Kabedon: Part 2 of A Tanabata Story

Chapter 4

Standing beneath the blinding stage lights of the school's gymnatorium, Miko recited her memorized campaign speech to the assembled student body. Just as her numerous speech, composition and diction tutors had taught her over the years, she slowly and clearly spoke the words she had carefully crafted to both meet her audience's expectations and elicit the correct emotions.

None of her audience, neither the curious students in the front row—only dimly visible beneath the stage lights—nor the teachers standing along the sides of the room with small proud smiles, seemed to notice or care if she believed them.

The audience would accept anything as long as it conformed to their expectations. They were only concerned with how well she delivered it. Because "meeting expectations" was the way to be accepted, Miko did it the best, but that blind acceptance only seemed to add to the emptiness of her words.

Miko had not felt the slightest quiver of nervousness before an audience in years. Being one-on-one with any of them, however, was a different matter. People as a group were manageable, but any single person was a mystery to her. Aside from Junko—who had decided on her own to be Miko's friend—Miko had never learned the secret of getting close to someone. Even Junko, however, had complained of her excessive formality. It had taken Miko years to call her by her given name, and even then Miko couldn't drop the honorific.

Having given his speech first, Ishihara stood offstage wiping his brow, loosening his tie, and looking as if he had barely survived the ordeal. Miko wondered if they could have somehow been friends in other circumstances? The idea of being a friend with a boy was so alien that she couldn't tell if it thrilled her or terrified her. Perhaps both.

She'd had heard that Ishihara was popular among his fellow second years. She would have preferred for him to win the election, but he didn't have a chance and it was not in her nature to do less than her very best. Miko almost felt sorry for him.

The current student council had interviewed them both last week asking, asking questions about their prior experience in student government, where they had gone to school and what leadership roles they had held. Ishihara's brief answers had quickly satisfied the council member's limited curiosity. After an uncomfortable silence they returned to Miko, asking additional questions about her club activities and other interests. They seemed fascinated by the numerous competitions in which she had competed and nearly all of which she had won.

Out of the corner of her eye, Miko watched the hopeful Ishihara wilt as the realization came to him that she and the council members lived in a different world. This was likely the first time he'd ever felt like an outsider. Miko was intimately familiar with those feelings. She wanted to confide in him that despite being able to speak their language she wasn't really one of them. But to say such a thing out loud would have been too presumptuous. It would have only embarrassed him further and angered him.

Hiroto Yoshida, the student council's secretary took a personal interest in Miko during the interview. Self-consciously good looking, he sprawled casually across his chair with an air of entitled confidence. He paraphrased a section from the student handbook on public behavior and then—with a twinkle in his eye and a faint wry curve to his lips that implied he found his question amusing—he spoke.

"With that in mind, I have to ask, are you currently dating anyone?"

Scandalized mutterings broke out among the student council.

"Eh?"

"To say such a thing!"

"—and so boldly—"

"It's just rude."

"But that's just Yoshida-san."

"He knows what he wants and he's not afraid to take it."

Yoshida ignored them and leaned in to hear her answer.

"No," Miko said in a firm tone that, for the first time during the interview, came dangerously close to a display of emotion. "I do not date."

The girls nodded approvingly. The boys looked disappointed. But Yoshida fixed his small predatory eyes on her, his lips stretching into a wry smile of challenge.

七夕

In the last period of the day, during homeroom, the class representative called out as their teacher entered the room. "Rise!"

Miko rose with her classmates, grateful that she has avoided the honor of being their class rep every time they were called to attention.

"Bow!" The class bowed. Miko had begged off, saying she was very busy with other school responsibilities and, to everyone's surprise, their homeroom teacher had relented.

"Sit!"

Their teacher sat at her desk and shuffled through a sheaf of papers she had brought from the teacher's staffroom. "We only have a single item today and that is a reminder that our first field trip is next week. This means that signed permission forms are due by this Wednesday. Also, class representatives, we need the list of groups by the end of class today. If you could arrange that I have some other business to attend to."

She rose, tapping a stack of papers together and scooped up a couple of over-stuff folders.

The girls' representative rose and called out. "Class—"

Their teacher waved her off. "That's not necessary, just bring the attendance books, the field trip rosters, and any permission forms you collect to the staffroom before you leave."

The girls' representative turned to the class. "About the group lists, how should we—" but before she could get suggestions for how to determine who would form which groups, a handful of boys had shot over to the boys' representative with a sheet of paper and insisted he join their group. The girls also scurried over to their friends' desks—sometimes even calling names across the room—while writing names on impromptu rosters.

Miko stared down at the polished surface of her desk, afraid to move or draw anyone's attention, afraid to even look up and stare rejection in the face. She waited with the perfect straight-back posture that had been drilled into her and hoped against hope for someone to call her name.

With each passing moment, the growing weight of disappointment and loneliness pressed Miko's head downward and her desktop began to grow tearfully blurry.

An authoritative hand slapped a paper down before her. Class 1-A Group # 11 had been written across the top in an emphatic script. It had two lines for signatures, one of which held Sato Junko's name.

Miko looked up into Junko's wry smile.

"That should be fine, ne?" Junko said.

Miko sniffed and nodded. Perhaps not quite alone, she thought as she added her name in a precise well-practiced hand.