kamishiro rui is my name

I don't know what happened for the rest of the day, so don't ask me.

I do know, however, that it's now Tuesday, and I'm walking idly to my first class. I don't want to go in there. I reach for the doorknob, but I can't bring myself to open the door. I don't know if I'll be able to see their face without crying. Instead, I turn and walk to the toilet as I pull Kiseki out of my bag and hug him so tight that a dent forms in him from my arms. Sorry again, Kiseki.

I go into one of the stalls and lock it and just…sort of…stay there. I stand there hugging Kiseki while feeling like I'm about to cry all the way until the bell rings, announcing the end of class. Only then do I leave the stall and shove Kiseki into my bag. Next, mathematics. I don't spot them once in the halls as I walk. Good. I sit in my seat and stare at my desk as the assignments for the day are handed out. But a paper is never placed on my desk. Instead, a hand that obviously belongs to an adult taps a finger on my desk. I snap out of my dissociation and look up to see the teacher looking at me. He silently gestures for me to follow him and I do.

I consider grabbing my bag but decide against it. I scramble after him as a few of my peers do that annoying 'oooooooo' thing when someone is asked to go to the office or step outside for a moment. If I had the guts, I'd throw a glare at said peers. But I don't. I step out of the classroom and the teacher closes the door behind me.

"How are you feeling?" Is the first question he asks me. "...what do you mean?" I ask him. My voice is shaking from how nervous I feel. Am I in trouble? As though he's reading my mind, he assures me that I'm not in trouble, he just has a few concerns. "I'm worried about you, Rui," he says. Why? Worried about me how? I'm not getting abused. My grades are decent enough in this class. I don't act up. I don't stand out. What's going on? "Why?" I ask. My eyes subconsciously flick to the wall behind him just to find something else to look at rather than his eyes. I catch that and quickly retain eye contact. "You haven't been participating as much as you used to. You don't ever answer any questions, even when I call on you, you don't ever stand up to turn anything in, and you've stopped participating in group projects entirely. What's going on?"

"A large dreadful feeling in my gut that forms everytime I socialize or stand out due to fear of getting criticized for doing something wrong or different is what's going on." I feel like there's something else though. "And potentially forming crippling depression." No…depression isn't the right word. That'd feel more like I hit rock bottom and do nothing all day. I still do stuff. I work on Robo-Nene. I…go to school. I…okay that's about everything I do. But still, I haven't hit rock bottom. It's more like a small loss of hope.

I feel as though what I've said has shocked the teacher—either from my large vocabulary (or what I like to say, my Brobdingnagian parlance) or the fact that I said something a little disturbing to hear from a twelve-year-old who usually never speaks about his problems. "Well…" But the teacher never finishes his sentence. He has no idea what to say. So instead, he just says "We'll figure something out, okay?" Then he gestures for me to go back into the classroom.

I look to the door and turn back to him, feeling tears prick at my eyes. I don't know why I'm about to cry. Maybe it's because I just got confronted and I have a mild fear of confrontation (it's actually a major fear of mine, I'm just in denial). "Can I stay out here?" I try to ask. My voice breaks and when I try to say "stay out", my voice disappears entirely. I try again. "Can I…can I stay out here?"

"Why?" It's now his turn to ask the question. "I don't want to go back inside." I know that if I walk in now, everyone will stare at me and I'll feel like the center of attention and then I'll burst into tears and everyone will lambaste me and I'll cry even more. My teacher considers it for a moment, then walks inside. He doesn't gesture for me to follow. Instead, he brings me my bag and tells me to sit in the nurse's office with the excuse that I'm 'tired and need to rest'. Well, it gets me out of class.

So I take my bag from his hands and force myself in the direction of the nurse's office. I give the lie that I'm tired and want to lie down for a bit, then walk to one of the cots and lie down. I face the wall so I don't have to keep my eyes closed the entire time.

———

So I actually ended up falling asleep… and I only woke up because lunchtime came around and the nurse wanted to make sure I went to eat something. But I'm not feeling very hungry. I tell her that and she gives me a pack of crackers and a juice box and tells me to just try. I swallow down the crackers and the juice then lie back down on the cot. But the nurse tells me I need to go to my next class, so I ask to wait until lunch is over.

Thankfully she lets me stay until the lunch bell rings. The ending lunch bell. I get up and set on my way to my next class where I don't pay attention at all. I just want to go home. I feel sick. Not fake sick. Actually sick. But I hold out until I get home in which I immediately collapse onto my bed without even kicking my shoes off or taking Kiseki out of my bag, and I fall asleep.

I remember seeing that the moon night light had completely flickered out.

———

3:16. Tired. My stomach feels weird. Where’s Ki…my bag. Right. My shoes are still on. I kick them off. They thud onto the floor. It’s dark. I feel sticky. It’s cold. I’m sweating. My stomach still feels weird. I need to use the bathroom. What was that-? Oh, I bumped into my doorway. It’s so dark in here— too bright. Why are bathroom lights so bright when it’s nighttime? I don’t even need to use the bathroom anymore… no, wait, yes I do… my stomach is telling me I do.

Disgusting. I brush my teeth to try and clean out the taste of bile. It doesn’t help. So tired… I could just… fall asleep… here…

———

Shi-…shoot… I blink my eyes open to see the bright light overhead blinding me. Am I dying? Is this what it feels like? If so, dying gives me a massive migraine. Also, dying apparently consists of my mom knocking on the bathroom door and asking if I’m okay. Huh? Did I seriously sleep until morning?

I push myself to standing. My reflection is a groggy boy with pale skin, forming dark splotches under his eyes, no comforting Kiseki in sight, and dried, crusted vomit on his chin. Ew. But I open the door anyway. Mom almost knocks again but she pulls her hand back when I open the door.

“Again?” she asks. I can’t tell what she’s saying ‘again’ to. The fact that I fell asleep in the bathroom, because yes, that’s happened before. The fact that I got sick twice in the same week—even though one was faked. Or the fact that I slept early despite never doing that even when I’m super duper tired. But I nod regardless because any one of those contexts would make sense.

Mom walks me back to my room while rubbing circles on my back. Did I flush the toilet? “Where’s your platypus?” she asks me. I point to my abandoned school bag that was left by my bedroom door. She reaches into it and gives me poor Kiseki, who is squished to fit the shape of my bag. He very slowly molds back to his original shape.

I lay down on my couch-bed and only now notice my shaky legs. Mama pulls the blanket over my body and up to my chin. It’s not enough. I’m freezing. I curl up in a ball to preserve heat. It’s still not enough. Mom notices this and asks if I’d like another blanket. I nod and she searches my closet for a second blanket, which she drapes atop the first one.

She once more does her Rui-forehead-kiss-then-Kiseki-beak-kiss routine she does when she tucks me into bed, then leaves the room and flicks the light out. Without the moon night light working, it feels suffocatingly dark. Like pressure binding my chest tight.

I hug Kiseki close to me and bury my face in his back. It’s too dark. It's too dark in here. But why? It’s light outside. As if to answer my question, thunder gently rolls outside, muffled by the outside door. Ah. That’s fine. I like thunderstorms. Kiseki doesn’t.

I cover his ears to block out the thunder. But after a while, I’m tempted to look outside to see the storm. I like seeing storms in the day, when the sky is all gray and dull, rather at night when everything’s just a void-black and it’s difficult to determine where cloud meets sky. So I gently sit up and rest Kiseki on my pillow. I pat him on the head and tell him it'll be okay, then I stand up with both blankets wrapped around my shoulders as I walk to my outside door and peer out the window. Clouds low and gray in color, the only source of light being the sun trying to poke through the clouds, and lightning bouncing throughout clouds and occasionally touching the ground so far away from me I have no worry about it accidentally striking the house.

I watch as a bolt of lightning strikes outward toward the air and count the seconds between the light and the sound. I just manage to stay the first part of 'forty' before I hear the thunder that follows. Last time I checked, that should be somewhere close to about fourteen or fifteen kilometers away from here. Kiseki's safe from any lightning strikes. I continue watching out the window as rain comes down hard on everything, including my window, so much precipitation dripping down the outside of it that it looks like I'm underwater. I'm half-tempted to walk outside and stand in the rain. But that would get me drenched and I already don't feel great so I go back to my couch-bed and lie back down. I hug Kiseki close.

———

Over the course of the whole morning, I puke two more times, look out the window at the rain and lightning three more times, and experience the power going out once. In fact, the power's still out. So I'm here in the bathroom in the pitchblack, the revolting stench of vomit in the toilet trying to burn my nose off, clutching my stomach. I feel around as best as I can in the dark and manage to shut the toilet lid and flush it. I continue to walk around in the dark, bumping into multiple walls and doorways until I make it back to my room. I shut the door behind me.

As I walk, I trip over my shoes that I had kicked off last night when I felt sick. I stumble and nearly fall, but thankfully, I don't. I get back into bed and hug Kiseki to protect him from the terrifying sounds outside. On cue, lightning strikes so close that the house shakes and the thunder that follows wastes no time in deafening me. This startles me so much that I even cover my ears as if that'll undo the deafening-sound I just heard.

That specific lightning strike left me trembling for the next ten minutes, scared so much to the point where I called my dad to my room and asked that he comfort me and Kiseki until I fall back asleep.

I understand why Kiseki would be scared of the dark and of lightning.