi. Just her. When she showed up with her bass guitar, she proved to me that maybe there as something beyond this shitty world, something worth looking for.
Something worth living for.
And then she left. I haven't seen her for a while. She left, and I feel lonely. I feel like I'm going crazy. Insane.
You don't ever want to get this feeling, but if you do, here's how it works. Think of the common cold. This simple cold strain is already connected to your immune system. No, really, it's been proven. Walk around for an hour in cold, freezing weather, then walk inside a house with the temperature set high enough to melt glass.
You'll throw a monkey wrench into your immune system. You'll be a shivering wreck.
Takkun calls it Stay-At-Home AIDS.
What Haruko did to my mind was screw it up so badly that it wouldn't work anymore. Imagine a circular piece forcing itself into a square hole and you pretty much have the general idea. My mind could only take so much tediousness before she showed up, and when she left, it wasn't willing to go back to that again. Never again.
It's all your fault, Haruko. Why did you do this to me?
But I digress. It's class time, and our teacher, Miya-Jun, is teaching something completely asinine again. It used to be chopsticks. Learning to use a spork. Making stickers. Making glue out of rice. Now it's cigarettes. Her lesson, it's about how smoking causes people to become walking cancer sticks. Tobacco zombies. I don't really care since I don't smoke. Mamimi smokes a lot and she's not dead. And those TRUTH commercials she keeps showing us, you have to admit, they kind of make non-smoking look pathetic.
From the side of my eyes, I can see Ninamori Eri, the class rep, looking at me all nervous-like. She never looked at me that way before. She's usually looking cool or smug like she won a poker game. I never liked that look on her face.
So I turn to her. If you're like me, right now, your face would feel like whipped batter. Completely beaten and bruised. If you're like me, your jaw feels like its just been dug out from a corpse and drilled onto your skull with a broken screwdriver. Your entire body, it feels like you just went through a meat grinder, except the grinder malfunctioned and broke halfway through the process.
Why? Who cares? You don't know why and you don't care why. All you know is that you feel great. This is better than feeling nice-looking, clean-shaven, freshly laundered, picture-perfect. This is way better than feeling normal. Or aware.
This is feeling like shit. This is feeling like you've been beaten sore on every place in your body you didn't even know you had. And it's the greatest feeling in the world you could ever, ever experience.
So I turn to Ninamori with my blood constantly pooling inside my mouth and seeping out my cracked lips. Here I am, feeling absolutely great, and she looks away quickly to pay attention to the teacher. This little charade. Pretending not to notice. So I suck in the blood, but some squirts out dribbling on the desk, and I have to wipe it away with my sleeve. I wipe it so fast that some of the blood spills to the floor and makes Ninamori cringe in disgust.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but snicker. She really does think I can't see her. And me with my puffed up black eyelids, you'd probably think so too. Will you just look at her, her clean clothes, her perfect angelic face, that poker stare. She thinks she's so much better than me and she probably is. The best thing about this is, do I even care?
So I'll just let Ninamori try her hardest to ignore me. I'll let teacher Miya-Jun start snatching glances at me. Looking across the crowd of kids, I'll let her stare in my direction and pause. And blink. I'll let Miya-Jun look away with furrowed brows and pursed lips, going back to her lesson.
I'll just let Ninamori and Miya-Jun think that they're important to me. That they make some semblance in my life. That I care.
I sneeze and it comes out in a little blood spray. Instantly, right away, every student turns around and moves their desk a little away from me. I try to smile at them, but that was a mistake because the homework sheet on my desk now has a splotched goop of red on it. Oops. Sorry.
I think look a bit screwed up. But really, I probably don't look that bad. I don't even feel that bad. In fact, I totally feel like a fucking big boss.
Author Notes: Next one will be better, for serious. Just wait, but for now, just review, please.