“What were you like in high school, Kaede?” Akiyoshi had asked me one day, a few months after we first met.
Without putting much thought into it, I answered, “Not much different from now, really.”
It was not a lie. I felt that I had probably had a bit more faith in people then than I did currently, but honestly, all I wanted was to forget that blue, painful, fragile time of my life as quickly as possible.
“How about you? I’m guessing you’ve always been like that,” I said. I’m sure it sounded a tad bit tasteless.
Akiyoshi’s quirks—her basking in attention, her dogged belief in her ideals, the way she unilaterally declared that I was her friend—all seemed like congenital conditions that I doubted would ever be cured, and I had rather resigned myself to that. However, as we sat there in our usual spot in the cafeteria, she shook her head.
“I have no idea what your ‘like that’ is referring to, but I think I was pretty different in high school.”
“What, was college a fresh start for you then?”
“It wasn’t a ‘fresh start,’” she chuckled. “When I was in high school, I never really got to say the things I wanted to say. I was weirdly afraid of criticism. On the other hand, I did also fight with my friends a lot.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I was deeply surprised. I had been certain that she had been born without any concern for whether she stood out to others, and I was sure that as long as she remained that way, my own anxieties would start to fade away as well.
“So, when did those circuits get rewired?”
“Circuits…?”
“I mean, what made you decide that you no longer needed to be afraid of criticism?” I asked.
She lowered her eyebrows bashfully.
“I’m still afraid.”
I was dumbfounded, but then she continued, “Oh, okay. I get what you’re saying now. No, so I mean, it is scary. I’m always worried about whether someone is going to criticize me. It’s just that, in high school, that’s as far as I ever got. So, it’s not that my circuits were rewired, so much as they developed?”
At the time, I couldn’t really grasp what she meant by “developed.”
“If you know that something’s going to be scary, aren’t you better off just not provoking that scary situation at all?” I said, speaking exactly what was on my mind. Back then, it was only in front of Akiyoshi that I could speak my own thoughts. She thought a bit and then shook her head again.
“I don’t think that growing up means ignoring your own weaknesses. Your weak self is still going to be there, but humans can’t change their own foundations that easily. It’s about recognizing that part of you and growing past it. It’s fine if some folks are satisfied enough just with recognizing that, but not for me. So, some things might be scary, but…what’s important is to keep moving past that ‘but,’ even if it’s only an inch at a time.”
Nothing about Akiyoshi would ever indicate that she was “inching.” As always, I was stunned to hear her say something so embarrassing with such deep confidence.