HYOGO / DEC 2013
two-headed boy: neutral milk hotel
tw! prose about a dead family pet
Caroline Kobayashi is a frail looking woman standing hunched over at a frame of 5'2, and despite the laughing lines, worry lines, and frown lines, she wasn't at all old. Her body's rather mangled looking, her skin had pruned up around her fingers and was loose around her wrists, but her smiles did not look old at all. Not at all, to him at least.
She smells like traditional Chinese medicine, tiger balm and medical bills. Every Sunday she wears loose lilac dresses and pretty orange braids, but the smell clung to her skin as though she was made to be with it, to be It. Caroline Kobayashi is 39, but she acts and looks like she's pushing 60. Her face is devoid of prunes and raisins, her eyes are a clear honey brown and her lips are still a smiley grin, pretty peach and cheeky pinks. But there is a gentle quiet air about her, something akin to a fresh sea breeze, altogether refreshing but contrastingly disturbing.
Caroline feels like fresh linen and warm cookies, everything about her screams calm and composure to him. She's always made him feel like everything he did was okay, and all that he says is fine, and everything he's feeling is normal, she makes him feel a kind of content that almost feels cruel for him too feel. Caroline Kobayashi has always been there for him.
Suna's almost known Coraline for 3, pushing 4 years. Even if he hasn't known her for all that long, it sure as hell feels like he has. He knows it to be true because she has the ability to make his skin bend with ease around her palms willingly, and she's got so much power and love for a boy not even of her own kin. One look from her and his tongue is running with everything he's bottled. Thats what makes it so hard for him to go home. To her, seated in an armchair on the balcony adjacent to his. He hasn't seen her in weeks for good reason.
She has so much to do already, he doesn't want her to worry further about his stupid feelings and his stupid grades, and his stupid volleyball games, and his stupid future. It was never her job to worry about him, he knows that much now. And he's more than determined to keep her away from his life.
It was never her job to mother a child living on his own at the age of 14 either. It was never her job to foster his happiness either, but she continues to do so without complaining so.
He thinks about Caroline in a busy classroom, wonders his mind cooks up in the midst of conversations and laughs from people he'd probably never see again unless he really had to. He got home late last night, and she was worried up to the creases on her forehead. She looked at him with so much fear and worry, he couldn't bear looking at her.
She told him how much she worried, told him not to stay out too late especially in the winter, she told him how much she missed him over for dinner, and then she wished him goodnight. Her door was barely shut when he opened his eyes again. He closed it shut. Then he closed his kitchen window and went to sleep.
He can't help but feel lost. After he has been given so much, so many opportunities, so much happiness, so many games, so much to look forward to, he's still lost in his own head. Is he ungrateful? He doesn't feel like it. It looks like it though, surely. Suna hasn't done many things to show people he cares, and he knew that nobody would give two fucks if he did care anyway.
He's fine knowing people don't want to know him the way he wants to be known. Time was a luxury anyway, he didn't want to spend the rest of his junior year convincing people he's more than just the quiet guy that has dirt on anyone and constantly hangs around the infamous Miya Twins. That took too much effort, something he could be putting more into when it came to his volleyball, his future. Even if he fucks up at that, something, someone up there gave him a talent he for sure doesn't deserve, he won't be entirely screwed over at least.
