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“Maki-chan…”
You hear your name, the soft song-like tone she always uses when she thinks you’re asleep. In truth, you’re never asleep. At least, not in her presence. You’re always up and at it, watching over her where you can—because if you don’t pay attention, nobody else will.
But you understand why she thinks you’re asleep this time. You’ve never been on a train before. Neither of you have, but it’s not the joyous experience that Nariko gets to go through. No, you have to keep on guard. You need to keep watch. Earlier, she begged for the seat by the aisle, so she could wave the attendant over for snacks later on—you didn’t tell her that she’s thinking of airplanes, and not the local train that travels to one of the closest areas out of Kofu.
So, you’re sitting near the window, and you’ve pressed the side of your head towards the glass. Like this, you can still watch over Nariko without staring at her. She always laughs when she catches your bright red eyes on her; she says you’re the least intimidating predator animal she’s ever seen. (You don’t really know what to make of the sentiment. The other kids in your class think you look scary and mean. They don’t like that you stick around Nariko all the time, who is your opposite—pleasant and kind.)
If nothing else, Nariko has never been scared of you. You’re her protector—not officially or anything—but that’s why you’ve followed her to Nirasaki.
“Hey, Maki-chan.” Her voice calls to you again, less sing-songy. She shifts in her seat, placing both of her hands on your shoulder and shaking you. “Wakey wakey! We’re pulling up to the stop.”
You already know that, but you pretend to stir. You turn your head, meet her gaze, and rub your eyes.
Nariko giggles, not even sparing you a moment to wake properly before she’s tugging at your sleeve and hopping up to her feet. The train is only now just slowing, so you struggle to find your balance immediately. Your dear friend grabs both of your arms, pulling you close as she laughs and drags you out into the aisle.
“Nari, wait,” you say, wiggling one of your arms free of her hold. You bury your hand into the pocket of your pants, locating the two tickets you’ll need to return home after this. (Well, home, as in the orphanage. You don’t really have a home.)
(Nariko calls it home enough, and that’s rubbed off on you throughout the years.)
Unfortunately, Nariko doesn’t wait for you. She tugs you towards the exit to the train, making way too much noise for a train full of quiet adults that are also traveling. You shush her, adding to the noise, which only serves to make her laugh harder. It makes you feel nervous, but the smile on her face makes it a little easier to bear.
“Nari,” you repeat.
You don’t do nicknames unless it’s her. You think it’s because you say her name so often that you’ve started shortening it to make it easier on yourself. She’s never paying attention, always caught up in whatever moment that she’s wrapped up in. You’re always observing, close enough for her hand to be interlinked in yours but just outside of her bubble to not know what is making her smile all the time.
Nariko is leading you through a crowd. The two of you walk further and further away from the center of stores that are lined up outside of the station. The tickets were a hefty price on their own, but she begged for something to eat. You scolded her for not eating breakfast this morning, but you know it’s not entirely her fault—the facility doesn’t prepare enough food for the children that stay at the orphanage, even though that’s their job to provide basic necessities. Sometimes, you hoard food so that she can have something to eat, but she’s a bit of a picky eater.
So, even though you were peeved at her, you did end up buying her a soft pretzel.
“Isn’t everything so pretty here?” Nariko asks—her acknowledgement that she did hear you after all.
You’re not really looking around, so you can’t say for sure. It’s strange, now that she says it. You’re always observing everything in your immediate vicinity, but the scenery never registers in your head. As always, you’re watching out for yourself and for Nariko, but have you ever thought about it on a deeper level?
You can’t really say for sure.
“I don’t know,” you admit. “I haven’t been paying attention.”
Nariko scoffs playfully, rolling her eyes as she glances back. “You’re never paying attention, Makizushi-chan.”
Similarly, Nariko is the only person that calls you a nickname of her own.
“Says you?”
You raise an eyebrow at her, which causes her to fall into another giggling fit. As she laughs, the hand holding her pretzel draws closer to your face, and she’s not paying attention because her eyes are shut tight and tears are forming at the corners.
Your stomach grumbles. You didn’t buy anything for yourself, and you gave the plate of food you fought for to Airi, who is three years younger than you and didn’t get dinner the night before.
The pretzel is warm—you feel the remnants of heat radiating onto your face, the smell of the fresh salt wafting into your nose.
And, well… she’s not paying attention. You have a point to prove, anyway.
“Wh— Maki-chan!”
The pretzel is warm. You sigh contentedly, lifting the back of your wrist to your mouth to keep any part of your bite from falling out. Nariko squawks like a bird, releasing your hand and shrieking as if you pushed her in the street. She’s jumping up and down as if they’re on the playground, her eyes welling up in tears.
“Don’t be a crybaby,” you tell her, pouting the way you always do after you swallow. “I didn’t even take a big bite. It’s your fault for not paying attention.”
Your point is made, but Nariko still looks sad.
You feel bad. You don’t like the way guilt makes you feel. It hurts in the same way that it hurts when other girls shove you in the hallway and pretend that it’s an accident. It hurts in the same way it does when Miss Umiko scolds you for what the younger children in the orphanage do.
Except maybe it’s worse. It feels worse, making your best friend feel sad.
So you stop walking, place a hand on her shoulder. You don’t know how to say sorry, so instead, you tell her: “There’s still a lot of your pretzel left. I won’t bite any more.”
Nariko sniffles. “Maki-chan…”
And then she hugs you, wailing and sobbing. You want to say she’s acting like a baby, the same way that Umiko tells you when you can’t hold back your own tears. It doesn’t matter that you’re only nine. You’re one of the oldest, you’re one of the most mature, you can’t cry over things that are childish.
Nariko doesn’t have that same responsibility. She’s your age, but she cries so hard that it sounds like she can’t breathe sometimes. Umiko yells at her all the same, but she doesn’t expect much of her. She doesn’t talk back anyway, and she doesn’t argue. She just cries.
You used to hate her for it, but all you can think now is that your best friend is too pretty to be crying.
Your arms wrap around her back, but you’re not good at hugs. She clings onto you like the koalas that she’s obsessed with, and you think of the koala charm you stole from the store the other day so she could hang it on her backpack. The koala hugs the bamboo like its life depends on it.
Eventually, Nariko begins to calm down. As her crying quiets down, you realize that you’re both still standing in the middle of the walkway. All the adults ignore the two of you, and you decide it’s wiser to not dare to look up and risk meeting any of their eyes. If someone realizes that the two of you are far from home, you’ll get in trouble.
“Y-You—” Nariko hiccups, pulling away from you. “You can have a-another bite.”
She extends her pretzel out towards you, and when she pouts, her tear-stained cheeks puff out.
You don’t really understand. “Why?”
“B-Because you bought it,” she explains. “I shouldn’t have cried. Y-You’re hungry too.”
You don’t like when Nariko apologizes for crying. A teacher once told her that crying is okay, and you want to be a good friend. If she’s apologizing to you for crying, you aren’t being a good friend.
But your stomach is grumbling.
“Just… promise you aren’t mad at me, okay?”
Nariko’s eyes well up with another round of tears. You weren’t mad at her—annoyed, maybe, but you get annoyed at everything. There’s something wrong with you for that, because no matter what you do, you can’t be kind the same way she does.
But you try. You always try.
“I promise.”
And then you lean in to take a small bite of her pretzel.
Nariko leans over your shoulder.
It’s the middle of the night, and the two of you have climbed up onto the top bunk that she’s had claimed since she learned how to use the ladder. It took you longer to learn how to climb it, and she laughed every time you shrieked as you went higher, but eventually, you got the hang of it. And then you playfully tossed her pillow onto the floor, so she had to climb down and get it.
(You got scared she was going to cry that night, and that you both were going to get in trouble with Umiko. When you looked back at her, though, she stuck her tongue out at you and blew raspberry, and then you yelled again because her spit got all over your face.)
“What’s that?” she asks, shining her dim flashlight under the covers.
You’re fourteen. It’s the middle of summer, and you have to start thinking about high school soon.
“It’s this thing from Hope’s Peak Academy,” you explain, making a vague gesture with your hand for her to stay quiet.
Nariko’s eyes widen and she gasps—quietly, like you reminded her to. “No way. Are you getting scouted?”
Which, admittedly, makes you laugh. “No,” you say. “I’m not talented enough for that.”
And that stumps her. “But there’s a tuition fee if you don’t get scouted. The… Reserve Course, or whatever it is.” Nariko’s eyebrows furrow. “They aren’t going to pay for it.”
She looks harder at the papers, but they’re difficult to read in the dark. You skipped dinner to mull over the printed words under the lamp by one of the desks, trying to make sense of the paperwork.
“It’s… some kind of lottery. They’re looking into something about artificial talent, but I don’t really care about any of it.” You set the papers down on the bed, meeting her eyes. “But I kind of want to attend. If I graduate, we’ll be set for life.”
It’s everything you guys have dreamed of and more. When you both turn eighteen, you’ll leave this hellhole and live somewhere else. You won’t have to soothe your best friend because she didn’t get enough to eat. She can have two soft pretzels instead of one.
(And maybe, if she wants, they don’t have to settle for a bunk bed.)
You were expecting Nariko to be excited. Hope’s Peak Academy guarantees success if you graduate—and if you’re successful, then you don’t have to worry about Nariko ever crying again.
But she only looks at you, something doubtful in her eyes. “But that’ll be three years without you, Maki. We’re far from Tokyo.”
She doesn’t use her nickname for you much anymore. Maybe she’s just gotten older. Your classmates think it’s weird when Nariko throws her arms around you, because she deserves better than you. She’s never cared about it, and so you don’t care either. (Except you kind of do.)
(You’re not kind like Nariko. This is the least you can do, instead.)
“Only three years,” you promise her. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Nariko doesn’t smile. She looks like she’s about to cry.
You don’t want her to cry. She’ll wake the other kids in the room, and you don’t want either of you to get in trouble.
Plus, she’s too pretty to cry.
So you place your hands on top of hers, brushing your thumbs over her wrists. “Can you trust me, Nari?”
You still use her nickname. You never stopped using her nickname. You never had the guts to make it sound cute the way she did to your name when you were younger; you’ve never been warm enough for that. Nariko loves her nickname all the same. The only time you’ve ever seen her angry is when the other kids at school try to call her Nari instead of Nariko.
The question makes her tears appear all the same. You never stop making her cry. You’re a horrible friend.
“I always do,” Nariko says, sniffling. “I’m sorry for crying.”
You lean in, pressing your forehead against hers. “I’m not guaranteed to be selected,” you tell her, the only way you figure will soothe her for now. “I’m not even sure if I’ll apply. But I’ll tell you if I do, okay?”
Nariko noticeably relaxes, closing her eyes as she takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
You know she believes you.
(In truth, you submitted your application yesterday. You won’t know if you’ve been selected until late-winter, but you don’t tell her this. You don’t want her to cry anymore.)
(And you promise yourself that this is the last time you’ll be a bad friend.)