Emi Sekiyama [E1-D2] Signposts
Emi and her pet pug, Pigpen, during what was clearly the falling of the cherry blossoms at a park. The little dog is licking her face happily, Emi cringing and laughing - the camera is slightly off-kilter.
On the back: ‘Me and Pigpen go on a cherry blossom viewing. Happy April!’.
- Two-on-two street ball for girls’ PE, and in Ms Asari’s frantic jabbing of fingers and calls of, ‘you, go with… you!’, Emi finds herself paired up with Fuuka Kuroki, something that leaves her distinctly unimpressed and the girls they end up opposing first, Kana and Aimi, in this state of pitying amusement. Like they want to laugh at the two of them, but it would be like kicking a puppy. That was already dead.
Emi consoles herself with the thought that paired with anyone else, she’d slaughter them. Whether that was true or not doesn’t matter.
Fuuka, exempt from the usual girls’ PE kit of bloomers and vest top, presumably for her own dignity, is decked in the biggest, baggiest tracksuit she could presumably find, and Emi feels hot with second-hand embarrassment just looking at the poor girl’s already tinged-pink face.
Emi usually finds herself feeling more sorry for Fuuka than anything else, but at the same time, going jogging once in a while can’t be too much effort. She herself manages, after all. Fuuka, she sometimes thinks, must just be kind of weak willed and lazy. And that’s not the kind of person she can see herself being close with.
“Okay, so do you guys want possession first…?” Kana proffers the basketball, holding up in her hand and letting it fall out, bounce toward them and be caught up by Fuuka. Emi shrugs her assent and smiles at her teammate, who has the worried look on her face that’s somewhat customary in these situations.
Emi hates feeling bad for people.
“Okay, Fuuka, if you go over there, I’ll…”
In the end, they manage to win against the unfortunate team of Hana and Nobuko, but that’s about all they manage, and the girls with functioning braincells and less than 10% body fat collectively beat them into the ground, leaving Emi with the sorest pride she’s ever had.
“Sorry,” Fuuka offers as she moves to help a surprised Emi pick up the discarded basketballs after.
“Don’t worry about it.” Emi shrugs it off, and the motion kind of hurts, but there’s a little bit of a good feeling right afterward. “It’s just PE.”
There’s silence as they throw the last of the balls into the trolley, and then Emi, with a sudden surge of charitable pity she had no idea she possessed, turns to Fuuka.
“You know…” She fumbles for a moment. “I dunno, if you want, you could come walking with me or whatever sometime? Or we could play tennis or something. You… wouldn’t have to say sorry anymore…?”
Fuuka looks completely taken aback, and as her face flushes a moment later, Emi realises painfully that what she just said could be easily translated into, ‘You’re fat and you need to change’, repeated a few times over. Granted, it is something the girl needs to hear, but it probably isn’t nice to hear.
“You don’t need to,” she adds quickly. “Just for fun.”
“Thanks,” Fuuka says quietly. “Maybe we can sometime.”
Emi somehow thinks that means ‘never’ - and she can’t say she minds that too much.
The zone D1 was where she finally found water in the form of a river, and that was where she set about cleaning herself. The soap from her toiletries bag finally found use as she used it to gently scrub her face and hands; her school uniform was stripped from her body quickly and dumped in the river to float away from sight; her change of clothes, jeans and a blouse, thrown on over damp skin, scrubbed by her washcloth till it glowed red raw.
It wasn’t vanity or even hygiene; it was purification.
Scrubbing away Tatsutarou, Mimiko, Aiko, Keisuke. Even Harumi, Miyako, Yuya. People who were gone because of her.
She hadn’t even looked at Mimiko or Aiko. Had barely acknowledged them.
But then, if she acknowledged them all, really thought about them, she’d break apart from the inside. Buckle under the gravity of everything she’d done. And she couldn’t afford to.
- It was one of the most beautiful parks in the city, all greens and blues and pinks, with old temples, a zoo and a lake, and even though the done thing was to come and look at the falling cherry blossoms in a massive group, today Emi had come alone but for her pet pug.
It was far better to come alone for taking photographs. If she went with anyone else, it would turn into a day of photos for her scrap wall (like a scrapbook, only an entire wall of her bedroom) and she didn’t really want that. Not today, anyway.
She enjoyed creating things that you could call beautiful - and she wasn’t good at art or music, but photography was something she could really say she did well. She took pride in it - and her camera was as well cared for as the pudgy, wet-nosed little dog skipping along beside her, yapping at cats and pigeons and taking scraps from the groups having picnics under the trees.
Sometimes she didn’t know what to do when she was alone. In a group, she could make decisions for them, or be led by them. Dominate a conversation or sit back and let it play out with only passive participation. On her own, she often felt almost lost. As though everything she was was defined and built up by those around her, and without people to bolster her, she was like a paper tower barely standing, swaying in the wind. A day to herself with no plans was a rare one, and often she would lounge around the house playing video games in her pyjamas with Pigpen on her lap.
She stopped to snap a picture of a tree just as a gust of wind caught the blossoms, sending a shower of pink falling like snow into a nearby group, who promptly began toasting one another with wine. Squatting on the ground to pet Pigpen as he came rushing over to her with a stick, Emi examined the picture she had just taken and grinned down at it.
It was a fantastic shot.
This was the kind of thing she was even more proud of than schoolwork, than her being class rep, than all that stuff.
Keisuke could make amazing music. She could take good photographs.
Just for good measure, she grabbed Pigpen and stood up, and, cradling him to her front with one arm, took a picture - one which ended up being of her making a grossed out-cum-amused expression as he started to lick her face - and put him back down, laughing as he immediately rolled over onto his back for a belly rub.
She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to show anyone her good pictures - only the camwhore ones with Pigpen or her friends. Maybe it was just that everyone else was so much better at something else than she was at this that it didn’t seem worth it.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have other things to be proud of, anyway.
The report came as she was leaving the river bank, wet and cold and yet with a raw, numb sort of feeling all over her. The pain in her hands and cheek had been numbed by the cold, and only throbbed uncomfortably, a niggle in the back of her mind now.
“Girl number twenty, Kana Minamino!”
A slight stab of horror now. Nothing compared to what it was two days ago.
“Boy number twenty, Kenji Matsuda!”
She wasn’t prepared. Not at all.
“Girl number sixteen, Kotone Fujino!”
There was no physical reaction she could make to express it, so there was a moment where she did nothing but stand stock still, her mind frozen, pain to her chest, eyes, stomach, head like consecutive punches, like a migraine, like nothing she’d ever felt.
The only physical response she could muster was nausea.
She hadn’t realised until then that she had been hoping to see them again, one last time.
Not even to tell them anything - she had nothing she wanted to tell them, anyway. Just to see them, talk to them, touch them, comfort them - take comfort from the people closest to her.
She didn’t even have any energy left to cry for them. Just to stand there in silent horror as the people who had bolstered her up, who had shaped her very personality, disappeared all around her.
Taking her right along with them.
Did it even matter if she survived? If everything that defined her was going to be lost, what use was it going back home.
Her mother. Yuu. Pigpen. Even her dad, wherever he might be. They were all reasons to live. To go back and make them happy. Even if she herself never would be.
She didn’t want to die. But the end of the Programme and the idea of going back to a world that would watch and revel in their agony - even if that were the height of hypocrisy coming from her - gave her chills.
Back to a world where some of the most important people in her life would have been snuffed out by her hand.
She didn’t know what to do anymore, but hug herself and shiver in what was no longer cold.
((OOC: This takes place before the last report, obviously, and before the FTD. I'm playing a game of 'catch up in bite sized chunks'.))