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It is the last week of school of his last year of high school, and really, Kenjirou is not sure if there is a point to life anymore.
Okay, well—no, he's being dramatic, like Seii always says he is. He's being dramatic. There is a point to life after high school, of course there is, because high school is just the stepping stone to college, which in turn is just the stepping stone to medical school. Everything he does is just a stepping stone to becoming a doctor. The whole point of life is to become a doctor, and then all of his dreams will magically come true, and all of his suffering will become worthwhile, because he’s helping people that are actually suffering, and he will magically become happy and fulfilled. Or something like that.
The last three years have been hell, that much is certain. Were they worth it? To be determined. At least he skipped junior year and went straight to senior year, so that's one less year of suffering.
His answer on whether high school was worth it at all changes from day to day. It's not like he had many friends in high school to give him their opinions. Oh, he had friends, sure, the ones that were in all of his AP classes, the ones that he studied with every other day, the ones he was constantly competing with to get higher grades than. He had friends, definitely, but not close ones. Not ones that he could...talk about his emotions with, or whatever.
It's fine. He never needed friends like those anyway. His parents said so, and his older brother said so, so. It's fine.
It's fine.
It’s fine, even if he’s crying in the backyard of his school because final transcripts came out a while ago, and he was ranked number ten out of the top ten, and he thought he could handle it, he thought it was fine, but—apparently, it’s not fine.
It's fine. It's fine. It's not like it changed anything. He's already gotten accepted into all three colleges that he applied to. He received scholarships for all three of them—and he even got a full-ride scholarship for one of them. He wanted to take the full-ride, but the college for it was an hour away, and his parents said no. They said that it didn't matter where he went for college, because the end result should be the same. He would get good grades at whichever college, and then he would go to medical school and become a doctor.
His parents are logical people. It didn't matter where he placed in the top ten, so long as he placed in the top ten, because they would all be treated basically the same by colleges. And top ten in high school wouldn’t even matter that much, because what really mattered was ranking top ten in college, for medical school. So it doesn’t matter. He just has to move on.
Still, there's something that burns in Kenjirou's gut whenever he thinks about the fact that he got ranked number ten, out of the top ten. What is he? The worst of the best?
How lame.
Seii became valedictorian his senior year.
Seii got a perfect 1600 on his SAT.
And what about you? What did you become? What did you get?
You ranked number ten, barely clearing the top ten? You got a 1500 on your SAT, a whole hundred points below him?
Compared to Seii, you're just…
Barely anything.
Almost nothing.
"Yo!"
Kenjirou snaps his head up, looking around frantically. Shit, is he about to get yelled at for being behind the school? It's fourth period, but he doesn't have a fourth period, because he normally has a dual credit college class during fourth period, but his college classes all ended. Technically, he's not even allowed to be here right now.
He looks up, and he finds a gray Toyota Camry parked right in front of him. The driver's window is rolled down, and the driver of the car is leaning his head out to shout at Kenjirou.
"Hey, you good?!"
Oh, this guy.
This guy.
The guy sitting in the driver's seat of this car has messy hair, dyed platinum silver, and he shakes it out of his face as he pushes his sunglasses off of his eyes. His eyelids are dusted with purple glitter, and he has a face that some people—not Kenjirou, but some—might call devastatingly pretty. At least, that's what Kenjirou has heard in the hallways. Mainly by the girls. He doesn’t see it, not really.
His name is Ethan Semi—or, well, Kenjirou has always called him Eita in his mind.
"Hey! Hey, Kenji, are you...okay?"
They're not friends. Well—they're not friends, but they're not strangers either. Acquaintances, maybe, but that doesn't sound exactly right. Every year of high school, Kenjirou has always had a class with him, and it’s always been some sort of AP class. AP Japanese in freshman year, AP Psychology in sophomore year, AP Literature in senior year. He's never seemed like the academic type to Kenjirou—sometimes, he randomly blurts out smart things during class, but he never really applies himself.
They met in Kenjirou's freshman year and Eita's sophomore year, in AP Japanese, of all things. Their teacher was a short lady with a very thick Japanese accent, and the first project they did in the class was to research kanji to come up with their own names in Japanese. They would be called these names for the rest of the year.
There were only two people in the class who already basically had the project done from the get-go, and they were the only two Japanese kids in the class. Kenjirou Shirabu—he has no English name, and he just goes by 'Kenji' to make everybody’s life easier, and Ethan Semi, who also has the Japanese name Eita. Both of them could even write their names in kanji right off the bat. Their teacher always favored them for that, just a little bit.
For some reason, ‘Eita’ always fit the boy better than ‘Ethan’, in Kenjirou’s mind. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because he’s one of the few other Japanese students in this school—Kenjirou can count them on one hand, including himself and his brother. Kenji Shirabu, Ren Shirabu, Ethan Semi, Emily Nakamura, and Claudia Yamamoto. That’s it.
So maybe it’s solidarity that Kenjirou feels towards Eita. Solidarity about being some of the few Japanese people in the school. They say hi to each other in the hallways, and sometimes they eat lunch in their literature teacher's classroom together, but that's about it.
He doesn't know much about Eita, and Eita doesn't know much about him. Kenjirou doesn't know why Eita's here right now, in his car, staring down at him with concerned eyes. He doesn't owe Kenjirou anything, so why…
"Fuck off!" Kenjirou shouts, trying his best to wipe his tears on his arm. Fuck, his face is probably all red and blotchy, and his shoulders are probably shaking. Fuck, he probably looks so lame. So, so lame, because crying doesn't do anything for him, and crying doesn't solve any of his problems.
Eita is quiet for a moment—probably staring at Kenjirou in complete and utter bewilderment—before he says, "Uh, okay. Do you...need a ride? Or anything?"
He doesn't need anything. He doesn't need anything, because there's nothing wrong with him. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need any help, and he certainly doesn’t need any help from fucking Eita Semi.
“No,” Kenjirou calls back, burying his face in his arms, hoping that Eita will take the hint and just drive away. “I—I’m fine, I swear, I probably..."
Oh my god, I'm so pathetic.
I’m so…
It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine. I am going to be graduating at the end of this week, a whole year early, and none of this will matter anymore. This encounter will not matter. Eita will probably forget that I even exist, after this week.
None of the people I met in high school, the friends that I made or didn’t make—none of it will matter.
He hears the sound of the car's engine being cut, the sound of the car door opening, and the sound of Eita’s stupid lanyard and keys jingling as he walks over to Kenjirou. He hears all of this, but he does not look up at him. He doesn’t want to look up. He doesn’t want to see the look of disdain Eita will give him—or worse, pity.
“Hey,” Eita says quietly, tapping Kenjirou on the shoulder. “I’m no expert, but you don’t look very fine. Get in the car.”
That statement is stupid enough to make Kenjirou scowl and jerk his head up. “What, are you trying to kidnap me? Can’t you see I’m already miserable enough?”
Eita sighs, raking a hand through his shiny silver hair. If Kenjirou squints, he can see the dark roots growing in, just a little bit. Eita looks from side to side before offering Kenjirou his hand.
“You can’t stay out here,” Eita says, shaking his hand a little bit. He’s got a bunch of beaded bracelets adorning his wrists, and there’s black nail polish chipping away on his nails. “It’s hot as shit. You’re gonna die of heatstroke. Or a teacher might come by and give you detention for skipping class, I know you’re anal about that—“
“I don’t have a class right now,” Kenjirou hisses, hiking his backpack further up his shoulder and grabbing Eita’s outstretched hand. Whatever his parents told him about not getting into strange cars with strangers is getting tossed out the window. “I have a dual credit college class, but they ended class a while ago. So this period is a free one.”
Eita whistles, reaching forward to grab Kenjirou’s binder for him. Kenjirou slaps his hand away, and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Damn, nice. I’m just skipping AP Calculus.”
“Careful, I don’t think they offer truants make-up hours this late into the year. They might just not let you graduate,” Kenjirou snarks as Eita climbs into the driver’s seat.
Now that he’s up close and personal with the car, he can see—the car is shit. There’s a large scrape on the right side of the car, where the gray paint is chipping off, the seat material is stained, and the inside of the car is inexplicably hotter than the outside air. And he tells Eita as much.
"Your car is shit," Kenjirou says as he collapses into the passenger seat. Something crunches underneath his feet—an empty soda bottle. "Like, really shit. When was the last time you cleaned your car?"
"Hey, cut me some slack." Eita slides his obnoxious sunglasses back over his eyes as he turns the engine back on. With a loud and obnoxious noise, the car roars to life, and then Eita is taking off at a speed that is definitely not within the school zone speed limit. “Bit busy and all, with graduation this weekend.”
"Your car sounds like it's a whale that's in severe and drawn-out pain,” Kenjirou notes, observing how the loud rumbling of the engine never seems to fully die down as they exit the school premises. “I think it needs to be put down, for its own good."
“Ouch.” Thankfully, Eita seems to have some semblance of how to drive, as he uses his blinker before cutting right in front of another car. “I’ve heard a lot of compliments about my car before, and that is definitely a new one.”
Kenjirou tries to think of something to say, but he finds that he can't. As he glances out the window, at all of the other cars that are probably full of seniors ditching class, the full reality of the situation he's found himself in hits him at full force, and he realizes—
Shit. Shit, shit, shit—
What am I doing? I'm skipping school? No, this is a free period for me, I'm not doing anything wrong, I should technically be off of school premises at this point. But I'm in—in fucking Eita Semi's car, and he's skipping class, and his car is shit, and we might get pulled over because his car is so shit, and I don't know if he even has a legit license, and then we'd get into actual legal trouble, and then my parents would find out, and then I'd have to explain what the hell I'm doing with Eita Semi, and I don't even know Eita Semi that well, and I—
"So, where d'you wanna go?" Eita asks, snapping Kenjirou out of his stupor. "You got any places where you hang out?"
"Huh?" Kenjirou asks dumbly. He hates feeling dumb. He hates feeling dumb. "Uh. No, no, I...don't."
Eita is silent for a moment, before he slowly says, "You don't hang out anywhere? With, like, your friends?"
Kenjirou is about to say, I don't have any friends, so I don't really have anywhere I can hang out with them, besides the library, but he decides against it and instead says, "My parents don't let me. I...go straight home and I study."
"Ahh, right," Eita says knowingly. "'Cause you're, like, really smart. Aren't you our grade's valedictorian, or something like that?"
And there it is again. There's that reminder—that he is the worst of the best, that he is number ten out of the top ten, that he is good, but he is not great. And no matter how hard he tries to justify it—to his parents, to his classmates, to himself—nothing about that simple fact is going to change. Nothing.
“I’m not valedictorian,” Kenjirou seethes. “I’m number ten.”
"Oh." Eita just shrugs. "Still top ten, though."
And there it is again. That reminder that he's still technically part of the best, but he is not the best. Just top ten. Not top five or top three or top one.
"That's gotta suck, right?" Eita asks next. "Being number ten? I mean, you're lucky it's senior year, so you don't have to worry about someone taking your place, but you're cutting it fine."
That is the first time anyone has ever said anything like that. His parents are both Japanese immigrants, and he’s heard all of the stereotypes about Asian parents being strict, but they’re not…like that. They were happy when he got ranked in the top ten, but they weren’t disappointed when he didn’t rank number one.
Well, they had said. That’s the best you could have done. No point in thinking about it any more than that. Move on.
Like they hadn’t believed that Kenjirou would even be able to get any higher than number ten. Like they hadn’t believed in how smart he was. And—Kenjirou should’ve been happy that his parents cared so little. He’s heard the horror stories from other kids about how their parents screamed at them for not ranking higher, for not trying harder. Apathy was better than malice, wasn’t it? They trusted him to manage his own grades, and that was more pressure than if they had been constantly monitoring them—because Kenjirou had always felt like if he got anything below a perfect A, he would be betraying their trust.
Seii was valedictorian, and they didn’t care much then, either. But they treated it like it was a given. Like they expected him to get number one. So when he got it, it wasn’t a big deal. It was just him meeting their expectations, not exceeding.
It’s fine. It’s fine. Seii was disappointed enough in Kenjirou to make up for both of their parents.
Everyone else that Kenjirou has spoken to about this has given him this strange mixture of happiness and pity. Like they felt bad for him, for not being able to reach any higher. But social conventions dictate that they can’t say, ‘oh, you poor thing, it must be so awful, being at the bottom of the barrel’, so they congratulate him for his meager achievement instead.
It’s awful. Kenjirou hates it, all of the useless platitudes and all of the ‘you’re a smart boy, you’re going to be going so far, Kenji!’ He hates it. He hates it so fucking much.
But this isn’t pity. This is…
“I remember when our choir came in third place for a district competition,” Eita says as the car comes to a stop at a red light. “And we had to come back with no plaque and a stupid certificate. I hated it. Everyone kept saying, ‘oh, third place is still good enough!’ Like—no, shut the fuck up. It’s not. If we were good enough, we’d be in first place. Don’t give me that half-assed bullshit.”
Is this empathy? Or something close to it? Solidarity, maybe?
“Somehow,” Kenjirou says slowly, turning his head to glance over at Eita. “You are the only person who understands that.”
Eita chuckles, rummaging through his glove compartment and coming up with a pack of gum. He offers a stick to Kenjirou, and when Kenjirou shakes his head no, pops both sticks into his mouth. “There’s probably a lot of shit that I don’t understand. You’re a smart guy, there’s probably a lot of stuff about…I dunno, GPAs and AP classes that I wouldn’t get. I bet it’s harder for you than it was for me.”
"You're smart, though," Kenjirou says, crossing his arms and staring straight ahead. "You're really smart, when you actually try. I've seen you in my classes, and you...why don't you care more about your grades? You could probably make the top ten percent if you wanted."
There's a very loud, very obnoxious pop! from Eita, and Kenjirou snaps his head over to look at him. Eita has blown a large bubblegum bubble, and it has popped. He snaps up the gum with his teeth, blowing another one. Kenjirou sighs.
"Never mind," he mutters, looking away from the sight before him. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe this all was a mistake. "I forgot that you're one of..."
He trails off, not quite knowing what to say. What he was about to say sounds really mean, now that he thinks it over. Eita said something really nice to him, made him feel better, and Kenjirou was about to say, "You're one of those kids who don't know what they're doing with their life."
That's mean of him to say, because he himself doesn't even know what he's going to do with his life. He's got his whole life planned out for him, down to every single step he needs to take to become a doctor. His parents had a hand in this plan, his older brother inadvertently had a hand in this plan, and—he can't really complain about it. What does he know? What does he know about becoming a doctor? What does he know about life?
"I'm just what?" Eita asks, tapping a fingertip against the steering wheel. "Just another kid that doesn't know how to apply himself? Just another kid that has so much potential but doesn't have the motivation to use any of it? Just another disappointment?"
He barks out a single, gunshot laugh, stepping on the gas pedal a little harder than necessary, accelerating them forward. "Believe me, Kenji, I've heard enough of that from my teachers. From my parents. From everybody."
The car lapses into an awkward silence after that. This does wonders for Kenjirou's rapidly deteriorating mental state.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, why the hell did I say that, why did I say that, he was so nice to me, he saw me crying on the side of the road, and he offered to pick me up, and I just—called him a disappointment. Fuck. Fuck, how the hell am I supposed to survive in college if I can't—
"I'm sorry," Kenjirou says quietly. "I didn't...mean anything by it."
Another loud and obnoxious bubblegum pop. Then a soft chuckle from Eita. "Don't worry about it. I know you didn't. You probably have a lot on your mind right now."
They lapse back into silence, and this time—it's slightly less awkward. Just a little bit. It's broken by Eita asking, "What do you want from Dairy Queen?"
Kenjirou blinks, startled, before glancing around and realizing that they are, in fact, inside the Dairy Queen drive through. "Uh. I don't have any money on me, so I'm good."
"Oh, don't worry about that." Eita vaguely waves his hand around. "It's on me. Besides, you look like you need it more than I do."
He doesn't need ice cream—what a ridiculous thing to say. His parents let him have treats, they're not complete monsters, but they're only to celebrate special occasions. Breaking down behind the school is not a special occasion that should be celebrated. He doesn't deserve ice cream. Not at a time like this.
"I can't ask you—" Kenjirou starts, but Eita cuts him off.
"If you don't get something, I'm going to get two ice creams, and I'm going to eat them both in front of you." Eita blows another bubble, grinning as he does. "So make your choice, and make it quick, because I'm about to order."
The nerve of this guy. The absolute nerve of this guy. Kenjirou sighs and says, "Just get me a cone of vanilla soft serve."
Eita laughs. "Yeah, I thought you'd be the kind of guy that likes vanilla."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't take this the wrong way, Kenji, but you always seemed kinda boring to me."
Kenjirou glares daggers into Eita's skull as he orders their ice cream, but he can't really find a proper response. He is pretty boring. He doesn't really have any interests outside of—what, studying and doing medical internships and volunteering at clinics and crying in his bedroom? He's not a very well-rounded person.
Not like Eita, who, from all that Kenjirou has seen, in the hallways and around school, is very interesting. He's a bit—well, ’weird’ is too mean, he'll use the term 'unconventional'—what with his makeup and his pretty cool fashion sense, and his lanyard that has a small plushie of Tanjiro Kamado hanging off of it. But he takes a lot of different classes, and Kenjirou has heard about him doing literally every extracurricular there is—art, choir, band, basketball, managing the girls’ volleyball team, and a lot more.
Kenjirou has never taken many extracurriculars that weren’t academia-related. He’s been in the Gifted and Talented program ever since he was seven years old, and all of the classes he’s ever taken were either advanced or AP. Every free slot, he filled with classes that would either get him more credits or give him more knowledge for college or medical school. He was historian for his high school’s National Honor Society chapter, his senior year. He took orchestra and photojournalism for his fine arts and technology credits in his freshman year, but after that, his parents told him to not participate in any extracurriculars that might distract him from his studying.
It was miserable. Absolutely miserable.
Eita probably had a good time in high school. He probably spent the entire four years enjoying himself and trying new things and not regretting anything about his life. He might not know what he's going to do with his life after high school, but he'll probably figure out a way.
"I am boring," Kenjirou admits as Eita pulls up to the window to get the ice cream. He has his plain vanilla cone, and Eita has his Choco Brownie Extreme that looks like it'll give him diabetes on the spot. He pulls over, into the parking lot, and parks.
Kenjirou stares down at his ice cream like it will have the solution to any of the problems that he has right now. It will not. It is just ice cream. And it will melt if he just sits there and stares at it, so he starts eating it.
"You said your parents don't let you hang out with people," Eita says, shoveling his ice cream into his mouth. "So that means you've never done anything like this? Like, you've never just gone out to get ice cream, just for the hell of it?"
Kenjirou shakes his head. "No. Every time we get ice cream, it's just—the big containers you buy from the store, it's...more efficient that way. And it's like—from the Asian market, it's always either mango or coconut. Because my dad likes those the best."
"Your life is sad," Eita notes. "Like, really sad. I feel bad for you."
"There's nothing to feel bad about," Kenjirou argues back. "It's just...this is how it's always been. I'm used to it."
Everything has a schedule in his household. His parents drilled it into his head from an early age that he needed to plan everything ahead of time, put it on calendars or in planners, make reminders for himself so he didn't forget. Everything in his life could be placed into nice, neat little boxes. Study for AP Government when he got home from school. Break for dinner. Study for AP Economics for an hour and a half. Break for a shower. Review notes for AP Biology for the next two hours. Sleep at precisely ten-thirty PM, because sleep was important.
He gets tired of routine, but—what will he do without routine? How will he know what to do if there is not something in underlined text telling him what he has to do? The routine is constricting, but it is comforting at the same time, knowing that every minute he exists has a purpose.
"Isn't spontaneity the spice of life?" Eita asks, spinning his bright red plastic spoon around in his fingers. "Y'know, you're gonna get, like, depressed if you don't do anything fun once in a while."
"Oh, I'm already depressed," Kenjirou mutters. "No fucking doubt. Probably been, since...since sophomore year."
His sophomore year has been the worst year of his life thus far. He's never had many friends, throughout all of his years in school, but sophomore year—sophomore year, he had no friends, period. Every single day, he sat by himself in the back of the classroom, in the back of the cafeteria, in the back of everyone’s minds, and nobody came to help him.
He was an idiot, back then, to think that anyone would care about someone that closed himself off from the rest of the world. He was snappy and rude and just a straight up bitch when he was a sophomore. Everybody probably thought that he thought that he was better than the rest of them, and so they avoided him like the plague. That assumption couldn't be further from the truth—the one about him being better than everyone else, not the one about him being a bitch. He was a bitch.
Kenjirou is his number one harshest critic. Nobody is harder on him. Not his teachers, not his parents, not his older brother.
He got better. He got over it. He got enough school credits to completely skip his junior year and go straight to senior year. It's fine. Life's a bitch, and you can either kill yourself, or you can get over it.
Kenjirou has tried both options, and he has found the latter one to be marginally more tolerable.
Eita nods. There's a stray trail of chocolate on his lips that irritates Kenjirou, possibly enough for him to reach forward and wipe it off himself. "I remember you last year. You looked...really sad. I mean—yeah, obviously, because you were depressed, but..."
He waves his plastic red spoon around in a circle aimlessly. "I saw you around, even though we weren't in the same grade. I think you kinda just...needed someone to talk to. And—I was kinda going through the same thing. Maybe if...I don't know...maybe if I was brave enough to talk to someone like me, I could've helped you, and myself."
What a thing to say, to somebody that you barely know. What a thing to say, because hindsight is twenty-twenty, crystal clear, and—yeah, Kenjirou can be the first to admit that he needed help last year, when he was fifteen and miserable and drowning in a sea of despair. But that doesn't mean that anything would have changed if Eita had tried to reach out to him a year ago. It might have made him better, it might have made him worse, but they'll never know.
It didn't make a difference then, and it won't make a difference now.
He does remember Eita a year ago, in his junior year. They had the same AP Psychology class, and they sat at the same table. He does remember how Eita was much quieter than he was the year before, when they were in AP Japanese, but—people could change a lot in a year. And Kenjirou was a year below him. It wasn't his place to pry into his upperclassmen's life.
But maybe he should've.
"We don't even know each other," Kenjirou scoffs. "We don't even...we've barely talked, all throughout high school. You don't know me, and I don't know you."
Eita's quiet again, digging around in his ice cream cup. Kenjirou turns back to his ice cream to find that it has mostly melted into a puddle inside his cone. With no other option, he begins chipping away at the cone with his teeth, trying to ignore the voices in his head—they sound an awful lot like his parents—that are screaming about how it's too much sugar and how he'll ruin his appetite for his dinner.
Great job, Kenjirou, great job. Way to be the asshole to the one guy that's nice enough to pick you up from school and take you to get ice cream. You really are a piece of work, you know that? You really are a piece of shit, you know that?
"What's your favorite color?"
Kenjirou looks up mid-crunch, ice cream staining his lips. He licks his lips quickly, then says, "Huh?"
"You said that we don't know each other." Eita sets his empty ice cream cup in the cupholder, then leans back, putting his hands behind his head. "But we've got all the time in the world right now. So we can get to know each other now."
"We graduate at the end of this week," Kenjirou points out. "This is probably the worst time to try and get to know each other, we're...probably not going to see each other at all after this."
Eita shrugs. "I know. Doesn't matter. What's your favorite color?"
Kenjirou thinks it over for all of five seconds before saying, "Dunno. Purple's nice, I guess. Like, a light purple. Lavender." Truthfully, he stopped thinking about trivial things like favorite colors back when he was in middle school, but he supposes that purple isn’t too bad.
"Hey, same!" Eita closes his eyes, pointing two fingers at his eyelids. "My favorite is this color. Kind of a dark and metallic purple color."
"And glittery?" Kenjirou asks as he watches the little flecks of glitter flake off his eyelids, getting caught in his eyelashes. Hm, maybe the girls in their grade had a point.
The other boy tips his head back and laughs. "Sure, glittery too." He grins, pointing a finger into Kenjirou's face. "Your turn to ask me a question, then."
"What is this, twenty questions?" Kenjirou mumbles as he eats the rest of his cone. "Fine. What's...your favorite animal?"
"Eagle," Eita says immediately. "They're cool. Any bird of prey, really, have you seen the pictures where they're mid-flight and like—picking a rat up, or something like that?"
Kenjirou thinks back to when he was in fifth grade, and when his younger brother used to be really into animal encyclopedias. He could rattle off every bird of prey in the book off the top of his head. It feels like forever ago, because now—now, his younger brother wants nothing to do with him.
Even so—his little brother's favorite animal was an eagle, so his favorite animal was an eagle as well.
"I like eagles too," Kenjirou says, shrugging his shoulders. "My brother used to be obsessed with birds of prey. He used to, like...talk about the differences between eagles and hawks and falcons."
"Oh, your brother?" Eita makes a thinking face, scrunching up his eyes. "Ren, right? Ren Shirabu? Yeah, I've seen him around, he acts...way differently from you, I gotta say."
Right, because Ren acts a lot more like the popular kids in their school. Kenjirou has seen it—of course he's seen it, he lives with Ren—how Ren wears chain necklaces and name-brand shoes and walks with a swagger and an arrogance he didn't used to have. His own brother, a stranger to even him now.
"He's trying his best to fit in," Kenjirou mutters, curling his legs to his chest. "He probably doesn't want anybody to think that we're related, because I'm...kinda lame, as we've already established."
"You're not lame," Eita says almost immediately—almost defensively. "You're really smart, dude, and your brother—" He pauses, then shrugs to himself. "Well, sorry if this comes across as mean, but your brother's the lame one. He tries really hard to act like a white guy, if you know what I mean?"
Of course Kenjirou knows what Eita means. He's never particularly hated being Asian, and he's never really wished he was white. His parents are strict, but he knows that with white parents, he would probably be falling behind everybody else. Just another mediocrity. And he loathes the idea of being mediocre, and he knows he's good—but he's not great.
"We're all whitewashed here, to some degree," Seii once said to him. Seii had also tried to renounce his culture, in the name of fitting in, dressing like the preppy rich kids that went to country clubs every weekend and got Lambos as birthday gifts. "It's just a fact of life. So why bother even trying to learn Japanese or go back to Japan? We have a good life here. You really want to fuck that up?"
His parents had always emphasized how important remembering their culture was, and how they made so many sacrifices to immigrate from Japan to America to give them a better life. They talked about how they needed to embrace American opportunities, but keep their Japanese character. Kenjirou seemed to be the only one that ever really got it, the only one who understood the ramifications of immigration and diaspora and aching for a home that doesn’t feel like home. Seii and Ren turned their backs on their culture, and Yoshi—Yoshi is seven years old, and he probably can't even pronounce the word 'diaspora' yet.
His parents once said that the smartest American kid was about as smart as the average Japanese kid. That it was so much harder to climb up the social ladder in Japan, so the children there had to fight to survive. That’s why they came here to America—where, apparently, all of the other children were dumb in comparison, and so the pickings for college acceptances and successful jobs would be better.
"You ever been to Japan?" Kenjirou asks. "Are your parents like...big on remembering where you came from? Remembering your heritage and all that?"
Eita exhales a very long and very slow breath, puckering his lips and shaking his head. “I haven’t ever been to Japan. My parents—well, my parents are divorced, and I‘ve lived with my mom for all of my life. And my mom never really bothered with…making me Japanese food or teaching me Japanese. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from the internet. Which—I mean, I love Japan, I love J-pop, I love anime—“ Here, Eita holds up his Tanjiro plushie, shaking it a little bit. “But I’ve never…really felt in tune with being Japanese. It’s like I’m a foreigner in my own culture, you know what I mean?”
Kenjirou thinks about the times his family went back to Japan, how the people there immediately clocked that he and his brothers were born in America, just judging from their height and their clothes. Every time they go to Japan, Kenjirou is spoken to in English, no matter how many times he tries to actually try out his Japanese.
If he doesn’t belong in Japan, and if he doesn’t belong in America, then where the fuck does he belong? Nowhere? Is he just doomed to never belong anywhere?
“Yeah,” Kenjirou says quietly. “I know what you mean.”
And they descend back into silence again, but this time—it feels more comfortable. There’s that word again, resurfacing in Kenjirou’s mind: solidarity.
Maybe the two of them are more similar than they thought.
“You ready for graduation?” Eita asks, after a while. “‘Cause…I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited to get out of this shithole, but…man, I’m so fucking scared too.”
Kenjirou is scared. He is so scared, and he does not know why, because he knows what he is going to be doing next. He knows exactly what he is going to be doing next, and he has it planned down to the exact letter. There’s nothing to be scared of, because he knows what’s going to happen.
“Just a little bit,” Kenjirou admits, and it feels like some sort of a confession, like he’s absolving himself of some unknown sin. “I…already know what I’ll be doing, but I’m still scared. It feels…stupid.”
Eita scoffs and laughs, waving his hand. “Nothing stupid about that. We’re hardwired to be scared of the unknown, aren’t we? Nothing wrong with…a little bit of fear. I bet that’s all of us, deep down. We’re all just…” He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it.
In the sunlight, everything about him seems to shine—his hair, his eyeshadow, him.
“We’re all just scared, but we don’t tell anyone that we’re scared, so we all just go walking around thinking that nobody else is scared. We spend our whole lives thinking that we’re alone in being scared, and we just…never question it. Never try reaching out, because we’re scared of getting rejected.”
Kenjirou looks at Eita for a little bit, and he slowly lifts his hand up, curling his fingers into a fist and softly punching him in the shoulder. “You are pretty smart, y’know? I wasn’t lying when I said that earlier.”
“Oh, I know,” Eita says breezily, reaching forward to very condescendingly pat Kenjirou on the head. “You’re not the kind of person to lie about something to make a guy feel better about themselves. And you’re not the kind of person to just throw out compliments.”
He says it with so much confidence, so much reassurance. Like he knows for sure what kind of person Kenjirou is.
And that—that sort of reminds Kenjirou that they are just two people that do not know each other very well, and they do not have much time left to get to know each other. Maybe something would have changed for the better, had they reached out to each other a year or two ago.
Maybe something would have changed, but now they'll never know.
Is it too late to find out?
"I think I have to go back home," Kenjirou says eventually, checking his watch. Almost four PM, and his parents will be home soon, and they'll be expecting him to have dinner ready for them. "Can you...can you take me home?"
Eita snickers. "No, Kenji, I'm going to kick you out of my car and leave you stranded at the Dairy Queen with no way to get home. Yeah, of course, put in your address."
"I'm not sure I want you to know where I live," Kenjirou snarks as Eita holds out his phone. He snatches it up, typing in his address and handing it back to Eita. "Who knows what you'll do with that information?"
"Responsible things, definitely," Eita says as he glances at the screen, then begins backing out of the Dairy Queen parking lot. "You feel any better?"
Kenjirou stares out the window, at the wonderful suburban sprawl that speeds past. He's lived here for his entire life, and some of it has changed, but some of it has stayed the same. "Honestly? Yeah, I kind of do. I...thank you. Eita. For doing all of this for me."
Eita chuckles, turning on some J-pop song. "No problem, dude. Any time. Which—well, it's not that much time, because we graduate at the end of this week, but—yeah, you get the idea."
He sings along with the lyrics, mumbling the parts he doesn't know and clearly singing the parts he does know. He has a nice voice, that's probably why he's been in choir for all four years of high school. Kenjirou can pick out phrases in the song that he understands—things like 'if I could start over again somewhere', and 'hey, how come you like me, when you've only seen me once?'
Is it too late to start over? Is it too late to start a friendship with the boy sitting next to him in the driver's seat, this boy that seems so different from him, and yet, so similar to him?
Kenjirou doesn't know. He doesn't know what the future holds, if he will ever succeed at anything he wants to do, if he will ever become a doctor, if he will ever become friends with Eita Semi. And he doesn't like knowing a lot of things, but this—this, he thinks he could live with, not knowing.
"I'll see you at graduation, yeah?" Eita asks as the car comes to a stop. "Our names are kinda close to each other, right? Semi, Shirabu, there's probably gonna be—like, only two people in between us."
Kenjirou opens the door and steps out. His parents aren't home yet, and there is nobody here to tell them that Kenjirou was playing hooky. He nods, one hand resting on the top of the door. "Yeah. I'll see you around, Eita."
And Eita flashes him a bright smile, sunlight glinting off his silver hair, and he says—
"See you soon, Kenjirou."