“Listen up!” Homeroom teacher, Miss Takahashi—an unforgiving lady in her thirties—called out to the room. She clapped once, and all eyes were on her. “Your attention! The day’s already started and class is in session. I don’t want to hear any more noise.”
The hubbub of the students died down. One or two towards the back continued their conversations, but fell silent under the weight of her scathing glare.
“Honestly.” She shook her head. “You lot are third-years now. There’s no room for messing around anymore!”
A general murmur of dissent like the buzz of a disgruntled beehive emanated from around the room. They’d all heard that same shtick from teachers before. It was as though they all shared a collective script they had no choice but to read off year after year.
“You all have your college entrance exams coming up soon; these practice exams matter!” She was holding a stack of papers. “I’ve graded them—” an audible groan passed through the class— “and I’ll be handing them out now.”
Most received their papers quietly. A few let their heads hit the desk, some others made small triumphant fist pumps.
“None of you, bar a few, scored spectacularly,” she eyed them with a degree of disdain. A few avoided making eye contact. “There is one I’d congratulate,” she looked to the back right corner of the class, focusing in on one individual in particular, “if only he were even listening to me!”
Senketsu High School. Nothing remarkable by most accounts. The school was still fairly modern, though the ashes of tradition still lingered.
The concrete and steel buildings themselves were standard and functional, reeking of that 1950’s utilitarian design. Whilst the exterior had been continually touched up every decade or so since the place’s inception, the classrooms and hallways remained entirely indistinct from any other self-respecting school in the province, or the country at large. Nothing remarkable, save for one thing only: Senketsu was the top-ranked academic high school in the entire Chiba Prefecture, a rating they had earned very recently, mainly as a result of two students’ efforts. The first, as it happened, was currently rocking back in his chair, borderline asleep, in that classroom on the third floor.
He was short and fairly scrawny. The jacket of his uniform hung loose off one shoulder, the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and his tie was loosened to the point where it seemed he hadn’t even tried. His head was tilted back, breathing heavily with the sound of someone who had never caught a good night’s sleep—be that through choice or otherwise—in the past few years. A long, untidy mop of black hair fell down the back of his chair.
“Rinkaku Harigane!” [鎍 麟閣]
The shrill voice cut the boy’s slumber short.
Rin grunted, head snapping forwards. Wincing from the whiplash, he gingerly rubbed the back of his neck and made an effort to sit upright. The front two feet of his chair hit the floor.
All his classmates cast expecting glares in his direction. Fantastic. Some rolled their eyes. This wasn’t exactly out-of-character; a fair few had shared class with him before, and knew this well.
“This is the last time I’ll tell you.” Takahashi narrowed her eyes, distaste etched into the wrinkles on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth. Rin’s presence had probably contributed to them. “Just because you think that you’re too good for this school, doesn’t mean you get a pass to laze around in class.”
Rin neither responded nor apologised, glowering at the woman. The poor boy did not look like he had slept a wink in the past fortnight.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t recommend you to be excluded from this school, given your record of blatant disrespect,” she continued despite his lack of answer, striding up the isle towards his desk. “Look at you, sitting there so sure of yourself, as if nothing could ever hurt you. It’d really put a thorn in the side of your college application if you were expelled, wouldn’t it? Not to mention any other plans you have for your future.”
Some exchanged worried glances; others, hushed whispers. Many of the staff had since given up trying to discipline Rinkaku Harigane. The boy’s obstinacy and sheer force of will to do as he wanted whenever he wanted, which usually resulted in absolutely nothing most of the time, seemingly knew no bounds. Sakuya Takahashi [高橋 咲夜], however, still had a bone to pick. Given it was past a full term into the school year, it’d stand to reason to say that she’d had enough of the lackadaisical attitude.
“Go on, Harigane,” Takahashi goaded him, standing in front of his desk now, folding her arms over her chest like the avatar of righteousness. “Give me a reason.”
Rin stared her down with a gaze darker the circles under his eyes, and flourished the paper on his desk. “Good enough for you?”
One-hundred percent, stated the reluctant red marking on the standardised test. His tone, defiant; victory, assured.
Takahashi’s nostrils flared. Turning on her heel and strode back to the front of the room.
“You in particular may not need to worry about getting into college, but if you think test scores along are going to guarantee you lifelong success, Harigane—” she let out a mirthless chuckle— “I really do not know what to say to you.”
She paused, then sighed. It evidently wasn’t worth the effort.
“You’ll come to terms with reality soon enough, I hope. For you, though, it’ll be quite the rude awakening.”
Choosing to ignore him for the time being, she snapped her fingers and, without missing the beat, the rest of the classes’ attention was on her for the entire rest of the period. No-one dared to attract her wrath for the rest of the period, unless they wanted to become collateral damage.
That little incident now over, Rin slumped back in his chair. His glare remained fixed on the woman, a grumpy child that had been refused a second helping of dessert. Rin finally straightened his tie a little. He didn’t want to have to sit through another verbal tirade by the latest teacher that’d labelled him “scum of the earth” simply by virtue of existing. He wished they’d all just give it a rest: all these tests, all these college entrance exams. None of them meant anything. He wished they’d let him get on with what he really wanted to do. High school was holding him back. Rin reached into his bag and procured a notebook. Clicking open his pen, he brushed a few locks of hair behind one ear and rubbed the corner of his right eye a little. He looked from the page the world beyond the glass prison, then back at the page again.
What he had drawn had started with simple tesseracts: cubes within cubes, the simplest example of four-dimensional geometry. What had started with just that, he had then taken onto a whole new level. He flicked through the next few pages, each displaying complicated schematics and diagrams showing more and more objects viewed through the lens of the fourth spatial dimension.
He looked out of the window once more. The school’s playing field, a small solace of green, backed onto the rest of Chiba’s bustling central metropolis: a cacophony of grey, a canvas of an intricately designed cityscape. Cars packed the roads like flecks of paint, each deliberately put into its place. Rin closed his eyes. It was a question that had always bothered him. Create a point, that’s zero dimensions. There is no direction to go. Draw a line; one dimension. A square, two. A cube, and three. What he couldn’t understand was why it stopped there. Any attempt he had made to visualise the fourth dimension culminated in disappointment. Rin would look away from his diagrams, and be confronted with the depressing, constraining reality in which he was forced to live.
What would the world look like in four dimensions? Was it even possible to know? Rin doubted his mind would ever rest, until he had reached some form of closure.
So, he kept sketching. His architectural schematics were the one thing that could bring him peace. His academic work was a chore. It wasn’t difficult, nor had it ever been. He had competed in college-level competitions in mathematics, architecture and physics. He could see it all so clearly, picture everything perfectly. Why other people couldn’t, why they found it all so baffling, baffled Rin even more so. Miss Takahashi’s voice faded to a high-pitched drone in the background. He likened it to the presence of a mosquito; annoying, yes, but you could ignore it. Rin focused in on the scratching of his pen, until all noise faded away until he was left with only the workings of his mind.
“Harigane!”
A voice, familiar enough—unfortunately—to rouse Rin’s consciousness from the depths of whatever dimension it had faded into as he slept on his desk.
“Harigane!”
Maybe—Rin thought—if he pretended he couldn’t hear, the boy would give up and leave.
“Harigane! Wake up, damn you!”
Someone rapped him sharply on the back head with a ruler. Rin yelped and sprang upright. Peeling the notebook page that had glued itself to his cheek with drool, Rin noticed he had filled in another ten whole pages. A lot more time had passed than he’d been aware of. Everyone else chatting animatedly to their neighbour, or to another close by: class in remission.
“What the hell was that for?” Rin massaged the back of his head. While he slouched to a near-unhealthy extent. The newcomer stood properly, with cropped black hair and a distinct parting. The irritation in the return glare was returned tenfold.
Rin caught sight of him now, and made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan, one that ended up sounding like neither. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want, Bingo?”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” The boy whacked Rin over the head again. “My name isn’t Bingo!”
“I don’t care.”
“You never have.”
“What do you want? I’m busy.”
“With what?” Dentaku Bango [番号 電卓] cast a scathing glare at Rin’s diagrams. “More idle doodling?”
“Won’t waste my time trying to explain,” Rin yawned. “Come back to me when you’ve figured out what the Kobayashi–Hitchin correspondence is.”
“It relates the—”
“Not an invitation!” Rin interrupted, dragging his palm down his cheek. “If I wanted someone to tell me what I already know, I’d be talking to the mirror!”
“Do you ever intend on paying anyone any respect at all?”
“So far, no-one deserves it. Oh, speaking of—” Rin dived down and fished an additional wad of papers from his bag. “I read your proof of the Ramanujan Conjecture—”
Bango’s surprise quickly gave way to a glare. “You stole it.”
“Stealing implies it’s worth a damn.” Rin filed through the paper, revealing reams upon reams of angry red scrawl. “It’s dreadful. Did you get a toddler to write this? I went through at least ten ink cartridges before I was halfway through.”
“You critiqued it?”
Rin barked a laugh. “Hardly. I was about to tear my hair out after you messed up your Dirichlet series for the nth time; ended up designing a tensegrity skyscraper instead, see?”
Flicking to about halfway through, Rin opened the booklet and shoved it in Bango’s face. The impressive schematic was scrawled in scratchy red pen over the carefully derived formulae.
“I got bored after that.” Rin tore out the page and tossed the rest of the proof to the floor. Crumpling the page into a ball, he tossed it at Bango, hitting the boy square in the forehead. “Want my autograph? That design will be worth millions. Thank me later.”
Resisting the urge to throttle him, Bango spied Rin’s test results. Revenge. He snatched them up and held them aloft. Rin screeched, grappling in vain. Bango grabbed the boy’s forehead and held him away at arm’s length. Rin clawed like a savage dog.
“One-hundred percent?” Bango looked away from the paper. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” Rin repeated, slapping Bango’s hand away from his face. “What’s it to you?”
“So you do care.”
“Jealous, Bongo? Scored another ninety-six this time?”
If Rin was any better at being this smug, he could list it on his job application.
Bango looked seconds away from an aneurysm. “Of course not,” he lied, tucking his own results further into his back pocket. “I can’t afford to have you slip up before the real thing. I came to check up on the state of my competition.”
“Competition?” Rin stuck his tongue out. “You really think I’m competing with you? Please.” He waved a dismissive hand. “We’re not even playing the same game.”
“Whatever.” Bango ended their delightful conversation there, slapping Rin’s results back down onto the table like a set of divorce papers. He picked up his briefcase and rubbished proof and turned away. “One more thing,” he added. “The National Maths Championships are next month. I’ll see you there. Then, we’ll all see who’s better.”
Rin, having exhausted all other ways to demonstrate his exasperation, rolled his eyes and let his head fall onto his desk as though he were an ostrich burying it in sand.
“I—” He banged his forehead against his desk after every word. “Do. Not. Care. Go. Away.”
Rin lay face down, hoping that by the time he lifted his head back up, Bango would have gone.
Bango clicked his teeth in frustration. Slinging his briefcase over his shoulder, he strode away, cutting right through the crowds of milling students loitering by the classroom door.
Rin lifted his head off the desk to find a glorious absence of Dentaku Bango, as well as most of the other students. He checked his watch. The lunch hour had begun. There was no wonder he was the only one left. The National Mathematics Championships rang a bell: one of the most well-regarded challenges in the entire country, watched by millions, with even more hopeful students desperate to take part. The event was heavily televised, and was what led to Rin being offered a scholarship to study at the University of Tokyo when he won it the previous year.
He had received his invitation to take part this year in his mailbox this morning, as it so happened. Rin gazed out the window, events from earlier that day coming into mind. Those thoughts stuck, not because of the letter, but because of something else.
Morning had broken and, unfortunately for Rin, the eight o’clock school deadline awaited him like a waterfall at the end of the river of time, the precipice beyond being the school day. It drained him of any possible energy he had managed to muster over the course of the day, before it spat him back out again at the bottom. It’s not like there wasn’t much he could do about it. Everyone else was in the same position as him, after all—though that didn’t make it any more bearable. Rin didn’t care what everyone else had to go through. All that mattered were his own tribulations.
The sun had shone bright through his windows, straight through curtains he hadn’t remembered to close, and awoke him from sleep about two hours after he had finally dropped off. You couldn’t exactly blame him for working deep into the night. The boy’s mind was teeming with so many ideas, sleep proved to be just another obstacle to furthering his understanding. Nevertheless, he begrudgingly rose and prepared himself for the day, stepping outside only to be greeted with a wall of cold autumnal air.
The street he lived on was a fair walk from the train station, but Rin found he didn’t mind too much. Sure, it had been a pain at first, but it ended up just being something he grew used to over time. It was like finding a hole in your sock: annoying, but it wouldn’t exactly kill you.
There had been no-one else at home. Whether he was cognisant of it or not, he was quite lucky to live in a comfortable suburban villa that could easily house three, and yet only contained the one.
There was no-one for Rin to say goodbye to when he opened the door—not that he was the kind to do that anyway. Besides, that wasn’t the point.
Stepping out of the door, his foot knocked against something. Looking down, Rin found a stack of mail waiting for him on the doormat. Though in a bit of a hurry to get to school, punctuality had never been in his priority. Among the assorted items, there was a letter addressed to him as well as a package. The rest were for his father, not that they’d ever get opened. The letter contained the invitation for the National Mathematics Championship. Rin skimmed it, before shoving it hastily into his satchel.
The box was much harder to open. It had his name and address scrawled messily onto the top as though done by permanent marker, and was bound by an elaborately pattered tape that looked more like a decorative measure. Fearing how late he’d be if he stayed to try and make sense of it all, Rin threw it, too, into his bag and journeyed onwards into the cold.
No less than ten minutes later, Rin was headed down a side-street overlooking a park nearby—a short cut he had learned that avoided most of the early morning commuters walking to his same station, one that allowed him to be first in line for the train. He walked with both hands buried in his pockets, his bag swinging from his shoulders as he looked down at the ground in front of him, deep in thought. So much so, in fact, that he barely noticed when a particular voice called out from behind him.
“Ahem. Excuse me, young man!”
Rin stopped and looked back. An old gentleman, dressed in a large grey overcoat over a two-piece suit, was looking at him from the bench he had walked by. He had been so lost in his own head, thinking about that, this was the first time he’d properly noticed someone on his way.
“What do you want?” He sneered.
“I’m very sorry to take up your time,” the old man began, fixing the cap on his head of wispy grey hair. He smiled up at Rin. “I dropped my wallet as I was trying to take out some money…”
Rin did a slight double take. He’d never met this man before, yet the shape of his face, the curvature of the nose and cheekbones: he could’ve sworn the man bore resemblance to his father. The old man coughed and pointed to the ground where, sure enough, a thick wallet lay on the cold stone pavement.
“These joints aren’t what they used to be,” the man rambled, chuckling in spite of himself. “Would you be so kind as to pick it up for me? There’s a good lad.”
“Why the hell would I do that? You’re out of your mind, old man.” Rin arched one eyebrow. He didn’t have the time or the bother to deal with this, not this early in the morning. Turning and walking away, he flipped the man off over his shoulder. “Do it yourself, lazy geezer.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” the old man began muttering to himself. His eyes remained fixed on Rin as he grew steadily further away. He didn’t sound offended in the least. No. It sounded more like he was pitying him above all else. “Now, that wasn’t kind, was it?”
By now, Rin was too far out of earshot to hear, let alone care.
The old man shook his head, and the wallet on the ground suddenly disappeared—as though it had never been there. Never taking his gaze from Rin’s back, he removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes glowing eerily white.
“Those that treat others poorly will have that very same poor treatment done unto them,” he decreed in a solemn tone. He shook his head again, replacing the sunglasses back over his eyes. “Actions have consequence, Rinkaku Harigane. If you don’t change your path, your fate won’t be a pleasant one.”
Rin should’ve seen the warning signs when the discarded mirror on the street smashed under his heel. Not so. He’d never been superstitious. In his eyes, religion, the supernatural, or mention of anything immaterial was just a waste of time—something people came up with to control and indoctrinate the masses which had, for the most part, been a resounding success. Perhaps he was just so self-absorbed in his own sphere of self-interest, that he didn’t even spot the cat, black as two shadows, darting across his path with a vile hiss as he walked underneath the ladder of the window cleaner up above.
All he could bear to think about was what was in that box.
Rin had no time for silly ideas of gathering misfortune. He had a train to catch.
As expected, the platform was already heaving with people. Students, dressed in their uniforms, stood alongside members of the workforce, dressed in their own. A faceless crowd, a standard for Japanese Conformity, the likes of which would be replicated at metro stations nationwide. Rin suppressed a yawn with the back of one hand, looking down at his wrist. 7:49, it read. There was no doubt about it. He was definitely going to be a little late for homeroom. A shame, but nothing he hadn’t managed to shrug off before. Besides, he had been distracted on his way. It wasn’t his fault.
A hand tapped him on the shoulder, and someone called his name. The familiar voice broke through his morning daze. Rin turned to see a girl, similar height, facing him with a smile.
Dressed in the same uniform, hers was a lot tidier and more stylised than Rin’s, accentuated with little frills along the collars and sleeves of her shirt, as though she had tailored them herself. Her blond hair was out of place, but was well-taken care of. Rin had only just crawled out of bed before shovelling some egg-fried rice down his throat, and so looked like he had been dragged backwards through a hedge. This girl even wore a hairpin: a long silver detail, shaped like a knitting needle.
Comparing the two, it would be difficult to find any reason why she’d be reaching out to him at all.
“Good morning!” She greeted him, bowing as much as the bustling crowd around her would allow.
Rin grunted halfheartedly. Neither his face nor his eyes showed any sign of emotion beyond that fatigue and carelessness that comes with an unhealthy relationship with one’s bed. Kinuka Amibari, his mind reminded itself. Why did she still bother?
“Are you alright?” Kinuka tilted her head to the side, pursing her lips. “Are you getting enough sleep, Rin? You look tired.” She pointed to the shadows under his eyes. The train pulled into view, detracting from Rin’s attention. As her hand drew closer, his stare hardened. The train doors opened, and he slapped her hand away.
“Give it a rest,” Rin sighed. He choked on his words a little, before— “Ugh, forget it. I have nothing left to say to you, Amibari.”
The next she knew, Rinkaku Harigane had already disappeared among the sea of commuters. She stood alone on the platform, her hand stretched out towards him, perhaps in the hope that he would look back and take it. He didn’t, not looking back even once.
Kinuka Amibari had just turned eighteen this morning. She had woken up alone, with no-one at home to celebrate it with her. Now she stood here on the station platform, even more alone. Not even the commuters cared enough to stay and so much as wish her well. Why would they, after all? To them, she was just some girl, no-one of importance.
The automated train-side announcer made her final call, and Kinuka realised she was in imminent danger of being left behind. She took off down the platform at a run, desperate to board the train before the doors closed.
She hoped he would’ve remembered from all those years ago, if not recently. What had she done wrong? She had hoped for a look in her direction; some nice wishes, perhaps; a smile, even, just like the ones that used to make her smile. Was that really too much to ask?
Throwing herself into the first open carriage, Kinuka shook her head to snap herself out of it, but nothing she did could stop the thin film of tears from blurring her vision. She screwed her eyes shut. Hopefully, by the time she opened them again, she’d be able to see clearly once more.
