Emi Sekiyama [B5-C4] Everybody Makes Them
This one is of Keisuke sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen with an acoustic guitar, obviously having just been tuning it, but now glaring down at the floor, where Emi’s dog is clearly howling.
The caption on the back: ‘Pigpen has great taste in music’
- They pooled together all their money for this, neither one knowing how much it would cost and the only thing mattering more than discreetness being time. Emi, after a two hour scavenger quest for loose change that morning, finds herself walking into the only clinic still open at four o’clock in the afternoon carrying 7,321 yen in mostly coins in a large purse, trying to look as innocent as possible. The receptionist automatically stares at her suspiciously.
“Good afternoon, how can I help you?”
Her school uniform is crammed into her bag and her hair is up - the plan was to look as old as possible, but she’s still in school shoes, holding a backpack and she’s fourteen - it’s not possible to look too much older than you are at that age and she kind of knows that.
Her knees are knocking in fear. Her face is sweaty and flushed. She wishes Keisuke was here instead of outside, but that would just make things even worse and she can’t tell her girl friends, she really just can’t. It would be humiliating.
More humiliating.
And even the white walls and the smell of drugs she’s inhaling in jagged breaths are making her feel sick.
“I… I’d like to talk to a doctor, please?”
“Okay.” The receptionist, seeming to have confirmed to herself that Emi is in the right place and not just about to pull some prank, pulls a large piece of paper with a lot of very small writing on it out of a desk drawer, attaches it to a clipboard with a pen and pushes the entire ensemble into her hands. “Fill this out, please, and the doctor will see you once you’re done.”
Shakily, Emi makes her way to the rows of seats off to one side and sits, hunched over the paper, glancing around as if this is a class test and she doesn’t want anyone cheating off her.
She fills out the form slowly, but messily. Nerves are stopping her reading it properly and some of the characters on here are so complicated she doesn’t even know them. However, she knows what she’s here for.
The pen draws a shaky circle in the box marked, ‘morning after pill’, and Emi has never been so terrified in her life.
Since she was a child, Emi had been early-to-bed-early-to-rise. She preferred mornings to any other time of day - liked the cool crispness of the air and the bright freshness of the sun, maybe the frost melting from the grass.
According to her watch, she would normally have been in bed hours and hours ago - maybe getting up in a relatively short time, and it was taking its toll. She’d stumbled even on flat ground a few times now, and the constant climbing and sliding around was only making it worse.
Miki and Harumi, she could tell, were just as bad, if not worse; neither was probably as fit as her. She couldn’t see them very well in the dark, but she could hear Harumi’s breathing getting harsher and more ragged, hear Miki’s long, slightly gasping breaths.
It was on their next rest stop, kneeling on the softest areas on rock they could each find, when Miki began to splash bottled water on her face, that Emi finally spoke up.
“If you’re tired, we can take turns sleeping.”
“No thanks,” came the curt answer. “I’m fine.”
What Emi had meant by ‘if you’re tired…’ was, ‘we’re all tired, so…’. “Look,” she muttered darkly. “You’re not Superwoman or whatever. We should really try to save up as much ener-“
“Shh!” Harumi suddenly hissed. Emi turned on her, tiredness and irritation ready to make her snap at anything, when Harumi pointed toward the path close by.
Voices. Two or three of them. Emi forgot about Harumi immediately as nervous anticipation spread through her rapidly. The atmosphere in their group was suddenly as chilled as if plunged in icy water, all of them frozen in place staring toward where the sound of footsteps crunching on gravel was moving closer them.
Emi’s eyes met Miki’s - it was clear Miki knew what Emi was suggesting even before she gave the tiniest jerk of the head toward the other group; the set look of anxious determination marring her face was revealing enough.
Harumi seemed to realise a second later what they had planned and turned on Miki, pleading. “Miki…. No. Please. You don’t have to do this…” Her voice was hushed and sounded almost tearful; when she grabbed Miki’s arm a moment later, Emi was half afraid Miki might have second thoughts, but the girl wrenched Harumi’s arm off her and got to her feet.
It was right then that Emi started to feel nauseous.
“Be quiet,” she hissed at Harumi anyway, trying to keep any shakiness out of her voice. “Don’t interfere.”
Harumi gave her a look that was something close to heartbreaking, and it was all Emi could do to keep her face straight as she murmured. “We don’t have any choice.”
“You’ve always got a choice,” came the faint reply.
“Yeah. Live or die.” But before Emi could continue, one of the voices came so loudly and clearly they must have been standing mere feet away.
“What’s wrong?” Was that Aimi Katsu?
No, it wasn’t. It was no one.
“Aimi!” Oh, God. “Get away fro-“
But whatever else the other girl may have said was drowned, as the deafening sound of gunfire exploded over the two girls suddenly illuminated by the fire and brimstone issuing forth from Miki’s hand.
Emi couldn’t look. But she didn’t need to - her other senses told her everything. The ringing screams, the steady metallic pops of the machine gun, bullets chipping and bouncing off the rocks, the screams, the boom of the echo thrown back all around them. The heat of the gun as it even reached Harumi and Emi. The smell of smoke, gunpowder… and then the already familiar metallic, sweet scent of blood filled the air.
It was then that Emi opened her eyes - mere seconds after closing them. One of the girls - she could see now, it was Aimi Katsu, and she was dying right there in front of them. Not like Tatsutarou, who had probably died instantly. That girl was dying, slowly - she probably knew it herself.
Emi grabbed Harumi by the arm and made to drag her away, behind the rocky outcrop to where they couldn’t see, but Emi had barely moved a foot and Harumi hadn’t moved at all when there was an almighty bang that rent the air above all the other noise.
And then Harumi too was screaming - Emi gave a screech of fright - and Harumi’s arm jerked hard out of her hand as the girl’s hands both flew to her chest and she began to writhe, convulsing on the rocky ground.
Miki was yelling something, but Emi didn’t even register it - the machine gun still hailing pure wrath into the mountain, Emi, against every instinct telling her to run, fast as she could, darted out from behind the safety of the outcropping and grabbed Harumi underneath each arm, dragging her back into the shadows and biting her lip against the pain to her hands.
“Shh-Harumi, please,” she pleaded as she collapsed back to her knees, tears in her eyes and knees in pain against the rocks, but Harumi was squirming and howling in pain, each breath clearly wrung from her lungs and coming back in with a horrible sound before she started again. The backs of Emi’s hands on either side of her face, as Emi murmured placations in her ear and sobbed silently.
This was wrong, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Harumi was already beginning to quieten down. Emi had only a second of relief before she opened her eyes, blinked away the tears, and saw that it wasn’t the pain easing; it was that Harumi’s eyes were out of focus, blood had spattered from her mouth and down her chin, it had pooled on her chest and was oozing down her sides.
“Harumi?” she gasped. Harumi’s only response was a whimper, before she took a deep, gurgling - oh God - breath.
“It-it hurts, Emi…” Her voice was faint, high pitched and… and somehow wet.
“I’m sorry, Harumi, I’m really sorry, I-“ But she couldn’t bring herself to say anymore.
And mere seconds later, Harumi seemed to have lost consciousness. Her eyes lost all focus, slid half shut. The only reason Emi could hear her breathing was because of the gurgling sound of air pushing through liquid.
“Harumi? Haru-”
“Emi!” It was Miki, grabbing her roughly, dragging her to her feet. Emi looked at her, wide-eyed, shock spreading in her system, tears painful on her cheek. “Miyako’s got a gun, we need to go.” And she was already dragging Emi away, back into the jagged rocks and away.
“Miki-Miki, Harumi-“
“I know, come on!”
And they didn’t speak again for what seemed like an unbearably long time, the only sound their own breathing - Miki’s harsh and shaky, Emi’s sobbing and uneven. The rocks were getting higher, the slopes steeper - or rather, Emi’s exhaustion was making them seem so.
It was when Miki let go of Emi’s arm and stopped, clutching her side and staggering slightly, that they finally stopped, and Emi took no time in leaning against the nearest rock and sliding to the ground, her throat burning, nose blocked and barely able to breathe.
“Who…” Emi finally gasped, after a gulp of water. “Who was there? Who died?”
Miki lowered her own bottle of water and eyed her. “Aimi Katsu. She’s dead. Miyako Kitagawa…. I hit her, but she’s alive. Yuya Murakami…. I don’t know. I think I hit him.”
Miki looked just as shocked as Emi felt, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just done yet. “Oh, God,” she finally mumbled, and said no more.
Emi suddenly found herself staring around her; she knew there was no way she would see anything in the darkness - it was barely light yet, just a bit of greyness off to the east - but she knew it was there. The camera. It had to be.
It had been watching while Harumi and Aimi died, and maybe Yuya too. And who knew how many people had been behind it, sat at their televisions? She’d done it, almost every year - she knew just how easy it was to almost think of the Programme as an anime or something, like it wasn’t actually real. Or like it was just really good acting and CGI.
Or rather, how easy it was to make yourself think that. And suddenly it was anger choking her - at herself, her friends, the people watching this right now and lamenting that people they might have bet on were out of the running.
She took a deep breath.
“We’re real people!” she screamed into the night air, and the echo that answered her was frightful as the mountain screamed it right back at her.
Miki was looking at her as though she had lost her mind. Emi wasn’t sure she hadn’t.
The only thing keeping her from breaking down into sobs was the sharp pain as she bit hard into her lip. Soon, she tasted blood.
- Three weeks later, Emi has returned to something of a normal routine, although it’s a strained, uncomfortable one, where she and Keisuke only hang out in the presence of other people and their mothers are wondering if they’ve had an argument.
Sitting by their respective bedroom windows, they can see one another across the alleyway - furtive smiles and gestures while doing homework (playing video games in Keisuke’s case) are all they achieve without burning shame and deep-seated fear that, like a boil on the skin, threaten to burst with every uncomfortable throb.
Sometimes she sits at her desk, losing minutes at a time in deep thought, about what she would do . About the idea of it. And somewhere past the panic and the mortification and the guilt there’s this tiny little part of her that, in some sense, is warmed by the idea of it.
Something about the concept is appealing in a way she can’t put into words.
She wakes up one Sunday morning to find her gut cramping uncomfortably and that familiar damp feeling and, beyond the usual mild annoyance and frustration, she finds herself laughing. Lying there in bed, sheets dirty, blanket tangled around her torso and hair over her face, and laughing.
Phone at her ear, listening to the rings of the other line, she realises with a start that that previously soft, warm feeling inside her is now ice cold.
Then Keisuke answers the phone, groggy and bitchy at having just been woken up, and she forgets it entirely.