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Kujo was — something.
There were too many and too few words in the world to describe “what” he was. It was disorienting; it was as if he was feeling everything and nothing at the same time. He knew he had to be feeling, he had already felt so many things in his life, had perceived so many things, touched them, carried them in his mind like heavy, useless luggage, but right now, all he could do was merely acknowledge the weight of his body standing on top of the rooftop and watch the images whir around in front of him.
Kujo stood there, still looking at the human-sized drawing which towered over his shadow, insulting the small silhouette of his. He could not hear the screams of the students down the roof, the sounds of Aoki’s hands clapping were still echoing inside his skull — if the students were screaming at all, that was. Was he able to hear? The silence was hurting Kujo’s ears more than Hanada’s footsteps approaching him.
Kujo may have been disconsolate. Discouraged. Angry, helpless… sad? He wanted to run. Every muscle was yearning to be anywhere but on top of this shitty roof, but Kujo didn’t know where else to go. There was nobody and nowhere waiting to welcome him without asking what he could offer first and the only place without asphyxiating expectations was now out of reach; it had fallen from the school’s highest place and had cracked its head open like a chestnut. Kujo would have scoffed about this, if his lungs weren’t being tied up.
»Is everything okay?«
Hanada had finally reached the top. He was panting behind him, and Kujo assumed he immediately noticed the lack of Aoki at the barrier. It was an obvious reaction, but Kujo had never before heard his teacher scream as loud as he did. They never dared to admit it, but Hanada was a small man, after all. A small man with big love. They never understood him.
The dreadful cry that left Hanada's mouth shuddered Kujo’s shoulders, making him unmanageably heavier and fall to his knees.
The floor was hard and rocky. Every single pebble was piercing through his skin like needles desperately trying to fix a hole in a piece of fabric. The pain spread out fast and Kujo felt the last bit of control over himself getting lost in the winds of his own breath. Before him stood tall the drawing of the stretched-out man with his arms extended out far to the sky, but just like Kujo, he was weak, one with the floor.
»Aoki! Kujo!«
Hanada called his name, but what was Kujo supposed to do? What could he do? He could do nothing. In fact, he didn’t want to do anything, even if Hanada begged on his own knees. Tears Kujo didn’t know his body could produce were flowing down his cheeks, the man disappeared, as they blurred his vision. They crawled their way through his eyelids down to the floor, piercing through the membranes of his eye like acid, melting his pupil away.
While Kujo unsuccessfully tried to rub away the flow with his sleeves, Hanada kept whispering Aoki’s name, hands folded together, calling out to someone, body see-sawing to the front and back. Kujo wanted to ask him if he was trying to start a ritual to awaken him again as if there was hope, but he didn’t want to be reminded again that Aoki had gone to never return.
Death. It was what Aoki would have wanted, Kujo told himself to comfort his aching chest and his bleeding shins. Aoki would have wanted Kujo to cry like a little boy about the little scratch on his knees, would have ridiculed him for his infant behavior and pointed his spiky finger at him just so Kujo would have been able to hate this Aoki, his evil guts, and wish him real fucking hell this way.
However, Kujo had so many wishes left, it was bruising him blue, purple, green, all the colors that he could think of. Weren't people supposed to go to heaven, when they died? No, go to hell? Make hell on earth, Aoki had promised, but why was it, that he wasn't here, then? He should have been here, prancing like a joker with his messed-up hair that would grow back to the old chaos that it was, which, frankly, wasn't better, but Kujo would still be able to skip class and cut it for him.
So that they could have stayed the same, at least. That Aoki and Kujo could bet on who could spit the furthest on the schoolyard, get the Ghost to measure it out for them, but before Kujo can reminisce, he notices, fuck, he's dead too.
»Kujo, let’s go«, Hanada proposed. His soft voice interrupted the thousands that were screaming and torturing Kujo’s scalp with their buzzing vibrations like a feather at a war site.
But even if silence fell over his tumultuous thoughts, Kujo felt a distinctive want to stay – a child-like curiosity that he had presumed extinct a long time ago. Like a parasite inside his brain, it steered him to the barrier. He stood up and walked to the fence without a word, mindlessly grabbed the cold metal bars and felt the freezing shock run through his fingers. How long had Aoki stood here? He must have not went home, he had never in his life been early to class, Kujo didn't want to think that he would schedule his own death in the morning. It must have been frosty hours standing here, alone, but how beautiful it was up here.
They had only looked far beyond the schoolyard — stare at the buildings being built in the horizon, and even if he had never said it out loud, because why would he destroy the mood like that, Kujo bathed in the imaginations of being grown up, working in offices and cooking coffee like there was no tomorrow. A shameful imagination for all the members of the turf— and Kujo assumed not many shared his ambition— that type of peaceful, careless life. A stupid life, but still a fruitful one. Aoki could have been a godfather, could have been opening up a beer on a Saturday with him, but now he would stay a student forever. One of the most miserable students at that, always at the bottom of the list.
Kujo looked down. To his demise, Aoki was already gone. He had wished to see him one last time, weirdly enough, laying there with all the red around him. All he had left was a puddle and a trail of his blood presenting him the direction he had taken to after-life.
Kujo tried to wipe away his tears again, but his digits felt like lifeless popsicles against his eyelids. He wasn’t crying in a conventional way, he was sure of it; there was no inherent sorrow, no sobs — just frustration resulting from his inability to understand why this was happening. Why couldn’t he understand? This had all happened because he had tried to understand and learn something, but no lesson had or could have ever prepared him for this. Not that he had ever listened to one with real interest, even after he had tried, but Kujo secretly wished he had.
»Kujo.«
Hanada sighed and joined the boy once more, putting his delicate fingers on the metal bars, feeling their rough surface. Kujo could hear quiet cackling, the outer metal layer of the barrier was crumbling. As he glanced down, he noticed his teacher wasn’t looking in the same direction as Kujo was — the place where Aoki’s lifeless body had been lying — but forwards.
Hanada chafed his hand against his thigh to get rid of the metal crumbs, before he smiled at the confused Kujo and continued to stare into the distance. He didn't look intimidating with his omniscient smirk, which was even more-so confusing, because this tiny man had been screaming his soul out a minute ago.
»Kujo, do you see those flower petals here and there?«, he asked.
When Kujo looked to the front, small, almost unnoticeable white dots were flying around. They were forming groups in the sky, moving along with the winds, twirling collectively. When he glanced to his right, he saw flower petals which had also gathered on the floor, right next to Aoki’s monument, dancing from one side to the other.
»Which do you think are more free?«
Kujo switched his perspective again to see the petals up in the sky once more. His eyes followed the movement of each petal. Some were fast, some slower — though at last, they would all reach the floor. »They all don’t seem free to me, Sensei«, Kujo answered honestly and leaned forwards, shivering at the thought that Aoki’s last breath was meeting his somewhere.
Hanada continued to speak, unbothered by Kujo's indifference, »Ask yourself, aren’t those petals just withered flowers as well? But look at us, we still see so much life in them. Were they more alive when they were blooming at the tree? Dead, when they withered and flew away, much further where their tree was?«
Kujo squinted his eyes, processing Hanada’s questions. His own thoughts were fleeing away from him, tranquility struck the tumult in his warhead like a peace-arrow. This must be sympathy — a rarity on this shitty-ass dump— and it was warm. So warm, in fact, that Kujo thought his guts were churning inside-out the way his heart expanded in his breath.
»They may have ended up on the floor, but who is at fault here? Are you going to fault the petals? The wind? The floor? Freedom is constructive.«
The petals got caught in the red patch on the schoolyard and got drenched in the burgundy colour, when they finally fell.
»Is Aoki free, Sensei?«, Kujo asked, as he watched white turn into red. Hanada harrumphed and audibly began to think of an answer. He hummed, even more calmer than before. How many dead students had Hanada seen to be able to say words like these? Did it only take one? Or had it already been one hundred? Kujo had heard stories everywhere of students jumping out of windows, always with a sense of mockery about the reasons behind it, but he would rather die himself than admit the meaninglessness of Aoki's death, let alone his life. School stress, peer pressure, if they hadn't been victims of it, then Kujo wouldn't be able to call this a coup de grâce of the suffering. He'd heard that expression somewhere.
»Who knows«, Hanada answered. »Was he ever unfree?«
This answer didn’t soothe Kujo as much as he thought it would. Aoki had thought of school as hell. He had escaped hell, and was therefore free of hell. If he was free now, he had to be unfree before. There was nothing easier than explaining that, nothing easier to grasp than this. Hell, if Kujo understood it, it must really be an easy reality.
»You’d know the answer better than I do. After all, you knew him better than anyone else.«
Kujo wanted to shrug. The boy with gelled back hair, missing eyebrows — that was not the Aoki he knew or had known, not the Aoki he remembered or wanted to remember, that was. Thus, maybe Hanada was wrong, like many adults in their life were; Kujo didn’t know Aoki, because Aoki had changed, because he had clapped to outdo him, because Aoki was dead now.
But if Hanada was right, and Hanada was the only exception he could make to be right, Kujo had always known Aoki, because Aoki was a complex character, because Aoki had been his one and only true friend, because they loved each other.
When he realized Hanada probably knew all of this, something sank inside him, painting his guts an unnatural color, urging him to puke out all the years of speaking big, but empty words, pressuring him to rip off the callus from his palm after having clapped as triumphantly as he had. He had lost something he'd never known was his – loyalty and friendship, the trust behind it. Of course Aoki would have died some day, but Kujo had never bothered to calculate when. Before graduation? After graduation? He wouldn't have taken the final exam. The last time someone asked him about Pythagoras he thought they meant the snake. Kujo was laughing back then, but he wasn't laughing now. Fuck, Kujo had always known Aoki had nothing to live up to.
It was a harsh truth, but everyone in their lives had been harsh to them. Once the first one had given up, the task of getting them back up was too big, shit, when they died, it would benefit the school's average performance.
Kujo would always think that students killing themselves was a coward thing to do, but to the turf, the idea of suicide was only a matter of speeding things up. The "Clapping-Game" had just been a disguise to hide their malicious self-depreciation of the sterile boys they were, unable to bear fruit with their exams. There was no cooking book to a successful life, but if there was, the teachers hadn't been exactly keen on teaching them how to get the ingredients or at least read the recipe: At the end of each year, they had finished with pieces of paper insuring deflation. They should have known— no, in all likelihood, they have always known. From the very first happy clap to the very last one. Ha, ha, ha. A joke! Life was a joke and Aoki got the last laughter out of it. He had skipped class and skipped the most important exam, Aoki was a genius.
»In life, having nothing to start with is sometimes more of a loss than returning what has already happened. Making the choice to not choose can be just as hurtful, Kujo. This is what we call ›lost potential‹. Wasted seeds. You can’t water what hasn’t been planted.«
Every test, every lesson, every after-school activity. Those had been things that hadn’t mattered to Kujo until he had decided otherwise. He cheated on those tests, failed them unanimously, skipped classes to live in the moment.
To both of them, school had been just that: a fragile moment — a turf. Something you were told to savor, but never would: who knew how many days were left until you’d miss it, they’d laugh, but nobody expected to miss the same shitty days. And so they clapped. Each year, again and again, just to remind themselves about the absence of meaning. Warn us, they did, stop us, they didn't dare.
School had never brought Kujo anywhere in his lifetime — neither up or down. His hands were steady and had always clung to the barrier without slipping, his back was always arched towards the sky, legs stretched out. He had clapped three times, four times, six times, seven times, but Kujo was a liar. He had never been happy enough to sing the song. Bluffing, he won and won again with nothing at cost, with nothing to have gathered as a winner except a title.
Kujo had been in school for so long, he didn’t know if he could change at all. He still felt like the same kid that ran through corridors with blood on his knees, so bashfully proud of himself to not have cried, and his ashy lungs were still reminding him of the same unbothered student that skipped class to smoke cigarettes in the storage room, ignoring every health and life concern. This consistency had calmed him down, stabilized him in his insecurity. Kujo had found safety in the unchanging conditions of his living situations, because he knew what was expected of him - nothing - and what he could offer the world - also nothing.
But like a tree yearning for the sun, growing so dangerously large that its leaves covered everyone else’s, Aoki had wanted to become more, have more. There were roots Aoki wanted to honor, made out of memories and traditions, made out of punches and pulled out hair. He wanted to leave a title, a mark into the school history books, though to his demise, there would be no sun to shine on him and Aoki would not even discover what fruit he would have borne. There was blood on the marble toilet floors, blood on the schoolyard, blood on Kujo’s hands, but none to tell stories about - just shameful memories to keep hidden away.
»Aoki and you, you used to think the same, didn’t you?«, Hanada asked.
Kujo may have been confused. Blue for the older times. He had felt so empty and indifferent for something like an eternity that now felt like just a single moment, he was drowning in sensations he couldn’t explain. Kujo had forgotten feel and feel deliberately. Memories he hadn’t recalled since the start of high school were arising from the deep waters of Kujo’s mind like a tsunami, drowning him in them. Those memories hadn’t held any meaning for Kujo, but now Aoki had given him a meaning he had never desired, never dreamt to desire at all.
Hanada stepped away from the block, taking Kujo’s silence as a sign to leave him alone. »You can choose to not water a bud and be happy with it. But right now, Kujo, I just hope you don’t regret it.«
Regret.
Kujo was regretful.
It had been fun to be in a gang. Why would it not have been fun? There was only the rules of hierarchy and Kujo usually found himself on top of it. So of course, he'd never grown sick of it and despite never finding the same fun in it, ever, he became leader again and again, all thanks to the same shitty indifference that said, fuck it, might as well try to beat the high-score in clapping at the veranda. Kujo hadn't fearful of death, more so less fearful somebody else would take his position.
Why couldn’t he have been fearful? No, why was it that Kujo was still not fearing death? The students under him were crying, weeping – confronted by the brevity of life at a place that promised them to arrange a long future, and they were holding each other, encouraging themselves to not end up the same.
How could so many of them continue living a life after finding out how short it could be?
Kujo regretted the time he could have figured all of that out. He wanted to grieve, but there was nothing. He had acquired nothing and yet in the last moment, lost everything. There was no ideal Kujo who worked a job, no adult Kujo with a family – Kujo had never drawn that kind of picture onto his school desk, only himself and the world around him, the moment was easier to live in rather than an unpromising future. Maybe he should have painted a happy life of two men, arm in arm, in ugly-ass suits and gelled hair, with lots and lots of women, grinning at the viewer. Then maybe things would have turned out differently.
»Sensei«, Kujo murmured, and he was glad it had prevented his teacher from leaving the rooftop, because his dry throat had only allowed a whisper of a voice. Hanada, who had been looking to the floor as he walked, raised his head. One final time, a smile formed on his wrinkly face.
»Yes, Kujo?«
»If Aoki hadn’t been at this school - hadn’t been with us, with me. Do you think he would have bloomed?«
Hanada sighed, approaching Kujo. Out of reflex, Kujo cowered down and Hanada put his hand on the teenager's head.
There would be no answer to Kujo’s question, at least not one coming out of Hanada’s mouth, except just a weak, »I'm sorry.«
They shared a long moment together, Hanada and Kujo, breathing into each other’s faces, surrendering to each other’s presence and letting time pass by. They let winds rise to their backs and draw a path on their spines.
Kujo watched his teacher blink once or twice, but before he could force out another word, a flower petal adhered at his lip. Using the slight second of distraction, Hanada disappeared.
Kujo was on the rooftop of his school. Tomorrow would be any other school day. Or maybe not. Maybe it would be the nth day before the final exam. Students would gather in the class and talk about the scary student who had sprung from the rooftop yesterday, and they would close the entrance to the veranda again. It would be spring, autumn would come and winter follow right after. Kujo would graduate, be asked what he was going to do, find something, work, die some time after that. It was going to be hell and Kujo would live in it.
And no, fucking hell, it certainly wouldn’t be easy, but maybe it was never supposed to be easy. The flower petal between his fingers would disappear somewhere in the accumulated mass, but Aoki would remain in his head. As the boy who lived, as the only boy to succeed in his will.
Kujo was alone and would remain as that, but he was alive. The days were going to be long, short, inexperienced – and overwhelmingly so – but he had never known otherwise, he could feel it.
wandering around
day turns into night
i go into the night
slowly over into the horizon
the hand of god
is bleeding pink
the feeling of candy
being licked clean