2 - Cavity
It was the first year of elementary school when I became aware of my abnormality. I messed up a jump on the vaulting horse. The moment my abdomen slammed into the horse, I felt a sharp pain and was reduced to shallow, rapid breaths.
I often watched anime where girls fought against bad guys, and the girls always lost. Even in situations where they were cornered, spitting blood, heavily injured, and unable to climb to their feet, the bad guys would torment them.
My eyes enviously devoured scenes like that. It was like I craved the same treatment. I especially liked scenes where the girls were thrown into the wall or had their necks and bodies squeezed. I had always wondered why I liked that sort of thing, but the moment my abdomen slammed into that vaulting horse, I surrendered to the feeling of scrambled electrical wires reconnecting.
I love being in pain.
I flopped down in the road on the way home from school, acting out death by lightning, stray gunfire, and other such delusions. The performance got my blood boiling and chest heaving.
I scraped my cheeks on the ground, wore skirts for the sake of grating my knees open, and pretended to black out after throwing myself against nearby walls. It was a hopeless struggle against a powerful force, and like the girls in the anime I always watched, I couldn't help but be made to submit. The very thought gave me chills.
People who happened to be passing by occasionally ruined my excitement by asking if everything was okay. I fled those conversations without a word. I suppose to the people who stopped to check on me, I looked like an end-of-summer cicada. A flatlining human who unexpectedly sat up, rose to its feet, and darted off. Peak abnormality.
Yeah, I think I’m abnormal.
I loved pain, and I loved suffering. Those moments when I fell feebly to the ground gave me full-body goosebumps. Although slow, deliberate suffering was good, a sudden death I never saw coming would have been nice too. I liked the idea of a punch that speared through me; a blow to the face, though, not so much. I wasn't interested in that type of pain. I'm not sure why. It could just be that the anime I watched didn't show that kind of thing.
Those were the reasons that Ruri-chan, who could inflict the perfect pain on me, was like a savior. She took the time to beat me up almost every day. She flawlessly alternated her violence between distress and sharp pain, as if she totally understood my inclinations. It was like going to sleep wrapped in feathers.
That's why I made sure to play my part with her. That hurts. Stop. Please. I begged too, but there was no way she'd give in to my pleading. Before me was a partner who directed her hostility towards me, who found me totally beneath her. That alone was enough to get me drooling with excitement.
When I couldn't go to school because of a fever, I waited for my mom to leave so I could try things like tying up my arms and legs or falling down the stairs. Still, it lacked something. All I can really say is that Ruri-chan needed to be involved.
Her technique was to never ease up, no matter how much I suffered, screamed, and cried. That tempestuous, merciless assault was lovely. I wanted more from her. I wanted her to teach me all sorts of pain. No other girl could. Only Ruri-chan could deliver satisfaction.
After my eye was destroyed, that side of Ruri-chan was silenced by the sirens of the ambulance that took me away. My eye was stabbed so violently by the mechanical pencil that it had to be removed in surgery. They cleaned the wound, and it was stitched shut until I got an artificial eye a few days later.
The teacher came to my home the night after the surgery, followed later by Ruri-chan and her mom. My mom thought that my eye injury was only an accident after I fell or something, so the teacher's explanation came as a horrible shock.
This particular incident led to the teacher becoming aware of the other things Ruri-chan had done to me. One of the toadies confessed, and it sounded like she escaped blame by getting her story straight with the other one and telling the teacher that Ruri-chan forced them to go along with her. And since Ruri-chan was the apparent mastermind, she was the one who came to my house to apologize.
Her swollen eyes were deep red, and maybe she'd already been yelled at by the teacher and her mom. She bowed her head, and with a trembling voice, said, “I'm very sorry.”
Her mom smacked her head as hard as she could while shouting, “Just saying sorry doesn't mean you're forgiven, you know!” My mom stepped in to calm her down despite her bewilderment.
Ruri-chan's mom started to cry after she was told that I'd been stabbed in the eye with a mechanical pencil, and that it was so severely damaged that it had to be removed. I didn't understand why she was crying, but it didn't seem like she was sympathizing with me. It was more like she was protecting herself. Ruri-chan's face went ghostly pale as she stared. I didn't know what kind of expression to make in this situation, so I just kept my face bowed.
Our moms and the teacher talked about money afterwards. Ruri-chan and I were probably the only ones who didn't understand what was happening.
She watched me from a distance when I went to school the next day. I spent the day looking forward to the moment when she'd decide to drag me to the bathroom, but she sat motionless at her desk the whole time.
I even went through the trouble of wearing my swimsuit underneath, and yet…
Jeez, aren't you going to shove me in the water?
Come on, aren't you going to stab me with a mechanical pencil?
“You need to keep away from Ruri-chan from now on, Tateha.”
My mom called the things Ruri-chan did to me criminal bullying, and spat, “Don't ever go near Tateha again.”
Ruri-chan's toadies were quick to spread word of the incident to people. She was totally alone by the time the gossip of her stabbing my eye out made it around school. There was no one around her. Not at recess, not on the way home.
The bruises on her body began to multiply around then. Through the rumor mill, I found out her parents were abusing her and that she also killed time at the nearby shrine instead of going home after school. I only went to see her at the shrine once, where she sat alone among the lush trees in the overgrown woods on its grounds. A stray cat enthusiastically came up to her but quickly got fed up with her lack of attention and went elsewhere. Big horseflies—I don't know how many—swarmed around her arm, but she just vacantly sat there like she did at school. Seeing her from afar, she seemed so lifeless that she could be mistaken for a corpse.
We grew apart after that. The silence between us continued until we reached middle school. Since we went to a combined elementary and middle school system, I stayed enrolled, but she changed to a different middle school.
Since peace and idleness are deceptively similar, routine and tedium end up being almost the same thing. Life was like cement hardening to gray, each day a roller flattening out every bump, every color, to nothing. Gone were the days when I could pleasantly writhe in discomfort and joyfully grimace with agony.
Growth is about polishing oneself. We remove the extraneous parts of ourselves as we move towards adulthood, just like pieces are chipped off a gem to reveal its true brilliance. Life was desolate. I wasn't able to get the thing I wanted most, but that was okay. The people around me were keeping their chins up, so I did too. Even though the bits of eraser fell away, I didn't stop to pick them up again. That experience was over, and everyone had moved on.
That was how I whiled away my life in middle school, experiencing neither highs nor lows.
Which brings us to high school. An entrance ceremony. A new class. Stepping into homeroom for the first time. One girl cheerfully spoke and hopped to her feet as we went through self-introductions.
“My name's Miyama Ruri! I'm a huge music fan! I love going around to all the CD shops, so I'd be delighted if anyone wanted to come with! I'm looking forward to working with everyone!”
Ruri-chan's bleached smile washed the past away. It was a major change from what she was like in elementary school. She looked like the living dead the last time I saw her. Now she was bright and bubbly. “I was super nervous~!” She was even able to talk to the girl in the seat behind her. She was so different.
Her once-short hair had grown down to her shoulder blades, and it swayed in waves every time she moved, reflecting the light in the classroom like ripples on a sand dune. Saying she was the most beautiful girl in class would be an understatement. I'm sure some of the boys in class were probably eyeing her already.
No way, the new Ruri-chan recognizes me. Her face went pale before my very eye.
It wasn't just Ruri-chan, I think I had changed in some ways since elementary school, too. My hair was done-up short, for one, and I no longer wore the butterfly hairpin that I liked either. That said, there are some things you just can't change. The gaping cavity she excavated was one of those.
Ruri-chan stared into my right eye, which lost its ability to see light long ago. A thought occurred to me at that moment.
I’ll bet Ruri-chan and I are almost inseparable.
All it takes for an ordinary friendship to go up in smoke is a change of schools or the environment. I'm sure old friends would forget faces and memories together as time passed, to the point they wouldn't even recognize each other if they crossed paths again. But ten years from now, thirty years from now, right up until the end of her life, I don't think Ruri-chan will ever forget me. She'd pause if we passed in the streets, take one look at my eye, and despair.
It’s a bond that ties us, stronger than friends, lovers, or family.
All Ruri-chan has to do is look at my right eye…
Until one of us reaches the end of our lives, we…
We're bound to one another, more or less permanently.