9: The Wind Tastes of Apple Peels
I survived you by enough,
and only by enough,
to contemplate from afar.
— Wisława Szymborska, Parting with a View
September means that school starts again, you think passively.
Sometimes it feels like you're the one coming down with Apathy Syndrome.
And yet nobody notices.
-.-.-
You are there in the library working on the newsletter with Saori when the pissed off girlfriend comes in and starts a catfight.
Saori isn't nearly as clueless as she says she is—she knows that what's-his-face has a girlfriend, the one who is screaming at her now. He is one of the more popular jocks in school, a guy who winks too much and pulls his shirt up to wipe his sweaty face after a basketball match. He is the kind of guy whose friends are popularized with him. So Saori knows that going to karaoke alone with a guy is a little hazy on the morality scale; she knows what he is looking for, and she knows what she should do.
Saori hasn't done anything wrong, really. It is as good a way to make friends as any, when you come down to it.
You hug Saori , because she is crying, and not all of it is for show.
-.-.-
You go to dinner with Ken. The poor kid, reminiscing about his dead mother to whom he didn't show enough love. Which child does, though?
You get him milk, and he smiles at you with a million misdirected watts.
-.-.-
It is Aigis's first day at school. You feel like an anxious parent half the time, and the other half you have to keep down the grin from a big inside joke. She says out loud that her highest priority is to be with you, and you can hear snickering from the back of the classroom—Takaoka probably, the slimeball. You flash him a wink.
It is also the day that you get a text from Akihiko that tells you that "I want you to come" after school. Of course, it's some seedy SEES business that he wants you to take care with him, but it doesn't mean that when you read it in class, with your phone's small blue-tinted screen vibrating in your lap underneath your desk, your mouth doesn't go dry and your lungs run flat.
You go to the strip mall with Akihiko and pick your nail as he and Shinjiro fervently whisper their fight. You think you'll go to the nail salon again—you're getting really bored of the avocado green nail polish, and you're already starting to chip away at it despite your strong self-restraint. Akihiko throws the briefcase at Shinjiro as you start your ring finger, and the waitress brings your white broth ramen. (Why is it that everything that has to do with Akihiko invariably ends up in Hagakure Ramen shop?)
Ken is mentioned, and the tension bursts into a peaceful resolution.
"Welcome", you say to Shinjiro.
He avoids all polite social talk, and instead glares at you before asking, "What you are fighting for?"
You smile wryly at him. "For world peace," you tell him in the dramatic, ditzy tone often seen on beauty pageants, "and I mean, like, it has to be good for karma, right?"
He glares at you even more, trying to decipher if you are that ditzy.
Good luck at that, you think as you bury your head into the wonderfully creamy ramen.
By the time you guys walk back to the dorm, Shinjiro has gathered enough wits to make a proper introduction. "… Hey," he says to stop you from going inside. He looks as grouchy as ever, but the way his eyes divert and he shrinks deeper into his burgundy overcoat makes him look shy. "So, uh, I guess I should what, introduce myself. I'm Shinjiro Aragaki."
It isn't like you are expecting a full ceremony, so you just shrug and say, "Yeah, I know."
"Oh," he seems a little surprised, but quickly gathers his cool. "Well, you don't have to worry about me being on the team. I'll get your back if I have to."
"And the year's most touching performance goes to," you drawl. "I know you pack a punch, but prove yourself inside the tower, not outside of it." And you leave him to ponder why he can't seem to meet a single docile, meek girl in his life.
That night, you do go to Tartarus. And it may seem jaded to say that nothing interesting happens on your trip inside a dark spire filled with monsters for a rescue mission of people afflicted with unnatural apathy with fellow students with superpowers, but—uh, well, nothing interesting happens.
-.-.-
You help Maiko's parents track down the runaway little girl, who happens to be just stuffing her face full of squid balls. Typical, you think, as she cries into your stomach and screams at the top of her lungs about how she's not going back.
Maiko is a spoiled little princess when it comes to her parents divorcing, but every little girl gets to be a spoiled princess if their parents are getting divorced. Your parents were talking about it when you were driving on the bridge, and if anything, you're just a little grateful toward Aigis for blowing them up, just so that they stay, in all eternity, in that moment of conflict but not separation, when you are all still a family, whole against the world.
Of course, you're sad that they're, you know, dead, but at least this way you get to keep a family.
-.-.-
Akihiko dares to say that you are his little sister.
Well, he doesn't say it, but his eyes and his mind betray him. You know exactly what he is thinking when he asks you to not fight anymore: that he sees a dead little girl.
Fuck that. Fuck it all, you think. It's not fair that every time, you have to bring him around. Why can't he work at it for once?
Just once, you ask to his confused, idiotic face. They have no more use to you, you have gleaned all that you can from them, they have nothing to offer you. You have the liberty of walking out—you can, you tell yourself.
So you do.
-.-.-
The full moon's already here. Junpei isn't here for the mission, and your heart sinks.
Dammit, Junpei gets himself kidnapped again, every single bloody fucking time. Of course he won't ever be able to resist a gothic Lolita type.
At least the Hermit is easy enough to annihilate, a crawling, furry thing on all fours, with cables coming out of its limbs. It's certainly not the looker of the all the Full Moons, but it's not like the Shadows are designed for some fashion show. He even glows an eerie, off-color blue when he's charging, and it's definitely one of the uglier blues that you have ever seen.
You save Junpei, and Junpei saves Chidori.
She glares at all of you and tries to evoke her Persona, Medea. You think it's funny that her Persona has such an oddly fitting name, but you also think that Junpei wouldn't get the humor this time. Her gun is thrown to the ground, its smooth, metal surface gleaming like a riverbed stone after a century's water flowing over it. She looks at it as a dying woman might look at her lover.
You go and pick it up, giving it a little toss and watch her wince. In the middle of everything, your little cruelty goes unnoticed by everybody, and you slip the gun into your coat pocket.
This one time, you took up mechanical engineering, and you tried to modify your evoker to fire actual bullets. That was when you found out that despite having the exact weight and appearance of a real gun, there lacked an internal bullet chamber. Probably for safety reasons, but it was easily rectified with a few quick purchases from the classified ads on Craigslist. Needless to say, Mitsuru was not pleased. This time, you might have better luck if it isn't your own goddamn evoker.
"Give Medea back," she howls one last time, "give her back to me you slut fuck bitch."
She doesn't even know how to curse properly, you think, and it shows innocence despite the words that she uses. Maybe Junpei's into this kind of stuff. His porn collection has always been very vanilla.
Whatever the reason, Junpei spends most of his time either sneaking in or trying to sneak in the hospital that Chidori is in. She spends all that time refusing to talk. They sit in mostly silence, you know for certain, except you can't really envision Junpei being silent. He must be a different person when he's around her, just like how he's a different person with you than with his parents.
Whatever, you don't have time to get involved with his personal development problems, not when there's not much time left to develop.
Yukari is worried about Junpei, in her angry, fretting sort of way. You remember feeling sorry for her, but you no longer do.
Ken is worried about how nobody tells him what happened and how you all think he is a kid. He forgets that he is a kid.
Shinjiro is worried about—well, Shinjiro's always worried about the team, he'll just rip out any tongue that dares to say it out loud. But you can't stand any of the people in this room right now, so you ask him to get a bite, because he scoffs at all of them openly, like you want to do but don't have the balls to.
"Let's go," you tell him, and he follows, slouching in his long overcoat but tight on your heels.
It's not like you're asking him out on a date, but Yukari still shoots you a heavy glance as the two of you walk out, her head following you through the room. She knows about your fight with Akihiko, but it's not about that. It's just nice to have a person to laugh at everybody else with. Akihiko's too good of a person, and Junpei's too laughable himself—who else can you snicker with over a bowl of spicy ramen?
"In grade school, I was this big," you gesture to about five times the girth of your current waist, "and there was this little boy who did either basketball or kendo, I can't remember, but he was like the star of all the little girls' princess-dreams."
"And you were the star of his dream?"
You burst out laughing—Shinjiro was mocking, but there was a trace of naïve wonder in him, as if he could believe that would ever happen. "Even boys as young as him knew how to judge girls based on their skinniness."
"And?"
"What makes you think there's an 'and'?"
"'Cause this story sucks balls without one."
"Alright," you go on, "So one day, his friend cut off the ponytail of one of my friends, and I went up to challenge them. He defended his friend like a blind, loyal friend should, and so we fought. I sat on him." You pound the table so the ramen soups shook in fear and your chopsticks almost roll off.
"And thus you won him over? A great moral story?"
"Oh no, I tried to be friends with him afterwards but he couldn't talk to me without trembling. The key to this roman à clé is that violence does not romance make."
"Is he why you like Aki so much?"
You blink at him.
"Just because I don't talk much don't mean I don't see," he says gruffly.
You laugh—of course it doesn't. Shinji is only ever wrapped when it comes to his own matters. "Maybe," you say coyly, "or maybe I just like his physique. Or I have a thing for older men."
"There are plenty of older—even older men," he scoffs.
You softly blow into your spoon before taking a sip. It still burns your tongue. "It's never a choice—at least it shouldn't be, not the right kind."
Shinjiro seems to ponder at it before grunting, "You ain't so young yourself."
You snort into your soup and you can feel the liquid going up your nose. Disgusting. "Yeah," you make out between choking and laughing, "none of us are young but me especially so."
He cocks an eyebrow, both as a question and a challenge.
"Go stroke your ego in your own room, don't expect me to do it just because you look tough. I'm like the twenty-year-old beef jerkin left in an apocalyptical gas station store to your aged tofu."
"What?" he masks a chuckle in a cough.
"You look wrinkly but are tender, whereas I'm far tougher than you'd ever think, but completely necessary for survival."
"You always this egotistical?"
"You always wear your red coat?"
"You always so deflective?"
"You always want to know so much about a girl?"
That shuts him up.
You feel smug and rueful at the same time. You eat your ramen quickly.
-.-.-
You could invite Shinjiro to dinner again, but he faces you like you're something to endure, so instead you ask him where you should take Ken, and watch his face. He is at once relieved and disappointed, and you think vindictively that look, that's how it feels.
But you do have to take Ken out now. It's hard eating with a kid: you hardly know what to talk about—yet knowing exactly what to do with each person is kind of your thing, so you smile at him with a hint of matronly affection and ask him about school.
Like you care about his school days.
He's embarrassed, but not averse to talking, and you hear a slow drabble about class and his classmates. You take the chance to dig into the teriyaki steak you ordered.
A lull, and you ask him about what his classmates are doing right now.
"Probably watching Featherman," he answers, "such kids." He looks at you, expectant of praise, like how a dog looks after it's done a trick.
So that's why he looks distracted all throughout the meal, you think. "Well," you say slowly, "I kind of like Featherman too," you admit to him with a sheepish smile. You don't—Fetherman's not nearly as cool as Batwing Rider, but whatever, the kid has bad taste, psh.
He seems confused, but you leave him to sort it out. Instead, you tell him to eat his peppers like his mom, and he is happy once more.
-.-.-
Fuuka has a thing for Shinjiro. Or maybe it's better to say she will, but you are still annoyed that when you two head out to Wild Duck's, Shinjiro gets distracted by the noxious smelling cooking failure that Fuuka left on the table.
Fuuka is too sweetly simpleminded to deliberately play a hand as good as this, but the end result is the same. So instead of going out, Shinjiro makes you beef stroganoff (well he makes everybody stroganoff, but whatever).
He lets the meat sit in wine, salt, and pepper as he warms the skillet, pouring an even layer of oil over it. Then he lays the beef strips onto the flat bottom of the skillet, careful to not let any meat touch each other, flipping over once the side is browned. Deftly, he removes the fried strips and transfers them onto a plate, and in the same skillet he drops in a wedge of butter. With it, he sautés onions until they begin to caramelize, which is when he adds the sliced cremini mushrooms, stirring in garlic and a pinch of salt. Once done, he put this over the beef.
He lowers the heat, and you know what he's about to do.
Your mother was more of a French chef than a Russian, but you remember the roux well—your job in the kitchen was to make the sauces, and roux was always the thickening ingredient (is it a wonder that you were a fat child?). In retrospect, it is possibly not the safest to allow a small child to burn lard and flour, but you have so few memories of a harmonious, loving mother that you still like bacon lard more than you should.
Shinjiro melts the butter, dusting in the flour in small quantities as he whisks it to a light brown. He then takes the veal stock at room temperature and beats it into the roux, folding vigilantly to avoid clumping. Once at a boil, he reduces the heat and adds one spoonful of sour cream. Then he brings in the pinot noir and a little dash of mustard. (You had no idea your kitchen even has mustard.) When the sauce is thickened, he slides in the prepared food, and turns off the heat.
"There," he says, "let it sit for a bit. The residue heat should reduce the sauce a little more."
"I like bacon lard roux more," you say, both to show that you know what he's doing and as a legitimate complaint—butter never tastes the same to you.
The edge of his eyebrows rise into his beanie hat, "You cook?"
You shake your head truthfully, "No, but my mother used to. I helped her with sauces, and she used a lot of velouté sauce, but always with bacon lard."
He shrugs, "It's an American thing to use bacon, but yes, plenty of people say it tastes better than plain pork lard. But butter has its advantages, it's really down to personal preference."
"And what's your preference?" you persist, trying to prove something.
He shrugs again, "The chef doesn't have preferences—it's about who he cooks for."
"Oh, senpai!" Fuuka exclaims, her eyes shining passionately, "you have to teach me again, oh please! That's exactly what I want to do—cook people food and make them happy!"
He looks at her thoughtfully, but doesn't argue with her. With him, that's as much a promise as anybody will get.
"Next time," you speak up, "you should cook so much that there's enough for a dorm party. That way you can make him teach you four times as much!" And Yukari won't eat a whole portion so you can have hers. He really is a great cook. Much better than your mom ever was, even though it was the one thing she tried to do for you.
"Yeah!" Fuuka agrees wholeheartedly, "that's a wonderful idea! Oh can we do that senpai?"
Shinjiro looks at you, and you hide a smirk behind a hand—there's no way out of it now. Be careful of promises, Shinji, because they bite.
Something in his face softens, and he grunts out, "I guess it might not be a bad idea."
"Great," you clap your hands together, "let's go get groceries tomorrow. Yukari would probably only eat a Salad Niçoise, Junpei will be happy with a simple steak, and I want braised rabbit and bouillabaisse."
"Tch," Shinjiro lets out, "greedy much?"
"Consider it Aigis's request then," you grin cheekily, "I'm sure she'd comply."
"Of course," he shook his head somewhat helplessly, "you are her highest priority, as her mantra goes."
"To be with me is not the same as to make me happy."
"Oh?" he seems intrigued by this burst of cynicism.
"Nothing. Just semantics," you brush it off.
"If you say so," he says musingly and drops the topic as you want him to.
The next day, you grab coffee and groceries with him. You order a cold brewed Sulawesi coffee on a whim, and when Shinjiro coughs, you aren't sure if it's because of his 'condition'.
It tastes bitter and acidic like every other coffee you've ever tasted. "Uh," you crumple your face and eye his cappuccino. "Great. This is what I get for trusting Junpei's tastes for once."
"Hm," Shinjiro hums and sips his frothy, sweet coffee casually.
Akihiko would have offered you his cup, you pout.
"Just get another one," Shinjiro mumbles.
"That's too reasonable a course of action, I can't do that!"
"Oh?"
"Otherwise everything is predictable and every day is the same," you blurt out.
"It already is, you can't do anything about it," he huffs.
"You have no idea," you rebut.
He raises his eyebrows and looks at you with both skepticism and interest, the way you look at Ken when he calls Junpei immature for taking milk with coffee.
Go to hell, you think sulkily.
"In that case, then let's get to the grocer's," he suggests, turning away from the veiled fury in your eyes.
"Fine," you acquiesce, and when he coughs again, you think, good, he should be reminded of his mortality, because god knows you all are forced to face it every day in his comatose face.
"C'mon, we need dry-aged steak, Junpei, simplest to satisfy of all. Yukari's salad will need some sashimi-grade tuna to sear, shallots, anchovies, olives, eggs, green beans, and I'll pick out some leaves for the salad base. Your rabbit isn't too bad, we'll need some rabbit flap, loin cuts, and back legs, chicken stock, celery root, parsley, thyme, and hm, you know what, I'll get some Belgian ale too, that adds a really nice flavor. And seafood, lots of seafood for your soup: lobster, striped bass, red snapper, maybe swordfish for its stringy texture, grouper, and some other fish fillets, mussels, shrimp, clams, saffron, garlic, onions, bay leaves, fennel, cayenne, fish bones to brew some stock—fuck, you really want bouillabaisse?"
You nod vindictively.
"Goddamn princess," he swears but then goes back to making a list of groceries.
"We'll get some sherry for the occasion," you ease him with the promise of alcohol.
He hums, "I do have a weakness for a good dry Lustau Oloroso."
You know that bouillabaisse isn't hard to make, just tedious, and that's why you enjoy having a house chef go through all of it. You pick up whatever Shinjiro points out, and a few times have to step back as he fidgets with the exact parts that he wants ("no, not that cabbage, can't you see the shriveling?" or "god, it's like you've never picked clams before, look at their shells").
You won't have to lift a single finger, because he doesn't trust you in the kitchen, not even with chopping onions, and you are too tired to earn it back. Instead, you watch Junpei button-mash the newly released Kingdom Hearts game. Junpei has died more than he cares on that level already, and you have taken to playing Professor Layton as you watch him die over and over again. (You try not to think about the similarities to your own life.)
From the kitchen, you hear frequent yelps as Fuuka burns or cuts herself, and Shinjiro's many exasperated but forcedly patient sighs as he takes care of whatever mess she created.
You aren't sure why you are slightly jealous—you don't like Shinjiro, and you know he doesn't like Fuuka. Never, in all your cycles, has he even once hinted of romantic affections toward Fuuka, although four times out of five, Fuuka follows him with worship and silence.
Maybe it's just the sight of some people being happy. Maybe because you think nobody deserves to be happy, not if it doesn't last. Maybe you're that bad of a person. Or maybe you don't like somebody pulling away something that you think belongs to you. Because, you surmise as you glance over to the kitchen and catch Shinjiro's retreating gaze, Shinjiro's in love with you.
Shinjiro's always in love with you, every cycle, every time, even when Akihiko doesn't fall for you, Shinjiro does. How could he not? You are a promise, a salvation, something so bright and hopeful that he can only weep at what you embody. He tells you that you are brave, and you believe him, because who wouldn't believe a boy whose heart beats on a countdown and whose breath is shaky but calculated. He reminds you that you were a good person once. If you hate this life less, maybe…
But things are never different, and you never love him. He knows that too, you think, and the conceited part of you (growing, taking over most of you, devouring what is left of you) thinks that it is the reason he dies. He doesn't say the word 'love', not like Ken, and he doesn't even tell you that he expects nothing, but it is a fact as sure and reliable as the gun in your hand, a comforting weight and no bullets to shoot.
You tell him you love him once. Not in a cruel way—at least, not intentionally—but as he lies dying, you tell him that, because you wonder if it would make the last ten seconds of his life a blazing glory, and if it would make him regret it.
He doesn't. It seems that even the love for you isn't enough to cancel out the tiredness he feels for life. Then you begin to wonder if it is humane to let him go like this—if Akihiko isn't the one who needs Shinjiro's continued existence, and if Akihiko is just selfish. You tell him you love him, and it follows, unspoken, that it is a familial love, the handholding that comes between a brother and sister. He looks at you, and although he thinks you're cruel, he smiles.
You save him the next cycle, and prevent all this.
Maybe you need him alive as well, and you're no better than Akihiko.
But when he asks you, a few days later, if you don't have something better to do than hang out with somebody like him, you wonder, is it right to strip someone's right to die, if they're depressed? At what point is it alright to say that you judge what is good for someone else?
Because you're pretty sure that you can say that Shinjiro's better off living, smelling the night air and shoving his hands deep in to his pockets, turning his face carefully to the left so you won't see his blushing smile.
Life is good sometimes, you think as the both of you walk in silence. It is good for you to remember that as well.
Author's Note: Oh dear. The more I write, the more I'm starting to like Shinjiro.