"What do you think I should do?" He asked, earnestly.

Kyosuke Mikoshiba had a golden rule that he always followed and that was to nevergo to his mother about any sort of advice. His father would not give great advice, and his sisters would never let him live down the embarrassment, but his mother would make it a much bigger deal out of it.

He does not know what it was, exactly. Perhaps his rebellious years play to her anxieties, or the fact of him being tall and strong even at a young age disappointed her fantasies of her last child, but whenever he came with a problem to his mother, things would go out of hand. She would cry or commemorate emphatically, and whatever he was struggling with would be forgotten under a pile of other things he now had to deal with.

Yet, here he was, growing desperate and deigning himself to ask his mom about how to get closer to a girl in his Japanese Rhetoric elective class. He was not the greatest with girls in the past and he wanted to make sure that he did not screw up his opportunity with this one.

To her benefit, she has not cried and seemed to be thinking quite earnestly on what she should say to him.

"Well, maybe you can talk about any common interests that you both have." The woman offers. "It's always a nice thing to have someone to discuss your ideas, and it does solve the problem of breaking the ice."

He looked to the ground. "I don't think we have any common interests. We run in pretty different circles."

The older woman pursed her lips. She wondered how, having been raised in a house with four of them, her son could be so oblivious to the fairer sex.

"Why don't you find out something she's interested in and learn about it?" She amends her offer. "Then, you'll have something to talk about."

Kyosuke nodded, deep in thought. "I could do that. Thanks, mom."

He tapped the counter with his fingers as if he were playing the drums and headed back to his room. He was rarely the type of person to be open about his feelings and the woman felt a hint of pride knowing that she helped him.

She figured that, since she seems to be on a roll with all this parenting thing, perhaps she should take a swing in curing the perpetual slobs that her older daughters became. If Kyosuke can become a soft and polite gentleman, after all, there is hope for anyone.

If the girls came to know why their mother renewed her effort to make them clean after themselves, there would be hell to pay.


The next day, Kyosuke focused a lot less on the class material being presented with vigour by the teacher and much more on Yui. He was determined to find out one thing that he could learn about.

He wondered how he could go about finding more about her in such a way that neither involved him directly asking her, nor coming out as stalkerish. What to do, what to do?

His eyes were immediately drawn to her binder. It was light blue with several stickers covering the front and back cover. They seemed pretty common place for a teenage girl: flowers, mascots, cartoon characters. Nothing too telling.

Something else brought him attention: a flier. He remembers putting those up the day before. It was for Yuto's new initiative of beginning a movie club in the school, for "lively discussion" of "cinema as an art". It seemed presumptuous to him, and so he was not too much interested in it.

Well, it would seem that the girl he liked had at least some interest on that whole discourse, and so he finally had an opening. Watch one of the movies that she liked and casually bring it up in a conversation.

Which one, however?

Kyosuke liked movies as much as the next guy, but his taste was limited to it as an entertainment value, and not as an art form. He enjoyed all genres and had a decent catalogue, but all those symbolistic movies from the West went straight through his head and he finds little enjoyment in them, much less has a reasonable critique to contribute.

He supposes he could always ask Yuto for suggestions, but he soon decides against it. The class president would ask why the sudden interest, and the redhead does not want to respond to this question.

Mikoshiba looked at the binder for a little bit longer, trying to find any other clues on what he could watch. His first instinct was to assume Romance, since Yui is a girl, but he feared the generalization. If he got it wrong, she would certainly be offended by his suggestion.

Then, peeking from her bag, there was his opening. A DVD case was peeking out of it.

He waited for a while, until she was distracted by some parallel conversation and, very discreetly, peeked on it and saw the title: Blindness. Surely, that was the what he was looking for. He wrote the title down on his palm and lightly blew on it so that it would not smear.

All that he had to do was go home, watch it, and then bring it up tomorrow.


Later that day, Kyosuke set up the DVD on the living room TV and queued the movie. His sisters had volunteered to watch it with him and help him understand whatever might be in it. Art films were known for being annoying and confusing to most people, they argued, and he could use three pairs of fresh eyes into it.

At the end of the hour and a half, the four siblings sat through the credits. They were not exactly sure what they saw or why Yui loved it so much. It was a romance, yes, but it was icky.

"What on earth has just happened in there?" His eldest sister expressed the first opinion.

"Well, first they became blind, but the blindness was infectious, and then they went to quarantine, and then..." The middle child pointed out, instead. "I don't know. I'm going to pick up a soda."

She stood up and left, her older sister following closely behind. Kyosuke turned the movie off and sat down on the couch once again.

"Asuna, you're my only hope." He said, serious. "We've seen her movie. Now how do I get this into a conversation that doesn't make it look obvious?"

The blonde woman sighed. "Talk about Brazil, I guess? It's supposed to be set there, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but what about it?" He pressed.

"I don't know! I've never been to Brazil." She snapped back. "You're the one who goes to a fancy school. What do you think of Brazil?"

Kyosuke sighed. "That they are good in football."

"This is not going well, huh?" The hairdresser smiled sympathetically to his plight, for once. "Look, there must be something on the internet about it. People love to pretend they are smart in there. If not, someone must have written something on a paper and stuff."

He looked over with renewed hope. "Yeah. You're right about that. Thank you, Asuna."


Kyosuke walked into his Japanese Rhetoric class the next morning, the play-by-play of his conversation plan repeating in his head. He had read review upon review of it, and was reasonably confident that he got

Yui was sitting at her desk as usual, writing in her notebook what he assumed were the answers to the questions displayed on the blackboard. If he talked to her before class started, then he could have the entire period to either sulk in his own self-pity or anticipate his next successful conversation with the girl.

"You like Blindness, right?" He segued directly into the subject.

Mikoshiba placed his hands on the edge of her desk and looked down, almost towering over her. She dropped her pen and looked up at him.

"Yeah, I really do. Why do you ask?" She ran a hand through her hair, pushing the strands from blocking her right eye.

He absentmindedly drummed his fingers of the wood of the desk. "Well, I saw it last night. It was pretty good."

Her eyes widened and her expression brightened considerably. It was rare that someone genuinely wanted to talk about film with her, especially this one.

"Really?" Yui asked, excitedly. "Don't you love how we never truly understand what is the origin of the disease, where it all takes place and who are these people actually? The camerawork is absolutely to die for as well. What was your interpretation? What did you think it was about?"

Kyosuke was at a loss for words. He knew that there was supposed to be a deeper meaning, but he could not exactly put it in words that would make him sound smart.

"Um, I think that it's like how ignorance and misinformation can spread, much like a virus. That how the institutions we put in place to defend us are so easy to fall apart." He argued, unsure.

Did he know exactly what the words coming out of his mouth meant? No. It did sound smart, though.

"But if you're interested, we can talk more about this." The redhead offered. "If you're free this weekend, that is. There's a burger joint at the shop street that I like, if you'd like to come with me."

Yui smiled once again. "I can't say no to that. It's a date."