Simplicity
But I guess I should really start at the beginning. Up until I was fourteen, I led a pretty normal life. I was an only child, though I grew up alongside my pet dog, Duran. I don’t have too many memories of that time of my life, but they’re all happy. But then my world ended. A car accident took my mother and Duran from me and put me into a coma for a couple of months. My father took care of me as best as he could while I was recovering, but he just wasn’t a very good parent, and eventually we both realized this. When I was old enough, he shipped me off to a boarding school, allotted me a more than generous monthly allowance, and left my life.
Even though he wasn’t much of a parent, I still wish my father hadn’t done that to me. He was the only family I had left, and he abandoned me. I was completely lost when I arrived at Fuuka Gakuen. Unsurprisingly, I acted out and got into a fair bit of trouble. I spent almost every day after school being yelled at by the student council president, Suzushiro Haruka.
The problem was that Suzushiro-san was just too ridiculous to be real. I started making it a game to see how furious I could make her, then laughed more or less silently to myself as she blew up at me. She threatened me with all sorts of punishments, of course, but I didn’t care. I guess it just felt good that someone there actually cared about me in some way. I wasn’t just a ghost there; I had an identity. It was far from ideal, but I had no idea how to be anything else.
Of course, Suzushiro-san didn’t feel the same way about things. She threatened to have me expelled on a couple of occasions. If I hadn’t transferred in close to the end of the school-year, I might have pressed her far enough eventually that she’d have followed through with it. But she lost the election, and when I got in trouble for cutting class the first time in the next year, I came up to her replacement, Kanzaki Reito.
Reito was a polar opposite to Suzushiro-san. Instead of being loud, bull-headed, and short-tempered, he was quiet, thoughtful, and serene. It was absolutely impossible to perturb the guy, try as I might to get him to care about me in some way. He simply met with me, calmly handed out punishments, and dismissed me. At first he was a bit surprised that I kept showing up, but eventually we settled into a kind of routine.
But then, after a couple of months, something changed in Reito. I don’t know exactly what happened, but something seemed to come up in the gossip network regarding him. I was completely out of the loop, so I really had no clue what it was, but the name “Reito-sempai” seemed to be spoken quite a bit. I didn’t care though. I was determined to not care about Reito just as much as he didn’t care about me.
What stymied my plan was the fact that Reito started gradually caring more for me after that point. By my logic, I’d have to start caring for him as well. I resisted, naturally, but he made it difficult. Instead of just telling me what my punishment was, he’d keep me around to talk. He seemed interested in me. He tried to figure out why it was that I was such a troublemaker. Eventually he wore me down enough that I explained my story to him and pretty much stormed out.
From that point on, I tried a new tactic to handle Reito: I refused to get in trouble. He couldn’t go prying into my personal life if I didn’t show up on his doorstep every other day. I did pass him in the halls on occasion, and he’d shoot me a proud look each time. I soon realized that in a way, I’d played right into his hands. I’d become a model student, just to prove a point to myself.
When I came to this realization and made my peace with it, I started smiling back at Reito each time we passed each other in the halls. Before I knew it, I’d made my first real friend in my new life. Our relationship developed through my final years in high school, though I barely realized it myself. I became more and more dependant on Reito as time passed. He was my only real friend, and on my graduation day, when he kissed me and asked if I was alright bringing our relationship to the next level, it only seemed natural to me.
I didn’t really have too much in my life, but it was all I really needed. I was content with my lot. That is, up until I met Shizuru, I was. She threw my life completely off-kilter. Granted, maybe it wasn’t entirely her fault, as the hassle of making up school after missing a month caused enough stress on its own, but she presented quite a different kind of stress.
I really don’t know how Shizuru was making me feel, to be honest. I mean, we seemed to get along great, and before I knew it I had another friend. Maybe the simple fact that I’d gotten another good friend brought up the possibility in my mind that I’d been missing something. Or maybe it was something about Shizuru herself. She was… something. She brought out all sorts of feelings in me that I hadn’t experienced since before the accident, and she seemed to revel in drawing them out.
Eventually, though, I was able to sort out my life again. I had a great boyfriend, who I was pretty sure I was in love with and who loved me back, and I had a wonderful best friend. I could do all sorts of sweet romantic things with Reito, and just hang out and have fun with Shizuru. I was even starting to think of trying to make some more friends, though I doubted any could rival Shizuru.
I was an idiot to think things would last like that. When Reito proposed to me, I thought that my life was perfect. I woke up the next morning practically giddy, and I spent the whole day at school waiting until I could get out and meet Shizuru for our afternoon tea and tell her the news. She reacted in a typical Shizuru fashion, calmly pleasant and congratulatory as she simply observed me being happy. Maybe I should I have seen through her mask, or the fact that she excused herself early, but, as I said, I was an idiot.
I came back to my dorm to find Reito waiting for me. We spent the rest of the afternoon and dinner together, just talking and reveling in each other’s presence. I started to get the impression that he was thinking of making a move on me that evening. While considering if I was ready for our first time, I got a phone-call from Shizuru.
“Natsuki?” Something sounded a bit off about Shizuru’s voice, but I paid it no mind. I was just pleased to be able to talk with her, having missed out on much of our usual time together that afternoon.
“Shizuru! What’s up?” I said.
Shizuru was silent for a minute. In retrospect, maybe you’d describe it as an ominous silence, but it didn’t seem that way at the time. And then, for the second time in my life, my world was turned upside-down.
“I love you,” Shizuru said, her voice breaking.
I stood there dumbfounded for a minute. Reito looked at me in concern. For some reason, I turned away from him. I tried to say something, anything, to Shizuru, but my mind and mouth were both blank.
“Forgive me,” Shizuru said. I could hear her start to break into sobs as the phone went dead.
I remained in a state of shock for another minute. I didn’t even move the phone away from my ear, though eventually my hand loosened up a bit and it fell out. Then I felt Reito coming up to me from behind, his arms wrapping around me. In the past, those arms had given me so much support and strength, but now I felt nothing from them. “Natsuki… is everything alright?” he asked.
I shook my head and turned around, gently pushing my way out of the hug. “No,” I said simply. I walked past him, towards the door. I picked up my keys from the desk beside the entrance and opened the door. I paused for a moment and looked back at Reito apologetically. He was concerned, definitely, but he wasn’t stopping me. I left without a word.
I didn’t know what I felt anymore. All emotions felt like they’d been stripped from my mind. The only thing I knew then was that Shizuru was in pain, and I couldn’t bear to think of her like that. Without a hint of a plan in my mind, I made my way towards Shizuru’s room.
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