In Excess (Itafushi)

Chapter 4

My only class today was a chemistry lab, but since it was only the first week there wasn't an experiment. The graduate student leading my lab section looked terrified as he went over safety protocols and basic lab procedures. I pictured us students as a panel of casting directors, and the graduate student was trying to convince us that he could play the role of teacher. After his mediocre performance, he assigned groups of four students to a set of equipment that they would be responsible for replacing if something were to break over the course of the semester. He wrote all of our names and the cabinet number on a sheet of lined notebook paper, and for some reason, I was bothered by the lack of robust bookkeeping. All it took was for him to spill a coffee on the sheet of paper or have it blow out of his hand in the wind and all records were lost.

I was done with class for the day by 8:30 a.m., and instead of going back to my dorm and wasting the rest of my day away by scrambling to find something to work on, I walked around the campus. I stumbled across a small cafe in the basement of a building dedicated almost entirely to physics. How much was there to learn about physics that it warranted an entire building? Surely, someone could give me an excruciatingly long lecture about every minute facet of the field that warrants immense research, but anything outside of Newton's laws of motion felt trivial. Why was it so important for us to know if light behaved as a particle or a wave?

I bought a bagel from the cafe and found a seat in the adjoining lounge. Unlike other study spaces I had seen that were highlighted on the university website and in campus tours, this one looked to be maintained primarily by the students. The furniture was mismatched, unlike the geometric corporate modular couches in the advertised study spaces. I would not have been surprised to learn that all of the furniture was donated by prior graduates, but it overall felt more comfortable and inviting. I pulled my laptop from my bag so that I could look over my assignments while I ate. Time was not in short supply yet, but I figured that multitasking would be a good habit in the near future.

"Excuse me." I looked up from my laptop to find a girl standing directly in front of me. For a brief moment, I feared that I wasn't supposed to be in this lounge, that it was only for physics majors. "Are you the guy that Yuji brought over a couple of days ago?"

"Yeah?" I was running through my waning memories of the night she was referring to. She took my answer as an invitation to sit down next to me.

"I'm Nobara, Yuji's roommate," she clarified.

"Oh, I'm Megumi," I introduced myself in return.

"I know," she chuckled to herself. "I feel like I already know you. Yuji won't shut up about you." She looked over at me and saw the terror on my face. "Good things! He only has good things to say about you!" I let the air that I had trapped in my chest escape.

"Sounds like I have some expectations to live up to now." I closed my laptop, giving up hope that I was going to get anything done here.

"Don't worry about it. We all know Yuji's an optimist." She spoke while texting someone, a skill I would never possess.

"We?" My anxiety climbed with every word. She smiled at me sympathetically but didn't ease my mind at all.

"Do you have another class today?" She asked seemingly unprompted, but I suspected it had something to do with whoever she was texting.

"No, I'm done for the day." Her sympathetic smile turned devilish and her fingers flew across her phone.

"Yuji will be done with class in like twenty minutes then we're going to my friend's place if you'd like to come." Her fingers were hovering over her phone ready to send a message the second I answered.

"Are you sure? I don't want to impo-"

"Absolutely! It will be fun," she assured.

"Okay," I gave in. She sent her message at the speed of light. I wondered who she was texting. At first, I assumed it was Yuji, telling him she ran into me, but it could have also been the friend whose apartment she was taking me to.