It's a funny thing, how you can work with someone for years, see them every day, and know almost nothing about their home life. Nothing about their background. Where they came from, why they wanted to do this thing, how they came to do it. None of that. Perhaps it's a symptom of our culture—we always keep things professional, always maintain distance.
I met her in 1999. She died in 2004. In terms of words exchanged and hours spent together, my time with her would far outlast any other relationship in my life, save for the time I have spent with her widower since. But that doesn't count. We are, neither of us, really full men anymore. Just revenants. Shadows of what we were, plunging onward, borne on her momentum.
Yet in all that time, and for all the inspiration she provided, I never knew where she came from. Who she was before I met her. What kind of girl grew up to be the woman I knew? What kind of childhood had birthed that drive? What parents nurtured it?
I asked her only once. It was late at night, though day and night barely mattered down in that unfinished cave. A startup simulation was cooking. We were waiting, and, to pass the time, I asked her where she grew up.
She smiled, said, "Now why would that possibly matter?" And that was the end of it.
—from the unpublished journals of Kozo Fuyutsuki, 2015
Under the Wisteria
By Glory-To-Our-August-King
The endless rain slows to a patter on the windows, leaving quiet in its wake. You're not sure what you expected, maybe the usual strained conversation distilled with polite banter, like when your father hosts associates from work. You are used to being ignored on those occasions too, but this time you are the host, and your guest has not said a word the entire tour, just made mild gestures of acknowledgment or soft hums in her throat, cloudy blue eyes staring beyond every room, door, and office presented to them. It isn't like you want to be here, showing her around a school you barely know yourself. The least she could do is talk, but she trails behind you as though being led to a prison cell.
You turn to make sure she is keeping up, radiating your annoyance in the hope she will feel it and make this less insufferable for both of you. All she does is slide some of her tawny hair away from her face and trudge along. It hangs in a straight sheet to the small of her back, well-groomed and in order, unlike your hair which flows down into curly clumps at your shoulders. Her uniform is from another school and looks as clean as the day it was made—pressed smooth and without a loose thread or scuffed elbow. On the dark blue lapel of her jacket, you spot emerald kanji. Curiosity gets the better of you.
"Takayama Nishi," you say. "Is that a private school like this one?"
She nods, you seethe.
"Why transfer here?"
"Exposure. It will look good on University applications." Her response is flat, automatic, but she notices you for the first time, and that your uniform is also different from the school's.
"What about you?" She asks.
"The same," you say, with what you feel is enough confidence for her to believe it.
The girl, whose name you realize in a minor panic you've forgotten, picks up her pace to walk alongside you and asks, "Where are you looking to go?"
You'll be lucky to go at all. Your academic scores aren't the best, and your parents sat you down for a stern talk about only being able to afford 4 years of university, so you'd better take it seriously or not go at all.
"I haven't decided, there's just too many to choose from."
"I know what you mean," the girl says, and starts going on about programs and degrees and which Uni offers what. You regret breaking the quiet of the rains.
The school grounds are subdued, and the city traffic roars distant. Puddles still sit in the track and field from the early rains, square plots of plants mostly dead and ill maintained. Overall, the school looks sick and in some sort of fugue state of suffering. Crossing under an awning between buildings, you think the new girl is probably lying, at least about needing exposure. She's in the 8th grade, just like you, but you know for a fact there were complications with her last school, something involving another student. It has to be true because you heard it from Emi, and she knows a little bit of everything about everyone.
The girl's chatter fades and the rest of your tour happens in now mutual quiet. You arrive at the faculty room, which contains a few staff and miniature skyscrapers of paperwork. Mr. Nishida, the student affairs counselor, ashes a cigarette as the two of you walk in.
"There you are, Yaeyama! Was beginning to think you got lost," he says to you, offering a pleasant smile and sliding on his thin, square glasses.
The girl faces you. "Thanks for showing me around," she says and makes a modest bow, which you return.
Mr. Nishida nods at the exchange and motions to the chair opposite his desk. "Now, miss Ikari, if you'll take a seat…"
As you leave, she gives you a smile, a small one and just for a moment.
You decide that she is plain and simple.
((()))
A week goes by, and it seems like you can forget all about the new transfer student, just as everyone else will. Except they don't. She learns everyone's names, greeting them all in turn each morning, even you. She gets on well with the class president, a lanky boy with a wide Filipino nose, who begins to defer to her more often than not. The atmosphere becomes excited whenever she enters the room, just as it does now. She strides in through the open door and is immediately approached as she sits with a pair of girls, Saki and Rin, in the front row.
You check the clock above the chalkboard, only ten minutes of lunch break left.
"Where does she go?" You ask Emi, who sits at the desk next to yours. You say it in a hushed tone, a careful glance towards Ikari, but no one is paying attention to you. They rarely do.
She looks up and shrugs. "Maybe something extra-curricular?"
"I suppose. She said she was coming here for exposure after all."
Emi perks up. "She did?"
"Yeah, when I was showing her around the school."
She chews on that. "It may be true, but I don't think so. Her family is rich, like, private temple in the mountains rich."
"They are?"
"Right? You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at her. Amada told me all about it. Her dad works for Fuji Electric and says he knows an Ikari family that does a lot of business with the company." Emi looks to the front of class, and then leans in. "The point is—she could get into a private junior high anywhere, right?"
Her face says she's happened upon something very clever that she might be willing to share if you ask nicely. You smile.
"Okay, I'll bite. You're just going to tell me anyway."
"Of course."
So, Emi tells you everything. Only a few months ago, Ikari's mother killed herself. At least, the police ruled it as a suicide, but most seem to think her father did it. His wife came from old money in Kyoto, and the woman was sick and never left her house because of some mental disease. It would have been easy to stage the death of someone who lived in such a state. Now, Ikari's father had access to everything and sent his daughter to be away from him.
"Do you think it's true?" You ask as Emi, looking very know-it-all, pauses to let you absorb everything.
"Why not? If her family is as rich as everyone says they are, it's as likely as anything else."
You look to the front of the class again, and Ikari's eyes are there to meet yours, as though they have just caught you. A commotion saves you as a handful of students return, and Ikari casually waves them over to where half the class has gathered around her, as though holding court. Ikari is all smiles, and so are they.
The school bell rolls, and everyone returns to their seats. Classes pass, you take notes, but your mind wanders on Ikari's mother and her father. Outside, the shrill scream of cicadas has calmed to a dull buzz that rises and falls in waves. It is the tail end of summer, and soon they will quiet completely as they burrow to escape the autumn chill.
Emi doesn't wait up for you since you have tennis and she has cram school, so you meet the girl's club in the lockers and change for practice. On the courts, two people are already waiting and in animated conversation. Your gut drops when you see Ikari with the club's president, talking in a way that makes you sick with envy. She catches sight of you and waves you over as the others start warm-ups.
"Yaeyama! I want to introduce you to Ikari!"
The new girl's long hair is tied back loose. She gives the president a gentle smile.
"We've actually met already: we're in the same class," you say, trying to replicate Ikari's expression.
The president claps her hands together. "Good! She was just telling me about starting in her last school's club."
A spike of alarm hits you. "So you've got some experience, Ikari?"
"Only a few months worth," she amends, giving you the same small smile from before.
"Well, let's see how much," the president says, turning to you. "Run a match with Ikari, okay? I want to see what her skill level is at."
You're not the best in the school, but you are the best in your year, and couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to put the new transfer in her place.
You win the racquet spin and choose to serve first. The club president stands at the net line as the two of you take up position on opposite ends of the court. The girls cheer you on from the sidelines. Ikari takes up a stance, and her face is stone-set defiance.
From your left hand, the ball goes up, and you peg it hard into her court with an overhead smash. The ball bounces past Ikari completely and rattles the chain-link fence behind her.
"Fifteen-love!"
Ikari shoots you another look, hot this time.
The next serve is hers. She nails it into your left court. Easy intercept, you nail it back. Ikari hurls it to your right court—she's stretching you, making you run the court on wide shots until you inevitably miss one. But you won't. You can keep up. She sends it to your left court again, and you grunt on the return, backhanding it to her left, already moving to the right. She does something then—runs up to her mid court to intercept your shot and gives the ball a low-power punt. It falls short onto your side. You have no hope of reaching it.
"Fifteen-fifteen!"
She scores twice more in the same fashion, keeping you far back on your court and then playing aggressive on the net. It's quick and brutal and efficient, like you've been laid out and surgically picked apart. The score shifts to 45-15. You're panting hard, and your limbs are so spent you can't feel them. She only needs one more point to win the game. Heat burns your cheeks. It's your serve. A sharp breath. You spike it hard and dash forward to your mid court—you can play the net like she does, you can.
Ikari is ready and catches the ball high, nailing it back with a spin towards your right court. You can't step over in time for a backhand—it has to be a forehand stroke, your right arm extends, aiming low. You swing.
The racquet catches air and whiffs the ball. It hits the court square behind you and thwacks the fence.
"Match point!"
It just kills you.
You like to think you take it in stride, but it rips you up, and you wonder if Ikari can see, looking at you from across the court. Her face gives away nothing. The girls are clapping at the good show, and some come to compliment her.
You force a big, stupid smile on your face and walk up with the club president. "You're really talented, Ikari!"
She shakes her head. "Not at all. I appreciate you going easy on me."
The rest of practice happens. Like your commute to and from school, a blank space of time in your memory. The things that stick out are your arms shaking with adrenaline, jerking with hesitation that has you missing easy strokes. Your shots go wide or hit the net. At home, you'll scream it out into your pillow.
None of the girls say anything to you directly. You'll hear all about it tomorrow, because they'll want you to hear it. Down the lockers, one girl in a group of three glances at you, and they all try to cover laughter, another making an underhand swing that makes them laugh harder.
You decide to start a rumor of your own.
((()))
For the next few days, it seems all anyone can talk about is how Ikari thrashed the junior girl's tennis up and coming athlete. She even had the upperclassmen talking since Temura, the senior star on the school's competing team, had happened to be watching that day. There goes any spot you might have had in the senior clubs. Sure, you can still attend the club, but if Ikari is here to stay, who would pick you over her for the team?
The urge to cry swallows you up, but you fight it back.
"It was bad, huh?" Emi asks while walking with you after school.
You don't answer. Ikari's definitely been at it for more than a few months. It has to be that. The idea she might be that good after a quarter of your time, or that you might be that bad, is too much to think about.
Together, you go to the drug store along your school route to rifle through their magazines and possibly find a way to forget your humiliation. Flipping through, you find ones with hairstyles and dresses you like, and take a western mag with Roxette on the cover. You bring your selections and a package of plum mochi to the nearby canal banks where chairman Uji fishes by the overpass. He's a middle-aged man who operates a produce stall you've never seen in person. Once, he ran for a seat on the municipal board and will never waste an opportunity to tell someone about his political campaign if he thinks he can get away with it.
At home, you definitely don't mention it to your parents at dinner that night, or any other night. The next day, you are staring out the window when Ikari ambushes you.
"Miss Yaeyama."
You manage to flinch instead of jump out of your skin. Her dark eyes regard you, and it feels scathing, like you are not supposed to be looking at them.
"Don't forget, we have cleaning duty today."
You blink. Just this morning you checked the schedule and know that Ikari was not on it with you. As you look again, sure enough, there is her name chalked beside yours on the board.
For the rest of the day, you're barely present for lessons, trying instead to plan an escape from cleaning duty with Ikari. Inevitably, you still stay behind as everyone shuffles out, because you'd never be so courageous as to break decorum, not even for self-preservation. Emi gives you a small wave, which you return, dread in your stomach.
Ikari goes to the broom cabinet. "I'll wipe the windows, and you can start on the floors."
She helps you slide all the tables to one end of the room before you start sweeping, from all four corners and end to end. You look at the ground and nowhere else. Orange melts through the windows, and by then Ikari has moved on to the chalkboard while you wipe the floor. The rag goes over, then down, and over again, like you are making a rectangle. You hear the thunder of feet as other students run their rags along the corridor floors. Ikari helps you finish, swiping her rag beside you in the same rectangle pattern. Everything is burned red-pink and cut with shadows by the time you're done. Ikari takes the rags and rings them out, still, calm, watching the doplets plink into the water bucket.
The two of you put the cleaning supplies away and slide the tables back. The effort not to bolt home as Ikari steps out with you is titanic. There is no one else in the halls now. It is just the two of you.
"You know, I haven't slept with a teacher before," she says, and you stop, a panic crashing into you, even though you expected this.
"I know," you say, because what else can you say when caught in the lie? There didn't seem to be a chance of anyone tracing it back to you, but maybe you're more clumsy and careless than you thought. Or maybe Ikari is that much smarter than you. Either way, she can destroy you when she starts telling everyone the lies you've been spreading. Maybe Emi won't even want to talk to you anymore, and the thought locks a wedge in your throat.
Ikari steps up beside you and loops her arm around yours, encouraging you to keep walking. "It was a very amusing joke, though."
You look at her, managing not to stumble. She focuses ahead, her long hair swaying around her shoulders, and you can't form more than a halting word. She lets you go as you reach the shoe lockers, swapping the school pair for black leather slips. It takes you a few attempts to get your white tennis shoes on. Your mind runs circles trying to find something to say, still running as you follow her to the courtyard.
"Ikari, listen... I'm sorry," you mutter, and it still sounds like the wrong thing.
She gives you a smile. "You can call me Yui."
((()))
You hear her before you see her, but you've become well-acquainted with the formally laced Tokyo-dialect.
"A mountain town in Honshu?" She says. The girl is Toyotomi, the shoe lockers her favorite haunt for gossip. You catch her in a glance: black hair in a lax bun, large glasses with a lanyard that make her look infinitely more mature than the three girls around her.
"Yes!" One says, bubbling with excitement. "I heard the teachers talking about it yesterday, apparently it's a real slum."
"What's it called?" Toyotomi asks.
"I don't know, but I also have a cousin there-"
Another girl laughs. "You don't know where your cousin lives?"
"I thought she was rich?" Another says.
Toyotomi huffs. "Couldn't be, have you talked with her? She's so crass and shallow, I'm surprised she can even afford to go here."
The chatter stops when Yui inserts herself among them, with the usual enthusiastic and chipper personality that has so invaded your class. Her face smiles, but her eyes are cold, like storm clouds over frothing seas. Even Toyotomi wilts.
"Who are we talking about?" Yui asks.
A few begin to stutter answers, others look away, and Yui looks at you. "I bet you're talking about that Yaeyama girl."
As the rest find you mere feet away, you heel-turn to escape. Before you can get very far, Yui breaks off and loops her arm around yours, walking with you to class. Your initial feeling of gratitude has fled and left you with a grating suspicion. The girl was willing to pretend your rumor spreading was all in good fun and not an act of malice, and you can't figure out why. Not that she gives you time to ponder.
When lunch break arrives, you find out where Yui disappears to, because she invites you out with her—and you feel if you don't indulge, she could decide your secret isn't worth keeping—but the answer is: everywhere. She is connected in every class block and in every grade level. Most of the students in each class you visit are delighted to see her, and have their own inside jokes and news to share. She talks to you on the walks between classes, about anyone and anything at such a rapid pace you aren't really having a conversation at all. So, to actually eat your lunch, you have to bribe her over to the vending machines by buying her a coffee. You don't see her eat and dare to ask if she brought anything.
"I'm fine, I'll get something on the way home," she says.
"Doesn't a car come pick you up?"
She laughs a little too loud at that.
You discover she rides a bike to and from school, and it looks no more or less expensive than any other bike. She is content to walk it alongside you to the train station in the cool, windy evenings.
"So you transferred because your father had to move here for the company?"
"Yeah. We lived in Odawara before coming here," you say, and tell her that, mostly, you lived on the outskirts in the countryside. Roads with nothing on them, rice fields that stretched in bright green waves to the base of mountains.
"Were you born in Odawara?"
"Fukushima, actually."
"And how long did you stay there?"
"Two years. I don't even remember it."
"Did you have a lot of friends in Odawara?"
For a moment, it seems worth the lie. "No," you say instead. Yui nods, as though you've confirmed what she already knew. Without missing another beat, she fires the next question, and so it goes. She wants to know everything about you.
You fall into her routine: traveling with her during lunch breaks, sitting beside the vending machines outside under a brittle wisteria, walking along the flood canals together. She keeps you informed on all the latest relationships, asks you for advice on technique during tennis—though it's obvious she needs none, especially from you—and in her student council meetings, she has you sit in as their secretary, recording the meeting notes. All the other officers on the council take this in stride, even the actual secretary. During festival committee planning, she places you nearby and in the middle of discussion stops every so often to ask your opinion on food vendors, decorations, or stall layout, then nods and moves on when you've given your input. The committee too takes this in stride, and afterwards, begin asking your advice on all sorts of things you don't have a clue about.
You are waiting for the other shoe to drop, for this weird charade she's playing to end. Because she must be setting you up for some big embarrassment in front of the whole school. No one like this could want to be your friend. Not plain, simple, average you. This is all the prelude to an elaborate revenge scheme to get you to trust her and then reveal it was all for fun.
When classwork doesn't take up every minute of your time, Yui does. She has made you her little shadow. Accompanying her everywhere because she assumes you will and you don't prove her wrong.
While out cleaning up after a student council meeting, held in an empty classroom used for storage, Yui stops in the middle of a tirade about some article she read in a physics magazine.
"You don't have much to say, do you?"
The question catches you off guard, mostly because you one-hundred-percent spaced-out.
"Not while you're around," you say.
She laughs, and it sounds real to you. From then on, she pauses to ask if she's talking too much, to which you'll answer, "No," because you'd much rather she do the talking than you.
Then you are on rotation to help the home room teacher with his paperwork. You don't mind since it gives you time to think, but you can't think, not while Yui slips into every thought.
"Mr. Nishida, what do you know about Y—I mean, Ikari?"
"I know that she is a hard worker." he looks up and smirks. "Don't put too much stock in rumors, Yaeyama."
Your cheeks burn. "I don't... I just wanted to know where she's from."
His sigh seems patient, willing to indulge. "Well, she transferred from a town called Morioka. A north town, not by the sea."
"Is it a big town?"
"Not so far as I can tell. Very small, rural even, with many old shinto shrines."
More questions ride the tip of your tongue, but you decide to leave it at that. In class, Emi becomes quiet and talks little, even when you prompt her for gossip. So you go through the morning in a confused vacuum of feeling.
During the lunch break, you are sitting on the ledge of a plant bed by the outdoor vending machines, where a twisting wisteria lets orange-gold leaves fall around you.
Yui is at your side, leaning against the tree and staring off across the courtyard. "I do believe that boy is carrying a torch for you, Lady Yae."
She has been calling you Lady Yae, and by the smile she wears when she says it, you know it is some hidden reference, a private joke. Whether demeaning or endearing, you don't know, and you are too afraid of looking foolish to ask, and accept the name. So, you look up and see a boy—out by the baseball fields—jump and turn away. It's Keita, one of the boys in the class next to yours.
"Me? No, he's looking at you. All the boys do."
"Every one of them?" There is mock fascination in her voice, and it makes you laugh before you can stop yourself. Yui is absolutely smug the rest of the day.
Soon, the seating order changes and of course you are next to Yui, who refuses to acknowledge she had any hand in it. Summer sinks away, making the mornings brisk, and the trees turn the color of autumn, red and beautiful—quiet.
She tours the school less and less in favor of studying with you under the wisteria. Though she never studies herself and helps you accumulate notes and solve problems. You knew she was smart, but she makes it seem effortless. She is the first to answer any question in class, much to everyone else's relief, but will also argue when something doesn't make sense to her—which you never imagined could work in anyone's favor. For Yui, it does. All the teachers know her and will always spare a minute or two to talk with her between classrooms.
You imagine most kids find it obnoxious, especially when Yui uses her influence to not so subtly get the two of you out of lunch duty. But to you, it's absolutely amusing. Yui has caught you during a lesson now, glancing at her with a dumb smile on your face.
"What's so funny?"
"You are."
She half-smiles, caught up in your amusement. "What have I done?"
You shake your head and try to eat a grin, whispering, "You've—you've got all these teachers by the balls."
Yui covers her mouth to stifle an indecent amount of laughter, and you have to do the same.
Sensei Sato turns, chalk paused mid-scrawl, eyebrows raised. Both of you straighten and Yui inclines her head with a small, "Sorry, sir, I'm not sure I understood the last part."
Sato looks at the book in his other hand, then his notes on the board, "Ah, my apologies miss Ikari, I did skip something crucial, eh?" And he dives back into the lesson.
"See?" You say, soft as a sigh.
"You're a bad influence," she whispers back, a smile breaking over her face again.
Cool autumn blows against you, and the entire world seems to open up and grow and move.
((()))
"She's just a flirt. She can't stand not having a boy's attention."
"She probably does more than flirt."
"She does!"
The girl goes on to detail exactly what Yui does beyond flirt. You can hear from the second story balcony overlooking the shoe lockers, and hot air does tend to travel up.
"I'm surprised she wasn't outright expelled from her last school," one of them says.
Toyotomi touches her glasses. "She almost was. Her grandparents are wealthy, though. They're the Ikari's that own the Tobu rail company, and they backed the prime minister's election campaign—she can get away with anything."
"Hasn't she got a boyfriend from her old school?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if she had a few."
"Have you seen her talking to Keita?"
"I thought he had eyes for that other transfer from C1, the girl who's always hanging onto Ikari like a limp rag."
"Then he probably wasn't looking at her at all." The group falls into a girlish fit of laughter.
"They've already kissed, you know."
"No way!"
"Shut up!"
Their voices fade as you walk away, but you don't remember your legs starting to move. You've heard a rumor like it before: that she'd been expelled from her last school for indecency, which could mean anything.
Your class is on the third story, which is marginally better than being on the top floor. Renji and Iseei run past you, taking the stairs two by two. You pause as you spy another familiar face beyond the corridor windows. Down below is the withered wisteria, brittle in the winter freeze, and beneath it, you see Yui and Keita, a student from C2 who is also on the baseball team. The boy she said was carrying a torch for you. But you were right. He was looking at Yui that day. Everyone always does.
In the classroom, Aika is dancing, while Emi and others watch and sway along, and Renji sings an American song into an invisible microphone. It sounds like Your Love, but it's hard to tell, and you can't focus on the English words anyway.
Has Yui done stuff like Toyotomi said with Keita? Or any other boys for that matter? When you look at Yui, she seems to stand on this higher plane than you, real and within reach, yet completely untouchable. Maybe you're just playing games, tricking yourself, and the idea of a girl the same age as you being that grown-up is intimidating.
"How is your new friend?"
It takes you a second to register Emi and what she's just asked. Aika has stopped dancing, and Emi is staring at you. The others pretend not to notice, poorly.
You're not sure what to say. "Fine," you manage, meek. "I mean, I'm not even sure we're friends, she just..." You stop because Emi is holding her puppy pencil case in both hands and seems to be throttling it.
"You shouldn't be hanging around with loose girls like her."
"Loose?"
Renji is still singing and now putting Iseei's hair into a top knot, the latter munching on dried squid and half asleep.
Aika and the others are looking elsewhere and listening carefully.
"She doesn't seem like that kind of person," you say, but it sounds empty—and Emi's grip on the pencil case is knuckle-white. She puts it on her desk and then whirls around to Aika. They carry on laughing and chatting, happy to forget ever talking to you.
You slump at your desk, picking out the wrong worksheets several times before giving up and stuffing everything back in your bag. Yui comes in with her usual energy, cheeks flushed, and a stab of annoyance hits you full force as she sits beside you. She makes a jibe about your posture and says a few more things you don't hear. You keep your hands on your desk and look nowhere else.
"Yae?" She asks, a hand next to yours, almost touching. "Are you alright?"
"I'm okay."
Her eyes look past you to where Emi sits, but your economics teacher walks in before she can say anything else.
It takes most of the lunch break to convince Yui that you're fine, no you don't need to see the nurse, yes you had breakfast this morning, no it's not your period. She still glances your way the rest of the day during class. You make excuses not to go down to the courtyard with her, things like helping teachers, or having lunch duty. She stares at you, but in the end, doesn't challenge your excuses. The library becomes your hideaway, where you can watch the first trickles of snow float by the windows. It soon turns into heavy snowfall and freezing winds, the city lost in a haze of white mist.
Every day, you pass the spot under the tree, eyeing it from the third story windows because you can't help yourself. Sometimes, no one is there, and other times, Yui and Keita are there. The snow is constant. Blankets of white cover cars and roads, but mostly it is wet, and miserable.
The winter break comes and goes just as the snow withers to slush—slippery, and brown. You've had plenty of time to study over the past two weeks, but have opened your math book maybe once, and immediately closed it. You expect the usual affair at school. Toyotomi gossips at the shoe lockers, students run to and fro to get to classes, and the wisteria is without company. Yui is the first to class, with you second. She doesn't notice you come in, half there in the room and half somewhere else.
It's only when you must cross her line of sight to sit at the desk next to hers that she sees you.
"Hey," you say, because you're stupid and not clever with words.
"Talking to me now, are you?" She asks. Her expression is impossible to read.
Your eyes find the desk and your pale hands. "Yeah."
"Fine then," Yui says and, pulling her bag into her lap, holds out a small, clipped stack of worksheets. Everything you were supposed to do over the winter break.
It's more than you can bear, and the shame chokes anything you might have said, so you take the papers and copy the work. During lunch break, you go with her down beneath the wisteria for the first time in several months. The tree itself is thin and barren, and looks liable to snap under even a slight breeze. For once, Yui doesn't have anything to tell you. The slush washes away under throbbing humidity, and the world is wet with life as leaves grow and blossoms soak in the sun.
Yui begins walking home with you again, but she is quiet, still like pond water, and with no smile on her face—like when you first met her. During classes, she stares out the window as though she has forgotten where she is, and doesn't look to the baseball fields while under the wisteria. The only time her mood lifts is when she drags you into the jewelry store on the corner of 98th and prattles on about gems and crystals. She breaks them down into their science, the chemical composition of gold and silver, sapphires and opals, and pearls that are pink. She will steal some of their shimmering glow for herself and let her smile out again.
And that makes you smile, too.
((()))
The ball drops into Yui's mid-court, tying the game.
"A deuce!" She gasps, spinning her racquet and going for water.
"Come on, we each only need two consecutive points to win."
She shakes her head. "Not me—you're making me work too hard for the points I have. I concede the game to you, Yae."
You join her at the bench and watch another game unfold as two more girls take the court. She relaxes and does the same, but her eyes don't follow any of the plays. The tensions from your months of isolation have dissipated like the late spring showers, so the rest of practice passes in warm, humid ease. You rinse off, change, and wait for Yui outside the lockers. Voices down the hall reach you, suspended on the stairway.
"That's easy: she slept with Keita, and then he dumped her."
"I heard that she dumped him."
"That's probably true, poor Keita."
"She'll have sex anywhere with anyone."
The voices fade along with footfalls. You look back to the locker rooms, and Yui is in the doorway.
You open your mouth to speak, but she walks away before you can finish the sentence, like a door's been slammed in your face. You go with her to the west wing of the school where several students are waiting. It's one of the last meetings for the festival committee. The faculty have been letting you use the old conference room on the second floor. It has a stale, musty smell, and the seats are so old the padding is non-existent.
It's a redundant meeting to go over what's already been decided and wraps up quickly, until the two of you are alone again. Yui is standing at the window, silhouetted and ringed with sundown. You amble about, unsure if she wants you to leave without her. Eventually, in a flurry, she grabs her bag and walks out.
You follow, barely changing shoes in time to keep up. She walks a solid five paces ahead of you and keeps that distance. The steelworks loom on your left, black shapes in the aching red evening. A line of chain-link fencing runs alongside it.
Yui stops and pops her bike's kickstand.
"What did I do?"
You stop alongside her. "Do?"
"You heard those girls talking about me and Keita. Did you tell them that?"
"I didn't start another rumor about you."
"But you were jealous of me talking with Keita, weren't you?" She doesn't let it show, but you sense a rising tidal wave beneath, so severe you have to look away. You were jealous.
"I don't... I don't sleep with boys," she says. "I haven't done that with anyone."
Your body has a strange notion, and lifts a hand. But you pull it back, because she might shatter if you touch her.
"I didn't say those things, I swear."
Yui looks at you, a long, searching look.
"You're the only one I can trust," she says past a lump in her throat, and it snaps you in half like a dry twig. Because the meaning is clear: maybe she can't trust you anymore. Maybe she hasn't ever since you left her alone in the winter. You were careless. You didn't think she could be hurt, that she shrugged off the rumors. You figured she was higher than their opinions because she feels impossible to reach that way. She's different from untalented, unintelligent girls like you. She's Yui, and she's untouchable.
She sets her hands on your shoulders and pushes you against the fence. It rattles and shakes. Your heart beats faster.
"What are you doing?" You say, small, afraid.
Yui is only inches from you. She smells like chocolate and cigarettes. You look into her dark eyes, so dark they're almost black.
"Nothing," she says and steps away. She looks to the sky, then back at you, and whatever it is she wants to say to you, she can't.
She walks with you the rest of the way to the train station. The city is packed and howling with noise, but all of it seems to be trying to reach you from across the world, through a silence so thick it is a smothering presence between you.
((()))
Over the next two weeks, classes are canceled left and right so that all the students have time to prepare for the festival. The two of you are in contact with faculty, the committee, and class representatives in what feels like a constant rotation. One minute, a teacher has a concern about the placement of a student stall, even though the plans were approved weeks ago. Another minute, two classes are in heated debate about having a more accessible section than the other. Next, the festival committee has a miscommunication about decorations, and the whole batch has to be remade. And back around again. Yui takes the brunt of it and, after another late and stretched thin evening, she leans back in her chair, sets her hand on your arm, and just holds it for a minute.
To add to the stress and excitement, the festival is being held in conjunction with the third day of the Kanda-matsuri, so the school is expected to be packed with foot traffic.
Finally, after debate, preparations, and too little sleep, the festival is here.
The morning starts overcast, with the sun diffused and bleak, sky heavy. Clouds roll in heaps of silver. You manage the check-in booth and make sure everyone is where they are supposed to be, while Yui attends other duties.
There's singing and dancing, and one student even plays the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute with a soft, floating voice. Others demonstrate kata from the sword arts. The gymnasium is alive with the sound of bare feet on laminate and the whisper of steel cutting air. There's a track race for which the upperclassmen boys have made special banners, and the girls have planned a choreographed dance. The school grounds soon become loud with voices and fanfare. Towards afternoon, a lowerclassmen runs up and hands you a parcel wrapped in cloth that swims with silver koi. He makes a curt bow and runs off again. Pinned to the cloth is a note: Yae - I picked this for you. Hope you don't mind.
You unfold the cloth and find a kimono of deep blue silk, with seagrape leaves weaving down its length outlined in pale ochre and an obi of soft pastels. You spend a full minute just staring at it, then dismiss yourself from check-in and find somewhere to change. It's awkward to put on, and you're not sure if you tied the bow on the obi right, but you manage.
The festival stretches out across the courtyard and into an avenue full of food stalls. The whole street smells of seared meats and frying herbs. There are games of chance and workshops where parents and children are woodworking. On the road adjacent, old men garbed as Samurai march in columns, some on ornately dressed horses, but most on foot, carrying banners, wooden rifles, and shrines.
You catch sight of her by a stall selling luck talismans, just as she catches sight of you. Her hair is styled like a geisha's, decorated with small ornamental flowers of white and lavender. She's wearing a kimono dyed the colors of fall and dotted with flowers that look like snow. There are also peonies, wisteria, and maple too, all swirling and tangling among cloud cloaked mountains. She is every bit regal and courtly. Could you ever possibly appear the same to her? Yui just looks at you. And you look at her.
She steps up beside you and hooks an arm around yours, walking you through the festival.
"I'm glad you wore it," she says. "I wasn't sure you would."
"Why not?" You ask.
She shakes her head. As she thinks, her expression falls. "I always do the wrong thing making friends," she says. Then her face explodes with excitement as she spots a stall selling handmade glass earrings in the shapes of fruit. The festival takes you in, and for a little bit, you're able to talk like you did in those months before winter.
The teachers are roaming about, taking part in the entertainment the students have put on. As Yui encounters them, they wish her luck and shake hands, and some even extend the slightest of bows. Upperclassmen and lowerclassmen alike stop whenever she arrives at a stall, casting well wishes and saying goodbyes.
With each one, an iron weight grows heavier in your chest. You try to catch Yui's eye so that she will offer some explanation—will fill you in on the secret she's told everyone but you. She doesn't look at you, just holds your arm around hers. Even as it gets darker and the two of you stop under the wisteria as fireworks start sparking in the sky elsewhere in Tokyo. They're far away and barely visible as splashes of color.
"I'm going back home for a while," she says at last, eyes on the sky. "Back to my old school to finish out the grade."
The weight turns into a burst of shrapnel.
"Oh."
You feel like you should hug her, or maybe you'd like her to hug you, because you feel untethered in this moment and your only anchor would be the assurance that Yui is still your friend.
In the end, you take her hand. She doesn't pull away.
"Thank you, Yaeyama."
((()))
Yui isn't at school the next day.
You're not sure what you expected. Maybe a more meaningful and final farewell. She didn't give you a way to contact her. You should have asked. Was she waiting for you to ask? It hangs over you for days, your mind playing the moment you last saw Yui at the festival in the humid dark, a paper lantern putting her aglow. Everyone was packing up and dispersing in small groups or with parents, and yours had arrived to take you home.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Lady Yae?" She said, giving you a small smile.
"Sure," you said, already not believing it.
Was she just playing with you that whole time? Seeing how many tricks she could make her pet do? You analyze every encounter, every conversation, every look, running yourself in circles until all you're thinking about are the autumn days walking next to her, talking about everything and nothing at all.
Emi and the others are not on speaking terms with you, but you mind it far less than you thought. You find fast friends in Renji and Iseei when the three of you start working chairman Uji's stall over the summer. Your afternoons are full of American rock, the sea-harbor smell of market fish, and a pair of boys that will do just about anything to make you laugh.
You run for the school council properly when re-election comes up for your old ad-hoc post as secretary. The tennis club backs you, but the vote sways far against your favor, and you give up any aspirations for student office. Most of the school doesn't even know who you are, but Renji says it's better that way, and you find you don't disagree.
The late summer storms are heavy and cold, keeping you inside most days. Until the endless rain gives way to autumn, and you can sit under the wisteria again.
About the author: Glory-To-Our-August-King has been writing Evangelion fanfiction since 2015. His works include the widely-loved Inheritance and Amarantos. 'Under the Wisteria' is his first contribution to the genre in two years, and it's very good to have him back.