LOOKING AT THE HEARTBEATS of the other students walking through the airport in their school-sanctioned coats, I realized their pulses were all racing. Ah, of course. It was proof of just how excited they were for this field trip.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. I could see each beat in numerical format. As for my own heartbeat, it continued to maintain its usual steady pace. No matter how happy I was or how much fun I was having, my heart never raced. After years of being able to monitor everyone’s pulses, including my own, this was the result. I had trained myself to stay composed.
Some would call this a good thing, but they would be wrong. I was just a cold, unfeeling person. Sure, it was an uncharitable mindset, but at the same time, it showed just how firmly I believed myself to be a special snowflake who was different from everyone else.
First thing in the morning and I had already hit the self-loathing stage.
When I arrived at the airport terminal where we were all set to meet up, I immediately spotted one of my classmates staring into space. Reluctantly, I forced myself to strike up a conversation.
“Good morning. How are you feeling today, my prince?”
“…Oh, hey, Looney. I’m nobody’s prince, but, uh…I daresay I am in good humor this day…?”
“Glad to hear it.”
As I spoke, I took half a step closer and brushed my arm against his—a tiny gesture, to be sure, but I was using the shampoo he had mentioned liking, and I wanted him to smell it. Furthermore, I knew men liked short girls, so I made sure to emphasize our height difference while I was at it.
Alas, as usual, it had seemingly no effect. My prince maintained a level head at all times. And when I looked at the four-beat rhythm floating at his chest, I once again thought to myself:
I really can’t stand that about you.
Sure, I didn’t get excited over field trips, but even I had a hierarchy of people I preferred over others. And as it happened, he was the classmate I hated most.
“Zuka.” The popular kid.
To be clear, I didn’t hate him because he was tall or handsome or good at sports. I hated him because his heartbeat resembled mine. His true colors were a secret only I knew.
No matter how excited he acted, how happy he sounded, his heart never wavered for anything except exercise and athletic reflexes. On the inside, he was a solid block of ice, just like me. And that was the sort of person I could never like.
So I unbuttoned the front of his peacoat and plunged my hand inside. I knew this probably wouldn’t have any effect on him either, but I figured there was no harm in trying anyway. He didn’t bother to stop me—just watched.
“The heck are you doing, Looney?”
“I’m cold.”
Sure enough, even if I openly acted like a clingy girlfriend, his heart never missed a beat. Next, I shifted my position into more of a hug. Again, I had figured nothing would happen, but to my surprise, there actually was a palpable effect this time.
Not on him, but on me.
There was a tiny jingling sound, and when I heard it, my heart fluttered. Then, when I recognized it, I reflexively moved away from him. He cocked his head at me, and I felt my heart pound…but then it quickly went back to normal. So I donned my most surprised face and decided to gauge his reaction. “Is that a bell I hear?”
At this, something happened that was equally as rare as my heart racing: his heart raced. In other words, the bell in his pocket had to carry some deeper meaning to him. I decided to wheedle it out of him.
“Why do you have a bell?”
“Eh…uh, well…”
I had hoped he might let something slip, but his guard was up, and he didn’t finish the sentence.
“It’s not for Miki-chan, is it?” I pressed.
I figured if I name-dropped her, I could gauge his reaction regarding her specifically. But his heart didn’t waver any further. Instead, he glanced behind me and grinned.
“Uhh, it’s a secret. Anyway, look behind you.”
A secret? A SECRET? Wait, behind me?
“Goooood morning, Looney! Wait, what’s going on? Why are you sad? C’mon, we’re going to Okinawa!”
Someone jumped onto me from behind, knocking all my questions up in the air. Once I was finally freed from her tight grip, I turned around. There stood my beloved friend, the only person crazy enough to wear summer clothes to the airport in February, when everyone else was bundled up in scarves and woolly hats.
“Good morning, Miki-chan. Flip-flops in the middle of winter, I see. Truly the cutting edge of fashion.”
“Oh, c’mon! I’m telling you, we’re not going to need our stupid scarves when we get there! We’re going to the tropics!”
As she gleefully shook me by the shoulders, I could see that her heart was racing faster than anyone else here. That alone was enough to put a smile on my face.
I had a hierarchy of people I preferred over others, and Miki-chan was at the top. She was dense, thoughtless, narrow-minded—if she heard me describing her this way, she’d probably kick me—but above all, she was a good person who was capable of reacting on an emotional level. Unlike me.
But although I knew I could never be like her, it didn’t stop me from dreaming.
“It’s okay, Miki-chan. I love you anyway.”
“Where did that come from?! Ha ha! Well, thanks. Oh, good morning!”
She spotted another friend about fifty yards away and ran over to her. It was Miyazato-chan, who flinched and then smiled softly when she saw Miki-chan barreling toward her. It was then that I remembered to collect my questions out of the air and put them back in my head—but when I turned back, I found Mr. Popular in the middle of a conversation with some other classmate.
And so I was forced to board the plane feeling even more frustrated with him than I normally was.
Somewhere out there, there’s this asshole named God who gets to decide the compatibility of two given people. Most of the time, it’s based on appearance, or relative position, or the way that they met, or sometimes it’s something even more important. And for the most part, people just accept it—a subconscious choice, but a fatal error nonetheless.
Height. Popularity. How long they’ve known each other. Number of friends. These are the sorts of inconsequential things people use to determine their entire relationships with each other. But I didn’t want my beloved Miki-chan to end up like that. Speaking as someone who spent her whole life overthinking things to an obnoxious degree, I wanted to believe that the power of love could supersede all those other things.
And so I had spent the past few months attempting to play Cupid for one particular boy. Who was his target, you ask? Why, none other than my dear friend Miki-chan. Rest assured, his was no fleeting fancy.
At first I decided to simply watch over them as a third party while ensuring that no unwanted pests got in the way. Every now and then I’d tell other people things that Miki-chan had told me to make sure he found out about it, but that was the most I ever did. Problem was, that didn’t lead to any progress.
Next, I took a more active supporting role, creating situations where they’d end up alone together. Cliché, I know. But surprisingly, that didn’t result in progress, either—and at the rate they were headed, I knew Miki-chan was probably going to default to ending up in a relationship with my prince, since they’d known each other for so long. Therefore, as someone who liked to keep all her bases covered, I decided to knock him out of the running. But how? Well, the easiest way would be to take him off the market myself. In other words, I needed to seduce him.
So I tried all sorts of things. I found out what hairstyle his ex-girlfriend used to have and tried to imitate it, I pressed my chest against him, I ate the same food as him, and so on. And while nothing seemed to be working thus far, I wasn’t planning on letting up during this field trip…but now the circumstances had changed. The item in his possession—the bell—had complicated things.
Allow me to explain, since I imagine its special significance is unique to our community. You see, our school had one of those sickeningly trite romantic superstitions: If you give a bell to someone during a field trip, you’ll be together forever. I’ll spare you the lore behind it, since it doesn’t really matter how this particular urban legend came to be. Also of unimportance: whether or not it was actually true. All you need to know is that to us, giving someone a bell was tantamount to a love confession. And my prince had a bell in his pocket.
Either someone had asked him out, or he was planning on asking someone himself. Not only that, but when I asked him about it, he saw Miki-chan coming and changed the subject. If he had merely received it from some girl in a different class, I could let it slide, but unfortunately, chances were high this had something to do with Miki-chan. And that was a problem.