Chapter 15

“Oh, that. Didn’t do it.” “Do you have it with you?” Modern Literature wasn’t on the schedule today, so I didn’t expect much—but to my surprise, Sasaki nodded. “I think it’s in my bag.” Small blessings. This particular worksheet didn’t draw directly from the textbook, so as long as you had the handout, you could manage. “Okay. Well, if you get back there and work on it right now, you can probably hand it in after class. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask me.” “You the class rep, Hirano? I forget.” For a second, I thought maybe he was being snarky, but it seemed to be an earnest question. “Disciplinary Committee,” I said. “Hey, speaking of which, you’re not supposed to be up here.” “But it’s nice and cool.” His answers never gave me anything to work with, and I was getting tired of it. He didn’t have any malice; he just didn’t have any motivation, either. It felt pointless talking to him. I was getting annoyed. “You need to cool off, go to the nurse’s office. Isn’t it pretty chilly there?” “Yeah, but there’d be upperclassmen. How’m I supposed to relax like that?” So he had a timid side. I’d never thought Sasaki would be the kind to care if there were older guys around. “You’re being delinquent, but that’s a problem? Make it make sense,” I said. He pointedly looked away from me. “I’m not a delinquent anymore. Anyway, delinquents are supposed to fight, and I don’t like fighting. I’m not any good at it.” I almost would have said he was pouting, and somewhere behind the brazen exterior I realized there was a certain childishness. He doesn’t really fit in here, does he? “Hey,” I said, “why’d you pick this school? They expect you to study hard here. If you play hooky all the time, you’ll get left behind.” He could probably continue to keep his head above water in his best subjects; a baseline level of academic ability would buy him a few months before his grades started to drop. Life would be a lot harder, though, in other subjects—ones he didn’t suck at but didn’t excel at, either. The advanced course, which we belonged to, started off in first-year with lectures aimed at getting you ready to take college entrance exams. There were supplementary lectures on a regular basis, extra classes that were supposedly optional but which were pretty much obligatory. Someone skipping several times a week like Sasaki would soon find it hard to keep up even in the remedial lectures. I was sure he’d heard all that pretty much since he got here…but maybe he hadn’t been listening. “Oh, that… I was told to go to the best school I could get into,” he said with more than a hint of self-deprecation. “What about you, Hirano?” He seemed to mean that he’d come to this school to satisfy his parents or maybe his teachers. If I thought that should have affronted his sense of personal initiative, well, his estimation of himself was too low for that. It was enough if he could do his bit with the direction he’d been pointed in. You completed the high school general-education curriculum before you had to decide what you were going to do with your future, so he would have plenty of opportunities to make his own choices later. “Me? There’s something I want to do, and I thought this school could help me do it.” “So you thought hard about this stuff, huh? Nice. That’s nice.” The look on his face, a gentle expression tinged with envy, seemed impossibly sad. I glared at him. It was too soon for him to sit aloof from his classmates, avoiding effort, resigned to his fate. It was still only May. May of our first year! I couldn’t stand here and watch one of our classmates drop out of his own life. “You find something, too,” I said. “Huh?” I took a deep breath, and, taking care not to let myself start shouting, I said, “You picked the best school you could swing. Well, now you’re here. So find something. I don’t care if it’s a reason not to be late or something you want to do… Er, wait, should that be ‘make the effort to find something’?” I wasn’t used to this whole lecturing thing. Sasaki chuckled. “Wish I could. Hey, you’re even more of a delinquent than I am, Hirano.” I hadn’t expected that remark, and it touched a nerve. Hey, he’s awfully cheeky for someone I’ve just met. “What do you mean? I show up to class every day.” “That hair color. Isn’t that against school rules?” “It’s okay. I make sure my uniform is up to standard.” It was true. I never let my uniform look sloppy, and I wore the mandated color of shirt under my uniform jacket even on days when there were no inspections. “So you can, but I can’t?” “The point is, I show I can follow school rules when I need to. So who cares what I do with my hair? It doesn’t have anything to do with my grades anyway.” “I think I’m starting to get it,” Sasaki said. He wrapped his arms around himself and then yawned widely. He wants to pull himself up, I thought. He just hasn’t found anything to give him that push. Not that it was any business of mine. “Sun’s pretty high in the sky by now. There shouldn’t be any direct sunlight on your desk this time of day,” I said. “You came all the way to school. As long as you have the chance to make the effort, why not make it?” With that encouragement, Sasaki got to his feet, swaying slightly. As I watched him brush the dust off his uniform, I decided to suggest to the Disciplinary Committee that we should make sure this area got swept periodically. We wouldn’t want any part of the school, even one off-limits to students, to look grimy. “Mmm… Well, I guess I could handle one worksheet. If you’ll help me, Hirano.” The way he still seemed completely harmless was almost funny. “Yeah, I’ll help you. If you really have it with you. If you don’t, then go talk to the teacher and get another copy before lunch is over.” “Yeah, yeah.” I almost cracked a smile at the sense of friendliness he exuded. “You should only say ‘yeah’ once. Break’s over in five minutes, you know. You could stand to look like you’re sweating it a little.” This time, Sasaki drew it out into a single “yeeeah.” He started down the stairs, and I fell into step beside him. “Hey, give me your phone number,” I said softly, rushing it out. “You?” he said, apparently not expecting that at all. I was surprised to discover I felt a rush of embarrassment. I kept my eyes determinedly forward. “It’s a pain in the ass not being able to get ahold of you.” It felt funny, looking after a guy my own age like this, but I couldn’t stop myself. I figured getting Sasaki’s contact info now would make it easier if I needed something with him in the future. Shuumei Sasaki. My first impression was that he did things by the seat of his pants. My second—that he was a lot of trouble. “I’ve got an idea. If you’re so averse to heat, then close the curtain when you get here in the morning.” Even if he just drew the shades near him to stop the sunlight from heating his own seat, it would have to make him feel cooler. “Hmm,” he said, but he didn’t sound very convinced. I was starting to think it would take a while for this guy to find his calling—what he loved to do. We walked back to the classroom, chatting about whatever. I learned that his family ran a bakery, and that since his third year of middle school, he’d been getting up early in the morning to help prepare for each day. No wonder he always seemed to be eating bread at lunch. “So you help your family in the mornings? What’s the point if it just makes you fall asleep in class?” I said. I knew early mornings must be busy for a bakery, but if it was making Sasaki push himself too hard, then I thought he ought to stop. Easy for me to say as an outsider and a layperson. Maybe he could at least limit himself to helping on weekends, when it wouldn’t be a detriment to his school attendance. “Believe it or not, it’s actually a lot of fun,” Sasaki said, looking placid as ever. Huh. So it really mattered to him. Even if that wasn’t enough by itself. “If you don’t want the school to force you to quit, you’d better at least show up to class so they don’t start sniffing around.” The teachers and staff already had their eyes on Sasaki. He looked at the ground. The tardiness in particular was really hurting him. Even on days when he didn’t outright skip class, he tended to show up at the last possible second, so the first-hour teachers really had it out for him. “I will,” he said, but he sounded unconcerned about it. At the time, I still didn’t sense any passion from him, any serious proactiveness. I thought he was just arbitrarily shrugging off my ideas. Well, it wasn’t my job to lecture him into the ground. Once we were done with that worksheet and it was safely turned in, I wouldn’t have any reason to keep talking to him. We went along, classmates but not much more, and in due course, we both moved up a year. It was more than a year after I met him that Sasaki really started to change—namely, in July of our second year. I never could have predicted the incident that started him on this personal transformation. Nor who it was that got his attention. And I never expected the look I would see on his face.