Kazumi Nishimiya 2
"Life was harder and harder for por Kaori," says the books I'm currently reading. "The fact she was invisible caused her more issues than benefits: first of all, she had to avoid people at all costs, because, since no one could see her, she could always be mercilessly pushed, rammed and crushed. Furthermore, if she made any kind of noise to alert anyone to her presence, people usually mistook it for the howling of the wind, the sounds of an animal, or any other completely rational reason that was in no way related to her. And if she made the mistake of talking, they would react in three different ways: 1) they confused Kaori's voice with someone else's; 2) they thought that Kaori was a ghost calling them, so they fled in terror in all directions and ended up ramming her with much more force than they normally would, and 3) they thought that Kaori was a ghost calling them, so they tried to exorcise her with insults, punches, kicks and randomly thrown objects that used to hit their target at least once.
"Second, Kaori was unable to purchases anything at any store or to hire any service, so she was forced to get everything online. The problem, however, was the delivery of these products, since Kaori had to constantly check the notifications of her phone and the entrance of her house to pick up the package as soon as possible, since more than—
"Arima-san, please come to the board and solve all the equations there".
I put a finger on my book—on the last word I've read, to be more specific—and raise my head. The classroom is calm and quiet: my classmates solve equations on their notebooks or wander off or are asleep or talk to each other through whispers or notes written on pieces of paper and secretly shared.
Then one of my classmates gets up from his desk and, following Tendo-sensei's directions, goes to the blackboard and begins to solve the previously written equations.
Everything's as boring and as usual as always, so I look down and proceed with my reading:
"…one time, she had forgotten for a couple minutes, and, when she went out to do it, there was nothing to pick up. In addition, by constantly ordering packages, her house was soon filled with boxes and packages that she had to throw away late at night to avoid any kind of scandal.
"Third, the only way to communicate with her family and the few friends she had left was through phone calls or text messages. When they proposed to go visit her or at least communicate with her through a video call, Kaori had to make up an excuse credible enough to refuse. At first, both Kaori's family and friends assumed that these hard-to-believe excuses were due to the fact that she was dealing with something quite serious, but that she still did not dare to share them at the moment, so they decided to respect her decision and give her a little time. However, after several months without receiving this much needed confession, they began to believe that she was simply avoiding them, so, with wounded pride, they distanced themselves from her.
"And, fourth, she could only work at home, so the available offers decreased considerably, and it was practically impossible to have a job interview in her state. She, then, had to resort to several internet advertisements where they offered quite simple jobs, like packing bags or silverware, with suspiciously high income—especially when you consider that any packing process in any factory is done by machines. Obviously she ended up—
Suddenly the bell rings. Lunch time. My classmates put away their school supplies, and most of them leave the classroom slowly and with their usual rampage. I, then, place my separator exactly on the last line I read and wait for them to leave; it's useless trying to read in such a noisy environment, and besides, I just have to wait a few moments for most of my classmates to leave the room to continue my reading. There will still be noise inside the room, and that is because of those who to stay here. But, in most cases, this noise is tolerable.
Well, while this happens, I open my backpack and grab my egg sandwich. In fact, I would rather eat takoyaki or yakisoba, but with these foods I always run the risk of staining the book I'm currently reading. To eat these foods and read without worry, I used to put a transparent plastic over my book, but the sunlight used to reflect on it, and this made reading extremely difficult. Also, it was really troublesome to turn the page.
Anyway, there are only a few classmates left in the room, so I take a bite of my sandwich—its taste is as common and mediocre as any other processed food—and I continue with my reading:
"...making some payments to receive those products she was supposed to pack, but she never received anything, so her savings decreased considerably and, therefore, her urge to get a job increased, and with that, her stratagems to foil the job interviewer, such as hiring someone online or asking one of her friends and relatives who were still talking to her to take her place at the interview and to go at the offices when required, which led to these relatives and friends to be much more suspicious of her because such an act is considered identity theft and is punished with up to 15 years in prison, so they confronted her about it and expressed their dismay, and she was so lonely and so desperate that ended up confessing that she had become invisible. Unfortunately, the family and friends who heard this confession believed that Kaori was speaking in a metaphorical sense, so they concluded that she must be suffering from some kind of mental illness and, consequently, they insisted more strongly on seeing her and she accepted despite the impossibility of this event. Thus, when they and Kaori met in the same place, and Kaori tried to prove she was there, they took it as a joke in bad taste and an attempt by Kaori to drive them out of her life, so they ended up distancing themselves from her.
"In other words, it didn't take long for Kaori, the invisible woman, to become a hikiko—
"Hey! You're such a █████!" Someone yells playfully.
I put a finger on my book—on the last word I read, to be more specific—and raise my head. In front of me there's a group of friends who only talk about banalities.
The only surprising thing about their conversations is how they don't get bored of talking about the same topics over and over again.
"Hey, stop it, anyway what u got 4 lunch, Gina-chan?" Asks one of them.
"Chilli."
"Again? Geez, I can smell it from here."
"It's just I like my chilli like my men: very, very hot and spicy."
"Man, ur always tellin' that joke, Gina-chan, and it ain't funny," says one of them. "And what's a spicy man?"
"Well… passionate, energetic, potent, shut up, it's my joke," she says embarrassed.
They are making too much noise, and that's why I stand up and head towards them.
"Hey," I tell them coyly.
"Hi, Nishimiya-san," says one of them. "Are we making too much noise again?��
"Yes, it's just that I'm trying to—
"We can't hear you, Nishimiya-san. Please speak louder."
"I SAID I'M TRYING TO—
I suddenly stop; I smell the chilli, and I feel an itch on my nose, and it's becoming more and more annoying and… "Ah…" I can't stop it. "AH…" I'm going to sneeze and I can't stop it. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… chi."
Those girls are stunned by my sneeze:
"Awww," they all say more than moved. "You sneeze like a kitten."
"Sneeze again," says one of those girls.
"Yeah, your sneezes are so cute."
"Kittymiya. From no won I'm calling you Kittymiya."
"Hahahahaha, I know. Or Meowsumiya."
"Meowsumiya. That's great."
"Hey, leave her alone," one of them laughs. "And what did u want to tell us, Nishimiya-san?"
"Nothing," I lie and, humiliated as always, I go back to my place. I feel the shame and the wrath all over my face.
But at least they're not being that noisy anymore.
Well, then, I can now resume my reading.
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The bell rings and the class ends. As always, my classmates put away their school supplies and slowly and noisily leave the room and head to their respective clubs or homes, and I just wait; there's no way I can get to the door fast enough to avoid bumping into them, and besides, with the conglomeration at the door, I just end up pushed around.
I place the bookmark on the last page I was reading—there's no use trying to read with all this fuss around me—and close the book.
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Now the classroom's empty. There's so much calm around me that I could stay here and read for the rest of the day, but there's always the risk that a teacher will find me here and confuse my search for silence with some of those usual and boring issues that affect the rest of the students and that neither he nor I fully understand.
I take my book, my backpack and say goodbye to the calm and silence to go to my beloved library.
As always, the corridors at this time of the day are quiet and lonely. The voices and shouts of different members of different clubs can barely be heard at the distance. Soccer, basketball, chess, video games and so on: they are always the same clubs, and they never have anything interesting to offer, especially the literature club: all their members are nothing more than a herd of snobs who believe that their value as readers is he finds in the abstruse and complex of his books rather than in the quality of them. The very belief that there is "high literature" is as simplistic as it is laughable.
But, well, there is no point going into that topic again. It is best to let them read books that they neither enjoy nor understand.
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I enter the library and walk the lonely corridors. Disorder. There are a lot of books lying on the floor. A shame, but luckily it didn't happen when I was reading. Now the silence that prevails in the place, together with the smell of old books, make the library the perfect place to relax and read, but there is always someone who ruins everything with their noisy existence. Like Natsumura-san, and now that I remember her, what has happened to her since I last saw her? She used to come here almost daily, and I haven't seen her for more than a week, since she stayed in this room together with Hamano-san and Yamamoto-san.
Hamano-san. Hamano-san was very nice to me. I wonder if she likes books.
Well, never mind, the absence of those three just means silence and tranquility for the library. But they are not the only ones capable of ruining my day with their fuss: be it with their unconscious laughter and screams or with the noisy food they smuggled in, there is always someone willing to make as much noise as possible in the library, so, in order to isolate myself as much as possible from these noises, I go to my usual study room, the one that is at the back of the library, and I lock myself there. Suzuki-san always does me the favor of schedule it every day without me having to ask her, and I really appreciate it, since on many occasions, when I tried to schedule it for the whole afternoon, someone else was already using it, so I had to find another one, and those ones are very close to the tables where people supposedly gather to study but end up making a fuss despite being in a library.
Sitting in my favorite seat of the study room—the one furthest from the door—I open my book and continue reading:
"'Are you a ghost?' Asked the boy.
"'Maybe,' Kaori replied. 'I drank an invisibility potion long ago, but sometimes I think it was just a mislabeled bottle of poison.'
"'So, are you invisible?'
"'Yes I think so.'
"'Wow, so you can do whatever you want because nobody sees you?'
"'Yes and no.'
And now that I think about it, I haven't seen Hamano-san and Yamamoto-san again, although that's not surprising; they didn't use to come here.
Perhaps they recruited the remaining members for their club.
It would be interesting to see what they do at that club; her name's ambiguous enough to make me curious.
"'What do you mean by yes and no?' asked the boy.
"'Well, I can do whatever I want unless make people see me again.'
"'And why would you want that?'
"'Because I don't want to be alone anymore.'
"'And why would you be alone?'
"'Because nobody sees me. Nobody believes that I exist.'
"'Well, just tell them that you are here and that's it. You are not mute.'
"'No, but if I talk to them, they think it's either a joke or their imagination. Or a ghost.'
"'But maybe you're a ghost.'
"'Well, yes, but they don't like ghosts, or they don't believe in th—
I would have asked them when they were here, although I didn't think about it at the time.
Well, if I run into them again I won't hesitate to ask them.
"'But there must be people who like ghosts, right? There are many who even want to talk to them.'
"'Yes, I once ran into someone like that. She asked me what hell was like, if I knew who-knows-who and if I had unfinished business or something, but I said I didn't know, and she got mad at me and didn't want to talk to me anymore.'
"'Hahaha, how strange… And how do you make yourself visible again? Isn't there a potion of visibility or something?'
"'Oh, I hope.'
"'Well, if we can't find something or someone to help you be visible again. And while we find it, well, you have me.'
"Hearing these words, poor Kaori couldn't help not crying in the most pathetic way possible. The ground soon filled with tears, and the air filled with sobs that seemed to come from no—
Hopefully I'll see those three again soon; they were ... entertaining.