The Longing of Shiina Ryo vol. 2

  Part 2

  The five of us stood on the rooftop as we prepared to perform as a different sort of band than the one I played with earlier and I felt like mood of the day was definitely crescendo.

  To make things simple: I had two sorts of drama, kissed someone, had a visit from the past, slammed that bass with a progressive/extreme metal group, someone I cared for was in danger, got into a fight and it was an established fact my friends schemed a lot too. The festival was an emotional rollercoaster yet I didn’t feel that awake in months so it was hard to complain; I really missed the thrill and I hated myself for it.

  Not just for that, but whatever.

  The two remaining members of our posse joined without making many questions, but this probably had to with me activating The Darkest in front of their eyes and showing them the absence-of-flames I could summon. Akane was weird enough on her own, but what surprised me was how Megumi seemed badly shocked for a split-second and then calming down only to get hyper enough to ask why I didn’t use the visually exquisite anti-pyrotechnic ability as special effects during our concert.

  The moment Kouma handed each one of us the Bluetooth earpieces and made sure we all had each other in speed dial I remembered how Megumi pawned her acoustic guitar and realized what Kouma and Ryo meant by how money mattered: it was easy to see how someone who for a while now have everything just handed to him would have trouble understanding the concept of not having enough monetary resources available.

  What I couldn’t understand was why Kouma had two phones on her; it would be easy to comprehend if the number she gave any us was of the new one, but she did not even mention it even though it was on sight. The second model seemed very simple in comparison to her fashionable main one, not even from a well-known brand: it looked completely bootleg if I ever saw one, and I’ve seen my share of counterfeit merchandise through the years. What could be the purpose of that, if not to avoid using her day number for the calls?

  Not the time to digress, I know.

  The roles were simply established by default: Ryo would take care of distracting Death Drive by pretending to be me; Akane was the closest we could get to a gadget person and would operate both the phone that would actually connect to DD’s when he called and the loop machine we’d use to record my lines so I did not have to pick the phone and give away the plan somehow; Megumi would provide assistance to Akane but her job was to be the field agent that would make sure I could get unnoticed to the room we already knew he was in thanks to Kouma having been through this day once before; Kouma was our information source and mastermind for that operation. And me?

  My job was, according to the fashionista, the same I chose on my own during the first timeline: to infiltrate and neutralize the bastard before he could do more than merely hurt our teacher.

  Needless to say, I was uneasy. Thrilled in a sense, sure, but it was an unusual situation for that kind of mission: we had a ‘who’, the exact location of ‘where’ and more than enough data on ‘when’. Our real trouble was ‘how’ and we barely had any time to discuss it: it was either following Kouma’s lead or storming like a bull and risk Reikoku-sensei’s life.

  I did not have much of a choice given the circumstances: I was offered a clean way out which would save me and others and the other option was letting Death Drive have his way.

  I’d never.

  With Kouma’s plan, Ryo would wear my clothes and walk around school in the same fashion as I did in the first timeline to keep it from diverging into new events due to the Butterfly Effect (not something I thought was entirely possible, but would have to work for a while somehow) and keep the day as predictable as possible until I could sneak behind DD and rescue Reikoku-sensei. This would have been all fun and games if it wasn’t for one detail: if my clothes were with Ryo, then whose clothes would I wear to successfully disguise myself in a school that was pretty much girl-only?

  Yeah, pretty obvious and not particularly pleasant.

  So they lent me some of Megumi’s, say, ‘hair’: one set of medium length red extensions, and despite having seen a lot of stuff ever since I was born I have to admit seeing that at least part of Megumi’s look was actually detachable and under the several layers of extension her hairstyle was essentially a sidecut freaked me out for some reason. Each of the extensions was placed under the sides of my own hair giving me an edgy look along with the side-swept fringe held by a bobby pin at the end. Ryo’s thick-frame glasses weren’t half as strong as I assumed they would be, so neither of us should have issues being with or without them. Kouma did my makeup; I told her ‘no heavy stuff’, but it’s not like we had the time for her to overproduce me anyway and the key was not to get too much attention, which I assume would be harder if I looked like Megumi did every day.

  A little padding on the uniform to make up for my absolute lack of bosom helped although it would take a lot more than ‘a little’ padding if we were to simulate Ryo’s, so a few safety pins had to be placed on strategic points too. While they talked about my transformation on the go I realized my idea that Ryo was entirely oblivious to girly things such as makeup was unfounded and made me realize she probably used it a lot more than I noticed, which made me happy because being ignorant to a girl’s effort in cosmetics was pretty much a ‘guy thing’. And why did that make me, a self-proclaimed feminist, happy, you ask?

  Because it took me one look at the mirror to realize they turned me into a hipster girl.

  It kind of offended me deep down that to disguise Ryo as me they seemed to have a little more difficulty to make her look manlier, going as far as trimming her hair a little and using plastic to bind her generous-to-say-the-least bosom, tasks which she wasn’t particularly thrilled about. Still, despite the many bad things that could come out of it, there was no denying Kouma was right about her bone structure being the most similar to mine of the four girls; she looked like an idealized me so much it got to the point of making me look less like myself. Yet it wasn’t like I didn’t prefer her as a girl: there was just no way I looked that good as a boy.

  She caught me staring at her and gave me the smile I missed so much in my life.

  “Did you like it? Put a ring on it.” She extended her hand to me as those waiting for an engagement proposal but took it back after a single second and I knew it wasn’t just because that reference felt a little out of place. “Wait, I’m the guy now... this should be my job, traditionally. Go on, give me your hand. No… should I be on my knees while doing this, Shin-tsu?”

  Instant smirk.

  “You ask as if I was the expert in proposals.”

  “Well, you sure flirt a lot amongst other things.” Ouch… With that critical hit blow I frowned instantly. I knew that was coming but it didn’t make taking the damage any easier. Guess I deserved that and the following five hundred remarks on that subject I surely would get over the course of months. “Forget it, I shouldn’t take things personal now. Let’s just move on. Our teacher’s life is at stake, it was shallow of me to waste time. I’m sorry.”

  No.

  Postponing stuff or making things happen sooner than they should was what put us in trouble in the first place. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. The time was right then and letting the moment pass instead of hitting the iron while it was hot was a risk I was not willing to take.

  “No, I’m sorry. You have the right to feel that way. I should have treated you as an equal and I apologize for not doing so. This is why we became friends in the first place, so I shouldn’t underestimate you and think you can’t take whatever I am dealing with. Concern does not justify concealing information, and thereby this offender offers a truce.”

  “On what terms?”

  “I promise to never hide anything from you again.”

  Dramatic pause, as expected of her.

  “What is it in exchange for? Forgiveness?”

  “Forgiveness isn’t something that can be bought with a deal, no matter what the State might say about pardon
ing someone in exchange for information on others. Either it blooms on its own or it’s bound to be taken back in the future. Remission is more of a realistic procedure, if you ask me, so I’m aware I deserve some consequences whether I regret what I did or not because I wronged you.” I had to stop myself from going off the tangent too much. “What I want is the same of you: you are not to withhold information from me. If we are to stand side by side as equals, you need to stop hiding things too. You’re in some sort of trouble and not asking for help. While that is commendable as an effort, it means nothing if you can’t get past it on your own. Kouma and I, we’re here. If you need us, just ask.”

  “Just that?”

  I nodded.

  “Just that.” Gently I took her hand and held it, ready for a shook. “Truce?”

  Rather than taken aback, she seemed peaceful like a burden was taken off her back.

  “Yeah, I guess we really are the same. Truce.”

  We shook hands in a rather firm way but if it hurt her she did not let it show. Despite having kissed her earlier surely that was the moment of the day when I felt connected to her the most.

  One interpersonal issue solved, all that was left was to save Reikoku-sensei.

  I looked at the script she wrote for Ryo and realized why the idea was, at least to some extent, executable: it was made of references and had several drawings. Every movement, pose and line she had to lip synch had very specific written observations that tied with sentences and such in TV series, manga, movies, books and even real life people such as celebrities and politicians. In face of such bizarre script one cannot help but wonder if what brought Kouma Yon and Shiina Ryo together was not something particularly deep and poetical but the fact one of them is so derivative she cannot do anything without comparisons and the other has an insane crave for knowledge especially of the pop culture variant: maybe the initial spark of their relationship was indeed because they were, for each other, the only ones who could fully understand what the other was talking about.

  I could comprehend that well, creating a bond over being extremely similar in one particular aspect. Surprisingly, I could even rationalize how Kouma managed to make a script with such a tremendous degree of descriptive information about my actions embedded in it.

  This was only possible because Kouma’s ability was pretty specific.

  She called it ‘It Keeps Happening’ and stated that the moment she activated it like I did she found out it worked like this: every time she sleeps she creates/overwrites her ‘save point’, to which she can return her mind to but not her body or any items. Kouma wakes up at the exact same moment that she did after using her power but once she sets a ‘save point’ by waking up, she cannot go back to a previous one ever again. Thus as long as she stays awake she can always use her ability to revert time on a personal level and rewrite the timeline.

  Which did not, in any way, seem to match the alternative explanation she gave the other girls, that her power was to predict the future and ‘expel’ the script for someone. Whether she lied to them because we didn’t have the time to explain or because of a special reason she had not to be open about her power, I would just play along. Maybe it was a secondary effect of her time travelling power, I could not tell.

  Personally, I find that all to be a little tricky.

  Why exactly? I’d like to have your input on this.

  It’s obvious she’s something else, for she mastered her Shugoshin already to a point there isn’t a trace of it other than the power.

  However, to do all that on the first time?

  Mastered her Shugoshin? So she doesn’t get voices in her head anymore?

  Don’t assume everyone does just because you do: my species isn’t known for sentience, or at least what you humans would consider sentience.

  What do you mean, then?

  Consider this: let’s say I am not the only of my species who actively thinks and talks, especially to the human host, and the other one is just like me.

  But it would be using the same logic you just condemned!

  Not precisely and it’s just a postulation so no need to get that upset: if I did not inform you of the full extent and limitations of your power yet, why would hers?

  …do you really want answers?

  Possible solutions.

  Alright then. How about ‘different personalities’? No, you talk too much about species, chances are you’ll disregard that and say you guys work on some sort of ant-like communist regime or something. Would it be too far from the truth to assume our powers were supposed to just keep developing instead of being stable from the start?

  You really can avoid seeing possibilities that are in your face when you don’t want to.

  Paranoia can be used against you too. Thinking bad of one of my ‘best friend’ persons is bad enough; two would be too much stress to handle at this point. Unless I acquire enough evidence for it to sink in as slowly as it can to avoid the complete shock, I’ll deny it with all I have.

  “Shin-tsu.” Kouma uttered to bring me back from my internal monologue. “It’s time.”

  “Understood.” I coughed on command, trying to get rid of the weird feeling at the back of my throat just to realize it was a psychosomatic symptom. “Standing by, waiting for your command.”

  She stood still, visibly uneasy about what to do next.

  “Are you sure? I could simply work as a source of data. This plan is a derivation of yours in the first timeline, you know.”

  “Whether it is or not, it doesn’t matter: the shortest the distance between a leader and the information necessary to guarantee the success, the better. You call the shots this time, Kouma; I’ll trust your judgment and follow your lead.”

  “I’ll definitely save you.”

  Her bold statement made me ponder on how the events of the first timeline turned out; it shouldn’t be me who would be in danger, and if there was danger directed towards me it probably would be directed to Ryo, which made Kouma’s line even more unusual. She would not put Ryo in danger for my sake, and it was her plan. So what the hell did that mean?

  “Wha-”

  “Everyone, on your positions!” Contrasting with the previous uneasiness, Kouma sounded no less confident than a general. “Ryo, go downstairs and wait for the simultaneous call to move outside as planned. Take your medicine as soon as you get there so we’ll have at least one hour before you’re drowsy or in pain.”

  "Aye aye Capt'n!"

  My favorite person in the whole world did an army salute and left.

  “Akane, man your station.” She ordered to the silent girl who had already taken the messy fringe of hair out of the way of her hawk-ish eyes and only nodded in reply. The kung fu fighting fashionista then gazed at the easily amused fashion disaster. “Megumi, it’s not too late for you to back out.”

  “I don’t know much about what’s happening but if there’s something huge going on and a friend needs me, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Megumi looked at me and gave me a thumbs-up. “Just take me out for burgers later and we’ll be even, okay?”

  She was quick to get angry, reckless, clueless whether it was fashion or business, irresponsible and had double standards; she was also quite normal compared to the others and a good friend who would accept hers gladly and fight anyone for their sake with what little weapons she had. I liked her a lot and was just thankful Kouma’s plan would keep Megumi away from the actual action rather than going back and forth and providing assistance to Akane, or at least away enough that she could not try anything ‘heroic’; it’s people like her, those who look in a way too good for this sinful earth, who die first.

  “Shin-tsu.”

  “Yes, Kouma?”

  “Go.”

  At which point I ran across the rooftop and threw myself to soar over the fence of the building; thus began the operation.