Optical Illusion
By Modular Blues
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(This was a three-hour semi-free-stream writing experiment, hence a style change from my previous works. But I just had to get it out. Revision pending. Not too sure about sequel/trilogy at this point…)
Part I. (?)
It was a normal day in an ordinary elementary school. Childhood played out its timeless drama. Basically, that means learning random factoids and reading random stories and playing random games in gym classes and drawing random pictures in art classes and talking about the usual stuff in lunch rooms.
All the fifth grade classes were preparing for the annual intramural athletic events, a.k.a. the Fifth Grade Olympics (FGO). Excited chatters rippled across the classrooms as the kids waited for their teachers to tell them all about it. What kind of fun awaited them.
In one of the classrooms, Kagome sat near the front window and daydreamed. As always.
Her best friend Sango sat to her left, ready to poke her with a pencil.
Olgie the Gossiper crossed her arms a few seats behind them and rolled her eyes. How boring.
Sam the Whiz leaned back and stretched in the other back corner. How amusing.
His buddies Miguel the Picasso and Kraf the Bodyguard traded smirks with him. They could never pronounce his given name properly, so they called him Sam.
Their teacher began scribbling on the board as she described the events. Dodge ball and Frisbees and track. Okay everything's normal so far. Then the kids grimaced when they heard about the obstacle course.
This had always been the wild card event in the FGO. One of the gym coaches liked to keep it a surprise… the more outrageous the better.
This year, it would be a relay race run by eight teams of two. A boy would piggyback a girl, who would carry a tray of water to the destination bucket thirty yards away. Whichever team got the most water in the end would win.
Right after the mention of the boy-girl pairing, all the boys looked at Kagome, and all the girls looked at Sam the Prince Charming.
Well, Kagome was a wiry little girl and rather petite, so of course that would make the boy's job a lot easier.
Even at that age, Sam the Whiz already had a fanclub. His hair wasn't long and he wasn't that tall back then, but still.
Then the teachers numbered the students and randomly determined the pairs… and guess what happened. Yep.
Kagome could feel the icy glares of jealousy from many girls. As if they wanted to skin her alive. Even though she was just an absent-minded little girl who didn't even like boys in general. They're so troublesome.
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On the day of the FGO, the weather was fine and nothing seemed out of place. Everything proceeded as usual. Kraf still aced the discus, Sam in Frisbees, he and Miguel in jail dodge ball, Sango in the 500-yard run and Kagome in the 100-yard run. Those long legs came in handy.
Time for the obstacle course. When it was their turn, Sam picked up Kagome and she picked up the tray of water. Very carefully.
They were going at a steady pace. Kagome was trying to still the wavelets of water in the pan and her own concentration, fading in and out from being under the sun for a while and the fact she was straddling the Whiz Prince. It's a heady thing.
Sam was approaching the bucket. Ten yards. Five yards. Suddenly, Kagome's hand loosened and the tray slipped.
Okay. It turned upside-down on his head, soaking him and blocking his view. He stumbled and fell forward and in an attempt not to fall on top him, she leapt away but somehow lost her balance and hit the ground at the same time he did. Face to face. Mouth to mouth. Their lips and teeth smudged against each other. Pain radiated into their head.
All the witnesses froze in shock.
Seriously, Kagome would rather break all her teeth or even fall into a coma at that instant. The reporter-effect spread the news far and wide. Copious giggling and whispering and fake love letters and random death notes ensued in the next few days.
Even Sango asked, are you really going out with that guy? Someone wrote in a bathroom stall that she saw you two at Furger King's last week.
Kagome was like, no I didn't! I don't even like him! Boys are disgusting animals!
Even if they were, Kagome secretly thought, it's satisfying to be matched up with the Whiz Prince. Very much so.
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It was one of those hazy afternoons, and Kagome was daydreaming yet again. She saw a flash of silver by the window. He paused. Kagome stared. He turned. Kagome froze. The universe stopped and rotated around them, etc. His lips slowly formed into a smile. A smirky-confident-amused one. Kagome returned a smile too. A dazed-embarrassed-apologetic one.
That night she rhapsodized and brewed a fairy tale of a comic, modeled on Cinderella. Very closely indeed.
A few days later, Kagome was still enraptured in the sublime act of artistic inspiration when Olgie materialized as the Evil Stepsister. She sneaked to her desk when Kagome wasn't looking and stole the comics. And shared with a bunch of gossipy girls. The reporter-effect in action once more.
Sam's buddies started bugging him. Miguel sketched suggestive images while Kraf patted Sam on the back and nodded knowingly every time. To which the Whiz Prince replied with tastefully rude comebacks. Although this did give him a few ideas…
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Little Sam looked up his father's optics text and somehow constructed a small telescope. He told him that it was for watching birds. What's unusual was that he could aim it apparently off-target yet still be able to observe the target. The marvels of optics. (AN: I actually don't have factual base for this :P)
The stalking began. Then the pranks. Little innocuous ones involving cryptic messages and (erasable) textbook doodles and fake blood and dead bugs became the highlights of her days, just enough to drive Kagome nuts and confused. Could he really hate her that much?
Could their hint of a sort of friendship be so ephemeral?
Sango tried to comfort her friend. But the fact was that she couldn't figure out what's going on either. And of course, Kagome was too embarrassed to go to the teacher for this type of thing. So the trio had wicked fun coming up with pranks and carrying them out. Did Kraf and Miguel know better? Maybe. But they continued until near the end of school.
Then news came that Sam was moving away. Family stuff.
The class had a little goodbye, and his fanclub members were close to tears. It was embarrassing to see Olgie beside herself. Of course, Kagome stayed cool and didn't even look at him.
After school was officially over and everyone was leaving, Sam reached into his backpack and extracted a paper roll. He had to catch Kagome. She was going out the door. He jogged up behind her.
Yes? Kagome's eyes narrowed at him and the roll of paper, expecting another prank.
For you, Sam replied. Simply and honestly.
Kagome took the roll and unfurled it. She recognized it from the showcase in the art hallway. A futuristic drawing of a cityscape.
Kagome looked at him. He stood motionless yet his golden eyes spelled eagerness.
I can't take this, she said.
Why not, he sounded impatient.
There's no why, I just can't, Kagome rolled the paper up and stuck it back at him.
His eyes flashed a series of inflections that Kagome could not quite fathom. The way liquid crystals reflect light under different levels of electricity.
He took his artwork back. In resignation. Kagome was surprised. Then puzzled. Then she felt something that resembled shattered glass.
The young Prince faded from view and from her life. It was certainly not love in that sense and hardly qualified as romantic. They barely spoke to each other. Yet the simple joys of friendship and naïve imagination were gone… forever…
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End (?)
