My steps clambered against the metal stairs as I approached the door to the rooftop and tested the rusty knob. It groaned and scraped and gave.
"I'd like to ask all of you here today a question," a muffled, yet unmistakable mellifluous voice queried beyond it. It rang with a metal edge of assertion. "Can one person defeat a hundred? How about a thousand? A million?"
I creaked open the door, schoolbag bumping against it on the way, and slipped out. Back against the wall, I snuck a look over my shoulder onto and caught a glimpse of her. She stood atop a generator as her impromptu stage, appearing at least a foot taller than typical from my vantage point. A small pile of thick paper printouts rested at its bottom, sheafs rifling open in the breeze.
"What is it that holds a million people together? The love for partner and child that builds a family, the love for a friend that binds a community, the love for the fellow citizen that glues together a country. The love for forebear that ties us to tradition and the love for children that ties us to the future. When these ties are at our strongest and we are our best selves, there is nothing we cannot accomplish together. When we know what is in each other's hearts, when we struggle together and gain an understanding of what each and every one of us needs and desires, even a million people can act with the purpose and tenacity of one."
She rested an allegiant hand over her chest and tilted her head and wore a smile that a million people could fall in love with. More of a slight smirk, maybe even a sneer. It had a little bit of herself injected into it compared to her ordinary deferent expressions that, though with a firm radiance, reflected whatever the viewer wanted to see of themselves. The sort of glowing charisma and infectious optimism she seemed to impart to everyone but me.
"We are the luckiest generation to live on this Earth. At this moment of maximum challenge, equipped with the maximum potential of technology, in the face of some of the greatest, most perplexing social and political upheavals, it is the time for us to demonstrate who we really are and our ability to solve the problems facing humanity today and in the future."
Her sleeves rolled up, her red uniform ribbon doffed, the topmost button on her collar undone amid the sweltering humid air that insists on sticking and rubbing against my skin and soaking into my shirt, she somehow otherwise appeared unfazed. Her untiring voice retained the silken melody with which it had begun. All she lacked was a microphone or podium and an adoring, chanting audience. Their thousand imaginary gazes already reflected themselves in the twinkle of her eyes lost in their own enchantment, living not in the present.
"The great men in New York and London say fairness is impossible. The great men in Washington and Beijing say democracy is impossible. The great men in Tokyo and San Francisco say love is impossible. But to all of these great men I say, they do not grasp our inestimable imagination for the human dream! We cannot face the twenty-first century alone - left and right, man and woman, rich and poor. Only those who seek to divide us, who seek to abolish the love that binds us, benefit from this. One person can only defeat a million when the million allow it!"
She stretched out her arms, as if attempting to embrace the enormity of the aspirations, the geography, the humanity without limitations she had just invoked. The sun blasted behind her, bathing her face within a halo of blinding light and casting her long shadow. She surveyed the empty rooftop, nodding to applause only she could hear.
"Trust ourselves. Trust our inherent goodness. Trust that when one of us chooses another one of us to share half our life, that free choice is infinitely more valuable and valid than any algorithm's. And that is why the first step to liberating humankind's unlimited altruistic genius must be the abolition of the Yukari Law - !"
I stepped out, and that's when she noticed me.
"Eep!" she shrieked. Her mask of confidence shattered, and she tripped and fell flat on her rear with a clang. For the briefest moment I pondered whether her blue plaid miniskirt was quite long enough to sit in.
"Are you okay?" I exclaimed, rushing over.
Takasaki rubbed her head as a furious blush took hold. She tried to calm herself down to no avail, and I couldn't help but think she looked so cute trying. "Ummm…did you…see any of that?".
"You might have a hard time becoming one of those 'great men' you mentioned if you get that flustered at someone seeing you speak," I teased.
"I wasn't expecting you to show up!" she fired back. "And you missed the whole point of that bit - I'm not trying to be one of those great men."
"Why not?".
She shot me a knowing, judgmental side-eye, arms crossed, when she suddenly melted into concern. "Reader-kun! Are you alright?!".
"Wha?". And then she reached for my face, tapping the slight red web that trickled down above my ear with a cool, gentle fingertip. It still stung, besides the unexpected electric euphoria of Takasaki's touch. No one else had bothered to ask about it for the past few days, out of silent courtesy or silent ignorance or silent disregard.
"Oh, this?" I dismissed. "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing!" Takasaki protested, wrists and knees trembling together. And in that moment, she deigned to behave just like an ordinary Japanese schoolgirl once again. "Do you want me to get some bandages from the nurse's office? What happened? ".
Her worried face was so close to mine, and I kind of enjoyed the attention, even if not the reason for it. And the thought of lying in Takasaki's lap as she wrapped gauze on my head and tended to me…
I closed my eyes.
A few days ago, my breathing ragged, I found myself sprawled on the cold tile floor amidst a constellation of crystalline shards. Crimson rivers trickled down the side of my face and cracked glass pricked and embedded itself into my red-smeared fingers every time I touched it. I had tried to imagine Takasaki then, as I usually did in these circumstances, kneeling beside me to caress my cheek or mutter some encouragement. But my mind could only see the back of her swaying, glimmering hair as she declared her love to Nejima and wrapped her arms around his hunched neck and leapt to kiss him in delight.
"Go clean yourself up," my mother had spat as she tossed a paper towel at me. I had gotten into an argument with her over taking that Saturday night off with Takasaki instead of working on my science fair project, and it had ended with her knocking me off a chair by smashing a glass against my head.
I was more tempted to call the cops than I ever had been, but my phone remained in my pocket. I would have loved nothing more than to see her behind bars, but my mother had worked so many hard decades for her academic career. Maybe she had a point - what right did a loser like me have to topple that? I could already see the headlines: "Entitled teenaged loser calls the cops on award-winning, internationally renowned professor." I could already imagine how it would end. I knew it wasn't true, but it was reality nonetheless.
I sighed and opened my eyes, and saw the real Misaki Takasaki standing in front of me with concerned, pleading eyes. Pleading for me. Even though my heart sunk and chilled a bit and my shoulders slackened every time I saw her now, it still couldn't help but spark a little jolt of joy in my chest at the same time.
"Trust me, Reader-kun…you can tell me."
It wasn't an act. It wasn't her generic kindness. Something swam behind those storm-cloud eyes inside her brain, something she would never say but with which for some reason still felt familiar. The same thing I saw five years ago.
"I just fell on the way back from school," I wanted to toss out. But the false lump lodged in my throat, and I almost gagged them out as I tried to lie to the one woman I loved.
I gurgled instead.
She put a finger to her lips and nodded to nothing. "It's okay. I understand."
Eager to change the topic, I stooped to pick up one of the packets lying on the ground.
"SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
AMOROSO ET UX. v. NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina's statutory 'Yukari' scheme to mandate marriage assignment by algorithm held 5-4 not to violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is affirmed."
Dropping the binder-clipped brick, I scooped up another stray paper, its pages blowing open.
"JPMorgan Global Research - An Investor's View on Yukari Laws & Privatization: Facebook, Google, and Tencent."
"What is all this for, Takasaki-san?" I asked, waving the document in the air.
"Oh, I'm on the debate team."
"You're on the debate team?" I echoed, before I flushed red at not even knowing what club she participated in after class. Unexpected, although on second thought, not as much as I thought. What part of it felt unexpected, exactly? She possessed the affability for it, with certainty. But the flip side of that: the steely sharpness, the bickering jabs, the fiery animation, I had trouble associating with her soft-spoken congeniality. Even when I saw her first amongst her friends, her implicit leadership rested mainly on her unspoken beauty and reserved nods. I recalled she spoke the least within her gaggle of girl friends and yet still headlined over the discussions, much like a worn gaveling chairman.
She curled a strand of hair around her finger, looking away at the beige suburbia carpeting the distance. "Do you…do you think I did a good job?".
"Oh, on your speech?" I clarified to which she nodded. "I thought it was beautiful."
"Just like you," I had the good sense not to add.
"Thanks." She swung her milky thin legs over the edge of the generator. "I feel like it's not very authentic, to be honest. It's just the typical fluffy stuff that people like to hear and eat up. We're definitely not the luckiest generation. The time to demonstrate who we were was forty years ago, our grandparents' time, when Japan first passed the Yukari Law. And we failed. And now this outrageous authoritarian, dystopian feature has embedded itself in banality - nobody cares anymore."
She sighed. "I mean, it's a very authentic issue to me, and I've thought about centering it around a personal anecdote instead, but my story's just not very interesting."
"What do you see in Yukari Nejima?" I blurted out.
Takasaki darted her head towards me and her eyes widened. "How do you know?" she squeaked. "Did he tell you?".
"No, no. He just happened to ask for some homework help recently and…I mean, I was kind of wondering, so…I just sort of asked," I explained. "Sorry if I shouldn't have."
She hopped down to the roof and patted the tile next to her. "I can already see it. Have a seat, Reader-kun."
I sidled up beside her, bunching up my knees. I withdrew an onigiri rice ball from a ziplock in my bag and unwrapped the seaweed. It got cold, and the rice became hard and fell apart, but it still appeared edible.
"Oh, late lunch?" Takasaki pointed. I nodded. "I haven't really been able to finish during lunchtime either lately," she admitted, pulling a small pink drawstring with a flower pattern from her schoolbag. "Want to share?".
"Sure." I responded by taking a second onigiri out of the plastic bag and handing it to her. "Not sure how good it still tastes."
"Not a problem at all, just wait til you see mine. Do you make them yourself?".
I shook my head. "I buy in bulk at the store, usually."
She reached into the pink sack, and pressed a hard, burnt, misshapen mound trying to pass as a chocolate chip cookie into my hand.
"Want a cookie?" she asked with a head tilt and a wink. "I keep trying to get into baking and cooking some things for myself and my step-brothers, but, well, hehe."
I took a bite as she watched, and almost winced at the texture of sawdust coating the inside of my mouth and the bland, smoky taste of combusted cardboard. I mustered a grin and thrust out a thumbs up.
"Verdict?" she asked, "And be honest."
"Well…" I trailed off. "It tastes awful, but it makes me happy to enjoy something you made."
She laughed. "Thanks for not sugarcoating it. I like the idea of actually making something, even if the outcome is terrible or I'm no good at it. It makes me feel like I'm productive and maybe worth something to the world."
She stared out into the distance. Beyond the suburbscape both of us could spy the distant shimmering ocean, the reclining sun skipping orange rays across it like pebbles. Just when I thought she had embarked on this awfully late lunch to divert away from my question, she began.
"I'm not surprised you guessed from talking with Neji-kun. It's hard to hide when you're in love, and it's even harder for him. When you lie or hide something, you can't just do it your words or even your voice. You have to do it with your whole body. And every little thing he does, from how he rubs down the cowlick on the back of his head when he's nervous to how he tries to pull up his neck when he's around me and then forgets to when he keeps glancing at me in class and trying to stop himself even though we're supposed to be reading. It just tells the whole world how he feels even when he really doesn't want to."
She nibbled at the onigiri I gave her and grinned off to nowhere, with nothing but Nejima in her dreamy eyes.
"You know, when he confessed to me, he started off by saying how average he is, how unremarkable he is, how he doesn't look that good or top the exam lists or do anything cool besides the kofun hobby he deprecates as nerdy and otaku-ish even though I think it's really cute. Most guys who confess sell themselves like I'm a college interviewer or a Google and Goldman Sachs recruiter or something. I don't usually think they're lying…but it's not really telling the truth either, is it? Just the very best part parts of themselves? I don't blame them, most guys who like me are the ambitious high-roller types who are used to the best, they just want to date 'the most beautiful girl in the school' as another line item to their already long resume of accomplishments."
I swallowed my saliva and wondered whether she meant to include me in that indictment.
"Even though I didn't agree with any of the descriptions he used for himself, I knew he didn't want to inflate his chances. He only wanted me to like him if I liked him as he really is. Which, of course, I do!" she chirped, throwing her hands in the air. The orange rays of sunset basked her calm, dreaming face, and for the briefest impossible moment there was nothing behind her relaxed blue eyes but lakeside serenity.
"I know he's nervous all the time and he probably thinks of himself as a coward, but I think he's actually very courageous," she continues. "It's easier for some people to puff themselves up with false bravado, but it's hard for someone in Neji-kun's position. Sometimes, when I have to think of what happy memories I have to show for life, what makes it worth continuing, I think back to when he gave me that eraser in elementary school. And even though you probably think it's small and insignificant, I knew he had to pluck up all the courage he had to do that one small act of caring for me at a time when nobody or nothing else would."
"I'm not someone's trophy," she stated, clutching her heart. "I want a guy who makes me as nervous around him as I do to him, someone who views me the way I view him. I want someone who makes my heart flutter as much as his. I want someone who I feel embarrassed stealing glances at in class even though I can't help myself. And that someone is Yukari Nejima-kun. Is that too much to ask for?".
Her face grew serious. "I know you probably think it's nothing, that 'oh, that's all?', that I'm so stupid for falling in love with someone over giving me an eraser in elementary school or some small thing like that. I know I'm a stupid girl, I don't need to be reminded. But those feelings are the most important thing to me, and I don't really care what you think of them," she concluded.
"I don't think they're small or nothing, and I definitely don't think you're stupid," I rebutted, turning and gripping her shoulder. "You should be easier on yourself. You're an amazing girl, Takasaki-san, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Including yourself."
"Only a stupid girl would fall for someone so deeply in a country where a government AI decides your partner," she muttered. A thin line of moisture underlined her askance eyes, although she held them back.
"Then don't," I spat out, without even thinking.
"What?" Takasaki asked.
"Don't marry me. Break the Yukari Law, ignore your notice." My voice cracked, and I couldn't believe the words tumbling out of my mouth. "I'm tired of seeing you miserable about this all the time. I don't want to see you cry anymore. I just want you to have that look you had when you were talking about Nejima, but forever instead of just a second. I love you Takasaki-san, I really do, more than anyone! I would rather spend my life with you, but not at your cost. I want you to do what makes you happy and look forward to life."
"And then what?".
"Excuse me?".
She repeated, "And then what? Marry Nejima and destroy his future? You know he won't be able to get into history graduate programs to study his kofun mounds if he did that. How many times have I explained this to Ririna too?".
"Ririna?" I asked, before remembering her as the girl at the chess tournament and Nejima's assigned wife. "She had - "
" - the same, idiotic idea," Takasaki finished. "She just thinks of this as a love story and she wants to play the hero, when she's meant to play the heroine."
"Well what about you?" I asked, "Breaking the Yukari Law doesn't prevent you from running for election."
"Voters would never go for it," she denied.
I pointed out, "There's plenty of recent examples of successful candidates with legal problems and domestic problems and -"
"What?" she groaned. "Really? Really? I'm on the wrong side of the gender line, and the moral line, and…I don't even want to think about it. Do you really think I have it in me to be one of those men, and if I did, do you really think that's what I want to achieve, the kind of person I would want to be?"
She sighed.
"I would just be trading one form of happiness for another. My own, I would make that trade. But Neji-kun's, the one I love? What about yours and Ririna's?".
"It wouldn't be our fault," I asserted.
"And you think you wouldn't still be held responsible by the system?"
The realization hit me like an unexpected cold, glass wall. I finished up the last few stale grains of my onigiri in silence, the two of us staring off into the purpling sky.
"Trust me, don't just speak off the cuff, I've already thought about this problem many times," she said.
"What if," I began, "what if, you followed through on the notice with me and then just…with Nejima…on the side…I mean, I guess it wouldn't be the best, but…"
SMACK.
I touched my stinging cheek, and realized Takasaki had just slapped me. At least with the care to pick the opposite side from my cut. She balled her hands into shaking fists. I didn't recognize the alien emotion etched into her red, fuming face, until I realized it's the first time I ever saw her angry.
"How could I? How could you say such a thing? Do I really look like the kind of person who could disregard and trample on your feelings like that?" she lambasted, her breathing heavy. "That's not only mean to yourself, but that suggestion is offensive to me too! Apologize!".
"I'm sorry, Takasaki-san, I was only trying to help and come up with something! I really didn't mean it that way, I should think more before I talk about these things," I blubbered out.
She huffed and crossed her arms. "Yeah, I know you didn't mean it in that way, but still."
An awkward silence. "You know, it's so weird, having this sort of conversation with you of all people," she noted.
I joined in, rubbing my neck. "Yeah, I guess it is."
"I'm really sorry," she apologized to me, taking my hand in hers, the last sliver of sun between us two and the fire-streaked purple sky above. They felt so soft, almost like a down blanket.
"It's okay," yI replied. "Do you know what you're going to do yet?".
She sighed. "I have to decide one way or another, and soon. I can't be like a dumb manga protagonist and just drag this and everyone's emotions along pointlessly for a hundred chapters or something."
"What do you mean, 'one way or another'?".
"I'm going on a date with Neji-kun next Saturday," she announced, beaming and her hands shaking with excitement, until she remembered me and tempered herself down. She started gathering her papers and stuffing them into her bag. "Oh, sorry."
"So that's when you'll decide?".
"Decide?" Takasaki asked. "I already decided. It's all in the implementation now, but I don't know if I can do it. I don't know anything except that I love Neji-kun. I just assume that and work out everything else from there."
She turned and started walking back to the door when I got up. My hands quivering, my voice quivering, I asked, "Takasaki-san - I don't know what the things you say mean going forward. I don't know what you're planning. But I have to know: if it weren't for Nejima, could you have loved me back?".
She paused mid-stride facing away from me, bag slung over her shoulder.
She slumped a bit from its weight,
I could wait for an answer for as long as she needed, even if that time means never.
"You can prove any statement true from assuming two inconsistent, contradictory statements," she began. "Any powerful axiomatic system must be either incomplete, having statements that cannot be proven, or inconsistent. I would rather choose incompleteness."
"Wait, that's Gödel's second incompleteness theorem," I exclaimed, reaching out to her. An advanced topic usually only covered in college math major courses. "How do you know - ?".
The rusty door slammed shut behind Takasaki as she left me behind with nothing but more mysteries and questions.
Author's Note: See disclaimer in chapter 1.