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Out of all the women in Seisho, not a single one had a god damn clue as to how there suddenly happened to be two Hoshimi Junnas in the dorms that morning.
Well… maybe Nana had something of an idea. Maybe something had interfered in the repeat performance — a glitch in the machine, so to speak. Maybe this was just a vivid dream. Or maybe her mind had just drifted a bit too much to the self-indulgent side when thinking about her ideal stage made manifest for the, uh, nth time.
These were just theories, though. She couldn’t know any of it for certain. As she pondered the possibilities, she watched on in silence the two identical girls in her room agonized over other matters.
“What are we supposed to say during roll call!?” Junna said, clutching her head in her hands and pacing around the room. “We can’t provide a good explanation to them. We can’t provide a good explanation to ourselves, for goodness’ sake.”
“She only checks for our presence on the outside of the dorm,” Junna replied to Junna, sitting on her — or, perhaps, their? — bed, jotting down notes in a notebook. “When she makes her rounds, I could very easily just be somewhere else for the time being–”
“But that only delays the inevitable!” Junna retorted, turning back to look at Junna, making exaggerated gestures as she spoke. “Logistically, getting to school will be difficult if we can’t be seen. Even if we do, we’ll still need to be fed and the like, and our meal plan only covers a single individual — and, though it would be convenient for that, too, to be doubled, I hardly believe that they’ll be willing to accommodate for Hoshimi Junna coming around for lunch twice.”
“One of us could very easily stay behind during the school day, while the other goes about our regular class schedule and duties. There’d be no absence record to worry about. The former would, of course, have to handle lunch by herself, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, until…”
“The long-term, right? Would that our monthly budget be doubled, too, but unfortunately, we still only have but the single income stream, and that includes food and all other daily necessities. We’d have to cut down on entertainment spending in order to cover toiletries, medications…” she said, counting the items on her fingers.
“Coins, for the laundry, too. We’ll be wearing double the clothes every day, and that means we’ll need to do extra batches.”
“Right, clothes! How could I have missed that?”
For all of the difficulties of the situation, Nana was quite amused to have her gaze ping-pong back and forth and watch what very might well be an inside look at Junna’s inner dialogue made manifest.
“Um, well…” she spoke up, interrupting the two. “How are you going to decide who goes to school and who stays home tomorrow?”
“Good question,” Junna replied, clasping her hands together and, after a beat, gazing at Junna. “It might be hard for us to decide on one of us to defer to the other in such a lopsided deal if we truly are identical in every way.”
She sighed.
“But, then, what are we going to do? Play rock-paper-scissors?” she said, perhaps incredulously.
“No; that’s stupidly arbitrary,” said Junna.
“What if I just picked for you two?” Nana commented.
“Oh, sure!”
“Oh, sure!”
After accidentally speaking in unison, the two Junnas turned to stare at each other.
“...You know, if anything, the only thing I’m surprised about is that that didn’t happen sooner.”
“Likewise.”
“Well, how about… you?” she said, pointing to the Junna on her right. “You can be the one that goes to school tomorrow.”
The Junna on her left clicked her tongue and shot an annoyed glance to the side.
“...Well, I guess that settles things,” Junna said, putting down her pen and shutting her notebook.
Junna looked down at her.
“You know, it still somehow feels weird to see you reading all of my personal notes, even if you do probably have all the memories of writing them yourself.”
“Well, we’re going to have to get used to not just feeling that, but feeling that often.”
“It’s certainly not going to be easy.”
“Well, it is said that life is as tedious as a twice-told tale.”
Junna smirked back at her.
“...‘Vexing the ear of a drowsy man,’” she finished. “William Shakespeare.”
For as much as she would love to simply just watch on in silence as the two engaged in their banter, Nana couldn’t help but giggle.
Day had not yet turned to night, but it sure as hell was about to. The sun setting in the distance painted the sky a warm orange, serving as ample illumination for the pages of Junna’s notebook. Its bright reflection rippled in the river beneath the bridge she stood upon. Perhaps if the waters were a bit calmer, it’d shine just as brilliantly as the real thing.
She heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
“You know, I figured I’d find you here.”
The Junna on the bridge pulled her lips back, not yet looking to the side.
“Am I supposed to be surprised, Hoshimi Junna?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it was exactly my intention to catch you off guard or anything,” she replied, leaning on the handrail next to her. “Moreso that I wanted to make it clear I wasn’t just running here by chance.”
“It’s not like it’s easy to just walk over to the Seisho school yard and sit down on the grass whenever I need to air out my thoughts.”
“I suppose not.”
“You sure it’s fine to be out here like this? Someone might see the two of us and ask questions.”
“I’ll… take my chances,” she replied. “It’s not like twins are a phenomenon unknown to science.”
Junna continued to write in her notebook in silence.
“You’ve been writing in that book a lot,” Junna continued.
“Why don’t you do the same, then? We’re the same person. Surely we must have similar thoughts running through our heads.”
“Well, it’s a bit difficult. That notebook’s the one I usually use as my diary.”
“We have other notebooks.”
“Well… I guess it doesn’t really feel the same if it’s some other book, is it?”
“...That’s a fair enough reason,” Junna said, sandwiching her pen between the notebook’s pages. “We are creatures of habit.”
“‘We’ being all mankind, or ‘we’ being just us two Hoshimi Junnas?”
“Well, either statement is true, isn’t it?”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Junna looked up from her book, meeting her glance at Junna.
“So, why are you here? Felt I was a bit quiet, and needed someone to open up to?”
“Hm, well, it’s not really that…” she replied, looking down at the rippling river water below her. “Moreso… I suppose you have your book to put down all your thoughts and ideas. It’s kind of an extension of you, right? Of us. The mind is fickle, fleeting; yet, the written word is forever.”
“In the grand arithmetic of life, it’s hard to do a little long division without a bit of scrap paper.”
“Yeah. So, well… I don’t have that, so…”
“Oh, er… I’m sorry.”
“No, no, you don’t need to apologize. If you gave it to me, I’d only be depriving you of it, no?”
“I could always just start jotting down my ideas in another book, too.”
“But other books don’t have those months of memories in them,” she said, pointing to the already well-used pages of the journal. “Without that hindsight, we’d be blind to the future.”
“...I guess it’s a bit narcissistic that I just thought ‘I wish people could hit the nail on the head as often as you do,’ since you’re just… me.”
“No, no, I understand that sentiment. It’s nice to be able to bounce off your ideas to someone who just… understands.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Guilty as charged, Hoshimi Junna,” she replied, offering a weary smile. “I don’t have that as an extension of me right now,” she said, pointing at the book. “But I guess… maybe I thought, ‘well, I have you.’”
Junna blushed.
“The way you phrased that is a little…”
“Cheesy, I know.”
“That wasn’t exactly the word that I was thinking of, Hoshimi Junna.”
“Maybe some things just seem cheesier when you’re looking at them from the inside out.”
“Maybe.”
“What about what you’ve written in your notebook? Do you think that’s cheesy?”
“Well, erm… it’s all unorganized stream-of-consciousness right now. It’d probably look a little weird to someone who didn’t write it…”
“We are the same person, no?”
“Well, yes, but the train of thought I’ve been following… I simply figure the moment this day started as a fork in the road, so to speak. We are who we are, and we were who we were, but now… we’re taking different actions, experiencing different things. It won’t be long until the sheer chaos of life compounds onto itself enough to shape us into markedly different people. Maybe with different directions.”
“That is true, and yet, we cannot deny our similarities in origin. We are made of the same earth — something one might say about all people, but in our case, it’s magnitudes more direct. We learn, we grow, we change — yet, at the same time, we forget, we stagnate, we stay the same. That’s the paradox of life, isn’t it?”
“It’s not as much of a paradox as both of us being Hoshimi Junna,” she said, tucking her notebook under her arm and turning to look at Junna.
“I suppose not,” she replied, a bit amused. “The world’s full of those kinds of paradoxes, isn’t it?”
“...‘I must be cruel, only to be kind.’”
“That is, well, another paradox, I suppose—”
“Starlight.”
Junna’s mouth was agape.
“In this rendition of Starlight this year… If we do intend to keep up this ruse indefinitely, only one of us will be able to stand upon that stage. What, then, of the other? What of her dreams? All the time she spent vying to make it into Seisho? On that stage? One will be spared of the work and the hardship, yet, in doing so, be deprived of the joy of performing. What kind of Hoshimi Junna would that make us? What about the Hoshimi Junna that moves on into the future?”
“...Then… we’ll end this ‘ruse,’” Junna replied, not hesitating to speak.
Junna was startled.
“...Are you certain? Just like that, on a dime?”
“Well, maybe it is something that requires much thought,” Junna admitted. “But we have time. And you don’t have to shoulder the burden alone, Hoshimi Junna. Simply, when you put it with that kind of dichotomy, well… it’s awfully easy for me to choose, isn’t it? We can figure out the details later and all, but…”
In the blink of an eye, she pulled Junna in by her collar and drew her into a kiss.
She was, of course, startled.
“W-what was that?” she said, pulling back, flustered.
“I… don’t know,” she said, her face turned bright red, staring into the riverbank. “Maybe… I wanted to do something on a dime, too, like you? To act on base feelings? I… can’t put it into words quite yet, but… I, erm…”
She lowered her head in apology.
“Sorry, I really shouldn’t have done that, I…”
“...N-no, it’s okay. I think… I can understand where that came from.”
She offered a smile of reassurance.
“Just this one time, you don’t have to put it into words, Hoshimi Junna,” she continued.
Junna looked up at her, still a bit rosy-cheeked.
“Um, since when did I smile like that? It kind of reminds me of…”
“...We are not telling Nana.”
“Oh, absolutely not.”