Chapter 18:

The east stairwell releases me into the corridor.

The white is still faintly present. Not the aggressive white of a blank surface demanding to be filled — just the residue of it, just the specific quality of a mind that has been briefly empty and hasn't yet fully refilled, that is still in the tail end of the absence, still in the particular quiet of a space that has recently been a different kind of space —

The hand.

I don't think about the hand.

I take the corridor.

My route assembles itself the way it always does — automatically, without consultation, the feet knowing the path the way they know the east exit and the long way around and the four extra minutes — and I'm moving through the after-school corridor with my bag and my jaw and the pencil — there is now a pencil in my bag, I'll get to that — and the specific quality of a Thursday afternoon that has contained more than a Thursday afternoon typically warrants —

I'm twenty meters from the east exit.

Something is standing near the east exit.

Not something. Someone.

Someone standing with the specific quality of a person who has positioned themselves deliberately, who is not passing through, who is waiting — the posture of waiting, the weight distribution of a person who has been in one place for long enough to have settled into it, to have made temporary peace with the standing —

I recognize the posture before I recognize the person.

Kana Kawamaru.

I walk past her.

This is not — I want to be clear, this is not a deliberate slight, this is not a performance of indifference, this is just the route being the route, just the feet continuing their program, just the body in motion staying in motion —

She follows.

I become aware of the following approximately four steps after it begins. The specific sound of a second set of footsteps entering the acoustic field of mine, close enough to be deliberate, too close to be coincidence, maintaining the distance with the careful precision of someone who has decided to follow but hasn't decided how closely following is appropriate —

I stop.

I turn.

"What are you doing," I say.

Kana Kawamaru looks at me.

Up close she is —

Quiet.

That's the word that arrives first and stays. Just quiet. Not performing quietness the way I perform neutrality — just genuinely, constitutionally, fundamentally quiet, the specific quality of a person for whom silence is the natural state rather than the managed one —

Her eyes.

I note her eyes.

Dark. Steady in a way that surprises me slightly — not the 0.4 second adjustment, not the prepared expression, just — steady, just eyes that are currently looking at me and finding that looking at me is what they're doing and not running any process to manage the looking —

Her neck.

The specific —

I'm filing her as ordinary and moving on.

"I —" she begins.

And then the stutter arrives.

Not a small one. Not a minor hesitation. A genuine full stutter, the kind that starts at the beginning and has to find its way through the word by force —

"I — I — a — a —"

She stops.

Takes a breath.

"W — wan — to —"

Another stop.

I wait.

I don't fill the silence. I don't complete the sentence. I don't make the face people make when someone is struggling with something, the encouraging face, the I'm-patient face, the performance of patience — I just wait, just let the silence be the silence, just give it the time it needs the way nikujaga needs the time it needs —

"I want to th — thank you," she says. "P — properly."

She holds out her hand.

In her hand is a pencil.

Not flowers. Not food. Not something that required significant research or financial investment or elaborate planning. Just a pencil. A standard pencil. The kind that exists in pencil cases everywhere, that costs almost nothing, that is the most ordinary object you could hand to another person —

She bought a pencil.

She waited by the east exit.

She bought a pencil and waited by the east exit to thank me properly with it and the specifically ordinary nature of the pencil — the fact that she didn't overthink it, didn't upgrade it into something more significant, just — a pencil, just the first useful thing, just the thing her hands found and decided was right —

I take it.

I put it in my bag.

"Okay," I say.

She looks at the bag.

Looks at me.

I look at her.

Her eyes.

Steady.

Her neck has the specific quality of —

I'm filing her as ordinary.

The pencil is in the bag now and the bag is on my shoulder and I turn and begin walking and she is — still following, still maintaining the careful distance, still in the acoustic field of my footsteps —

I stop again.

"Is there something I should do for you," I say.

She opens her mouth.

Closes it.

Opens it.

"I —" The stutter begins its approach. She takes a breath. Steadies. "I want to be your friend."

I look at her.

She looks at me.

The corridor around us does what corridors do which is exist with complete indifference to the people in it having moments inside it.

I nod.

One nod. Unelaborated. Just — the head moving in the affirmative direction and returning to its original position.

"Soon," I say. "What do you want to do."

She blinks.

"I — I don't know," she says.

"Okay," I say. "We'll figure it out."

I turn.

I start walking again.

She falls into step beside me.

Two quiet people walking in a corridor.

The specific silence of two people who have agreed to something without knowing what the something looks like yet — the agreement existing in the nod and the okay and the we'll figure it out, in the specific ordinary miracle of two people deciding without ceremony that the other person's company is something they'd like to have —

I look at the pencil in my bag.

It's just a pencil.

It's in my bag now.

That's enough to think about that.

---

Something lands on my back.

Not gently.

The impact arrives before the processing does — the body spiking, the specific full-body alertness of a system that has been caught genuinely off guard, the background process spiking to emergency frequency in approximately 0.2 seconds, the jaw reporting renewed interest in the day's events, the shoulders responding before the brain has identified the source —

Weight. Arms. A person.

On my back.

"WHO IS THIS GIRL."

Sky.

The voice identifies her before anything else does. The specific frequency of it. The complete lack of concern for the acoustic properties of a school corridor.

She is on my back.

She has climbed onto my back in a school corridor.

I process this.

I process this with the specific efficiency of someone who is developing, against their will and through repeated exposure, a Sky-specific processing pathway — a dedicated system for inputs that arrive faster than the standard model can handle —

"Are you seducing her," Sky says from my back. Conversationally. As if this is a reasonable question to ask from the position of being on someone's back in a school corridor.

I look at Kana.

Kana is looking at the person on my back with the expression of someone whose quiet Thursday afternoon has just become something significantly less categorizable.

"Yes," I say. "I'm seducing her."

Sky's head appears over my shoulder.

She looks at Kana.

Kana looks at her.

"Heeh," Sky says.

She dismounts.

With the specific efficiency of someone who has decided the back was a temporary position and the ground is now more strategically useful, she lands, straightens, and moves immediately to Kana's side with the energy of a person who has identified a mission and is executing it —

"Hey," she says to Kana. "My lady."

Kana blinks.

"Don't follow that man," Sky says, with the gravity of someone delivering genuinely important information. "That man —" she gestures at me, "— is a renowned pervert. He loves armpits. Belly. Feet." She pauses for emphasis. "You should be thinking about your future, young woman."

I look at Sky.

Sky looks at Kana with complete sincerity.

Kana looks at me.

I look at Kana.

There is a moment.

The specific moment of three people in a corridor where two of them are looking at the third and the third is trying to locate the correct response in a situation that has no obvious correct response —

Kana looks back at Sky.

Something in her face — quiet, steady, the same steady quality from before — does something small. Not a full expression. Just the edges of one. Just the beginning of something that might, in a person who had more practice with the having of visible expressions, become a smile —

"Why," I say to Sky, "are you talking like that."

"Like what," Sky says.

"Like a narrator in a period drama."

"I contain multitudes," Sky says. "Also —" she turns to me fully, "— first and foremost. Not first in foremost. First. And. Foremost."

"First in foremost," I say, "means the same thing."

"It really doesn't."

"It does."

"It's grammatically —"

"I am a good pervert," I say. "I want that established. There is a categorical distinction between a pervert who causes problems and a pervert who operates within a self-defined ethical framework that prioritizes —"

"Yada yada," Sky says.

"I'm serious about the distinction."

"You're always serious about the distinction," she says. "I've heard the distinction. The distinction has been noted and filed and I remain unconvinced." She looks at Kana. "He'll explain the distinction if you give him any opening. Don't give him the opening."

Kana looks at me.

I look at Kana.

"She's not wrong," I say.

Kana's face does the edge-of-something again.

---

"I heard you stayed after class," Sky says.

We're walking now.

All three of us.

Which is — I note this, I note the arithmetic of it, the specific novelty of the number — three people walking in the same direction without any of them having planned to be walking with the others, just the accumulation of circumstances producing a three-person configuration that I have no established protocol for —

"It's nothing," I say.

"Reyes kept you after," Sky says. "That's not nothing. Reyes keeping someone after is a whole thing. She doesn't do it casually."

"She does it casually," I say.

"She doesn't."

I look ahead.

"Why were you waiting," I say.

Sky shrugs. The specific shrug of someone who has a reason and has decided the reason is not worth the ceremony of stating it directly. "I'm bored," she says. "Might as well make fun of you."

I look at her.

She looks back with complete straightforwardness.

I'm bored might as well make fun of you.

I file this.

I file it next to I want to be your friend.

I don't note that they mean the same thing in different instruments.

I don't note it because I don't examine it because examining it would require me to say something about it and saying something about it would mean acknowledging what it is and what it is is —

I look ahead.

"Where are we going," Sky says.

"I'm going home," I say.

"We'll walk you," she says.

"You don't know where I live."

"I know your route," she says. "Same thing."

I look at Kana.

Kana is walking with the specific quality of someone who has arrived somewhere she didn't plan to be and has decided that the not-planning is fine, that the somewhere is acceptable, that the company is — she's looking at the corridor ahead with the steady eyes and the quiet and the edge-of-something still faintly present on her face —

Three people.

The route assembling itself ahead of us.

The four extra minutes of the long way around.

I note that the long way around now regularly includes other people and this was not in the original parameters of the long way around and the original parameters were designed specifically to minimize human contact and —

The parameters may need updating.

I don't update them yet.

I just walk.

The pencil is in my bag.

Sky is to my left.

Kana is to my right.

The corridor holds us.