Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Enjoy The Silence ❯ Enjoy The Silence: 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 2

Morning came too soon. I sipped coffee and suffered through some reheated leftovers. I adjusted my new uniform in the wall mirror before departing. Again, there was frost on the roofs, but not as much as yesterday morning. I was able to ride to school on my bike, thankfully, and didn’t hit any black ice. The school office administrators verified my ID and paperwork and I got introduced to my classroom, the usual short introduction and seat position assigned. It was neither the protagonist seat, nor the antagonist seat that I’d written my character using in my novels. 

I really wish I’d gotten an agent for publishing those books and anime rights with a bigger cut. I really got screwed on those. Popular first novel? Yes. Prize money? Not much. Money from the anime that was coming? Hardly any at all. That went to the animation company and the rest of them who did the work and paid all those people. My piece was tiny. I was better known so I got book sales. People read? Why read when the anime is so good? Sigh. I am famous by my penname, but I am a long way from rich.

As second years the students are finishing up the social part of high school. Third year would be next spring, when we would all be studying hard for college entrance exams so there wasn’t much time for anything like social events. And this time I was really polite when I turned down mixer offers. I don’t want to offend, but I want to see that expression of disappointment even less.

I found the school library after eating my lunch. It was a nice place, run by a tiny girl who looked like a middle schooler. She paid me no attention, looking at a camping gear catalog instead. Not a terrible idea, actually. I found some magazines on that topic and read some articles, flipping through pages of ads for tents and hatchets and lanterns and so very many sleeping bags. Expensive stuff, but probably relevant in the winter months when there’s ice on your front steps. Outside some students were futzing around with a tent and snapped a pole. There was a squeal and knocked on the window. There was a pink haired girl tapping at the window like a happy dog and shouting. The girl behind the library counter looked up in horror. I could see her expression. Yes, it was horror. Definitely horror. Like all her dreams had just been crushed.

The bell rang shortly and I went back to class and continued with my studies around the lectures and quizzes and assigned papers and tests. Just a few more months of this, then finals, and I’ll be a Third Year and I can cram full time for college.

After classes ended for the day I went back to the library and found some books on camping, and the motorcycle manual. I can’t afford a car, even a K-car, much less get a license at 17, but I can get a license for a light motorcycle or scooter so I would study up for the exam and see about training classes in spring. Considering it’s nearly November now I’m just relieved my bike works. I left with my books and biked out of the school noting some giggly girls playing with leaves and aluminum foil.

I think I need some peace and quiet. I returned home, noting that various apartments were noisy with news stations, radios playing, anime too loud, something that sounded like a game show from an open window with a strong smell of garlic and burnt onions. I opened my door.

“Ta-dai-ma,” I said for the utter pointlessness of it. Of course there is no-one there.

I changed out of my uniform, noting how starchy it was, spot cleaning some mud off the back of the pants and hung them in the shower to dry off. My bike needs a fender. The neighbors were noisy. I marinated some meat and cut up some veggies, beginning food preparations for my dinner. I turned on my TV and found some dumb music channel, and eventually settled on that as background to drown out the neighbors. The changed color to orange and then fell outside. Eventually I had to turn on the light to cook my food, and ate, cleaned up, and deal with homework. All in the same room. Hours passed and it was bed again.

+++++++++

Tuesday morning was another cold one. Brief breakfast and uniform adjusted, coat zipped. I found the street iced up so I had to hurry on foot to make it to school on time. Some slipping on ice but I managed not to fall. The school shoebox had two love letters. I sighed. How to turn down girls who met me yesterday? During lunch break I read one of the books I’d borrowed yesterday. When lunch ended I nodded to the tiny librarian and headed for class. More studying.

My week continued this way.

I went to the market on Saturday, found a pair of plastic bike fenders at the hardware store and installed them later. This kept me cleaner. I went to the laundromat and washed my clothes there, getting the starch out of my uniform. I rented the iron and finished it there before carefully folding it and my other clothes and walking home in the settling dark, the sharp smell and dark sky reminding me snow was coming.

I spent two hours of hard studying of my cram books. The universities I was interested in were strict. And very hard to get in and would offer better potential jobs when finished, so they claimed. Rain started while I was cooking dinner. I spent another hour cramming after dinner every night, and would be doing cramming after school ended each day. It was exhausting, mentally and physically.

That night the rainy sound ended and instead there was steady dripping in the gutters. I drifted off, not thinking much about it. Several hours later flashing yellow lights and a terrible and monstrous scraping sound on the road five meters from my back balcony turned out to be a snow plow. Happy Sunday. It returned right as I was getting back to sleep. It was 4 AM. I was exhausted, but could not sleep.

I turned on the TV very quietly and made coffee, sipping it as I wrote a bit on the final book of my novel series Oregairu. My publisher said that my original ending was not going to sell and they refused to publish it. I’d stonewalled them for months but finally accepted the increased payment. I’m not rich, and I need it to sell as much as they did. I hate myself for compromising. It puts me in a foul mood.

I sipped coffee and wrote more. This would be the third attempt. My prior two were heavily marked by Kei as both unmarketable and requiring me to get a new pen name after I wrecked my reputation.

I sent him pictures of the piles of snow outside my window. His laughter in Lines were just a series of emoticons. He was obviously awake early too, no doubt writing.

For all the discomfort it is still better than dealing with those women in my house. I gave up on the writing and got back to cramming. There were several universities with creative writing programs so I could learn to publish for more money than this. Authors seek money. We write for cash. For improvements in our basic living standards. All that stuff about honor and feelings? That’s for the simpletons. It sells books if you pretend. It impresses the critics and fans, and that’s just another percentage point you want, because it affects your check at the end of the day. And there’s a lot of competition in print media in Japan. Thank goodness I don’t deal in Manga. That’s a deep hole with high operating costs and low payout. The math is ridiculous and people still do it!

The neighbors are awake. Music starts blasting Sunday morning TV noise all around me. The snow plow goes by again, scraping loudly. I wish I had somewhere quiet to be. At least I’ll be back at school tomorrow and that means the library will be available for study, homework, and cramming before dark.

I turn up my TV on another music channel, some travelogue on winter camping around Japan. I notice some of it between studying useless bits of Japanese history and rote memorization because you’re expected to be an expert on this stuff to get into college rather than learn it there. Japan’s educational system is dumb, but it’s what I have to deal with. I just hope what I learn about publishing rules and contracts is worth the expense.

I spent the entire winter day studying and listening to the snow melt. Monday morning it was getting ready for school cooking for the day, and then on foot to the school rather than fall on the black ice. Even then it was hard going. I got there before bell and drained meltwater off my street shoes, which really needs to be insulated winter boots with studded soles, and ascended to the classroom. I hung my coat with the others, hoping nobody went and stole anything from the pockets.

Lectures on Japanese history, lectures on English language, lectures on Kanji and Japanese literature. Lectures on poetry, and math, and eventually Economics and then it was time for PE. With the weather this terrible it was crowded in the gym so I dressed warmly and ran laps on the track with another hundred people. Crowds of giggling girls and boys doing sprints and walks and sprints again. I got warm, then hot from my jogging pace. Others would pass me, going faster, then I’d pass them as they walked it off. After PE I cleaned up at the boy’s locker room, getting a shower in and changed back into my uniform and headed for the library once more.

The girl with the huge beehive hairdo and giant scarf around her neck eyed me, which seemed to be her default expression, and turned back to her catalog or whatever. I wasn’t that interested. I settled down to study in the relative quiet. I got messages on Lines from my new younger sister, a girl whose name I am trying to forget. Kept poking at me, like a wound. That’s how it felt to me. My phone played Billy Idol. It was my new stepsister.

What? I’m busy. I wrote her finally.

Help me with my sister. IceCold Sister wrote me.

Help her yourself. Or ask Dad for advice. I suggested.  

I can’t ask him. He’s a stranger. She wrote.

So am I. Remember? You told me so. I answered, reminding her.  

Sorry. You don’t have to take it so personally. She wrote me.

Yes, I do. I wrote back. I meant that, too.

There was a long wait on a response then. I got back to studying.