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“Why is everyone watching this play without complaining? It really upsets me. I don’t get it. It’s like the world is filled with monsters, monsters that only I don’t understand. I’m all alone, living in a world of monsters.”
All of a sudden, Ranpo is transported to the classrooms he’s frequented daily since he was a child.
He fidgets with the sleeves of his shirt as the old guy he just met earlier today stands before him. The reproaches of his teachers echo in his mind, telling him to not be disrespectful.
“Edogawa Ranpo, for the last time! You keep your hands still when listening to somebody. You show them proper respect, young man!”
“I’m going to be scolded because I did something wrong, right? If so, then it’d actually make me feel a little better. It’s an easy concept to grasp.” Ranpo makes the sort of comment to Fukuzawa that would have kept him inside for recess in elementary school.
Only, the scolding never comes. Fukuzawa instead asks him about his parents. The sisters had only ever mentioned them once.
“Just imagine if your parents could see the way you are throwing away your talent! They are rolling in their graves, Ranpo!”
Fukuzawa even brings up Ranpo’s intellect, but not to take a further jab at him. It is not brought up as the only reason anybody puts up with him, or the only way he can be of worth.
Shortly after being orphaned, Ranpo was taken in by a convent of nuns in Yokohama. It was here that he lived from the age of seven onwards, attending the local Catholic school there. Was it a stroke of luck? Ranpo still isn’t sure.
Sure, he was provided with three meals a day, but he had to remain still and recite words to a God he still didn’t quite understand before eating them. The convent provided him with a bedroom, one that the nuns often berated him for not keeping neat and organized.
Ranpo got to continue his education, but there was no comparison between this and his previous school. The school of his very early childhood had treated him…well, like normal. Both Ranpo’s parents and his teachers did their best to not single out Ranpo for his intellect, but also did not try to suppress his keen skills and quick wit. Within a year of his attendance at Saint Ibaraki’s, the teachers and nuns had placed him on a pedestal. But this was a precarious pedestal, threatening to give way anytime Ranpo did something they did not seem to like. One day he would be praised by his teachers for flying through the multiplication assignment given to the class, then yelled at the next day for blurting out the answers to the teacher’s questions to the class.
Middle school only seemed to worsen these dynamics. As he got older, Ranpo became more curious about the world and felt unafraid to speak his mind. No longer was he blurting out answers to teacher’s queries and taking the subsequent scolding like a timid little child. Now, he openly challenged his teachers whenever he found a question to be stupid or a particular lesson to seem useless. At least once a week it seemed Ranpo landed himself in front of Saint Ibaraki’s stern, no-nonsense principal, Mr. Wilder. Almost every one of his reprimands ended with the same annoyed, exasperated phrase,
“Boy, if it wasn’t for your intellect…”
It was a phrase Ranpo never understood. Why the hell did it seem the only thing keeping him from expulsion was his intellect, yet also the reason why his enrollment at the school was precarious in the first place?
And to tell you the truth, Ranpo wasn’t doing these things to be rude. That time he went too far ahead in history class and asked his teacher why the class was paced so slowly for him, he truly meant it. Why was the class moving at an excruciatingly slow pace, but seemingly only for Ranpo?
In fact, why did it seem Ranpo was the only one bothered by the inconsistencies and lack of purpose in these classes and lessons? Why did it seem Ranpo was the only one bothered by the computers teacher giving them a specific, “correct” way of placing their fingers on a keyboard and typing? Why did his math teacher get annoyed when he asked her how he would use geometry out in the real world?
While these started off as genuine questions, Ranpo couldn’t help but feel hardened against St. Ibaraki’s—no, scratch that, the world—for never understanding him. Even at home, the nuns frequently scolded him for “talking back” when in trouble, when all Ranpo was doing was simply explaining why he did something! Sister Mary asked him “What on Earth were you thinking?” one day after calling out a priest during his homily at school mass that day—of course Ranpo was going to then explain all the logical fallacies he found in the man’s sermon! Sister Mary had asked for it, after all.
And this was all Ranpo ever really knew. Sure, his parents and previous school had been wonderful to him, but as time went on, Ranpo began to see them as simple anomalies. Angels in a world otherwise filled with monsters. Although he kept up this hardened persona that quickly garnered him the label of “problem child,” Ranpo could not help but wonder on occasion if the world was right about him.
These occasions would come some nights as he lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling after a particularly troublesome day at school. Or sometimes they came when he excused himself to the bathroom after being reprimanded by the nuns or teachers at school, sobbing in secret about why it seemed no one could understand him.
This is the state Ranpo finds himself rapidly approaching as the bodyguard he met just hours ago stands before him, yelling at him for recklessly putting himself in danger for the sake of this case. As Ranpo holds his cheek, stunned at the man’s anger, he feels stupid. Stupid for ever believing that maybe this mysterious old man would be different from the other adults in his life. Stupid for ever believing that maybe this man cared, that he—
“You’re free to flaunt your gift, and you can challenge your opponents with it! But you have to stop gambling with your life! You’re still just a kid!”
His life? His very existence? Fukuzawa wasn’t mad that Ranpo risked his life, nearly costing him a valuable tool in the form of his intellect, but because Ranpo was still a kid?
In the folds of Fukuzawa’s yukata, in the yellow scarf that comforted him with the smell of tea leaves, Ranpo felt the universe warm up for the first time. His world was still cold and dark, but with a door cracked open, letting some light gently stream in.
As the tears left his now trembling body, Ranpo felt seven years of pain he did not even know he had experienced drain out of him. Fukuzawa patted the young man’s head, not fully knowing yet just how much he means to this orphan. He doesn’t yet know that the tears now staining his yukata have cemented himself as Ranpo’s home.