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“Chifuyu, why aren’t you going home yet? It’s late,” Baji asks, a pack of yakisoba on one hand and two cans of soda nestled on the other hand’s fingers. “Weren’t you supposed to study for midterms or somethin’ like that?”
The two boys sat on one of the chairs in a public playground near where they live. Clutching a drawstring bag containing notebooks and pens, Chifuyu cleared the neighborhood-owned table from dust or other harmful material for where Baji could land his laptop. "Not midterms. Some old requirements our teacher has been pestering us to turn in."
"Hey, Chifuyu, do you know why Pah-chin and homework are alike?"
"No, not really," Chifuyu answers, expectant of some sort of profound answer though rare.
"They both turned themselves in," trailed with a loud burst of laughter, Baji jokes as if he could never tell a funnier punchline. "Except that we haven't turned in our homework. Ah, why is school mandatory? Can't we just rock our way through lives? This ain't fun."
Chifuyu eats his share of the yakisoba without uttering a word that served as permission. Separating the noodles into two equal sides, recognizing the territorial-like agreement on whose is whose, sharing a pack of sodium-rich perishable good—to Chifuyu and Baji, that was the most natural thing in the world.
"This would be more fun if we found a better tutor. I mean, Baji-san, if you hadn't scared our class' resident poindexter, we wouldn't be playin' students right now. Oh and, by the way, were you not aware that I only get promoted to the next grade by a hair. Like, it wouldn't be a dang shocker if I get held back before my third year. That said, tutorin' ain't my thing as much as it's yours."
Baji only slurps on the noodles. "Let's get started, I'll be helpin' you out, too. Not to brag but I'm smart enough to repeat a grade, y'know."
"Nah, that doesn't mean your smart. Opposite, actually," Chifuyu snickers, his nose crumples and his eyes narrow to concave slits in a cheeky grin.
"You talk too much."
"That, I do." Chifuyu cuts off the conversation and draws a thin notebook from his bag. The cover was filled with doodles that resembled a familiar design of graffiti and the two-lined "s", obviously drawn out of mid-lecture boredom. He flips through the pages back and fourth, seemingly unsure of where he wrote whatever he was looking for. An abstract lightbulb appears above his head as he finally found a page with actual words and not signature rehearsals.
Chifuyu reads out the writings, "Here it says that we have to turn in a..." he struggles to decipher his own penmanship. Chifuyu narrows his eyes into slits in an attempt to enhance his vision as the words became less and less looking like a part of the Japanese lexicon and more and more like another of his chicken coop doodles.
Baji snatches the notebook when Chifuyu could not seem to understand whatever he wrote with his two hands. With a sigh, he says, "It says here to turn in a short reaction paper on the short story we were asked to read. What kind of moron doesn't understand his own handwriting?"
With the same nose-scrunched expression, Chifuyu gives the older boy a thumbs up like how pub owners congratulate their drunken employees. "You're the best, Baji-san!"
Baji raises a fist for a fist bump, to which Chifuyu obliges. "Of course I am! That's because I don't make my mom cry."
"You make your mom cry all the time."
"Last time was a year ago, stop twistin' shit!" Baji chides. "All right, to more pressing matters—see, I used the mature term 'matters' because that's cool—what was this short story your notebook was sayin'? Can't remember any."
"Same here," Chifuyu says while chewing yakisoba. "But I guess this helps."
Chifuyu hands Baji a sticky note with bullet points, the header says "short story: points of discussion" with a very dragged penmanship, obviously drowsily written and painstakingly done so. "You're a genius, Chifuyu," Baji commends his delinquent junior.
"Death meaning, life meaning, flower, season, yakisoba," Baji then reads the content of the sticky note out loud. "You sure these aren't just random gibberish you wrote? Were you under the influence of," he whispers, pretending to look around and making it seem like he was checking if no one was within hearing range, "Cartoons?"
Chifuyu could only break into a giggle. "No, both. What I can deduce—I also used the word 'deduce' which is both cool, mature, and manly; chivalrous, if you may—from this is that the short story was about... death... life... flowers... spring... not yakisoba, maybe I wrote that on a sleepy whim, that I'm sure of. The handwriting seems so sloppy."
"You just enumarated what's written."
"Okay, then maybe," Chifuyu stresses the third word. "Maybe it was about life and death on different seasons... because, you know, flowers bloom according to season."
"Holy mother of god, Chifuyu, you are a genius," Baji says while giving Chifuyu a little round of applause. "Now let's get this paper started, they're gonna get schooled by Toman division one."
"Sure they are. Also we have guide questions. One, elaborate death on a non-literal sense. Two, elaborate your personal idea of death. Either of the two would work apparently."
Baji opens his laptop and connects to the neighborhood internet network. The strongest coverage was in that playground where many kids and guardians flock during the day. They chose to work on the homework at night since no one was around, meaning the internet speed would be miles faster compared to when many houseparents are passing their time looking after their snot-nosed brats.
While hitting the keys and making do with whatever lighting they had from a rundown lamppost near their table, Baji reads out what he was typing on the search query, “Death... personal... idea... Then search. We could just write what’s written on here, Chifuyu! You can’t rack brains if there’s none to begin with.”
“But ain’t that grounds for... I forgot the name but when you copy from other texts, ain’t that against the law or somethin’?”
“We’re minors, the worst we can get is a sleepover in juvie!” Baji answers with a sonorous gush of laughter.
Chifuyu snaps his fingers, denoting that he had recalled something, “I remember now! It says if we copy anythin’ outta our minds, that’s called plagiarism—not sure with the pronunciation, who gives a fuck about that—and the school takes it seriously, I’m thinkin’. First offense is getting held back a semester.”
“How’d you know this? You actually read theose handbooks they give out?!”
“I read them when I can’t sleep. They’re so dead boring that they work better than any other sleepin’ meds or whatever.”
With a sigh, Baji says, “Guess we don’t have a choice then, agh. We just answer one of these guide thingamajigs?”
“Yeah. I’d go for the second question since it’s just requirin’ a personal idea,” Chifuyu responds while jotting down the guide question on a clean sheet of paper. “And yours, Baji-san?”
“Then I do the second question, too. So we match!” Baji half-exclaims with a cheeky beam yet still evidently lackadaisical over the homework.
“Okay, okay. So we’re explainin’ our personal idea of death, right?”
Baji thinks for a moment and flicks Chifuyu’s temple, “Yeah, that’s what you said earlier! Damn, you’re kinda bad at this school thing.”
“Right back at ya.”
The two boys just shared a stream of hearty laughter that sounded so synced to the point that one may conclude that it connected them both. Baji was the one to break off the giggle to actually start their homework. “Seriously, goin’ all poetic on middle schoolers, that’s torture,” he says in exasperation. “Alrighty then, how do we explain our personal idea of death?”
Chifuyu pauses his pencil from whatever he was writing to brainstorm. “Okay, okay. Baji-san, how do you want to die?” he asks his senior. “Maybe just write it there then we turn in our literal personal ideas of dyin’. Just to get this over with, jeez.”
Baji thinks for a second. “Death is for worms. I’m gonna live forever!”
Chifuyu, for the nth time that night, laughs a little. “Sure you do,” he genuinely says, no hint of teasing was heard from his tone because he, too, would’ve loved it if Baji was gonna live forever.
“You’re a darn good liar, Baji-san,” he says with a vision so blurry yet he can feel how Baji’s cold body weighed on his arms. “My name as your last word, ain’t that a wee bit unfair?”