Snippet #2415952

When Maemi awoke that morning, she saw nothing more than a deep, bloody orange and tasted nothing but the remnants of a nightmare. Her breath still rose and fell quickly in her throat, her hands still clutched at crumpled bedsheets, and she was wrapped up like an autumn moth in the comforter, feet bound by a night’s worth of worries. As she laid there, staring up at the ceiling as though looking at it long enough would make it dissolve and return her to the world of sweet dreams and bitter nightmares, she caught her breath and steeled her mind. Today was the day she returned.

It was almost laughable, the way she put it, but to Maemi’s sleep-soaked mind, the matter was all too grave. She shed the sheets, and she didn’t bother making them, instead drifting into the bathroom the moment her feet hit the floor. She was caught in that early-morning trance: sticky eyes, stiff limbs, and the remnants of sleep still caught in her joints made for a long and painful journey from her bedroom to the bathroom across the apartment. Her bare feet hardly made a sound over the carpet, the colorless thing worn dull and hardened by time and the countless footsteps that had passed over it before. Had she cared to contemplate it, Maemi, perhaps, would have been fascinated by all the stories the worn carpet might hold.

At six in the morning, though, Maemi was in no mood to think.

It wasn’t particularly early; in fact, since she now lived in a smaller town with a nearby school, she had more time to sleep in during the school year. Just coming off break, however, when she’d slept until ten o’clock in the morning, the contrast was stark. Her eyes stung and burned when she flicked on the bathroom light, and it took her a moment to adjust before she could fumble for a comb and run it through her hair. Thankfully, the humidity near the seaside kept the static-laced hairs, still mussed from tossing and turning at night, from sticking to her face. Her frizz, on the other hand, was acting up. She’d be braiding her hair today.

That in mind, Maemi ran herself a hot shower. She gave the ancient thing a moment to heat up while she shed the shirt and the shorts she’d worn to bed and grabbed a bottle of her stronger conditioner from the cabinet next to the sink. This time, Maemi did care to fold her clothes and leave them neatly by the door alongside her towel. The simple actions of turning on the lights and combing her hair had been enough to wake her up at least halfway even if the quickly-accumulating steam was doing its best to put her to sleep again. By the time the first drops of water hit her back, however, her eyes had lost their sticky coating, and she was aware enough to feel the twisting feeling that had crept into her stomach.

She tried to ignore it as she rubbed the shampoo into her hair, but by the time she’d finished putting in the conditioner, it had turned into something almost overwhelming. Maemi wasn’t sure why the sudden nervousness had attacked so suddenly, but whatever the reason, she didn’t like the thought of it. As if nightmares the night before hadn’t been enough, the sickness in her stomach had made itself at home that morning. Why now? Why today? She supposed it was the day itself that was making her nervous.

She really wished the feeling would go away.

Maemi flattened her palms against the wall and let the water run down her back. Rivulet streaked down her skin, her hair, her fingertips and fell to the floor in a neverending flurry of tiny droplets throwing their suicidal bodies into the basin below. She took deep breaths, slow ones, to calm herself down. She could feel the roiling in her stomach slowing some, but what she was doing was nowhere near as effective as she needed it to be. She was on the verge of having a mental breakdown on the first day of school. Something— though she didn’t know what— was very wrong.

The last few days had been a harrowing affair. The weekend before, Maemi and her mother had packed all they owned into three suitcases, picked up, and left. The plastic dishes as well as the cheap furniture had been left behind, as they’d sold it to the new occupants knowing they wouldn’t be able to take it with them. Neither Maemi nor her mother owned anything of particular value other than perhaps a laptop computer and some jewelry. It wasn’t that money was particularly tight; the women just didn’t buy things they didn’t deem necessary. Maemi had stuffed the entire contents of her closet into her suitcase along with her desk lamp and the few books that wouldn’t fit inside the biggest suitcase. Her mother’s library was hardly the largest of things, so they’d brought that along, as well. But that was all.

Well, she’d put her laptop in her backpack along with her headphones and a number of other trivial things to make the hours-long train ride less of a nightmare, but aside from that, she’d taken few belongings. For the first time in years, they bought new towels and replaced their cheap dishes with a set slightly nicer than the ones they’d owned before. A family of two didn’t need much. One trip to the supermarket had been enough to leave them needing nothing more than a bigger cooking pot and furniture. With that, Maemi had lived the past few days in a barren room trying to find ways to hang the curtains to make it look a little less empty.

Maemi drew the towel around her. It felt strange— she’d grown used to the old ones she’d had at home. Having something so... fluffy felt odd. She wondered if it’d wear off in a week. That was the way it tended to go with new things. It was like the shipbuilder’s dilemma: at what point did something stop being new and start becoming old? Worn down? Or was nothing ever new at all, and was it all just a construct of the human imagination?

She shut herself up, dried herself off, and wrapped the towel around her body before picking up her nightclothes and heading back to her room. She could hear the tea kettle whistling from the kitchen behind her, but she didn’t turn and look lest she stop and drip all over the floor. It was cold, anyway, since her mother had run the fan all night to cool the place down. Were they not on a strict budget for buying new things for the apartment, Maemi would have suggested they get another one to strategically cool the place instead of just blasting it at night. Buying brand new furniture, though, however long-overdue, was going to be pricey no matter how they put it.

Maemi threw the towel on the yet-unmade bed, quick to change into her one matching set of underwear before the chill started to seep into her skin more than it already had. She wasn’t the most superstitious of people, but she couldn’t help feeling as though it was somehow luckier to match. She didn’t consider it for long, though, before she was tucking the hem of her shirt into the waist of her uniform and slipping on her socks and shoes. Despite the heat and humidity outside, the air bit her wet skin inside. The sun still had yet to warm the room, as she’d left the curtains drawn and the window shut during the night— an old habit from her days in the city. She supposed the air wasn’t as poisonous out here as it was there. After dabbing away the circles under her eyes that came with a terrible night’s sleep, Maemi played a bit with her makeup and pulled her hair half-dry into a pair of pigtailed braids. It wasn’t long before she’d made her way back out of her room and into the kitchen, where her mother waited with toast, a plate of eggs, and the kind of smile only a mother could let spread across her face on days like this.

Seeing her mother lightened Maemi’s mood significantly, and after a brief hug, she felt almost normal again.

“It was hot last night, wasn’t it?” Maemi’s mother remarked offhandedly. Maemi nodded in agreement, though she begged to differ— with the fan at full power running all night long, it’d hardly been an inferno. “Ah, but it’s good to be back. The weather here’s great for citrus. I used to have the most amazing orange tree— do you remember?”

She smiled at the memory of the orange tree they’d grown out in the farthest reaches of the apartment complex’s spare land when she was younger. It had been out by the dumpster, so it was hardly a landmark worth stopping by and bothering to remember, but the fruit it produced had tasted so sweet with just the right amount of sour.

“Of course I do,” Maemi replied after a beat. “I wonder if it’s still there.”
“Mm, probably not. Not in that dump.” her mother tossed back through a mouthful of toast. “And I mean that in a very literal sense.” The two women broke out into a brief moment of laughter.
“Still, it must be worth checking. I doubt anyone there would have taken the time to remove the corpse even after it died.”
“After eight years? If the weather hasn’t gotten to it, the animals would’ve torn it apart.”
“Good point. But there are a lot of things I’d do to taste that fruit again, and I’m not above stopping by anyways, even if all I do get to see is a corpse.”
“On the off-chance there is still something there, make sure to bring some home for me. Those oranges would go well with dinner.”
“Are we having something special for dinner?”
Maemi’s mother winked. “Well, it was supposed to be a surprise.”
“Oh? Really? What is it?” Maemi was about to say more, but with a glint of mischief in her eye, her mother shooed away from the table before she could say anything more.
“Oh, just get going, you! Or you’re going to be late!”

***

Arriving at the school gates, Maemi was once again gripped with the sense of dread that had haunted her as she’d been washing her hair. A far cry from the comforting sanctuary of her quiet albeit empty home, she was surrounded by gleeful voices greeting each other again after a long while of being pulled apart. It was everything she’d expected: old friends greeting one another after too many days apart, girls standing in clusters and giggling and gossiping before they were pulled apart by more important matters, and boys being just as loud and rambunctious as ever. The incoming students milled about or got to know one another, and the ones who kept to themselves did what was expected of them. Nothing was out of the ordinary, so she supposed she shouldn’t feel so nervous.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling, and it was beginning to annoy her.

Maemi scouted out an empty chair chair in the slowly-filling ocean of the things and sat herself down as she tried her best not to make eye contact with any of the other students. Her row began to fill, and she murmured a few ‘hellos,’ but by the time the assembly was ready to start she’d become engrossed in the novel she’d brought with her that morning. When the lights in the auditorium dimmed, she stowed the book back in her bag.

The presentation wasn’t particularly interesting, but Maemi caught a few odd words at the end. Though she ended up disregarding them, they weren’t helping her feelings of dread. By that point, she was beginning to wonder if she’d gotten an upset stomach. Was the water here bad?

When the opening address was finished, the students began to clear out and sort themselves into their respective classes. Maemi had spaced out a bit during the talk, much to her own shame— ever speaker deserved her attention, and it was hardly fair not to be paying attention when she should— and it wasn't until at least three quarters of the student body had left that she noticed anything had happened. She grabbed for her bag and sifted through it in an attempt to track down her schedule, but she turned up empty-handed.

Desperately, she grabbed for the pockets. Surely, her schedule had to be in there? But there was nothing. She knew she was in Class 1-C, but aside from that, she knew nothing of the school. She hadn't at all bothered to memorize classroom numbers or even names. She picked over her backpack one more time for the schedule, but nothing turned up. She stood, slowly, and made her way to the inside of the school, following the students who'd lagged behind in the auditorium to the main part of the school. Usually, the classrooms were labeled, so she'd be able to find it easily enough.

Right?

But the system was somewhat different from the one she was used to, and all Maemi ended up was lost, wandering the halls like an idiot, not even knowing where she'd started off. She couldn't be lost. She just couldn't be. Not on her first day of school. She was such a moron. How could she have lost her schedule?

Wandering was all Maemi could do at the moment, so she kept doing that in the hopes she'd stumble upon something at least mildly useful. It was almost time for class, and there she was, lost in the halls like a complete idiot. Even if she'd wanted to ask someone for help, the halls were quickly emptying.

Not that she'd wanted to talk to anyone in the first place.