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Calls of "Morning!" ring out, sleepy and bright, as Tsukino Usagi - on time for once - tries to sneak through to her desk. It's a double edged sword, the paradox of punctuality, that means getting somewhere early makes her stick out just as much as showing up late. Bathed in crisp sunshine, the classroom is mostly full, overflowing with casual chatter and muted laughter. Her satchel hiding her face, she creeps along the back wall, desperately trying to avoid hearing -
“Oh, wow! Tsukino’s here early!”
“Seriously? Should someone check the clocks are right?”
And the laughter is now focused on her. Usagi grimaces and chuckles awkwardly, scratching the back of her neck. As much as she loves being the centre of attention, there’s nothing quite like the mockery of her peers to make her wish she had never bothered. Taking it in her stride, she offers a few awkward waves, a tribute to her adoring fans, and the conversation slowly bubbles back to last night’s television special, tomorrow’s chat show, so-and-so’s new pet, and someone’s loud neighbours. Usagi sighs, relieved.
Unfortunately, she’s not all the way through the woods - or the classroom - yet, and Umino Gurio, fresh-faced and dewey eyed from early morning classroom duty, pushes his glasses closer to his face, and says, “It’s very like you to finally manage to be early on the last day of school.”
“Come on, Umino,” Usagi whines, turning to face him. “Can’t you at least cut me some slack?”
Umino smiles lopsidedly. “Just trying to make sure you learn good habits for adulthood.”
Rolling her eyes, Usagi bites back her scolding. She thinks, Umino should be smart enough to know that mean things like this make people want to to be worse, out of spite! And I’m going to be a wonderful adult anyway! After all, I’m on the verge of becoming a super-glamorous and cool high school student!
But when she makes it to her desk, she hesitates before pulling the chair back. The metal frame is cold, the wooden back is soft and hard in the way that something that's almost-natural-but-maybe-plastic often is, and shadows stain the wood grey where the window pane thrusts itself forward in the sunlight. Her grip tightens, and, as the chair scrapes across the laminate floor, she thinks of Chibiusa. Not on a particularly personal level; she doesn't wonder how she is or dwell on her day. Usagi thinks, instead, about how small she is. About how she goes to Usagi's old school, carries Usagi's old bag, uses Usagi's old pencil cases, and about how tiny all of those feel in Usagi's hands. When she's picked her up from clubs, the chairs and desks have almost seemed lifted from a dollhouse. In only a few years, Usagi has outgrown her everyday, and now struggles to relate to her old normal.
She feels all grown up (most of the time), which is why the chair makes her hesitate. As she slips into the gap between it and her desk, she wonders, will she look back on this place in years with that same feeling, like she's looking at a shed skin and trying to work out how she once wore it comfortably. Her high school uniform isn't much different to the skirt that sits on knees now, to the shirt clinging to her shoulders, but how quickly will she outgrow it? How long until her reflection in the window is a foreign memory of a time long gone?
Fear of the future and the past mingle together as the trees in the courtyard bow to the wind. Usagi rests her face against her fist as she daydreams, and she leans into it until her cheeks are numb and her eyelids flicker lazily, torn between slow blinks to keep her awake and strong blinks to keep her from crying. Not that she’s sad. Or, at least, she doesn’t think she’s sad. She can’t tell; not completely. Her head feels empty but her thoughts feel thick. She's bad at detangling the words that swirl in there somewhere, too far away to catch but close enough to frustrate her, and she bites her lip. She's better at feeling than thinking, but whatever she's feeling is weird . That strange place between good and bad, or maybe strange because it's good and bad at the same time.
She’s about to be a (super glamorous and cool) high school student. The fact sits heavy on her stomach and light on her heart.
Umino pulls her out of her thoughts by leaning against her desk. His already frosted glasses are thicker with fog, and he chokes out sadly, “Oh, Usagi, what are you going to do without me? Who’s going to impart you with flawless morals and impeccable life lessons?”
“Don’t you think you’re thinking too much of yourself, Umino?” Osaka Naru says, her bag over her shoulder and a frown dancing between her brows and lips, her glare directed at the boy blocking the passage to her own seat. “She’s best friends with Mizuno Ami, you know.” She greets Usagi kindly, before turning sternly back to Umino. “Besides, your life lessons aren’t as good as you’re making them out to be.”
“It’s okay, Naru,” Usagi feels like she has to de-escalate the situation, before Umino starts crying. “I think it’s just his way of saying he’s going to miss me.”
“I am,” Umino bawls. Usagi winces as she notices a few of their classmates turn to watch. “I’m going to miss you so much-”
Naru groans. “Okay, that’s enough,” she says, gripping onto Umino’s arm. “Back to your seat. You can cry during the ceremony. Sorry about this, Usagi.”
Usagi smiles, shaking her head, trying to show she doesn’t mind. Umino isn’t making her feel bad, or anything, but there is something sticking sharply into her chest. She thinks, maybe she wasn’t as good a friend to Umino as she should have been, now he’s not moving up to Juban High with her. They’d only really become friends by accident, so Usagi had never really had to put a lot of work into the friendship. Now, she thinks maybe she should have.
Not that she would have had much time, between being Sailor Moon and high school entrance exams. Honestly, she thinks, as she looks sadly at the back of Naru’s head, she hasn’t had much chance to be a good friend to Naru either lately. Is that where this sad feeling is coming from? This feeling of possibility, mingling with regret?
Really, she owes a lot to Umino. Not any of the things he thinks, not manners or etiquette or anything, but wasn’t it Umino who introduced her to Ami? Wasn’t it Umino who clarified the rumours about the haunted school bus and the superpowered transfer student? How long would it have taken her to find Rei or Makoto without him? Is that something she can thank him for?
The whole situation feels weird. It’s not like she hasn’t graduated before. Is high school really so different from middle school?
She thinks back to the dollhouse-like furniture Chibiusa seems so comfortable in. She thinks about work experience, about career counselling, about the university entrance exams Ami is already preparing for, about how, today, as cherry blossoms knock on the window and the days stretch long and cold into rosy pink evenings, is the closest to adulthood she has ever been.
Yes. High school really is that different.
A student further down the class complains about how his sister’s graduation ceremony had the whole class wear flower brooches. “Our parents are going to think she’s better than me,” he groans. “I just always pictured something grander.”
“Have you never been to a graduation before? It’s like this every year, how are you only just realising what it’s going to look like?” his friend teases from two desks over.
Usagi kicks her feet and pretends she isn’t eavesdropping. It occurs to her now that she had never really pictured her middle school graduation, either. Her wedding reception she could describe in a heartbeat, the adult clothes she can’t wait to grow into, the makeup styles she’s going to experiment with when her face is longer and more angular, the jewellery she’s going to buy when she has an income outside of her allowance. She’s always felt that she had planned for and dreamt of so much of her future. Now, as they wait for the class to fill, for one final choir rehearsal before they perform to their friends, their family, their soon-to-be-former classmates, Usagi realises most of her fantasies are for after she’s reached adulthood, and not about the paths she takes to get there.
It isn’t that Usagi is chasing after adulthood. While she’s excited to grow up, she loves living in the moment more. Every Usagi is the best Usagi she can possibly be in that second, even if that’s going to cause problems for the Usagi ten minutes away. Maybe it’s just that Usagi is so devoted to being in, living in, feeling that present as it courses around her, churning back and forth, that she’s failed to ever consider that the present does, of course, end.
Right now, Usagi is standing at the point where the present becomes the past. Cherry blossoms wither and die and are crushed into the ground, shredded and dirty. Snow melts. Wind drops. Everything ends and begins again, and it’s ending and beginning outside Usagi’s classroom window, and it’s ending and beginning inside Usagi’s classroom as they line up, ready to head to the gym and take their seats on stage as the graduating class, and it’s ending and beginning inside Usagi as she says goodbye to the present that has treated her so kindly, in order to say hello to a new present, which will soon feel as normal as this to her.
It’s terrifying to think that a few months from now, being a high school student will mean nothing. Being a high school student will be familiar and boring and something Usagi almost resents for the amount of stress it puts on her. It’s miserable to think that, three years from now, Usagi will be getting ready to say goodbye again, to another school she’s sure she’ll grow to love, to a class she’s sure she will regret not being closer to, not treating better, to friends she hasn’t made yet and is already mourning.
The constant cyclical nature of the world is horrifying to her, in that moment, sat facing the crowd, ignoring where her father is waving to her from. But they stand for Hotaru no Hikari and she only stumbles over the words a little bit, and it reminds her that, before they land, cherry blossoms dance so gracefully, so elegantly, like they have rehearsed the world’s most gentle ballet in the breeze. That before they fall, they sway, practising for that spiralling pas de deux that each and every petal will get to perform with that quivering flurry that lifts them higher, takes them further, than they could if they danced alone. Usagi is not the only person changing, and changing isn’t bad. When cherry blossom season ends, when she and her friends roll up their picnic blankets and swill the last dregs of lemonade from plastic cups, they will feel sad, for a moment. But the warmth that permeates living will bubble in their chests, and that sadness will be sunny and gentle and kind, and peel away with ease rather than sticking, as they think about organising next year’s trip.
Everything is always ending and beginning. Usagi shakes her trepidation away and waves to her parents. She shakes hands with the principal and doesn’t trip on her way there. After the ceremony, she hugs Naru the way she always has, and she throws her arms around Ami’s shoulders, and she and Makoto yell their goodbyes to the school as loud as they can, and her parents offer to take them for ice cream. The world is young and old all at once, the sun is shining despite the air being tinged with a bitter cold, and melancholy is allowed to wrap itself gently around the excitement, the relief, and the joy that is draped over Usagi’s heart. Life is a series of contradictions weaving together until they create a truth that is simultaneously fragile and unbreakable. So Usagi is allowed to laugh while she cries, and Naru is allowed to hold her in an embrace so tight it hurts, and Ami’s shoulders are allowed to shake a little while they support Usagi’s weight. In fact, this is the way it works, Usagi is pretty sure. This is how things are meant to be.
The only thing she knows for certain about the next few steps of her path is that three years from now, she’ll have to say goodbye again, just like this. But this was already so different from her elementary school graduation, so she can’t know what she will actually be saying goodbye to when that time comes. And that’s the exciting part, isn’t it? That she doesn’t know for sure what kind of person she will be when she graduates high school, what kind of things she will have done, the people she will have met, the ways she will have loved them - and without those things to bid farewell to, the graduation means nothing. So Usagi will keep doing what she always does, living in the moment, making every second count, finding fun in whatever she can and ignoring the things she doesn’t find that fun in.
Feeling upset that something has ended means that it was good, after all. Usagi is going to fill her future with as much good as she can, and maybe, at her next graduation, she won’t feel conflicted about crying. Maybe next time, she’ll be so overcome with all the love and joy she’s found that she won’t be able to keep it in.
Whatever kind of Usagi she’ll be, cherry blossoms will bloom next spring. Everything changes, and everything stays the same. Three years from now, Usagi will look up at the exact same sky, and she hopes she’ll feel as proud of herself as she does in this moment, her ears ringing with her friends’ laughter, her cheeks red from smiling, her heart full with love and joy and happiness and sadness all at once. She takes Ami’s hand in one of her own, and Makoto’s in the other, and she says a private thank you, to herself, the all the Usagis she’s been, and all the Usagis she has yet to become.