Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ My College Romantic Comedy Was Wrong, As I Expected ❯ My College SNAFU: 2 ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter Two

 

The following morning my alarm played She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, an 80’s tune with excellent energy. I was hoping it would get my blood pumping so I could rise and shine. Seeing Saki here was good news, at least. And she didn’t actively hate me, which is already better than most of Chiba City. As I dressed for the day it played Fire Woman after that, same band with a great beat. Nanako came down the steps from her end of the house, heading for the bathroom, asked me about the music, bouncing along.

“It’s from Beggars Banquet, by The Cult. American band from the 1980s. Hair Metal, very popular. My sister gave me ‘Best of the 80’s Collection’ as a graduation present.”

“That’s very esoteric. Aren’t you a Literature major?” Nanako confirmed.

“Anything that helps you write is a valid influence. Something for the mood is important, at least I think so. I’m not very experienced yet.”

ShinoAki descended yawning and damp around the edges. “What’s that playing?”

“Indigo Eyes, by Peter Murphy.”

“Is that Goth Rock?”

“He’s one of the originators of Goth Rock. He was in Bauhaus before he went solo.”

“What’s Bauhaus?” asked Aki.

“Goth rock band.”

“What song is this?” asked Nana as a classic guitar riff pealed. We were eating breakfast now.

“Echo and the Bunnymen. Lips Like Sugar.” Both girls started to sing the chorus as we packed lunches.

“Is this Goth Rock?” asked Aki.

“New Wave. Our parents probably listened to this, if they were cool,” explained Nana. I nodded along.

“Is this American music?” asked Aki.

“English. The lyrics are good if you know English well enough.”

I printed out the lyrics on my printer and handed copies to the girls and Kyouya. We tromped up the hill to school, singing Lips Like Sugar a capella with air guitar. It was fair to say we attracted no attention at all, because this was Art school, so people did stuff like this all the time.

Class was preparation for our team project. I almost reserved the wrong camera by mistake, but I noticed SLR wasn’t the same as video and made sure to correctly get the right one for our project. I’d pick that up in a week, when we had hopefully gotten lucky on the very changeable weather. Hopefully that wouldn’t screw things up in unforeseen ways.

The mood from the morning was gradually eroding and by the time I reached Cities In Dust by Siouxsie and the Banshees I was feeling both hungry and tired. It was lunch so I found the cafeteria and remembered their coffee was terrible, remembered the good coffee Saki made at her club, did not see her around and tried the cold tea instead, with ice. It was better, and refreshing. I ate my bento I’d made that morning and missed Komachi a lot, thinking about it.

“Hey, why you sad?” asked Saki, appearing finally.

“I miss Komachi.” She was silent. She looked sad for similar reasons.

“I miss my brother and sister too.”

“We’ve been listening to 80’s tunes today. I was trying to sing Lips Like Sugar on the way to school. Nana is off-key and tone deaf. Aki is breathing too hard to sing and run along on her short legs.”

“Who’s Aki?” she asked.

“I’ll introduce you sometime. She’s short, housemate. Nana is the other woman there.”

“You’re in coed housing?” she asked, slightly scandalized.

“We have our own rooms,” I scoffed. If I wasn’t going to work after this I’d show you around. It has a nice view.”

“Lucky. I have a view of concrete dorm wall. The on-campus housing was created by someone with a reverse understanding of Arts students, probably thinking that giving us dull and oppressive monotony will inspire us to be great artists.”

“I didn’t see you at the Intro to Visual Arts talk on the first day.”

“I’m not in Visual Arts. I’m in Industrial Arts track. We got a speech about employment. Only 40% got the job they wanted and another 25% settle for related. It’s kinda depressing. How was yours?” she asked. I told her. She laughed. I frowned. She laughed harder.

“Sucks to be you,” she taunted.

“Yeah yeah. We’re the ones who eventually employ you. Keep that in mind, Miss Smug.”

“Haha, no. I’m minoring in Fashion. That’s a huge field with lots of jobs back in Tokyo,” she denied me. Denied me. I sighed, admitting defeat. It wasn’t a bad plan.

Tokyo. Chiba. I wiped my eyes again, something in them. My handkerchief will never betray me.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked, concerned.

“Just, stuff back home. It sneaks up on me.”

“You’re really sensitive, aren’t you Hachiman?” she asked.

“Yeah. What happened in Middle School just happened worse in high school,” I agreed.

“That’s why you pretty much disappeared in third year.”

“Everybody does, to study for exams. We just show up for the graduation and then disappear from each other’s lives.”

“But you broke off talking to everyone. Even me. Like you couldn’t be around anyone.”

“How should I have felt? My heart broke. Do you know how that feels?” I asked her. She froze at that.

“No. I never confessed to my crush,” she eventually said in a small voice. I waved my hands around.

“Well, it’s not a nice feeling. It consumes you, all your thoughts and your dreams are broken and every bit of hope you have is just torn out and crush. That’s what it’s like.”

“Wow. Sorry. That sounds really horrible.”

“Sorry. I think I’m not very good company right now, and I need to get to work. I’m glad to see you Saki. Nice jacket by the way. Suits you,” I noted, waving and leaving for work.

Storming off campus with earbuds in, I listened to Change by Tears for Fears. Good fast paced song, but hits close to home. “But It’s all, too late, It’s all too late… change! You can’t change!”

This kind of feeling reminded me of a show I watched when I was younger, too young to understand it. It was Honey and Clover, and it was about and art school in Tokyo, and all the people who went there and sort of tore each other up inside. There was a lot of pain in the second season, and it was a long show, back when they still did those. It had a great and varied soundtrack with a bunch of different artists. I found Suneohair and Sora mo Isogashii and cried all the way to work, listening to it.

It was the climax song for the series, when the lesser artist from the first ep, who has fallen in love with a master sculptor who looks like a doll, realizes he can only hold her back and she can’t give him her love. He realizes he’s lost. And his heart breaks. That’s when the theme plays. I put it on repeat and stocked shelves, sniffling and wiping my eyes all afternoon in the fridges. Nobody said anything to me. I worked alone. When shift ended I left my uniform hanging in the locker and headed off to the market for some comfort food ingredients. It was sunset.

Home was a loud bustle but I cooked alone and ate alone and went to my room to study, trying not to cry from all these feelings welling up in me. Of my failure. Of something genuine I would never experience. Of my broken heart. I cried myself to sleep.

That morning Massive Attack started in with Teardrop on my alarm, setting the gloomy mood for the day. It was appropriate. We were expecting rain later. I wore earbuds, and carried my umbrella to school alone with my dark thoughts. I feel torn up, broken. It was an appropriate mood to write, so I broke out my writing notebook and redid my Youth Is A Lie essay with far more precise wording, a more cutting tone, and applied all I’d hurt over the last three years into it. I was satisfied. I would begin my memoir with this.

Morning classes on script writing felt deeper than usual. I gained some understanding of essential aspects of dramatic tension, and how pacing worked, and why it was harder with books than it was with scripts who got their pacing determined by the director during editing. I put that to practice editing the narration in the script to overlap scene changes. I would have to work closely with Kyouya since he was volunteering to manage the direction and edit, along with the camera work, with help from Aki, who knew photography. She was an illustrator, but framing a scene and timing are essential skills for either.

This had some effect on my writing because I’d been trying for ornate with the memoir, but it was dragging. I made a copy and started trimming out words, creating faster pacing through editing it into a Light Novel. I read a lot of those so I know how they’re supposed to be. I kept the cruelty, the dialogue, the essentials, and only left traces of the important descriptions, when the moments needed them.

The second version was smoother, faster, maintained the essential feeling of what High School life feels like after the fact: over too fast. None of the repetitive drudgery and nonsense assignments which are only meant to break your spirit and send you into a twisting hell of doubt, ready to be broken as salarymen or office ladies in commerce and administration. An awful existence that everyone agreed was terrible but the bosses, of course.

No work that evening. A new hire was getting added to the shift and the boss was going to train them. I noticed Nanako was missing from the house and decided she was probably using one the school voice actor studio booths to practice. Upstairs I found the door open on Aki’s room and she was working on an illustration of a girl with a straw hat. Very detailed. Pretty. I was impressed. I left her to work and passed Kyouya, heading up to his room looking exhausted with a familiar uniform for Lawsons. I sighed and made myself some dinner, trying to stretch eggs and bean sprouts with rice until payday. I was working for food and tuition and boarding fees. There were no scholarships for people like me. I’m not like Saki. I don’t have special talents. I have a bad attitude. Everybody hates a cynic.

After class the next day I heard a voice singing Teardrop, slowly approaching, step by slow step. I craned my neck from my writing notebook and the cafeteria table where I’d gotten lost in writing using a simple pen. I would have to type it up later, but it’s what I have. I’m not rich. I don’t own a laptop.

The slowly approaching woman was Haruno. She grinned as she approached, still singing the song reasonably well.

“Hello, Hachiman.”

“Hello, Haruno. I’d ask what you’re doing here, but you’ve cleverly lowjacked my phone, haven’t you?” She grinned wider.

“Did you like my singing?” she asked.

“Yes, it was very nice. I’ve been listening to that song on repeat for days.”

“I know! I was so surprised when I saw that. What sort of mood might you be in?” she leaned in, giving me a good view of her cleavage. She was always like that. Teasing. Sexual. Erotic. Haruno was a master of this game, and I was barely a novice. And it was her sister who had broken my heart. There was something in my eye so I wiped the tears away. My handkerchief will never betray me.

“Probably not the one you’d hoped for. Did Yukino send you to gloat or did you volunteer?” I accused. She frowned.

“That wasn’t nice, Hachiman. And I came all this way.” She twirled.

“I’m wearing my good girl dress. Do you like it?” she teased.

“You look good in anything, Haruno. It’s one of your more irritating qualities.”

“Oh, Hachiman. People dislike me because they want to compete and don’t simply accept my Grace and Presence as they should.” She paused, standing up to emphasize her bust and simultaneously look down at me.

“And today I am here to grace You.” She booped me on the nose. I sighed.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No thank you. I’m told it’s quite terrible,” she demurred. “Some iced tea I think.”

“I helped her into a seat and then got her some iced tea, in a glass, with a straw because I was sure she was going to suck on it suggestively.

I was right.

“Hachiman, I am here to see you, for myself. Not for my sister. Not for your sister. For myself.”

Was this some kind of game? It was Haruno. She loves games. I glared. She smiled more widely.

“My sister lost a bet. And there’s a penalty game.” She gave me the most-smug gloat and said nothing more, daring me to ask.

“And what penalty might that be?” I asked, knowing I would have to ask or she would just keep sitting there, gloating. She was drawing a crowd. Even at this school, women like her draw attention.

“My sister wanted to punish you for hurting Yui, and she did so in a childish way which has ended your relationship. She thinks it can be mended if the right circumstances happen, but I can see that is not the case. She predicted you would be sobbing into your coffee with loss over her.”

“I have been sobbing into my coffee with loss.” She frowned at both the interruption and the correction.

“And that you’d beg me to convince her to take you back.” She waited. I didn’t beg. That ship had sailed.

“And so I am proven right. She believed you to be a cad, like Hayama. I believe you to be the real deal. And so in winning this bet, she has to butt out for a period of time while I seduce you into my bed and myself into your heart. What do you say?” she asked, smirking.

“I would say duck but it’s too late,” I said, looking over her. Saki dumped a pitcher of ice water over Haruno’s head, dousing her in cold and as it happened revealing her excellent figure and hardened tips to my view for a moment while she shrieked in surprise and outrage. Saki was surprised at herself but held her ground.

“Well, this should be interesting.”

Several of the lunch crowd clapped loudly and wolf whistled, a very uncharacteristic noise in Japan but this was art school, so we get the better educated and well-travelled weirdoes who know what that is.

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