Little Tiger

College, years 3-4

By my Junior year, I had lost all communication with my friends at home. Shigure and Ayame had graduated and started their own careers, and Hatori was head over heels for his assistant (Ayame's words, not mine). This left no room for me in their busy lives, and that was okay. I only saw Hatori and Ayame for one day in the springtime. Hatori had come to give me my check-up, claiming I was old enough to "check myself up" after this last visit. Ayame had tagged along, finding time in his schedule to drop by my place. 

I had switched buildings this year. The dorms were even smaller, but I had a bathroom this time. It was shared between me and the girl next door to me: the bathroom connecting our rooms. I had found on my first night in my new dorm that the girl next to me had a habit of sleepwalking. She often opened my bathroom door, thinking she was walking into her room when she was actually standing in the center of mine. Rather than telling her to go back to her own room (who can reason with a sleepwalker?), we would share a few moments of eerie, uncomfortable silence before she turned, walking through the bathroom and entering her own room, presumably still sleepwalking. I'd started to wedge clothes underneath the door as a barricade and a precaution, afraid of waking up in the middle of the night to her standing over me or something. I never told her about the sleepwalking, afraid of embarrassing her, even though she had taken a few years off of my life the first time I found her standing in my dorm and I deserved some sort of apology. 

"Ko-Ko your room looks how mine did in school!" Ayame applauded me, glancing at the piles of clothes and empty drink bottles that littered the floor. I glanced around my room, every corner of it occupied with something or other. I'd never had a messy room before, I'd never had the chance to. 

"Just because no one is here to watch you doesn't mean you shouldn't pick up," Hatori scolded, stooping over to pick up some empty bottles, tossing them one after another into my trash can. Then he went through great measures to clear a path for himself to arrive at my desk. 

"It's too small to keep clean," I explained. I had so much stuff now, thanks to my friends' generosity. It was hard to find room for all of it if the floor was out of the question. But I never spent much time in my room, anyway. I was always at Mitzu's place. She had an apartment off-campus. It was more interesting there than it was in the tiny confines of my dorm. 

Ayame chuckled, nodding his head. "That's what I would say. I'm so proud of you, Ko-Ko. I never thought I'd see the day where my room was cleaner than yours." He walked over, patting me roughly on the back and then lying on top of my bed with his arm under his head.

Hatori gave me his check-up, informing me that I had gained some weight at the very end. "Drinking," was all he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, sitting forward on my desk chair. 

His eyes cut to mine severely. "Drinking. That is why you're gaining weight." 

Ayame sat up on his elbow, looking at me with his eyebrows raised. "Drinking?" he repeated amusedly. "Wow, you really are just like me--" 

"Aya," Hatori intercepted seriously, snapping his fingers at him. He turned back to me. "Ko, your room is a mess, your grades are slipping, and you're drinking too much." 

"I know," I stated irritably. I knew I had a problem--problems. "How do you know about my grades?" I had not shared my grades with anyone. I was in this entirely by myself. 

"That doesn't matter." 

"I think it does." 

He sighed. "I can check them online with your log-in information. There. You happy? Now, the real problem is that you need to pull yourself together."