Chapter 02
SUE'S END
I have made my decision –
"I am ending it."
DON'T get me wrong. I am not the type of person who would valiantly duel with the world just to walk away in the end simply because I couldn't accept things that weren't perfect like an obsessive-compulsive. I have lived nineteen years of my life like this, feeling as if I were a walking Starbucks planner you'd get from collecting those little stickers after buying a tall caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream and low fat milk. The course of my life had been mapped on a perfect schedule long before I could point out the difference between a humerus and a femur.
Oh! Honda Sumiko's going to be a great doctor just like her mother, her father, and everyone else in her family! And that's exactly what I've been doing for the past two years – fulfilling their mega-prediction of my grand destiny as if it weren't the most obvious thing yet.
At nineteen, I spent the greater fraction of my life attending second year classes in Oshima Ika Daigaku, where I learned how to name every bone, muscle, tissue, and crease of the human body like counting one to one million with my proximal and distal phalanges. It's not fun, it's not cool, and this same routine could get really cadaveric. Being a medical student had its perks and drawbacks. You learned how to save a life while being branded as a certified geek because some people just couldn't point out the difference between a doctor and a mad scientist. The pressure could get as high as that of Mount Fuji's peak. There were times when I would feel that I'd be better off as some sort of heir to that popular car manufacturing company rather than a successor to my mother's stainless scalpels. I am not blaming okaa-san for allowing me to form in her uterus just like I am not blaming otou-sanfor being named Honda when he drove a Mazda.
The main point here was that I, Honda Sumiko, knew that I had zero chance of turning my perfectly planned life around. Not that I'm complaining. I mean, it's too late for me to be doing that now.
Anyway…
I am not a quitter. I have mastered the art of being competitive in anything. As a child, people would come up to me, pat my head, and praise me for being such a 'good girl'. And I grew up thinking just that, doing just that, and ultimately becoming just that. Straight A's… first place trophies in western fencing… vice-president of the Oshima Ika Daigaku student council… playing the violin… those kind of great things a 'good girl' does. I'm not a 'geeky-goody-goody-girl' either. I am the type of person whom one would see winning in Fear Factor. I could dive in a pool with cobras if that was what it would take to win. I may have Puss in Boots' adorable smile, but I have Energizer Bunny's drive.
Tonight, I suddenly felt unsure.
I sat silently on the back seat of the Honda NSX police car, gazing through the tinted window to catch the spectacular night time view of the world's most populous metropolitan area – my proud hometown: Tokyo. People knew this side for the 5 'S' – sushi, sake, sakura, sumo, and Sailor Moon. To me, it meant so much more. Living in such urban place where thirty five million people were constantly on-the-go, either making money or talking business, had melded my belief system into how it was today. Those skyscrapers, banks, towers, bridges, and shrines could make even a 450 lbs sumo wrestlerstill feel so small. Do the math by simple ratio and proportion and imagine how it would tantamount for a 110 lbs girl like me (115 whenever I overload on carbohydrates, thanks to Hershey's Cookies and Cream). It's almost like being a plankton in the Pacific Ocean. I don't want to be a sumo wrestler, but I wanted to be… bigger. 'Bigger' was different from 'perfect' – and some people just don't understand that.
