Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ My College Romantic Comedy Was Wrong, As I Expected ❯ My College SNAFU: 18 ( Chapter 18 )

The initial arrival into any jump is generally a moment of disorientation as all the memories from the future flood into the past self and the body tries to make sense of it. The memories is what we are. It’s who is in the driver’s seat of being me. And I am here, this is now. You do the job that’s in front of you. No wait. I’m not Sam Vimes. Though that was a good book.

This time found me on a train. I looked around, noting it was a comfy seat and the scenery was whipping by so it was the Shinkansen, and heading South. I was in the Soubu uniform. This places me in high school and going on the school trip to Kyoto, presumably to try to get a confession opportunity for Tobe when he’ll be much happier with a life without Ebina in it. Vita T made him famous, rich, and happy. His swimsuit model girlfriend was also porn model. Ebina was nothing much in comparison, as well as mentally ill fujioshi with a stalker complex. She was a nutjob. I decided I wasn’t interested in helping her further. Same for Hayama and his little games of status quo. Screw that. Yui looked both uncomfortable and determined. Saki was stuck in with a group she didn’t like.

“Hey, Saki-san. Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked her. She looked me up and down, realized her chance and rose from the seat to join me. I moved back in the car and found us some empty seats where she could restore her calm. I nearly married this girl, twice. I know exactly how she thinks.

“Thank you, Hachiman,” she sighed as the tension left. We enjoyed the view sitting together.

“You’re welcome, Saki. I get the idea you prefer to be alone. As a loner myself I respect that.”

We just sat together like that the rest of the trip. Yui stalked by, spotted us being quiet and looked upset, and sat across from us to stare. I met her gaze, seeing her become uncomfortable at the attention. She squirmed more, not saying anything and got up again and ran to the bathroom. I really ought to get her one of those DOA hairclips. She’s a dead ringer for that game character.

Saki just looked out the window beside me, enjoying the silence. She really does. She’s the sort of woman who can find contentment in sewing, in simply being there in the room with you. She doesn’t have to make small talk. She doesn’t have to cycle through periods of denial or paranoia. She’s just there and waiting and ready. If more women could be like her there would be no population problems in Japan, but tell that to the feminists.

Since I just got here I haven’t written my novels yet. I don’t have external income or personal achievements. Searching my memories I find I’ve helped with the various Service Club tasks, as expected, and made an enemy, again, of that stupid girl Sagami. A pity that this me didn’t remember that and simply left her to rot on the roof by herself instead of confronting her about her terrible personality. I made a lot of enemies that day, and gained Hayato’s respect, something I really don’t care about.

Before the train rolled into Kyoto station I extracted my phone and checked my Lines account. Saki wasn’t on my friend list so I offered her a friend exchange. She considered then accepted. Now I could get ahold of her.

“Want to tour with me?” I asked her. She nodded. I offered her my hand and we took our bags and stepped off the train together. Yui looked even more uncomfortable standing with her clique. The tension between Tobe and Hina, cowering behind Miura… it was thick. Yukino was with her class group getting roll called and we waited for roll call to finish and headed for tour buses outside the station. Saki had been enjoying the Kyoto station architecture as most Japanese do on visiting there the first time. It was a major achievement in engineering after all. The inner atrium was huge.

The buses were nice, plush with comfortable seats. We rode them to our hotel in Kyoto, all narrow streets barely wider than alleys, and every part of its spotless, decorated, touristy. There were shops everywhere, and little restaurants and souvenirs for sale and shrines for all the kami, all the gods and spirits. A very odd place, if you took away the tourists. It was a big part of the Japanese identity that many people hated for multiple reasons.

I’ve been here a bunch of times now, so I lead Saki around corners with and down alleys with interesting displays and eventually got to the Traditional Garment museum, getting us student pass rates to enter. I let her stare at the various kimono, just absorbing it. She’s been a fashion major every time, even when she joins me at Okami Arts. The best part of escorting such a fine woman around, besides knowing how she looks in the throes of passion and being the inspiration of a prank war between Japanese Space Agency and the supernatural community in Nara, is when some predatory Kyoto skeeze-boy approaches I just have to take off my fake glasses and stare at him. The effect is amazing. They veer off like they’ve got somewhere to be. This happens four times during our pre-lunch tour. I find us an Izakaya I’ve been to before and order her some foods I know she likes. She doesn’t complain and quietly accepts the meal, makes that little smile I know so very well, and I enjoy my food seeing this. We almost married. A couple times.

I check my phone, noting the overcast and prior trips we got thunderstorms when we visited. Radar shows the storms. I stepped into a shop to buy a large umbrella for us and opened it as the drops started to spatter on the roof tiles, tinkling with sound.

Kyoto is interesting from a purely aesthetic sense. The best of art is here, and that’s also why most Japanese hate the place. It’s both the comparison with their ugly homes and brutally overcrowded lives of competition, but also that everyone notices this and never says it out loud. It isn’t allowed to be said. Haruno once told me Kyoto is to Japan like Americans who visit San Francisco. They feel like they ought to go there and see it, and then they learn its really dirty up close and it’s too cold, and it’s not all that cute up close, but they don’t dare admit this because it costs a fortune to get there from the Midwest or East coast of that country. They want to brag because they spent all the money so have to pretend they had a good time. Okinawa and Hawaii are pretty much the same.

Saki and I huddle together in a place with less splashing and just observe the rain in silence for a bit. Eventually she tugs my sleeve and we drift along finding another clothing museum. Also interesting. And then to another museum, where yet another Kyoto boy tries an approach so I turn my eyes on him and he veers away like all the others. The upside of looking like a Yakuza couple is it cuts down on the trouble in places like this. Amazing. My sister would be shocked. She’d probably take videos and put them on MeTube with some kind of wildlife narration about honey badgers or Nara Deer.

The sun began its descent and we returned to the hotel, checking in with our school monitor. I went to soak in the mens hot spring. Tobe was there.

“Tobe, that thing you asked. I’m having second thoughts. She’s avoiding you right?” I confirmed. He admitted this.

“And its like she knows, right?” I asked him.

“Yeah, like she keeps avoiding me.”

“That kinda seems like an answer doesn’t it?” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but the heart man, the heart wants!” he emphasized.

“Can I tell you a story?” I questioned him. The other guys from our class, and several other classes could hear us, and were listening because this was entertainment.

“I knew a girl once. She was so nice. She was nice all the time, to everybody. She was even nice to me, even though I look like this, and most girls just shy away.”

“Harsh man. Totally rude!”

“Girls are shallow,” I pointed out. Heads all around the hot spring nodded agreement. Even Hayama winced at this.

“Many of them are mysterious. Ones who make sense or like to be around you, who actually like you? Those are the precious ones to treasure. Any girl who runs away? You don’t need her. And there’s so many girls in the world.”

“So what happened with that girl you liked?” he asked me after a while.

“She rejected me, and her friends bullied me out of the class. I had to transfer. She was shallow, and I learned my lesson.”

“So what about now?”

“Maybe. There’s someone who’s comfortable and doesn’t run away. There was someone else once, but she’s gone forever.”

“Dude, did she like, die?” asked Tobe, and then cringed at my expression. I was crying wasn’t I? I was crying.

“Whoa. Sorry man. Sorry.”

I took a while before I could compose myself. Haruno’s loss was really hurting.

At least I have a title for the book this time. A ghost story, Sleepwalking With the Dead.

I rinsed off and dried myself and found a quiet corner in the room, avoided the festivities and cheerfulness. I don’t want to spoil their fun, but my head is in a bad place right now, and it’s filled with her smile and taunts and laughter and charm and passion and so much her and it’s all gone. She’s just an ordinary college student. She doesn’t know centuries of life anymore. She’s just a sleepwalking body. The woman I loved was dead, gone. They saved her from the curse of immortality, but that’s all. I am the only one who remembers how amazing she was. The Grey Area was feared for good reason. Look what it did.

I cried myself to sleep, and rose hurting early the next morning. I pulled myself together, washed my face and stepped out into the misty morning. It had rained more overnight, so I was right to carry the umbrella. I found an early morning stand offering tourist coffee and a bun. It was enough to keep my hunger pangs at bay. I ghosted through the alleys of Kyoto, searching for something I won’t find. I looked anyway, hoping for some kind of answer, something to either justify this consequence or ease my pain. Love is selfish. I know this to be true. You can say otherwise all you want, and pretend, but when your love is gone the pain is all your own.

I drifted until my phone reminded me to meet up back at the hotel to gather my overnight bag and board the bus. The ride back to the station found Saki looking distressed at my absence and noting my expression kept her questions to herself. It was halfway back on the train that she finally worked up the nerve to speak.

“What happened?” she quietly asked me.

“I… loved someone once. And she’s gone. Forever. It still hurts.”

“Who?” she asked.

“You might meet her one day, if she’s very unlucky,” I answered without lying. “Or happen to be standing in just the right place, I suppose.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Hachiman.”

+++++++++++

After the trip I spoke to Ebina who was upset with me, but not as upset as she might have been. Tobe was hurting, but not as bad as he might be if he’d worked up the nerve to ask her. He was left wondering why the rejection, and was withdrawn from his crew and was quieter, stopped telling dumb jokes and stared off by himself, thinking a lot. I know how he felt.

I started writing my novel, only as a ghost story, skipping the nonsense of the high school which had been so popular before and focusing on the college dorm, with flashbacks to the high school, to moments spent with Haruno, to memories of things that won’t ever happen here. Saki drifted apart, unclear what she should do. I don’t think I can be here for her, and only her. No woman wants a man to cry after making love, and that was likely with my heart like this.

I put a lot of poetry into the book. Some of it classical, some my own verse. I said a lot about ghosts and memories, and dreams discarded by fate. About interfering well wishers, and rejecting parents and jealous exes. I wrote about my broken heart and when I was done, I submitted it to the Debut Novel contest, and won, again, right before summer break. The critics liked the overlapping format, past and present. The housewives loved the romance and tragedy. The university gave me the scholarship and the free room and board at the Share House, which had full time webcams watching it.

I went through the motions of high school. I finished quietly, saying goodbye to those I’d met there. I felt no joy anymore. Graduation came and I journeyed to Okami Arts to start my college years.

“Is Hikigaya here?” asked a familiar male voice. It was Zak. He had his suitcase with him. I pointed him to a chair in the otherwise empty dorm.

“It’s just us here. The boxes arrived, but the students will get here later.”

“You don’t look well, Hikigaya. I read you tended to be cheerful and full of energy.”

“I’m the only one who knows. I’m the only one who remembers. Did Meatfucker realize what its fix would do to me?”

“It saved your girl. Your woman. She was hurting, and now she isn’t. She’s alive,” complained Zak.  

“She’s a ghost. That’s a tiny part of who she was. My Haruno was intensely alive, of compounding memories of centuries of life. She was a goddess of life. And the girl she is now? A shade.”

“We saved your planet. We saved your world. We saved thousands or millions of people suffering what she did. And we’ve saved you. This is the last time you’ll remember. After you travel that’s it. Your suffering is over.”

“Wonderful,” I replied with greatest sarcasm. “You’ve taken torture to a whole new level. Erase the soul of the greatest mind my species has ever known and then erase her memory, and then the memory of everyone who ever knew her. That’s like there’s no crime at all!”

“Special Circumstances isn’t nice, boy.” And Zak’s tone was the darkness of the mass murderer I knew him to be. He killed entire civilizations, toppled empires. Turned his cousin into a chair made of bones to win a civil war. I read his book. He was a true monster.

“This is the last time you’ll see us. Sorry how things worked out for you. This world is better off. And it’s staying under quarantine.”

“Wonderful,” I repeated. They left. I cried.