Burn My Regret Chapter 03 - Daily Life
Apr. 16th, 2015 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angevonWithin the first week, Yu established a routine. Koromaru would wake him up in the morning, asking to be let out, and then he'd shower, eat breakfast, and take the train to school. He'd worried about Koromaru being alone, but the dog was well-behaved and seemed to be able to survive without being let out for long periods of time. Yu still went straight home after school when he could out of guilt for the animal, and he eventually set up a litter box for the dog in the boy's bathroom, and that seemed to solve that problem.
Once 'home,' he spent the evening completing his homework and studying; third year was going to be rough at Gekkoukan High. In the end, he'd never done his assigned summer homework, and besides that, the expectations seemed to be higher here than at both Yasogami and the school he'd attended during first term, so even if he had done the homework, he'd probably still be behind.
He was starting to regain his drive to do well in school, due in no small part to Tomochika-san. Every time he was asked a question in class, she'd whisper the answer behind him, even though he'd never asked for her help. It was a bit frustrating—he was supposed to be the one providing answers for his friends, not the other way around. One of his classmates had called her the teacher's pet; if that was true, she was likely to be his main competitor in being top of the class. But a little competition was good; although he loved his Inaba friends dearly, it hadn't been hard to best them in the grades department—though he admitted it might be another story if Naoto had been in his same year.
He finished exploring the dormitory. It had five floors in total, although the top floor was only the roof access. The fourth floor had a set of bathrooms and a room, but its double-doors were locked and he couldn't find the key. He found signs of previous inhabitants in the second and third floor rooms: a spent shell casing (puzzling, that), an old sports poster, and the lingering scent of some feminine perfume which quickly dissipated when he left the door open to air it out.
The last room on the second floor was a mystery to him. Koromaru whined when he went near it, and despite Aigis's warning, he'd tried the handle, but it was locked. He'd brought his head to the floor to try and look through the gap under the door, and he saw that some envelopes had been shoved into the room, but they were firmly out of reach. Not that he'd read someone else's mail...
In the end, he found that he felt the most comfortable in the spacious dining room, where he spread his schoolwork across the huge table with Koromaru at his feet.
"So, partner... Chie or Yukiko?"
Yu sighed heavily into the phone and leaned his head against the back of one of the brown armchairs in the lounge. "Do I even want to know why you're asking that again?"
"Dude, it's senior year," said Yosuke. "There's no way I'm gonna stay single! Which one do you think I have more of a chance with, partner?"
"Just give it up while you're still ahead," Yu advised.
"C'mon, man, don't be like that." There was a creak from the other end of the line as Yosuke changed his sitting position. He was probably in the computer chair in his room. "Let's see. Yukiko already rejected me three times last year... and Chie's liable to kick me straight to the moon... Fine, maybe you're right. Hey, what's the girl situation over there? Any cuties in your class?"
"Well..." Yu envisioned the 3-A classroom. He thought of Tomochika-san, the strange but intelligent bookworm sitting behind him... And there was also that excitable girl with the pigtails whose desk was across the aisle... He'd learned her name was Haruka. There was another girl, too, who was Haruka's friend, but Yu hadn't caught her name.
Yosuke was quick to latch onto his hesitation. "So there is! Wow... Nanako-chan is gonna be heartbroken. Her big bro has a crush!"
"I didn't say that," Yu said with another sigh, but it was already too late. Yosuke's mind was made up and arguing otherwise would only further cement it as truth.
"Tell me about her," Yosuke said in a wheedling tone. Yu refused, and after a while, his friend finally grew bored of the topic. "Hey, uh..." Yosuke began in a more subdued tone of voice. "You doing okay there, partner?"
"Hmm? Yeah, I'm okay," Yu replied. "Haven't found a job yet, but... it's only the first week, anyway, so I haven't really looked. And Chie and Kanji called me yesterday... And I called my uncle and Nanako-chan earlier, just like I promised, so... Well, it's not so lonely. Besides, I got a dog." He patted Koromaru on the head with his left hand, and the dog licked it.
"Not a cat? It's like your mom doesn't even know you! Err..." Yosuke then stammered out an apology for speaking without thinking. Yu told him it was okay, since it was probably true anyway...
He hadn't told any of his friends that he wasn't living with his parents anymore. They'd inevitably ask why, and perhaps assume that it meant he had free reign in where he could live, and then wonder why he hadn't just returned to Inaba. It wouldn't be easy to explain... so he thought it best just not to tell them. Naoto might know already through Mitsuru, but he trusted her discretion.
The cell phone rang again not long after he'd ended the call with Yosuke. Yu expected it to be someone else from Inaba, or maybe his parents—yeah, right—but his phone didn't have a name associated with the calling number, so it wasn't someone in his contact list. He almost didn't answer, but then he recognized the number while it was on the fifth ring: Aigis-san.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Narukami-san? This is Aigis. How are you and Koromaru this evening?"
"I'm fine," he answered. "I bought Koro-chan a chew toy. He seems to like it." It was a bone-shaped plush with a squeaker in it. The dog had already torn out the squeaker, and Yu had confiscated it from him, just in case. It was basically a small plastic choking hazard, and even though Koromaru was smart, it wasn't worth the risk.
"I'm glad you're getting along well. Narukami-san... I was reading through your profile earlier, and I saw that you once tutored a middle school student?"
"That's right," Yu recalled. "Shu Nakajima. It was a short job. 12 visits, I think?" It was kind of a blur, what with everything else that had been going on then.
"I am asking because we might have a tutoring job available for you. Would you be interested?"
"Maybe..." he said. "Can you give me more details?"
"There is a young boy," she said, "who is taking middle-school level English. You'd be doing us a great favor if you could help him with that... But please, don't feel forced to accept."
"I don't mind," he said. "How soon would I start?"
"I'll email you the details. It'll be easier that way."
The message came quickly, and he suspected that Aigis had drafted it out before even calling him, though it was short and to the point. The boy was a fourteen-year-old attending Gekkoukan Middle, and Yu was to call the boy himself to make arrangements. English was the only subject the student required help for. Yu's weekly stipend would increase if he accepted.
Yu gave the phone a dark look while he dialed the number. This was going to a cold call, and he hated calling in the first place. He didn't know this kid at all. What if the boy resented that he needed to be tutored? Why had he been given the boy's number and not, say, his parents' number? That would make more sense...
"Yes?" the boy answered. At least, it sounded like a boy, but with one word, Yu couldn't really tell.
"Is this Ken Amada-kun?" Yu asked, enunciating the name carefully. "My name is Yu Narukami... I'm told you are looking for an English tutor?"
"Oh! Yes, that's right. I am looking for someone... but how did you get my number?" Amada-kun asked.
Yu balked. It was from Aigis-san, but... Yu didn't know this kid's relationship to her, if there even was one. "Ah..."
Amada-kun answered it himself. "I suppose my dorm master forwarded my information to you. Narukami-san, my goal is to do well in my English class, but it isn't coming naturally to me. I'd like to meet with you for some time after school on Mondays. Would that work for you?"
Yu agreed, and they made plans to meet at a public library in the upcoming week.
Yu lingered at the school gates before class started on Monday morning, hoping to overhear something interesting. He'd learned a lot about the Midnight Channel last year from eavesdropping like this.
"Hey, did you hear?" a student with black hair asked her friend.
"No, what?"
"A boy in class 2-B was caught smoking in the bathroom! I wonder if he'll be expelled..."
...Nothing interesting today.
"Narukami-kun!" Mr. Takenozuka called. "Acceleration is the derivative of what function?"
Ah, physics! Yu knew this one. He'd spent his entire Sunday afternoon studying. He had a pretty good handle on this material, and the question didn't even involve math, making it a breeze.
He opened his mouth to answer...
"Velocity," Tomochika-san whispered behind him.
He bit his tongue and then stammered out the answer, even though he'd known it confidently just a moment ago. He sat back down and the teacher continued the lecture, but he turned sideways in his seat and muttered at Tomochika-san. "Please stop giving me answers."
She made no sign that she'd heard him. In fact, when another teacher called on him later that day, she again provided the answer. His mood soured until he mulled it over. Maybe she was trying to get his attention? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. All last week he'd been swamped by people trying to get to know him. Today it seemed like things were calming down; everyone was becoming accustomed to 'the new guy,' but he was still being invited to hang out with people during lunch and after school. Maybe Tomochika-san was curious about him too, but didn't want to compete... or something? She certainly seemed the type to keep things to herself. Not too different from Yu in that aspect, really...
He fiddled with his notebook after the last bell rang and waited for the classroom to clear out before turning to Tomochika-san behind him, who he already knew tended to be one of the last to leave. She continued to read the book in front of her, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was looking at her.
"Tomochika-san? Excuse me," he said.
She ignored him.
He tried again. "Tomochika-san? I'd like to talk with you."
Her eyes continued to move across the page she was reading.
He rapped his fingers against the top of her desk. "Please."
Her eyes finally flicked to him, but she didn't move her head up from the book. "Stop that," she told him.
He drew his hand back. Her eyes roved back to her book.
Yu watched her read for some time. She seemed totally undisturbed by his presence—and totally uninterested in him. She turned a page. "What are you reading?" he asked.
She scowled, apparently at the interruption, and closed the book. She picked up her book bag from the floor, secured the book in it, and then stood up and strode towards the classroom's back exit.
"Tomochika-san!" he called after her, but she left without looking back.
Yu was left blinking in confusion. What had he done wrong...?
He didn't have much time to think about it, though—he soon had his first appointment with Ken Amada.
"The word 'though' is pronounced 'tho'? Then why does it have the 'gh' at the end? English makes no sense..." Amada-kun was scowling over the poem he was supposed to read aloud in his next class meeting.
Yu was doing his best, but it wasn't like English was his first language, either. He was enrolled in an English class himself at Gekkoukan, in fact. He'd spent all Sunday evening—after spending the afternoon studying—looking up middle school level English practice books online with his phone to prepare for this. He didn't want his first tutoring session with the boy to be his last.
But it seemed to be going well. Amada-kun had been somewhat apprehensive at first, but he'd warmed up to Yu quickly, as most people did. Amada-kun was a rather serious boy. He spoke formally and chose his words with care. His manner was, in fact, quite similar to Shu. But there were differences—appearance, for one. Amada-kun was shorter than Shu and wore his Gekkoukan Middle jersey with an orange undershirt and his shorts were... rather short. His brown hair was styled so that his bangs curled up, much like human Teddie's hair was styled to curl up in the back.
Yu had wanted to call the boy 'Ken-chan,' but he was pretty sure that would annoy him, so 'Amada-kun' it was.
"Here. Repeat after me," Yu said, and he read the poem's next line out loud. Amada-kun followed, but his words were stilted and lacked cohesive flow. Yu asked him to repeat the line several times until he seemed more comfortable with the unfamiliar words. "That's better. You're doing better," Yu encouraged him.
"Is that so?" said Amada-kun. "I hope you're not just saying that."
"Start from the beginning now," Yu instructed.
It took a long time, but they practiced the poem until Amada-kun could repeat it without slipping up. By the end, the boy was feeling much more confident about the next day in class. "I can do this!" he exclaimed.
Yu nodded. "Of course you can."
Amada-kun smiled shyly at him. "You helped a lot. Do you think we can do this again?"
Yu overheard students talking at the shoe lockers before class the next morning.
"Hey, did you watch Tanaka's Amazing Commodities on Sunday?"
"I don't watch that show... He only sells weird stuff."
"Hey, I like seeing the weird crap he tries to sell. It's frickin' hilarious. One time he was selling goldfish, I kid you not. I mean, who would buy goldfish from television shopping?"
Yu tried to keep his face neutral even though he wasn't looking at the students. He'd bought those goldfish to feed the neighborhood cats.
"My mom thinks his herbal pills will cure anything..." another student murmured.
"Well, anyway!" the first student said. "I was trying to tell you, TV Tanaka wasn't on! I mean, it was still his show, but it was some lady instead of Tanaka! What's up with that? I've never seen the show without him on it. It was weird... And she didn't seem to be that happy to be on it. I think she was his producer."
Yu's mouth turned down in a half-frown. He also couldn't remember a time when Mr. Tanaka himself wasn't on the show. He'd bought so many things from there... Well, maybe the host had to take a vacation. The show had run every week for as long as he could remember. That was bound to tire out any host, even one as tenacious as Mr. Tanaka.
Yu headed on to class, and Tomochika-san was already in her seat, already in her natural state—with a book open in her hands. He tried to read the title on the spine. It appeared to be a biography on enka singer Hibari Misora. "Do you like her music?" he asked. So absorbed in the book, she didn't answer. Or, perhaps, she was pretending not to hear him.
"I'm sorry if I bothered you yesterday," Yu went on.
"Are you trying to talk to Tomo? Don't bother," the pigtailed girl, Haruka, interrupted. "When she's got her nose in a book, she tunes out the whole world."
But she'd been listening last week, he thought, on his first day in class. Maybe he had to try a different approach. He wrote her a note. She liked to read, right? Maybe that would get her attention. It was nothing complex, just an invitation to lunch, but he spent some time on it when he should have been listening to the Japanese Literature lecture. I've been told I'm a good chef, he added at the bottom. Then he folded it and placed it on the corner of her desk.
But when the lunch bell rang, Tomochika-san left the room, and he saw that his note was exactly where he'd left it, completely untouched.
Had she no natural curiosity?
...So he invited Haruka to lunch instead, and she, at least, seemed quite happy with his homemade bento.
One afternoon, Yu allowed some of his classmates—three girls, including Haruka—to take him to the Paulownia Mall, an indoor shopping center with a domed roof. From the outside, it looked almost space-age, like a UFO. He remembered visiting it before on the Yasogami school trip, but it was all a blur. He appreciated being shown around again.
Inside it looked about the same as he remembered, at least. Some backless benches surrounded a cascading fountain of water. It was the mall's centerpiece, though there were two other fountains on either side of the main entrance. The tile flooring gleamed in the light of the lamps positioned over each store's sign. Of these stores, only the pharmacy and the cafe interested him. He'd never cared much for arcade games, nor antiques, nor the club scene, even though these were the places his classmates seemed to be drawn to. Nor karaoke. Definitely not karaoke.
The four of them were now standing in front of Game Panic.
"I heard they just got in a new dance machine!" Haruka announced. "Are you any good at them, Yu-kun? Wanna give it a try?"
"I'll try anything," he said earnestly, and he allowed them to lead him in.
Although it turned out he had two left legs, he ended up having a lot of fun on the dance pads. The girls were so energetic that it seemed like they were still on summer break. By the end of the afternoon, he had something from TAG stuck in his head.
It was almost too bad that the Investigation Team had gone to the club instead of here, he thought. He suspected Chie and Yosuke would enjoy competing against each other at the dance machine. Naoto might be good at a crane game or maybe the more retro games in the back of the arcade. Kanji would like the punching bag, and Yukiko the Lucky Fortune draw. And Rise would just have fun egging them all on.
"I'm beat!" said Haruka, her pigtails bouncing as she wiped her brow dramatically. "How about we get a drink?"
One of the girls declined because she hadn't finished a paper that was due soon, but the remaining two girls and Yu went to the Chagall Cafe where they were seated at a booth. Yu glanced over the selection; the two girls seemed to be regular customers and already knew what they wanted. Yu was hoping not to get a coffee that would knock him out like the blend at the branch in Okina City. One of the girls—Natsumi? He still hadn't actually learned her name—noticed his searching. "I recommend the Pheromone Coffee," she said. "It's a classic."
"I don't think Yu-kun needs that," said Haruka. "His smile alone is charming, have you seen it?"
"I haven't! Yu-kun, why are you so serious all the time?" Natsumi pouted at him.
"He was smiling when you beat him at 'Butterfly' earlier, didn't you see? It was adorable." Haruka turned puppy-dog eyes on him, and it was... really uncomfortable. She wasn't Rise, not that he'd ever exactly welcomed Rise's playful advances... Come to think of it, her pigtails were a similar style. Was she a Risetteer?
"Huh? No, I was looking at the score..." Natsumi said, lowering her eyes unhappily.
Yu ended up getting the Pheromone Coffee out of curiosity. It turned out to contain more cinnamon than he was accustomed to, but otherwise was a nice blend, not that he was a coffee aficionado. He decided he might come back another time.
After the refreshment, they sat by the mall's main fountain. Yu tossed in a 100 yen coin after the girls each threw one in. Haruka turned to him and brushed her hands down her blazer. "Well, I guess it's time to go home. Where do you live, Yu-kun?"
"Over in Iwatodai," he said. "I'll have to take the train."
"Ohhh! Have you been to Wild-Duck Burger by the station? Their wasabi burger is amazing!" Haruka declared.
"If you can still taste after it," Natsumi said, rolling her eyes. "I'd rather go to Hagakure any day!"
The two bickered about restaurants for a while before finally telling him that they lived on the other side of town. "What a bummer. See you tomorrow in class, then!" Haruka said.
"All right. Have a good night," he told them. He waved after them until they left the mall.
His phone had buzzed earlier, so he checked it now and found a message from Amada-kun. The boy had received full marks for his presentation in his English class and was excited to see Yu again next week. Yu smiled to himself. He looked forward to it, too.
Yu wandered around the mall for a little while longer. He needed to use the bathroom, at least. He'd seen an empty hall between the police station and the stairs to Mandragora, and he thought there might be a public restroom there. He went into it and blinked at the eerie blue lighting, but it turned out he was wrong and there was nothing at all there except a couple of potted trees.
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