Chapter Three:
Rain, Fever
“THAT TEACHER OF YOURS sure does say the word ‘customary’ a lot.”
These were my mother’s first words after a long period of silence as she drove me home from school. I was sitting listlessly in the passenger seat, watching the rain droplets trickle down the windshield like shooting stars in the blustery wind.
“Oh, it’s customary for students to be involved in extracurricular activities,” she went on, doing a mocking impression of his voice. “It’s customary to treat these things as unexcused absences. It’s customary for all students to be in their seats at least five minutes before class begins. It got to be so ridiculous that after a certain point, I actually started counting how many times he said it. Go on—take a wild guess.”
“…Mom, I really don’t care,” I said.
“It was definitely more than eight. Minimum. Honestly, I was so focused on keeping an accurate tally that I was hardly even paying attention to any of the actual stuff he was saying. But I mean, can you blame me? These things are always so boring.”
My mother chuckled to herself. She’d always been a very chatty person—more than happy to talk someone’s ear off if they ever lent her a listening pair, be it a total stranger or even a stray cat. Hell, she’d done the same thing today; we were just now coming home from my eighth-grade parent-teacher conference, yet my mother had dominated the entire conversation throughout.
“Also, what ‘customs’ are we even talking about here?” she continued. “I mean, I understand that there are rules about unexcused absences and everything, but if you’re going to insist on kids being in their seats five minutes before morning homeroom starts, what’s the point of having a late bell? I know he said that it’s to prevent kids from rushing in the door at the last minute, but who cares if people cut it close as long as they’re not actually late? Seems like a pretty pointless ‘custom,’ if you ask me.”
“…It’s because a kid got hurt,” I said.
“Sorry?”
“Someone was running down the hallway, trying to make it to class before the bell, and crashed into another student… The kid had to get stitches and everything. So when it came time to talk about how to prevent this from happening again, that’s when the school made the five-minute rule a thing.”
“Well, aren’t you well-informed.”
“It was in the school newsletter.”
“But that doesn’t do much to solve the fundamental problem, does it? I mean, if you’re going to tell everyone they have to be there five minutes early, you’re just going to get the same situation with people rushing to meet some arbitrary deadline.”
“Yeah, hence ‘customary.’ It’s not a mandate or anything, duh.”
“Ooh! Someone’s feisty today, I see. Don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘duh’ like that before. Are we entering our little rebellious teen phase, by any chance? Or is it just Kurehiko’s bad attitude that’s rubbing off on you? Trust me when I say that acting all grumpy and jaded about everything won’t do you any favors in life.”
“…I’m not.”
God, just leave me alone. I really didn’t need her grilling me on my word choice. It was about the most frustrating thing imaginable.
“Oh yeah, speaking of injuries—you were pretty good friends with that Mishima boy, weren’t you, Kayato?”
The streaks of rain on the windshield grew more tempestuous, and the automated wiper blades dutifully upped their tempo to compensate.
“I was pretty surprised when your teacher brought that up,” said my mother. “He came in first place during your elementary school sports festival, didn’t he? Things must be pretty rough for him right about now, I’ll bet.”
“…I wouldn’t know. We don’t talk anymore,” I said.
“It was Mishima-kun, and… What did he say the other boy’s name was? Matsuse-kun? I forget, honestly. Must be pretty rough, though—having two of your students get injured on the same day. Didn’t he say Mishima-kun was still in the hospital? If you two were close, then maybe you should go and pay him a visit.”
“I told you, we don’t talk anymore!”
We hit a red light. My mother slammed the brakes, making me lurch forward a little. Some pedestrians carrying umbrellas shambled along the crosswalk, passing directly in front of the vehicle.
“Who even cares, honestly?” I said. “Not like it matters to me.”
I rested my elbow on the window frame and leaned my head against the door, my breath quickly fogging up the glass. If we were close? Don’t make me laugh. I didn’t even want to think about the two of them. As far as I was concerned, they got exactly what was coming to them. When I first heard that they got injured in the announcements during homeroom, it was almost enough to make me believe there really was a god after all. At the same time, it was also a little bit eerie—to have two of the people I most wished would just up and vanish from this earth get wounded on the same exact day, like some sort of premeditated hit. Apparently, they both suffered leg injuries during sports practice—one of them even broke a bone, while the other was just covered in bruises. Their wounds suggested they’d both been beaten with some sort of blunt object.
Given my “closeness” to the two of them, my classmates were quick to size me up like I was the primary suspect. But I hadn’t done a thing—nor could I have, even if I wanted to. Everyone in class knew about my condition, not to mention my skittish disposition. So of course, no one tried to pin the blame on me. But as a result, I went from being the laughingstock of the class to being treated like some sort of horrible freak of nature who’d curse anyone who dared to mess with him. I supposed that was a slight improvement, if it meant people would stay out of my business, but it was still a pretty brutal way to be treated.
“You’re right. I guess maybe it doesn’t matter to you all that much, at the end of the day,” my mother said nonchalantly as the light turned green and she gently stepped on the gas. “But you really shouldn’t take good friends for granted either, you know.”
I didn’t acknowledge this statement with a denial or an agreement.
Good friends, huh? I didn’t have any of those—nor anybody I could possibly take for granted, even if I wanted to. I really didn’t give a damn what happened to anyone else. They could all drop dead, for all I cared.
“Look, we’re almost home,” my mother said. She flicked the turn signal and the blinker went on.
Click-clock. Click-clock.