“Uh, just… Um, what was that all about? What do you mean, I’m a pussy?”
“I mean what I said. You hate this school, so you smoke to rebel. But you don’t want to fight the teachers, so you do it in secret. That’s the long and the short of it, right?”
“No… Well, yes. Basically.”
“I get why you can’t stand this place. I fully understand your frustrations with the top-ranked students and the way our teachers talk. I get it! But…” She added a lot of emphasis to that but. “All you’re doing is sneaking a smoke. Really? You might as well sit around fantasizing about beating them up. You’re not actually doing anything. You’re just sulking, like a pussy.”
“Um, excuse me?”
Her language was so caustic, my brow was starting to twitch.
Maybe I was just lashing out at people in my head. But getting called a pussy by a total stranger rankled me. I’d done what I could, fought back the right way.
“Don’t talk shit about people you don’t even know,” I snapped. “Sure, I’m just blowing off steam. Smoking is a feeble way to rebel against this awful school. But I did do something real once.”
“Oh? And what was that?”
“…I lodged a protest… I told the teachers it was messed up to hurl abuse at students and put them down just because they got bad grades.”
Her eyes shifted. They didn’t quite widen, but—and I’m not sure if this is the right way to put it—her gaze went from that of someone looking at garbage to that of someone looking at a fellow human.
“Sorry, can you elaborate?” she said.
“Well, lemme see…” I’d blurted all that out in anger, so I figured I might as well tell her the rest. “This was two months ago, at the start of the year. I was all stressed out from being screamed at, so I approached one of the more reasonable teachers. I said, ‘I’d like you to soften your language. If this kind of abuse keeps up, I’ll have to take legal action.’”
“Oh-ho. You said that? And how’d that work out for you?”
“Well, since I’d officially approached the teacher and spoken with them seriously, they agreed to my request and relayed it to the rest of the faculty, just as I’d asked.”
“Mm-hmm. And?”
“From that day forth, the abusive language stopped.”
The girl’s eyes went wide. “What, really? At this school? That’s a miracle. Good for you.”
“It wasn’t.” My voice was louder than I expected. I took a drag on the cigarette and calmed myself down. “The abuse stopped, all right. But only when directed at me.”
She went quiet, mentally running over what I’d said. After a moment, she seemed to catch on.
“Aha,” she said, grimacing. “So they’re still screaming at everybody else, then?”
“Exactly. The kids in front and back of me are still getting yelled at and told they’re worthless. I’m the sole exception… That wasn’t what I’d been asking for at all.” Two months ago, when I’d realized that, it had crushed me. “They’d heard my arguments, and they hadn’t changed their minds in the slightest. They simply saw me as a liability and started giving me special treatment.”
“Ah… That sucks.”
The girl’s lips twisted into a mean sort of smile, but she didn’t seem to be jeering at me. Perhaps this was her way of offering me comfort.
I closed my eyes and continued. “Things only got worse from there. Since I was getting preferential treatment, my classmates turned against me, and I wound up an outcast.”
“Oh dear. And right after moving up a grade and changing classes. You were probably the common enemy they all bonded over.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know.”
They were all dancing to the faculty’s warped tune; I didn’t give a damn what they thought.
“I smoke as a way to fight back. I protested properly and got nowhere, so I gave up and started smoking. See?”
“Entirely. Thank you. I take back what I said.” She bowed, but the mean smile was still on her face.
“Oh, uh…fine, then. Sorry, guess you just hurt my pride.”
I hadn’t expected a proper apology. What was her deal anyway? She’d maintained a poker face until just a little while ago, and now she was smiling and bowing low. The word schadenfreude floated through my brain, but I didn’t feel like it applied to her.
“So even proper protests mean nothing, huh? This place is rotten to the core…,” she said, walking slowly to the fence next to me. She hooked her fingers in the mesh and gazed dismally at the schoolyard below.
As I stared at her profile, I spoke up despite myself. “Tell me something.”
She tilted her head to the side. “What?”
“Why did you come up here? The roof’s technically off-limits to students. You called me a slacker, but you’re breaking the same rules I am.”
“Hardly. I’m not here to smoke.”
“Okay, so half the rules, then.”
“Fair enough,” she admitted, her eyes downcast. “I guess if my sin is the same as yours, so is my motive.”
“You’re being evasive. What is that supposed to mean?”
“I got fed up and fled here.”
“Ha-ha… Then I guess you are just like me.”
I felt like I finally understood what she’d meant by “a psychological test.”
Our eyes met, and a gust of wind blew past.
“Want one?” I asked, holding out the blue carton of cigarettes.
“No thanks,” she said, indifferent.
I was half disappointed, half relieved as I flicked the ash from the end of my cigarette.
“I dunno what happened to you,” I said, “but I bet it sucked.”
“Yeah. It did.”
“Don’t wind up like me. Here’s hoping you get through your three years here without breaking down.”
That was the best I could offer an underclassman who’d picked this dogshit school.
But her next words derailed all my encouragement.
“It’s fine. I’m gonna drop out.”
“Pfff! Koff, koff! Ugh, bleh.”
My coughing fit got worse and worse. She’d caught me so off guard I’d accidentally let smoke into my lungs.
“You okay?” she asked, leaning in.
I waved her off and managed to squeeze out, “You’re quitting? You really mean that?”
“Yep. Here, proof.”
She reached into her skirt pocket—I kept my cigarettes in the same pocket on my pants—and pulled out a rolled-up brown envelope. She unfolded the piece of paper inside and showed it to me. The field for her name was blank, but the words at the top clearly read, “Withdrawal Request.”
“…I’ve never seen one of those before,” I said. “Guess that means you’re serious.”
“Like I said, dead serious.”
She put away the paper, clearly failing to understand what I was surprised about. Apparently, dropping out wasn’t that big a deal to her.
She was really going for it, then. Damn. I guess that’s why she called me a pussy.
“The teachers here don’t think twice before telling you to drop dead, and they even make derogatory remarks about your appearance,” she said, shaking her head. “No, those people aren’t teachers. They don’t have a shred of humanity left. It doesn’t matter how impressive their credentials are. There’s nothing anyone could learn from that pack of assholes.”
I mostly—no, I entirely agreed with her. The faculty here should really rethink who deserves to get screamed at.
This exchange perked me up a bit. I was pleased to know someone else here understood.
“Since they can’t teach me anything, I decided to voluntarily withdraw,” she concluded.
“Okay… Well, consider me impressed. I respect your decisiveness.”
“Come on. I don’t deserve your praise. I’m dropping out, remember?”
Despite her dismissive attitude, I genuinely thought she was amazing.
In fact, after seeing that withdrawal form, skulking around on the roof with a cigarette felt pathetic. I was a pussy. A complete loser. This sucks.
“…No,” I said. “I think you’re really something.”
Let me say it again. From this moment, I began to admire this girl whose name I didn’t even know.
But just admiring someone won’t change your life or anything. The best I could do right now was stub out the butt of my cigarette in my little portable ashtray.
Once that was done, I put the ashtray back in my pocket and looked up at her.
“When are you leaving?”
“I’m thinking it’ll be right before summer vacation. I’ve got the form now, but the paperwork’s gonna be a hassle.”
“So two more months? Well, uh… Hang in there.”
“But of course.”
She nodded, then turned to look down at the school grounds again. I could see a strong light in her eyes as they reflected the colors of the sky—orange and navy fighting for dominance on their surface. She looked determined but also a little lost.
“……”
“……”
As silence fell over us, she pulled a phone from her skirt pocket and checked the time.
“I’m heading out before the school closes for the night,” she said, before turning back toward the door.
“Hey,” I said, calling out to her retreating figure. “Will you come back here?”
She stopped with her hand on the knob, then turned back to face me.
“Do you want me to?”
I hadn’t expected a question. What was the right answer here? I didn’t know.
“Heh-heh, why are you so rattled?” Seeing me at a loss, she flashed me that mean smile again. “Don’t worry. I’m never coming here again.”