by Kamui Maiko 神無為舞子
At the movie theater
Staring at the screen with non-blinking eyes and an almost numbing expression, Keiko was eating popcorn with excitement – or so I thought.
I got bored of the movie from the get-go; it was another action flick with villains that were simply evil to the core with no apparent reasoning behind all their actions and no time for thinking anything ordinary, like actually going to sleep at night, go on a vacation somewhere with family, or more realistically, handling finances.
The required-romance plot was slightly amusing – the girl was an Internet geek turned into a super heroine by a freaky accident with the “wire” and some other things involving servers, cybernetic parts and so on, and then she met the hero. Keita was smiling to himself the whole time and stuffing his mouth with fist of popcorns. Men seem to love those movies involving girls and machine parts.
Letting out a light sigh, I sat back letting my eyes drifting around the hall. The seats were mostly empty save some teens just like ourselves, couple of men sitting at the opposite ends of the theater, and a lone girl sitting in the bottom right, in the front row.
She wasn’t even looking up at the screen. She was here long before we came in; we wanted to skip the preview.
“Let’s not waste our time on that,” said Keiko. “Great time to get some snack and all.”
“You gonna get fat again, sis.” Keita said. His smile looked a little sinister.
“Oh shut up!” Keiko hit him on the arm.
Then we came inside hall no.2.
I wanted to fall asleep but Keiko warned me about snoring. “You snore loud, you know.” She said.
“Then why hasn’t any teacher stopped me?” I shot back.
“Why bother? You get perfect scores and you know more than most of our teacher combined anyway.”
I smiled but said nothing. Was that supposed to be something special? I much preferred looking up at the sky – blue, gray, white and off white…
Sighing and forcefully stopping my musing, I stood up to go to the bathroom.
“Where you going? It’s just getting good!” Keiko said. Her voice was very suppressed and a little harsh. No one in the theater turned his or her heads.
I searched her face a little. Keiko’s big eyes were not telling me anything.
I had always wondered why Keiko bothered to talk to me. I sat in the back of the class staring at outside most of the time when I started my first year in high school.
Keiko had the face that most guys would find attractive but not in a princess-kind of way, more like a little sister kind of way. Her features were small except for her eyes.
As I continued to look, I noticed that she had a little bit of make up on.
It was the first time that I noticed that. Maybe that was why she could talk to other girls normally when she didn’t have to talk to me.
“Bathroom. Wanna come?” I said.
Keiko thought for a second and shook her head.
I turned and said nothing and went.
Maybe I should’ve dragged her to go with me. Maybe I should’ve just not excuse myself at that time. Maybe I should not have made that excuse just to leave the hall.
But I was suffocating, not physically, just mentally.
I sighed a breath of relief as I entered the ladies room. All I did was washing my hands and staring at the mirror.
A pale face with large black-rimmed glasses and a disappointed look was staring back at me.
I smiled; the reflection smiled back.
My heart ached. My mind instantaneously rushed far away into the sky. That fierce blue sky that I seemed to possess in my memory…
“Um…”
I almost fell to the floor as I quickly spun around to see where the voice was coming from, and almost stopped breathing when I did.
Sannomiyo Ryoko.
She was standing right there, less than 3 feet away from me with her hands folded in front of her.
She was blushing.
Ryoko
Or so I thought she was. But if I had any mental capacity at that moment it was all due to some kind of miracle.
It was even a mission-impossible for me not to break down in tears just seeing her up close in person. She had the most perfect eyes, nose, mouth, ears and eyebrows…
…Shoulders, collarbones, waist, hips, hands, fingers, fingernails and…Wow.
What I was doing before she opened her mouth? Could girls think about another girl like what I was thinking?
I felt my face becoming warm as I tried to regain my composure.
“You are…Suzuki Sayoko, right?”
Did she sing my name in a choir somewhere?
“Ye…yes…you…actually…” I stuttered.
She smiled. The clouds dispersed and light came to me.
“Yes, I know.”