Episode 2: With Feelings Beyond Description, Beyond Redemption — I Want You to Glare at Me

Come to think of it, even the day I made that special promise with Houu-chan. I was reading a book that day too, same as always. I’m fairly certain I’d been reading at the library right up until the last moment before forced closing time, which is precisely why I was able to run into her at such a late hour.

Into Houu-chan, whose eyes were clouded with the colour of despair, who was on the verge of being crushed beneath the weight of self-loathing she had taken on by herself.
Into Houu-chan, who had apparently been alone in a dark stairwell landing after school, crying quietly.

That chance encounter was, in a word, entirely thanks to the book that had held me captive until the last moment before closing time that afternoon. What was I reading, I wonder. Something thick and difficult, a philosophy book of some kind, if I recall correctly, even by my own standards.
It occurs to me now that the content was probably something like what I’m reading at this very moment, here on a weekend with no school and no Houu-chan, filling the hours with books.

I love stories. Just reading them builds imagination and vocabulary.
But what I love more than fiction is writing that carries the weight of reality, books of ideas where someone’s thoughts and ways of thinking are set down on the page; the more specialised, the more my interest is piqued. Any book that feels like an entire other mind has been rendered into text, I’ll read it gladly, and many have left their mark on me.

For instance:

Elementary school children are insensitive to their own mistakes and to others’, and only pay attention to the mistakes a grown-up points out to them. For that reason, adults must choose their words carefully when pointing out mistakes.
Middle school children remain insensitive to their own mistakes, but grow sensitive to the mistakes of others. That is precisely why middle schoolers are the most difficult to communicate with.
By the time high school comes around, they begin to wonder whether they themselves might be making the same kinds of mistakes as others — and turn that scrutiny on themselves.

I interpreted this as: the mind grows more delicate as it matures.

It was exactly right.

When I looked again at the world around me, it fit too well to ignore.
That’s the kind of thing that stays with you, I think.

I’d always been the clever sort, and quick to think.
Efficient, too, and above all, when I was given one piece of information, I could extrapolate to about five and prepare myself in advance.
Back in elementary school, a homeroom teacher told a boy in class, in an exasperated tone, “How many times do I have to tell you. This is how you do long division.” I felt a small, vague discomfort at the scene, nothing more. But my classmates were different.
One adult, the teacher, had grown irritated at that boy’s mistake. Hadn’t even tried to hide their feelings, had even sighed.

The result: for a while afterwards, that boy was laughed at by his classmates as the stupid one.

I was… a bystander who looked the other way.

Nobody blamed me for that, though.

In middle school, the age when self-esteem begins to stir while the heart is still young.
The boys and girls around me began to laugh together behind people’s backs.
I simply found it very cruel.

I was… a bystander who looked the other way here too.

But I was clever, quick to think, efficient.
And I, who surpassed others academically, became a target for that same whispering.
Being a bystander itself became something to gossip about.

Even knowing that, I could do nothing but remain a bystander.

And then high school. In other words, now.
Am I truly clever? I decided to look at myself again honestly.
As it turned out, I was just another child who fit the example in the book perfectly.
Being a bystander is not the right choice. But my childish self couldn’t work out how to reach for any other option. Even in high school, I still couldn’t.

So I worried and worried.

And at the end of all that worrying, I gave up even being a bystander.
I abandoned that option too.

I don’t get involved with anyone.

Isolation is different from being a bystander.
Perpetrator, victim, bystander: I exist outside the framework that groups those three together, alone.

Whether that’s right or not, I can’t say for certain; but at least while I remain isolated, I don’t have to worry about troublesome human relationships. Don’t have to think about them.
The clever girl I once was is gone. What emerged instead was a blunt, unfriendly high school girl, with nothing to show for herself but efficiency and quick thinking.
At school, most people treat me like a leper.
Cold, unapproachable. A girl like that, it wouldn’t be strange if she became a target for gossip too. But fortunately, I’ve stayed clever.

The label of perennial top of the year has become the filter that lends at least a little glamour to someone as off-putting as me.

One way or another, if you have even one thing you’re better at than others, you can get by even in isolation.
I’m fine on my own.

That was what I’d been thinking, when a certain girl’s promise came into my life.

To cut a long ramble short, what I’m trying to say is:

houka: can I come over now?
houka: want to study for the mock exams in two weeks

If a girl who has no qualms about barging into your private life, rolling over to show you her belly like a dog, comes and plants herself in front of someone who has steeled herself for a life of isolation, well. Of course something’s going to slip in the emotional machinery. Something’s going to tilt in an odd direction.

Of course it’s going to tilt a person’s whole outlook on life.

◇

I tidy the room quickly and wait for Houu-chan’s arrival; she’d sent those messages a little while ago. She had visited our house on weekends before, days without school. But those had always been with at least a day’s notice, a single arrangement with prior contact; something like today, a sudden message saying she’s on her way right now, didn’t exist in my memory.

The front door intercom sounds.

I leave my room, come down the stairs, unlock the front door.

When I open it from my side, the heavy door becomes light in an instant.
Houu-chan, having pulled the handle, stands there with that easy, welcoming smile.

“Hello.”

In direct contrast to her smile, my mood is not especially good, because she rang the intercom.

“What do you think I went to the trouble of negotiating with my parents and giving you a spare key for?”
“It’s fine, isn’t it. You could stand to welcome me in once in a while.”
“I don’t like fuss. You know that.”
“It’s just stepping out of your room and coming down the stairs.”
“The act of going out to meet someone is itself a bother. And besides…”

I pause.

“Greeting people at the door is the pet’s job, isn’t it?”

I lift the corner of my mouth with a note of satisfaction.
I wonder how she’ll react.

The attitudes and ways of speaking she doesn’t show at school.
But in private, and in situations close to just the two of us…

Our promise takes priority over everything else.

Both of us bound by the promise, transformed into a relationship of master and subordinate for the sake of fulfilling each other’s wishes. So here, on the front step of this perfectly ordinary house, we are no longer perfectly ordinary high school girls.

The moment I caught sight of Houu-chan, some switch had already been thrown inside me. Even the irritation at her ringing the intercom despite having a spare key had barely registered before I was moving to make her depend on me. Trying things out.

Under the promise, control is mine to hold.

That’s what I’d believed, and it’s why I’d taken that goading attitude just now.
I waited, enjoying the anticipation of her reaction. But what came back was something I hadn’t expected.

“Though I suppose cats aren’t as clever as dogs, and they don’t come to greet you either.”
“…What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Heh. A kept cat that hisses at its owner gets a bad kitty, you know.”

Houu-chan prods my forehead with one index finger, looking amused.

A cat? Me? And a kept one at that?

The Houu-chan I’m fond of at school, the dog-like one, doesn’t exist inside the promise.
In her place exists a Houu-chan whose eyes go dark and flat, who lets me do as I please with her body on the pretext of mutual dependence.

I hold feelings for that Houu-chan too, feelings other than fondness, as we spend our days entangled together.

Which means I’m not fond of this version of her, the un-dog-like one. And being called a “kept cat” by a girl I’m not fond of left a strange mark on my small and petty pride.

What I truly want to see is not Houu-chan like this, grinning and teasing me with evident enjoyment.

“…Fine. Come in.”

I turn my back on her.

She needs to be shown.

That girl who can’t commit to being a dog through and through.
Who yields her body to me with an air of detachment.

Today, thoroughly.
More than ever before.

Undressing her one layer at a time.
Looking down at her flushed, burning cheeks and body with cold eyes.
Working over every place I know will make her feel good.

So that a dog never mistakenly scratches its master again.

Until she protests. No, even after she protests — today, I’ve made up my mind to train her.

If I go that far.

Perhaps.

Maybe she’ll look at me with even a little spite in those eyes.
I hope she does.

Hiding that true feeling, I made my way with Houu-chan to my room.