Chapter Text
The two of them are hanging out on the school roof, like always. Chika has her nose deep in her textbook, physics, the class they’re supposed to be taking. Miu dragged her up for a smoke break during lunch period. When the bell rang and Chika tried to head inside, she felt a tug on her sleeve.
“Extra long smoke break.”
“You’re gonna get me in trouble, you know.”
“What? It’s not like it matters if you go to class. You get good grades anyway.” Miu leans against the railing, tilting her head up towards the sky as she takes a drag from her fifth cigarette. “Hey, you remember that café Nobuonee-chan took us to back in the day? The one by the river?”
Changing the subject. Classic Miu. “Yeah, I remember that. You got us lost and harassed couples on the swan boats.”
“Hey, you were there too!”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“You’re an accomplice!”
Chika shakes her head, turning away.
“I wanna go there! I want the special cake set!”
“They don’t do that one anymore. Besides, we can’t leave school grounds. Then we’ll definitely get in trouble.”
Miu pouts.
“I bet you can’t even afford it. You were begging me for cigarette money just this morning.”
“Oho.” Miu whistles as she lights up her sixth. “So I was.”
“So you were.” Chika gave up on Miu a long time ago. She’s still the same as she ever was, causing a ruckus wherever she goes. She still has to deal with the second-hand embarrassment of Miu’s in-class outbursts.
Miu’s copying and cheating haven’t been a problem, but only because she’s gotten better at them. It’s almost like she’s doing her own work.
“Why are you still doing this anyway? You’re smart enough already.”
Chika ignores her. For as long as she can. It’s like Miu isn’t even there. She can’t hear her irritating giggles. She can’t smell the tobacco pouring out of her mouth. She definitely can’t hear her lighter click.
There’s something warm licking Chika’s hand. Something warm…
“What the fuck are you…” Chika lifts the book over her head. Miu is kneeling in front of her, grinning. A faint flame wavers on her favorite black lighter. The 100 yen zippo she bought for Nobue way back when. The one Nobue rejected.
“You need to lighten up.”
“So you’re lighting up my textbook? Do you have any idea how much this costs?”
Miu shrugs. She stands back up and lights up another. “Everything in that book is out there for free, you know. All you have to do is look at it.”
Chika ignores her, trying to find where she left off in the textbook. She can’t remember any of the words of the page, but she read most of them, didn’t she?
“I worry about you, you know? University entrance exams are coming up next year. You’ll have to start taking things seriously sooner or later.”
Miu guffaws, startling a flock of birds. “I’ll be fine. With a dynamite body like mine, I can get anywhere I want.”
She strikes a pose to emphasize her point, one hand on her side and the other behind her head, popping her hip. Like a 12-year-old’s interpretation of what sexy is supposed to look like.
Chika glances up from her textbook for half a second, unimpressed with what she sees. “You’re still flat as a board.”
“Geez, you don’t know a sexy lady when you see one. That’s why you’ll always be single.”
Chika smirks, still half-focused on her textbook.
“Hey, hey, do you think I’d make a good mom?”
“Why? Did your boyfriend knock you up?”
Miu gasps, half-finished cigarette falling out of her mouth. “Chi-chan? Do you really have… One of those? A girl shouldn’t have something like–”
Chika smacks Miu upside the head with the textbook. “Knock it off, idiot,” she hisses, glancing around. The roof is always empty this time of day, but she can’t help worrying. Teachers come up here for smoke breaks. The classmates that bully her too. Everyone who looks at her and only sees Nobue. Any one of them could have heard that.
Miu considers for a moment, staring at her lost cigarette as it fizzles out. “What about you? Do you think you’d be a good mom?”
“Like I told you, I’m not interested in that kind of thing.”
“Why? You think you’re a man or something?”
“So what if I am?” Chika’s shout sends another flock of birds into a frenzy. She purses her lip, scans the roof, trying not to let Miu notice how nervous she is.
Her closest friend still has that same unbothered gaze. “So what, you’re gonna move out on your own and get a sex change?”
Chika sighs, closing her textbook. She tries to ignore the tremors in her arms. Tries. “It doesn’t work like that, you know. It’s a complicated process. I don’t even know if I’ll bother with any of it. I just wanna be left alone. Mom and Dad always asking when I’m gonna get a boyfriend, telling me to stop cutting my hair. That’s why I’m studying so hard. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get out before Onee-chan could.”
“Must be tough,” Miu says in her static monotone, her thousand-yard stare far beyond Chika.
“Jeez, can’t you at least pretend to care?”
“Not really.” Miu takes another drag of her cigarette, blows it in Chika’s face. “Hey, don’t you think it’s funny that Nobue wasn’t saving to move out until we finished middle school?”
Chika scowls, waving smoke away. “Don’t think about stuff like that.”
“Well, it happened, so of course I’m gonna think about it.”
“It always pissed me off when she was like that, you know. With Ana especially. Dressing you guys up and stuff.”
“And stuff? Like trying to get a look up Ana’s skirt? Groping her at any chance she got?”
The backs of Chika’s ears feel hot. She scans the roof again, and again. For every bad impression that Nobue gave at this school, she’s glad none of them made her out to be a sex pest. That’s the last thing Chika wants coming back to her.
“Isn’t that just how things are? Coppola-chan’s a pretty foreign girl with a lot of money. People are gonna take advantage of her so she stays like that forever.”
“Well, it’s not like Ana can help being British,” Chika mutters.
“She can’t help being pretty either.” Miu sighs. “Or having a lot of money. It’s like girls like that are born rich. But people who evolved that way can’t survive in the wild, you know.”
It would be redundant to tell Miu she’s not making any sense. Talking about evolution and the “law of the jungle” all the time. Chika can’t understand it. They’re both living in a modern society, with modern conveniences. The law of the jungle doesn’t apply anymore. You don’t get anywhere thinking like that.
“I haven’t even heard from Ana since the last time she switched schools.”
“Huh? I’ve been mailing her every day.” Miu pulls out her flip phone, cute cell charms knocking against each other as she types away. “Here! She doesn’t mail back much, but she sent me this picture the other day!”
The girl in the picture barely looks like Ana. That pretty blonde Nobue liked so much is gone. Now she has black hair, black makeup, a punk Lolita look, and a guitar case in hand. Chika recognizes some of the stickers on the case, the logos of bands she would listen to with Nobue.
When Nobue moved out, she passed her CD collection on to Chika. It didn’t feel right, Nobue giving away something she treasured like that. Chika didn’t want them, but her sister insisted.
“It’ll be something to occupy your mind when you’re alone. You can’t let your imagination run away from you.” She’d patted her head, something Chika had gotten too old for a long time ago. “A little sisterly advice.”
Chika wonders how much Ana thought about Nobue’s “sisterly advice” when she changed her image.
Miu’s shouting brings her out of her reverie.
“Ana’s trying to put together a band. She wants me to move to England and play drums for them!”
“How are you gonna pay for that if you can’t even afford a cake set?”
“I have my ways.” Miu does the stupid pose again.
“Can you even play the drums?”
“Pssh. All I have to do is hit them, right?”
“Is that what you’re gonna do then? Drumming along like a little kid without thinking about anything?”
“Hey, at least I’ll be doing something.” Miu flashes a toothy smile. Chika can see a few cavities. Her teeth are already rotting. Soon enough she’ll have black lungs, a failing liver, several restraining orders against her.
“I’m outta cigs. Chi-chan, lend me some money.”
“Good grief… You’re just like her in every way. Isn’t it about time to move on?”
Miu shrugs, grabbing her lost cigarette off the ground and lighting it up. “I am moving on. I can’t help moving on. Time moves in a straight line, you know. Aren’t you learning anything from that damn textbook?”
Chika looks at the textbook. Thinks about the past hour. She was reading all that time, wasn’t she?
Maybe the secondhand smoke is getting to her. Words swirl around her head that don’t mean anything. Reading without reading… Information rearranging itself into incomprehensibility. She’ll struggle to make it comprehensible during the next test, with Miu’s eyes over her shoulder. She’ll struggle and struggle until…
What is she even struggling for?
“Fuck it,” Chika sighs. “Let’s go to the café.”
“Yay! You’re treating me, right?”
“The man always treats the woman, right? Isn’t that one of your laws of the jungle?”
Miu grins, pulling another cigarette out of her coat pocket. “Lucky me.”