Capricious

Chapter 8: Kiri Komori

Ein Hungerkünstler.

And I couldn't help but wonder if I had just gone wrong somewhere from the beginning, from the very first thought of my conception. If mine was a soul meant for another world, and I had been grabbed into this one. I wasn't an outsider, I was an insider. Everyone else was so odd. If you're the only odd person then you're odd. But if everyone else is odd, then you're in the wrong place, which makes you odd as well. If you're the only outsider, you're alone, just as you are alone if you're the only insider.

But for an outsider it's just frustrating. For an insider it's scary, because you're surrounded. Outsiders can move away. Insiders are surrounded.

I was surrounded, that day. By that girl and Sensei. Until I was successfully smoked out of my sanctuary, like prey. But then he'd parted my hair and said such kind words to me that I could forgive him, if only because for once I didn't feel like I didn't belong. And for that moment of feeling like maybe I wasn't in the wrong universe, he'd taken my heart.

"I've marked you as present."

The blanket hugs tighter, and I need it to be so. Brushing me off so freely, people are so frivolous. Away from society is away from the frivolous, confusing outsiders.

Outsider in, makes the insider go out, in a fruitless battle of one side trying to be the other. How I miss him now. For him I might try to be an outsider...

The door is open now.

"Komori-san, I thought I'd find you here."

"Chie-sensei...what are you doing here?"

Something about this outsider's presence had always been calming, like she was as protective as my blanket. Her eyes are troubled but calming. She gestures for me to sit by her, and I lay my head comfortably on her lap with the blanket hugged around me too. I asked her what I should cook today, and her face scrunches up, troubled, and I think, even if she seems troubled she is still a calming person to be around. As far as teachers go she is second only to Sensei, and that was only a matter of timing; if it had been her at first I may have fallen for her instead. Feelings must be a string of coincidences like that, if it had one person or another then the relationship would be completely different.

She runs a hand through my hair, and I'm caught between that wonderful stage just before unconsciousness, the most aware yet least aware, because sleep is so mystical but you need to be awake to acknowledge anything so almost asleep and barely awake is closest to that mystical time that you can't see.

"Komori-san, I don't know how to tell you this..." Her voice is an echo and her face is fuzzy so I can't tell if her face is scrunched up and troubled anymore, whether she is trying to tell me something important or not, but it's because I'm almost asleep anywa "He's gone."

What's with the students in my class; it's enough if I'm the one having troubles.

"Who...?"

"He just needed someone to vent to, so he always came to me...but after a while it seemed that it wasn't enough...like the want to change the world became a need that went unfulfilled, and when needs are unfulfilled..."

Sleep has become distant. I feel the water welling in my eyes. "Killed...himself?"

She bites her lip and looks to the side, trying to escape and forget what she says next. "Actually...he was murdered...brutally..."

"S-Sensei? Who- who killed sensei? Sensei is dead...?"

She's my second blanket, maybe. She wraps around me and rubs the back of my head. "I'm sorry..."

A/N: Ein Hungerkünstler: German phrase meaning "A Hunger Artist," or "A Fasting Artist." It is a short story published by Franz Kafka in 1922. It opens with the description of a caged man in public, starving himself for his art. Caged from the world, onlookers pass by, bitterly saying that he is probably sneaking food. The man himself prefers people who come close to him, and share his life story only with these people. After fasting for forty days, the crowd cheers as he is taken out and spoon fed, but the man knows he can fast even longer. However, after he finishes his forty days, it seems no one cares about starvation artists. He tries to join a circus to spread his art, but no one seems to see him in his cage, even after he fast for more than forty days. People all but forget about him, the manager even does not seem to see him anymore. He dies and is unceremoniously buried. His cage then occupied by a lively, attractive panther.

I kind of ship Chie/Kiri. xD There are many more females than males in this series, it is inevitable I find a lot of yuri to ship :P

Readers, what should the genre of this story be? I still don't know what category to put it in. O.o