kamishiro rui is my name

Jeez, how are people able to sleep so easily with so much on their mind? My room is dark besides a small moon night light plugged into an outlet near my couch-slash-bed. I'm lying awake on my side with a stuffed platypus hugged to my chest. I kick my blanket down to my feet. It's way too hot in here. But now that my blanket is all bunched up at my legs, I start to feel cold in my upper half. With an irritated grumble, I pull my blanket back up to my chin and stick my leg out my blanket instead. But what if—Rui, what are you talking about? Monsters aren't real. Well, other than my classmates at school whose names aren't Mizuki.

But I pull my leg back under the blankets anyway and endure the heat of my blanket. Now that I think about it…Mizuki and I have already been dating for three days now. Not one of us has said 'I love you' to the other. Maybe I'll be the first to say it. Or Mizuki. It all entirely depends on how I feel tomorrow. Actually, it won't. Maybe Mizuki's waiting for me to say it first. Maybe I should say it first.

Why is love so hard?

———

Mizuki isn't here again. That means I can't even tell them today. Well, it's not like I was prepared anyway. Maybe Monday. And so I sit in the courtyard again. As I'm sitting on the bench I sat on yesterday, my ears catch Mizuki's name spoken in a conversation between three boys. "I heard Mizuki is dating someone," says one of the boys. "Who is it? Do you know?" "I don't know his name, but…he has purple hair." "Is it that one over there?"

I can tell one of them is pointing at me. I just know it.

"Rui? It seems like he'd date a freak like Mizuki."
"He's so weird." There's the first time I've heard those three exact words fall from someone's mouth.
"You do know Mizuki's a guy, right?"
"It's kind of obvious, he has the guy's uniform."
"So Rui's dating a guy?"
"That's even weirder."
"So Rui's gay?"
"I'm not surprised someone like him would be gay. I mean, come on, look at him! He's not right."
"What if he starts drooling over one of us next?"
"Ew, don't put that image in my mind."

Great. Now that those three are gossiping about me and Mizuki, me being gay…even though I like girls…and Mizuki being a guy…well, they were. They aren't one now. But now that they're gossiping about us, rumors about us two are going to spread like wildfire.

Am I gay…? No. I like girls. But…I still wonder what it'd be like to date a guy. No, Mizuki does not count. Ugh. This is just great. A month and a half into school and I've already had my face and name scrawled over in red pen, reading 'weird' and 'freak' and 'gay'. But I'm not gay.

I stand up and leave the courtyard. One of the boys whisper-shout a homophobic slur to me as I leave. It started with an F.

———

Again, I find myself lying awake on my couch-slash-bed, platypus plush hugged to my chest, blanket repeatedly kicked off me, then pulled back up to my chin, then back to being a tangle around my legs, and so on. The moon night light is still on. I stare at it. The light seems to be a tiny bit dimmer than usual. Just a bit.

After a moment of just lying awake, I sit up and push my blanket off me. Thankfully, tomorrow's a Saturday, and I'm not part of any clubs, so I don't have to go to school tomorrow. I stand up off my couch-bed, my platypus still hugged close as I walk out of my room and to the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of the clock: 3:28. How are people able to sleep so easily? Nene manages to sleep at exactly 22:00 every night without fail. How does she do it?

I open the fridge and look through it. Salad (ew), a few string cheeses, leftovers from the night before (soup), and a lot of other ingredients that I can't eat by themselves. I close the fridge and instead look in the pantry. Nothing else in here either. I go back to the fridge and take out a string cheese.

I eat it and 'feed' a small bit to my platypus, then throw the trash away. I'm not sure why I'm even in here. I just needed to do something to pass the time. I go back to my room, but instead of lying back down, I turn the light on and carefully sit my platypus down on my couch. Since I don't think I'll be sleeping anytime soon, I'll just work on Robo-Nene.

———

I work for a long time, until the sun is up and shining through the tiny window in the door to outside. I look at the clock settled right next to my computer setup—which I still have yet to dust off. In fact, I need to clean my whole room. Books and papers are scattered everywhere as well as a million pencils and robotic parts. Back to the clock. It's now 7:53 and I'm still nowhere near finished with constructing Robo-Nene. Today will be agonizingly slow.

I keep working on Robo-Nene until there's a knock at the door to my room. The outside door, not the one that leads to the laundry room. There's only one person I know who would knock on the outside door. Nene. I rub at my eyes to try and clear out my vision. The lack of sleep is finally getting to me. I glance at my clock again. 14:36.

Another knock at the door snaps me out of it, and I hurry to open the door. Oh, right, I forgot. Still in my pajamas. I'll worry about that later. I open the door, and of course, there stands Nene. The first thing she says is: "You look horrible." "Thanks, that really boosted my ego," I reply sarcastically. "Are you sick or something? You're still in your pajamas and you have circles under your eyes." Nene points to the area under her own eyes as if I wouldn't know where 'under your eyes' means. "No. I just couldn't sleep." "...so you stayed up all night?"

"I worked productively?" I step back to let Nene in. She walks in and closes the door behind her. She immediately looks to my workbench, since when I say I did something productive, it usually involves something with the workbench. Robo-Nene's head is sitting on the wood surface, her body lying in a cold metal heap on the floor next to the bench. "...you decapitated my clone. Nice."

"I didn't decapitate your clone. I'm doing 'surgery' on her. …I tried to add in a few wires but I messed up and pulled the wrong one. It sorta spewed sparks everywhere and now Robo-Nene won't power back on." I walk over and pick up Robo-Nene's head and tilt it just enough to show Nene the wires. One of them has one end torn out and looks…not great.

Nene winces. "Did you get burnt?" "No. I'm careful when I do this." "You're not very careful by working on a robot with no sleep." She walks over and puts Robo-Nene's head back onto the workbench. She points to my couch-bed. "Lie down," she commands me, as if I were a dog. "If you're trying to get me to go to sleep, it's not going to happen."

"I don't care. Lie down." She takes my platypus off the couch cushion and shoves him to my chest. I reach up and cradle him with my arms so he doesn't fall to the floor. I should name him. I would name him Perry like after that one kid's cartoon, but that's unoriginal. I need something…unique. Something like…uh…I'll think of it eventually. Nene pushes me over to my couch. "Lie down," she says for the third time.

Because I don't feel like arguing, I finally give in and lie down on the cushions. She tosses the blanket over me and goes to turn my light off. She's about to turn the night light off as well, but I stop her. "Don't. He's scared of the dark." I hold out my platypus to show her that I'm not the one scared of the dark, but my platypus. She withdraws her hand. "I'll come back in half an hour, and if you're not asleep, I'll tell your parents you stayed awake all night." "Oh, no, anyone but my parents! I'm already trembling at the thought," I exclaim sarcastically.

"Then sleep." She leaves and closes the door without another word. It takes me almost all of those thirty minutes to fall asleep, but I do manage to fall asleep before I hear the outside door open. I end up sleeping all through dinner and until 6:45 the next morning. 16 hours of sleep…fun.