The Melancholy of Daimon Masaru I
There is no such thing as monsters.
Though my father wasted no time in quashing my nanny's Santa Claus stories, it still took me a few more years to realize that monsters, aliens, ghosts, time travelers, and shapeshifters were also false. They were on the television just the same as my beloved boxing matches, how was I to know any better?
But I suppose I always knew they weren't real. I just didn't want to admit it.
All I wanted was a monster to just appear and be my friend.
Unfortunately, everything I learnt at school put a dampener on things. As I got more absorbed in my studies, I even stopped watching those shows. Monsters, aliens, time travelers, shapeshifters: Of course they don't exist. But a small part of me wishes that they did.
Being a child at university makes you grow up quickly. It becomes unacceptable to contemplate such things; you must only accept reality. By the time I graduated, I had outgrown those things.
I may have been used to living in an ordinary world, but I wanted to live an ordinary life for once. So after three years of trying to convince hospitals that I was indeed a licensed doctor in my early teens, I gave up and enrolled in a Japanese high school, claiming to have finished junior high in Sweden.
And that was when I met him.
"My name is Touma H. Norstein. I finished junior high at a small academy just outside of Stockholm. It's very nice to meet all of you, and I hope we have a good year."
I sat down, waiting to get these apparently customary but tedious introductions over with. Granted, I should have been paying more attention given I knew only one other student (another university graduate trying the slow path), but several students managed to make their introductions completely dull. Had they never made a speech or presentation in their lives?
As such, I didn't even bother turning around to give the boy behind me my full attention, even when he knocked his own chair over by standing up.
"I'm the great Daimon Masaru, and I graduated from Otori Municipal Junior High."
Well, his confidence was certainly refreshing, though as his last school was hardly one of note, I idly wondered what had spurred this confidence.
"I don't have any interest in you losers. Unless anyone here is an alien, shapeshifter, monster, or something that can give me a decent fight. In that case, bring it on!"
The problems of an ordinary life: Having a common thug for a classmate. I turned around to examine who I was to avoid. He had a bush of auburn hair that looked as though it had never seen a brush in its life. His face held a challenge for the staring masses, and the look in his green eyes was utterly serious.
Clean him up a bit, and you might actually have someone respectable.
"That's all."
Masaru looked over the class with all the disdain I had the grace to mostly hold in, paused to glare at me for returning his contempt, and sat down without smiling.
If that was supposed to be humor, I would have stayed in Stockholm. But it appeared the class had some semblance of taste, as not a single person laughed. Instead, they were confused. Nobody knew how to react.
It wasn't a laughing matter. Masaru's jokes are much, much worse than that.
That was our first meeting, although we should have met years before. Maybe meeting this way was just a coincidence.
I wish it were.
I should have realized then: This was the calm before the storm.
The thing was, when he did shut up, Masaru seemed like just an ordinary teenager. Seeing as I was in this high school to try out an ordinary life, I thought I should get to know some ordinary teenagers. Masaru, sitting behind me, seemed like a logical place to start. I merely thought that if I was to sit in front of someone until our next seating arrangement, I ought to assess early whether we could get along, so that I might plan for any future conflict.
Thus I turned around in my seat one morning before class, putting my politest smile on.
"Hello, Daimon-san."
He raised an eyebrow, as if prompting me to go on.
"The things you covered in your introduction. Surely you're not serious?"
Masaru glared at me. "What 'things I covered in my introduction'?"
His tone of voice made his opinion of my choice of vocabulary quite clear. Well, I was hardly about to 'dumb down' my diction for him.
"Aliens, shapeshifters, monsters."
"Why? Are you an alien?"
"Not even legally."
It appeared he had no idea what I was referring to. I sighed. "Never mind."
The confusion on his face melted away, replaced with a glare. I couldn't decide whether he'd truly recovered or was just brushing it off. "Then why are you even talking to me?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Because you're wasting my time. So piss off!"
Smacking his hands on the desk in frustration, Masaru glared at me before turning his attention to the blackboard, tapping his fingers on his desk. It just wasn't worth trying to continue a conversation with someone so pig-headed, so I too turned to the front as the homeroom teacher came in.
However, as I did so, I noticed a number of my classmates staring at me with interest. Though some looked inexplicably sympathetic, they all looked completely unsurprised.
It turned out they had all attended the same junior high school as Masaru.
My first interaction with Masaru had been a complete waste of time. There were much more open people to talk to in the class, so I kept my distance from him in order to more efficiently socialize at school.
Yet for all his glaring and my own unsuccessful attempt at conversation, people still tried in vain to talk to him. Fools. Some were girls looking to tame the apparent 'bad boy'; some were fellow delinquents who thought to make themselves an ally in the area's top street fighter by getting on his good side. Unfortunately none of them had the foresight to ask for advice from those who had experience with him.
"Did you see that new episode of that mecha anime last night? The mecha just keep getting bigger and bigger!"
"Nope."
"Eh? Why not?"
"Not interested."
"You should try it, I think you'd like it. Seems like your kind of--"
"Get lost before I make you!"
This comprised 99% of the results.
I was getting sadly used to Masaru's lack of basic manners. It was possible to more politely dismiss a conversation starter, but Masaru either didn't know how to or simply didn't care. Thus his victims thought they were the ones who had done something wrong, while the only thing wrong was with Daimon Masaru's brain.
Despite my best attempts, thus far I was proving unsuccessful at integrating into ordinary high school life. I was certainly more polite about it than Masaru, but I also had little interest in the television shows and media my classmates were so enamored with. My musical tastes were more Western and classical than most teenagers'. I neither held nor needed a part-time job, since moving back to Japan I had never had the time nor candidates for dating (beyond the Austrian heiresses my grandmother introduced me to, whom I had no desire to speak about), and I had yet to be particularly interested in any one club. All in all, it was quite difficult to relate to these ordinary Japanese high school students. My classmates' curiosity about growing up in Sweden could only stretch so far, particularly with there being two of us who were schooled there.
There is safety in numbers. To appear alone is to show weakness, something I, as a Norstein, could never do. So I resorted to eating lunch with Kagura Tsukasa, my fellow university graduate. If anything, he seemed glad to have a pair of ears willing to listen to his observations on our class (read: gossip), and he alone knew better than to gawk at my professionally prepared lunches.
In time we found ourselves adopted by a boy no more than my sister's age. An Otori Municipal Junior High School student, Noguchi Ikuto had idolized Masaru from their brief encounters in elementary school (I could never discern a clear reason) and wanted to follow his hero, but could only do so during lunch breaks. However, Masaru was often nowhere to be found at lunch, so Ikuto joined us instead. We never saw him coming; perhaps his teachers never saw him leaving.
We often spoke of our classmates, trading classroom gossip for Ikuto's local knowledge. In retrospect, it's surprising it took so long for the subject of Daimon Masaru to come up.
"You tried to talk to him, didn't you?" asked Kagura.
I sighed. "Yes, and it was a complete waste of time."
"But Masaru-san is a genius!" Ikuto protested. "You should have seen the machine he made for the science fair!"
Kagura and I shared a look of bemusement over our lunches.
"Three years ago, he dismantled half the computers and science lab equipment in the school and made this huge thing that was supposed to take you to another world. A digital dive, he called it."
This was too hard to believe. Masaru had yet to show any aptitude for academia.
"It's true!" Ikuto insisted. "It was in all the newspapers! And he owned up to it, put his name on it for the project and everything. So he got called to the principal's office for vandalism and all, but he didn't say a word. They just gave up asking him about it."
"Did this 'digital dive' work?" I asked.
The mental image of Masaru putting together any sort of machine amused me: Rewiring circuits from the insides of a computer, soldering together microchips and metal with the equipment from the school's industrial arts classrooms, determination etched across his face...
"No," he sighed.
I was about to further argue Masaru's supposed intellect when Kagura interrupted me. I took the opportunity to take a sip of my goulash.
"Genius or not, I have heard some strange things about him. For example, I hear a police man once dropped by the school and found several delinquents knocked out, yet arranged in a pentagram."
Ikuto swallowed a bite of rolled egg. "What's a pentagram?"
"A star," Kagura sighed, before continuing. "I also heard he once plastered his school's walls with seven strange symbols, without explanation. If the stories are true, our classmate is... quite a character."
"But he's still really popular with the girls!" Ikuto barged in, as if determined to clear Masaru's name of his strange past. "He's sporty, girls like his looks, and I hear he really understands girls."
It was true he displayed a form of crass chivalry: Though he rarely called a girl by name, preferring endearments like 'toots' or 'doll face', he was still the first to open a door for a girl whose hands were full, or to offer to carry something heavy. This was rather jarring when compared to his usual antisocial behavior.
"And he's so bad ass! He's the number one street fighter in all of Japan!" Ikuto paused to think. "Do you think if I started beating up guys and acting bad ass, girls would like me?"
"No," I replied, stirring my goulash. "Obey the law, Ikuto-kun."
"Alright," he said, looking disappointed into his bento.
"That's exactly why I wouldn't get involved with him if I were you, Touma," said Kagura. "A Norstein, hanging around with an underaged criminal. It wouldn't look good."
One attempt at friendly conversation was hardly getting involved. I had no further interest in befriending the clearly insane.
He laughed. "I only wish the girls thought so too. I'm told there was a period of time in which he dated non-stop, completely at random. Ikuto-kun, could you confirm this rumor for us?"
"That's true too." Ikuto looked so earnest when he was talking about his hero; bless him. "He kept asking girls out, and when it was the other way around, he never refused a date either. From what I heard, the longest relationship lasted a week, and the shortest was five minutes after being asked out. Something about not wanting to socialize with ordinary humans. I wonder if he'll do the same this year?"
So Masaru believed in science fiction, was a proud criminal, and he was flighty as well.
"Who knows," Kagura said, shooting me a look. "Well, at least I know one girl won't fall for his tricks."
He nodded towards a group of girls sitting nearby, with Ohashi Nanami smiling away in the center.
"She seems like she's got a good head on her shoulders."
"And more besides," I added, trying to hasten him to his point.
Ikuto went for the obvious. "She's pretty."
Don't get me wrong: I understood perfectly well what Kagura meant about Ohashi Nanami. She was, as Ikuto stated so plainly, physically attractive, and her frequent smile seemed like sunshine on these still chilly spring days. Yet she wasn't just a pretty face. She was the one person who still tried to talk to Masaru, courageously brushing off his rudeness as if it were nothing. Additionally, there were times when I wondered if she was on an intellectual level around Kagura's and mine, but had never done anything about it. She finished work quickly and correctly with seemingly little effort and had surprisingly thoughtful answers in class; no doubt the teachers saw her as a model student. Furthermore, she already had much of the female population of our class wrapped around her little finger after only a week of class, and, it appeared, some of the male population too.
Kagura could do what he wanted. His hypothetical courting of Ohashi Nanami didn't concern me in the slightest.
Certainly, the stories of Daimon Masaru's previous acts of insanity were interesting, but even now that he was in high school he still remained eccentric, if not to the same extent. From my vantage point as a neutral observer in the class rather than tied to any one clique, I witnessed or at least heard about a number of his oddities:
#1: This small high school, which lacked the budget for locker rooms attached to its gym, had students change in different classrooms for physical education, divided by gender. The girls in my class remained in our homeroom, while the boys changed next door.
Most of us had the good sense to delay our stripping down until we were in the appropriate room. Masaru, on the other hand, would begin to take his shirt off as soon as he was back inside, with absolutely no care in the world for the girls. Granted, quite a few female members of the class appreciated his body, but his utter lack of propriety appalled many other classmates, including myself, and the teachers.
When told to only change in the specified room, Masaru merely said, "Who cares?"
It appeared he saw no difference between girls and a hole in the ground. The female attention this daily stunt garnered was wasted on him, though many boys in our class would have killed to be in his position.
Within a week Ohashi-san took to making a line of herself and her closest friends, blocking the girls' view of Masaru, as Kagura and I (nominated by our classmates as unlikely to intentionally hurt him, unlike the boys whose girlfriends were among the girls ogling him) forcibly removed Masaru from the room and dragged him next door. One would think this and our teacher's disapproval would be good indicators that his behavior was unwanted, but nothing changed.
#2: Masaru quickly gained a reputation for joining clubs at random and quitting within a day, if he didn't manage to get himself expelled from the group. While his athleticism seemed astoundingly flexible, he couldn't hold a tune on any instrument to save himself, seemed to be oblivious to any beauty in the world, and had little patience for the other artistic and cultural pursuits such as the calligraphy club. Furthermore, his hand-eye coordination appeared to be strictly limited to sports: The drama club reported broken props, the calligraphy club broken quills, and the computer club broken keyboards and one crashed harddrive. For cultural groups, Masaru was a very expensive risk of a new member; his only saving grace was that even if one allowed him to return, he never did.
For the sports teams, however, Masaru was a lucky find. The boxing and baseball teams in particular engaged in a two week battle for his permanent membership. Both teams failed to regain his attention after his day with them.
No one could figure out what exactly he thought he was doing. When asked, he excused his behavior with, "The clubs are all boring. I don't wanna sit around doing the same crap with the same people every day! I get enough of that in class."
This, despite my sometimes seeing him at a local gym or baseball diamond with strangers.
In no time at all, word of a 'dumb ass' first year joining every club spread like wildfire.
#3: Kagura and my idle finishing of our homework and assignments well in advance (I sometimes got bored and managed to completely pre-empt the setting of homework) was definitely atypical in our class. Many students put the assigned work off to the last minute, but most still managed to finish their work on time.
Masaru, on the other hand, never even tried. His idea of starting homework on time was writing his name on it the day after it was due. What was worse, he appeared to genuinely struggle with his work. It was a miracle he'd made it to high school, let alone supposedly build a 'digital dive'.
Life went on. School would have been boring were it not for my classmates' antics. I skim read the year's curriculum as Masaru quickly exhausted the school's stock of clubs.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, the Golden Week holidays provided a welcome release from school. With little interest in the festivals and events in the area, I resorted to returning to Austria with my younger sister.
Golden Week dragged on in Vienna. My grandmother was all too aware of my medical degree for homework to be a useful excuse for avoiding the balls and parties. (In any case, I had in fact finished it on the jet.) I put on my polite mask and kept my distance from my fellow aristocrats, disliking their elitism. Though my lineage lowered my social status, my money was still old and plentiful, and therefore desirable. People were only ever interested in my money and my family name.
That was something I had enjoyed about university: I had been so young that I was judged only on my mind. At high school, however, I was stripped of all preconceptions based on age or family. If anything, I was simply foreign, a good student, and had fancy lunches. I felt it helped people see me for me.
Finally the holiday was over. My sister and I bid our extended family farewell and returned to Yokohama and to school.
When I walked into my homeroom early on the first day back, I found Masaru, alone in the classroom and making a valiant attempt at the holiday homework. I was feeling unusually charitable upon seeing someone who looked at me without seeing a pile of money, and so after watching him for a few minutes, I started walking him through the basic math problem.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Helping," I stated the obvious.
Masaru snorted. "I don't need your help. A man doesn't ask for help."
I remained calm. "You never asked me. Nor was I was about to ask for your permission to give you the help you so desperately need."
Before he could try to dismiss me again, I went on explaining the homework, this time changing the scenario given to one involving aliens, time travelers, and shapeshifters. He actually shut up and listened, to my surprise. It appeared the same tactic I used with my little sister, making the question relevant to their interests rather than to every day life, worked on Masaru. Within moments he was attempting the problem again.
As I looked over his working, Masaru leaned forward, trying to see what I was doing. All he succeeded in doing was getting in my way. It was that shock of hair that was taking up too much space; I began to suspect one could build a bird's nest within without him noticing. The fumes from his hair products were suffocating at this proximity.
"The beginning of this looks adequate, if verging on illegible, but in order to check the rest you'll have to get your bush out of my face."
"My what?"
"Your hair."
Masaru leaned back in his chair again, looking as though he was about to retort, but instead he began to stare at me. A little confusion washed across his expression. Did I have something on my face? Had my sister cut my hair when I fell asleep on the aeroplane?
"Have we met before?" he asked at last.
We had met only in high school. Was he insane?
"Forget it. Come on, Tonma, how's my math?"
"It's Touma."
"I know."
I had the unfamiliar feeling that I was missing something.
The next day he came to school with his unruly hair cut to his shoulders with his bangs tamed to part on either side of his face. Half of his hair was tied back in a ponytail.
The sudden drastic change caught everyone by surprise. In truth, I didn't recognize him until he hit me upside the head with his unfinished homework. With this haircut, he resembled a girl.
"Shut up," he grumbled, "my mom cut it."
After my comment about his bush only yesterday? Surely that was rather rash.
"A man doesn't care about fashion. Now, are we gonna do this or what?"
Smothering my smile, I let the subject go.
Helping Masaru with his homework quickly became a morning ritual for me. When my chaffeur inquired after the change to the schedule, I simply told him that I was tutoring a less able student.
On some days it was more than just a tutorial. There would be days when the many factors including our arrival times, the amount and difficulty of the work, and sacrifices to the gods all had favorable values, which would see Masaru declaring himself finished before class started (rather than an hour into the lesson). On these days we would actually converse without the pretense of tutoring.
Of course, I still had to select my openings wisely, lest I was dismissed like our classmates who had tried TV or the weather. Masaru had no idea, but I too saw those conversational topics as dull.
"I was wondering about the school's clubs. You seem to be the expert here, having tried them all yourself. Could you recommend an interesting one for me?"
"The clubs are all so boring that even a stuffy nerd like you wouldn't like any. Yeah, I've seen you getting bored in class; the clubs aren't any better."
Masaru being observant? This was a surprise.
"Shut up! If I didn't keep an eye on my surroundings, I'd totally miss an alien or something appearing, or I'd get my ass kicked by some punk trying to take over my turf."
Valid concerns, I'm sure.
He hit the desk. I was concerned that the desk would, over the year, acquire a fist-shaped dent. "I thought high school would be different. But it's just the same crap all over again. I picked the wrong school."
I was hardly one to talk, but how on earth had he chosen his high school?
"The clubs are all the same. I just wish there was one that was special."
And what exactly constituted a 'special' club?
"My sayso."
I'd been dealing with this kind of arrogance from a young age, so I merely raised an eyebrow.
"It's not something you can explain!"
The bell rang for class. As I turned back to the front of the classroom, I caught a glimpse of Masaru directing all his annoyance out the window.
Another day, another page completed, another conversation.
"I never would have taken you for fast-paced serial monogamy."
Masaru looked utterly blank. "...what?"
I sighed. "Quickly dating one person after another. It's what I heard from--"
"People can say what they want about me. It's probably true."
What, the truth was too absurd already for anyone to invent anything plausible?
"Exactly."
With the nagging feeling that Masaru had understood only half of that sentence, I returned to the original subject.
"Were you simply unable to find a girl you truly cared about?"
"Nope. They were all so ordinary."
"In what manner?"
"Everything."
"So what kind of girl would you find interesting? Would they have to be an alien or time traveler or...whatever?"
"An alien or whatever," he seemed to be smirking at my use of the word, "would be cool. Wouldn't even have to be a chick, as long as they're not normal. Or even if there was someone with that extra, kind of, I don't know, spark. I could tell if I saw them, but it's not something you can explain."
It sounded as though he was already looking for the love of his life.
"Not even! Love is such a waste of time that could be spent fighting. And it's just another form of retardedness. It makes people act stupid. Like hell I want to be part of that. I mean, the girls who asked me out? They all asked by phone! What is up with that? If you really like someone you should put all your heart into it and be a man about it, even if you're a woman!"
That last part made no sense whatsoever, but I could agree with part of his rant, at least.
"If I were to court a girl," I ignored his sniggering at my terminology, "I wouldn't do so by phone; I would ask in person, or send a formal invitation--"
"And that's why you ain't got a girlfriend."
My love life had nothing to do with this conversation.
"Hit a nerve there, eh, Tonma?"
"Well, why did you pursue a love life so avidly, then, if you think so little of love?"
"Aliens always go for the women first."
I could feel my jaw dropping open despite myself. That was seriously why he dated?
"So I figured, a tough guy like me, I'd protect girls from alien invasion. Or even just from jerk asses out to hurt 'em. I thought a really exceptional girl might attract aliens, all the way from outer space. But they were all so ordinary no aliens would bother with them."
Fortunately I had already long reached the conclusion that Daimon Masaru was insane. However, once again I found myself agreeing about one thing.
"The earth is full of ordinary people. If aliens do exist, and if they've developed the technology sufficient to travel to our planet, then it's extremely likely they also have the technology available to observe us from afar. They must have realized that there's nothing of worth on our planet. Or instead of mere boredom, they may have observed the atrocities of the human race, such as the wars and genocide, and been utterly appalled. Either way, if aliens did exist, they wouldn't bother with earth."
Masaru suddenly stood, slamming his hands onto the desk.
"That's why I need to get their attention!"
That made even less sense than he usually did.
"Aliens who would bother with us are special! They're something different! They're--"
"Disrupting the start of showtime," said the teacher from his desk. "I see you've done at least some of your homework this time, at least. Sit down!"
Glaring at me, Masaru returned to his seat, and didn't speak to me again for the rest of the day.
At the beginning of lunchtime, I was called to the teacher's desk. As my work had been nothing short of stellar and I was in no way disruptive (unless one includes provoking Masaru before class), this was a rather puzzling development.
"Norstein-kun," he said, baring that smile that always disturbed the class, "I'd like to congratulate you."
I had been anticipating a scolding. This, however, caught me by surprise.
"Kurata-sensei?"
"Whatever you're doing with Masaru, keep at it."
He was encouraging me, yet almost sneering Masaru's name without so much as an honorific. Odd.
"His grades have been steadily improving, and as I've seen you working with him before school in the mornings, I believe it's due to your influence."
"I hardly influence Daimon-san, Kurata-sensei. If anything, I simply have the patience to take him through the problem and put the terms into a language he understands."
"I see," Kurata-sensei murmured, before smiling again. "Well, keep up the good work!"
It seemed to be a dismissal. Bowing, I retreated and went to fetch my bento.
"Are you in trouble?" Ikuto asked. "Kagura-san said the teacher wanted to talk to you!"
"Not in the slightest," I assured him. "Kurata-sensei merely wished to congratulate me on my progress with Masaru. It seems his grades are actually improving under my tutelage."
"People are already starting to talk," Kagura warned me.
And if it reaches the adults, it would merely sound as though my genius is an improving influence on even a delinquent through our tragically forced interaction in the public school system.
"How did you do it?" Ikuto burst out. "Since he got cool, he never gives me the time of day!"
'Cool' was certainly a unique way of labelling Masaru's fanatacism for the extraordinary.
"I'd like to know that too."
Suddenly the smiling face of Ohashi Nanami was before me. I was amused to observe Kagura, who was usually never one to become flustered, almost falling over himself to bow to her.
"It's good to see Daimon-san finally making a friend in the class," she continued, bowing in return. "I've tried to talk to him a few times but nothing happens. At least with a good friend like you he won't be so isolated any more."
I could hardly call an uncivilized oaf whom I was merely tutoring my friend.
She giggled. "You are such a kidder, Norstein-san. Well, if I have any messages for him," she had, after all, recently been elected class monitor, "I'll let you pass them on!"
Do I look like a courier?
"You look reliable."
Ohashi-san smiled brightly, assuming my agreement, and backed away to leave. Yet she paused, looking at Ikuto.
"Who's this?"
And what was he doing here, read the subtext in her slight frown.
"Kagura-san's little cousin, Noguchi Ikuto," I invented. "After school he's quite occupied with clubs, so he drops by at lunchtimes for some tutelage from his dear older cousin."
Ohashi-san looked pointedly at our utter lack of paper.
"But first we like to eat lunch together. Tutoring makes one very hungry."
"Yes, you would know, wouldn't you?" Ohashi-san nodded. "Keep the good work, you two!"
She returned to her group of friends, leaving us to our own devices. Kagura let out a huge sigh.
This high school seemed to have an obscure rule that required a change in the seating plan every month. Our class's arrangement was done at random; I was pleased to find myself by the window, near the back of the classroom. A breath of fresh air was good for the circulation.
Yet once again, one Daimon Masaru was seated behind me, complaining as per usual. The set changed, but the characters did not.
"I joined the mysteries club yesterday."
"And how did you find it?"
"Ha! Those losers were just waiting for mysteries to come to them, and in the meantime, they read mystery novels. They might as well take over the literature club!"
"What exactly are you looking for in a club?"
"Something interesting!"
I was coming rapidly to the conclusion that even Masaru himself had no idea of what he was actually looking for. He never had a definition of 'interesting' to offer; one could only deduce from his long list of rejected clubs what wasn't interesting.
"I thought there'd be some kick ass clubs at high school! But nothing's changed."
"Most changes and advances occur under a few conditions. One is out of necessity, such as the development of Braille and sign language. Another is when there's a benefit to the quality of life of a significant number of people. The invention of automobiles, trains, aeroplanes; the discovery of penicillin, pasteurization, medical uses for radiation: These were all to aid people. Advances where any need or benefit to society is unclear or dubious were at least made with specific goals in mind. When America put man on the moon, they did so deliberately, with plans in mind. It didn't just happen because someone at NASA said, 'I'm bored.' When Rutherford split the atom--"
"Do you ever stop talking?"
I usually let him speak; it was about time I gave him a piece of my mind!
"My point is, everyone else is content with the clubs the way they are. You're the only one who thinks there is any need for change, or would see any benefit from change to their activities. So any change has to come from you. And it has to be deliberate. You have to do something concrete rather than sitting around whining."
"Like what?"
Hm. Bring it back to him and suddenly he's interested again. When debating with Masaru, leave your examples at home.
"Why don't you make your own club?"
And then he'd be too occupied with discovering that running a club is harder than it sounds to complain to me. A win-win scenario, I thought.
Masaru appeared to contemplate it for a second.
"Okay!"
Little did I know what damage I had inadvertently wrought.
Though my father wasted no time in quashing my nanny's Santa Claus stories, it still took me a few more years to realize that monsters, aliens, ghosts, time travelers, and shapeshifters were also false. They were on the television just the same as my beloved boxing matches, how was I to know any better?
But I suppose I always knew they weren't real. I just didn't want to admit it.
All I wanted was a monster to just appear and be my friend.
Unfortunately, everything I learnt at school put a dampener on things. As I got more absorbed in my studies, I even stopped watching those shows. Monsters, aliens, time travelers, shapeshifters: Of course they don't exist. But a small part of me wishes that they did.
Being a child at university makes you grow up quickly. It becomes unacceptable to contemplate such things; you must only accept reality. By the time I graduated, I had outgrown those things.
I may have been used to living in an ordinary world, but I wanted to live an ordinary life for once. So after three years of trying to convince hospitals that I was indeed a licensed doctor in my early teens, I gave up and enrolled in a Japanese high school, claiming to have finished junior high in Sweden.
And that was when I met him.
"My name is Touma H. Norstein. I finished junior high at a small academy just outside of Stockholm. It's very nice to meet all of you, and I hope we have a good year."
I sat down, waiting to get these apparently customary but tedious introductions over with. Granted, I should have been paying more attention given I knew only one other student (another university graduate trying the slow path), but several students managed to make their introductions completely dull. Had they never made a speech or presentation in their lives?
As such, I didn't even bother turning around to give the boy behind me my full attention, even when he knocked his own chair over by standing up.
"I'm the great Daimon Masaru, and I graduated from Otori Municipal Junior High."
Well, his confidence was certainly refreshing, though as his last school was hardly one of note, I idly wondered what had spurred this confidence.
"I don't have any interest in you losers. Unless anyone here is an alien, shapeshifter, monster, or something that can give me a decent fight. In that case, bring it on!"
The problems of an ordinary life: Having a common thug for a classmate. I turned around to examine who I was to avoid. He had a bush of auburn hair that looked as though it had never seen a brush in its life. His face held a challenge for the staring masses, and the look in his green eyes was utterly serious.
Clean him up a bit, and you might actually have someone respectable.
"That's all."
Masaru looked over the class with all the disdain I had the grace to mostly hold in, paused to glare at me for returning his contempt, and sat down without smiling.
If that was supposed to be humor, I would have stayed in Stockholm. But it appeared the class had some semblance of taste, as not a single person laughed. Instead, they were confused. Nobody knew how to react.
It wasn't a laughing matter. Masaru's jokes are much, much worse than that.
That was our first meeting, although we should have met years before. Maybe meeting this way was just a coincidence.
I wish it were.
I should have realized then: This was the calm before the storm.
The thing was, when he did shut up, Masaru seemed like just an ordinary teenager. Seeing as I was in this high school to try out an ordinary life, I thought I should get to know some ordinary teenagers. Masaru, sitting behind me, seemed like a logical place to start. I merely thought that if I was to sit in front of someone until our next seating arrangement, I ought to assess early whether we could get along, so that I might plan for any future conflict.
Thus I turned around in my seat one morning before class, putting my politest smile on.
"Hello, Daimon-san."
He raised an eyebrow, as if prompting me to go on.
"The things you covered in your introduction. Surely you're not serious?"
Masaru glared at me. "What 'things I covered in my introduction'?"
His tone of voice made his opinion of my choice of vocabulary quite clear. Well, I was hardly about to 'dumb down' my diction for him.
"Aliens, shapeshifters, monsters."
"Why? Are you an alien?"
"Not even legally."
It appeared he had no idea what I was referring to. I sighed. "Never mind."
The confusion on his face melted away, replaced with a glare. I couldn't decide whether he'd truly recovered or was just brushing it off. "Then why are you even talking to me?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Because you're wasting my time. So piss off!"
Smacking his hands on the desk in frustration, Masaru glared at me before turning his attention to the blackboard, tapping his fingers on his desk. It just wasn't worth trying to continue a conversation with someone so pig-headed, so I too turned to the front as the homeroom teacher came in.
However, as I did so, I noticed a number of my classmates staring at me with interest. Though some looked inexplicably sympathetic, they all looked completely unsurprised.
It turned out they had all attended the same junior high school as Masaru.
My first interaction with Masaru had been a complete waste of time. There were much more open people to talk to in the class, so I kept my distance from him in order to more efficiently socialize at school.
Yet for all his glaring and my own unsuccessful attempt at conversation, people still tried in vain to talk to him. Fools. Some were girls looking to tame the apparent 'bad boy'; some were fellow delinquents who thought to make themselves an ally in the area's top street fighter by getting on his good side. Unfortunately none of them had the foresight to ask for advice from those who had experience with him.
"Did you see that new episode of that mecha anime last night? The mecha just keep getting bigger and bigger!"
"Nope."
"Eh? Why not?"
"Not interested."
"You should try it, I think you'd like it. Seems like your kind of--"
"Get lost before I make you!"
This comprised 99% of the results.
I was getting sadly used to Masaru's lack of basic manners. It was possible to more politely dismiss a conversation starter, but Masaru either didn't know how to or simply didn't care. Thus his victims thought they were the ones who had done something wrong, while the only thing wrong was with Daimon Masaru's brain.
Despite my best attempts, thus far I was proving unsuccessful at integrating into ordinary high school life. I was certainly more polite about it than Masaru, but I also had little interest in the television shows and media my classmates were so enamored with. My musical tastes were more Western and classical than most teenagers'. I neither held nor needed a part-time job, since moving back to Japan I had never had the time nor candidates for dating (beyond the Austrian heiresses my grandmother introduced me to, whom I had no desire to speak about), and I had yet to be particularly interested in any one club. All in all, it was quite difficult to relate to these ordinary Japanese high school students. My classmates' curiosity about growing up in Sweden could only stretch so far, particularly with there being two of us who were schooled there.
There is safety in numbers. To appear alone is to show weakness, something I, as a Norstein, could never do. So I resorted to eating lunch with Kagura Tsukasa, my fellow university graduate. If anything, he seemed glad to have a pair of ears willing to listen to his observations on our class (read: gossip), and he alone knew better than to gawk at my professionally prepared lunches.
In time we found ourselves adopted by a boy no more than my sister's age. An Otori Municipal Junior High School student, Noguchi Ikuto had idolized Masaru from their brief encounters in elementary school (I could never discern a clear reason) and wanted to follow his hero, but could only do so during lunch breaks. However, Masaru was often nowhere to be found at lunch, so Ikuto joined us instead. We never saw him coming; perhaps his teachers never saw him leaving.
We often spoke of our classmates, trading classroom gossip for Ikuto's local knowledge. In retrospect, it's surprising it took so long for the subject of Daimon Masaru to come up.
"You tried to talk to him, didn't you?" asked Kagura.
I sighed. "Yes, and it was a complete waste of time."
"But Masaru-san is a genius!" Ikuto protested. "You should have seen the machine he made for the science fair!"
Kagura and I shared a look of bemusement over our lunches.
"Three years ago, he dismantled half the computers and science lab equipment in the school and made this huge thing that was supposed to take you to another world. A digital dive, he called it."
This was too hard to believe. Masaru had yet to show any aptitude for academia.
"It's true!" Ikuto insisted. "It was in all the newspapers! And he owned up to it, put his name on it for the project and everything. So he got called to the principal's office for vandalism and all, but he didn't say a word. They just gave up asking him about it."
"Did this 'digital dive' work?" I asked.
The mental image of Masaru putting together any sort of machine amused me: Rewiring circuits from the insides of a computer, soldering together microchips and metal with the equipment from the school's industrial arts classrooms, determination etched across his face...
"No," he sighed.
I was about to further argue Masaru's supposed intellect when Kagura interrupted me. I took the opportunity to take a sip of my goulash.
"Genius or not, I have heard some strange things about him. For example, I hear a police man once dropped by the school and found several delinquents knocked out, yet arranged in a pentagram."
Ikuto swallowed a bite of rolled egg. "What's a pentagram?"
"A star," Kagura sighed, before continuing. "I also heard he once plastered his school's walls with seven strange symbols, without explanation. If the stories are true, our classmate is... quite a character."
"But he's still really popular with the girls!" Ikuto barged in, as if determined to clear Masaru's name of his strange past. "He's sporty, girls like his looks, and I hear he really understands girls."
It was true he displayed a form of crass chivalry: Though he rarely called a girl by name, preferring endearments like 'toots' or 'doll face', he was still the first to open a door for a girl whose hands were full, or to offer to carry something heavy. This was rather jarring when compared to his usual antisocial behavior.
"And he's so bad ass! He's the number one street fighter in all of Japan!" Ikuto paused to think. "Do you think if I started beating up guys and acting bad ass, girls would like me?"
"No," I replied, stirring my goulash. "Obey the law, Ikuto-kun."
"Alright," he said, looking disappointed into his bento.
"That's exactly why I wouldn't get involved with him if I were you, Touma," said Kagura. "A Norstein, hanging around with an underaged criminal. It wouldn't look good."
One attempt at friendly conversation was hardly getting involved. I had no further interest in befriending the clearly insane.
He laughed. "I only wish the girls thought so too. I'm told there was a period of time in which he dated non-stop, completely at random. Ikuto-kun, could you confirm this rumor for us?"
"That's true too." Ikuto looked so earnest when he was talking about his hero; bless him. "He kept asking girls out, and when it was the other way around, he never refused a date either. From what I heard, the longest relationship lasted a week, and the shortest was five minutes after being asked out. Something about not wanting to socialize with ordinary humans. I wonder if he'll do the same this year?"
So Masaru believed in science fiction, was a proud criminal, and he was flighty as well.
"Who knows," Kagura said, shooting me a look. "Well, at least I know one girl won't fall for his tricks."
He nodded towards a group of girls sitting nearby, with Ohashi Nanami smiling away in the center.
"She seems like she's got a good head on her shoulders."
"And more besides," I added, trying to hasten him to his point.
Ikuto went for the obvious. "She's pretty."
Don't get me wrong: I understood perfectly well what Kagura meant about Ohashi Nanami. She was, as Ikuto stated so plainly, physically attractive, and her frequent smile seemed like sunshine on these still chilly spring days. Yet she wasn't just a pretty face. She was the one person who still tried to talk to Masaru, courageously brushing off his rudeness as if it were nothing. Additionally, there were times when I wondered if she was on an intellectual level around Kagura's and mine, but had never done anything about it. She finished work quickly and correctly with seemingly little effort and had surprisingly thoughtful answers in class; no doubt the teachers saw her as a model student. Furthermore, she already had much of the female population of our class wrapped around her little finger after only a week of class, and, it appeared, some of the male population too.
Kagura could do what he wanted. His hypothetical courting of Ohashi Nanami didn't concern me in the slightest.
Certainly, the stories of Daimon Masaru's previous acts of insanity were interesting, but even now that he was in high school he still remained eccentric, if not to the same extent. From my vantage point as a neutral observer in the class rather than tied to any one clique, I witnessed or at least heard about a number of his oddities:
#1: This small high school, which lacked the budget for locker rooms attached to its gym, had students change in different classrooms for physical education, divided by gender. The girls in my class remained in our homeroom, while the boys changed next door.
Most of us had the good sense to delay our stripping down until we were in the appropriate room. Masaru, on the other hand, would begin to take his shirt off as soon as he was back inside, with absolutely no care in the world for the girls. Granted, quite a few female members of the class appreciated his body, but his utter lack of propriety appalled many other classmates, including myself, and the teachers.
When told to only change in the specified room, Masaru merely said, "Who cares?"
It appeared he saw no difference between girls and a hole in the ground. The female attention this daily stunt garnered was wasted on him, though many boys in our class would have killed to be in his position.
Within a week Ohashi-san took to making a line of herself and her closest friends, blocking the girls' view of Masaru, as Kagura and I (nominated by our classmates as unlikely to intentionally hurt him, unlike the boys whose girlfriends were among the girls ogling him) forcibly removed Masaru from the room and dragged him next door. One would think this and our teacher's disapproval would be good indicators that his behavior was unwanted, but nothing changed.
#2: Masaru quickly gained a reputation for joining clubs at random and quitting within a day, if he didn't manage to get himself expelled from the group. While his athleticism seemed astoundingly flexible, he couldn't hold a tune on any instrument to save himself, seemed to be oblivious to any beauty in the world, and had little patience for the other artistic and cultural pursuits such as the calligraphy club. Furthermore, his hand-eye coordination appeared to be strictly limited to sports: The drama club reported broken props, the calligraphy club broken quills, and the computer club broken keyboards and one crashed harddrive. For cultural groups, Masaru was a very expensive risk of a new member; his only saving grace was that even if one allowed him to return, he never did.
For the sports teams, however, Masaru was a lucky find. The boxing and baseball teams in particular engaged in a two week battle for his permanent membership. Both teams failed to regain his attention after his day with them.
No one could figure out what exactly he thought he was doing. When asked, he excused his behavior with, "The clubs are all boring. I don't wanna sit around doing the same crap with the same people every day! I get enough of that in class."
This, despite my sometimes seeing him at a local gym or baseball diamond with strangers.
In no time at all, word of a 'dumb ass' first year joining every club spread like wildfire.
#3: Kagura and my idle finishing of our homework and assignments well in advance (I sometimes got bored and managed to completely pre-empt the setting of homework) was definitely atypical in our class. Many students put the assigned work off to the last minute, but most still managed to finish their work on time.
Masaru, on the other hand, never even tried. His idea of starting homework on time was writing his name on it the day after it was due. What was worse, he appeared to genuinely struggle with his work. It was a miracle he'd made it to high school, let alone supposedly build a 'digital dive'.
Life went on. School would have been boring were it not for my classmates' antics. I skim read the year's curriculum as Masaru quickly exhausted the school's stock of clubs.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, the Golden Week holidays provided a welcome release from school. With little interest in the festivals and events in the area, I resorted to returning to Austria with my younger sister.
Golden Week dragged on in Vienna. My grandmother was all too aware of my medical degree for homework to be a useful excuse for avoiding the balls and parties. (In any case, I had in fact finished it on the jet.) I put on my polite mask and kept my distance from my fellow aristocrats, disliking their elitism. Though my lineage lowered my social status, my money was still old and plentiful, and therefore desirable. People were only ever interested in my money and my family name.
That was something I had enjoyed about university: I had been so young that I was judged only on my mind. At high school, however, I was stripped of all preconceptions based on age or family. If anything, I was simply foreign, a good student, and had fancy lunches. I felt it helped people see me for me.
Finally the holiday was over. My sister and I bid our extended family farewell and returned to Yokohama and to school.
When I walked into my homeroom early on the first day back, I found Masaru, alone in the classroom and making a valiant attempt at the holiday homework. I was feeling unusually charitable upon seeing someone who looked at me without seeing a pile of money, and so after watching him for a few minutes, I started walking him through the basic math problem.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Helping," I stated the obvious.
Masaru snorted. "I don't need your help. A man doesn't ask for help."
I remained calm. "You never asked me. Nor was I was about to ask for your permission to give you the help you so desperately need."
Before he could try to dismiss me again, I went on explaining the homework, this time changing the scenario given to one involving aliens, time travelers, and shapeshifters. He actually shut up and listened, to my surprise. It appeared the same tactic I used with my little sister, making the question relevant to their interests rather than to every day life, worked on Masaru. Within moments he was attempting the problem again.
As I looked over his working, Masaru leaned forward, trying to see what I was doing. All he succeeded in doing was getting in my way. It was that shock of hair that was taking up too much space; I began to suspect one could build a bird's nest within without him noticing. The fumes from his hair products were suffocating at this proximity.
"The beginning of this looks adequate, if verging on illegible, but in order to check the rest you'll have to get your bush out of my face."
"My what?"
"Your hair."
Masaru leaned back in his chair again, looking as though he was about to retort, but instead he began to stare at me. A little confusion washed across his expression. Did I have something on my face? Had my sister cut my hair when I fell asleep on the aeroplane?
"Have we met before?" he asked at last.
We had met only in high school. Was he insane?
"Forget it. Come on, Tonma, how's my math?"
"It's Touma."
"I know."
I had the unfamiliar feeling that I was missing something.
The next day he came to school with his unruly hair cut to his shoulders with his bangs tamed to part on either side of his face. Half of his hair was tied back in a ponytail.
The sudden drastic change caught everyone by surprise. In truth, I didn't recognize him until he hit me upside the head with his unfinished homework. With this haircut, he resembled a girl.
"Shut up," he grumbled, "my mom cut it."
After my comment about his bush only yesterday? Surely that was rather rash.
"A man doesn't care about fashion. Now, are we gonna do this or what?"
Smothering my smile, I let the subject go.
Helping Masaru with his homework quickly became a morning ritual for me. When my chaffeur inquired after the change to the schedule, I simply told him that I was tutoring a less able student.
On some days it was more than just a tutorial. There would be days when the many factors including our arrival times, the amount and difficulty of the work, and sacrifices to the gods all had favorable values, which would see Masaru declaring himself finished before class started (rather than an hour into the lesson). On these days we would actually converse without the pretense of tutoring.
Of course, I still had to select my openings wisely, lest I was dismissed like our classmates who had tried TV or the weather. Masaru had no idea, but I too saw those conversational topics as dull.
"I was wondering about the school's clubs. You seem to be the expert here, having tried them all yourself. Could you recommend an interesting one for me?"
"The clubs are all so boring that even a stuffy nerd like you wouldn't like any. Yeah, I've seen you getting bored in class; the clubs aren't any better."
Masaru being observant? This was a surprise.
"Shut up! If I didn't keep an eye on my surroundings, I'd totally miss an alien or something appearing, or I'd get my ass kicked by some punk trying to take over my turf."
Valid concerns, I'm sure.
He hit the desk. I was concerned that the desk would, over the year, acquire a fist-shaped dent. "I thought high school would be different. But it's just the same crap all over again. I picked the wrong school."
I was hardly one to talk, but how on earth had he chosen his high school?
"The clubs are all the same. I just wish there was one that was special."
And what exactly constituted a 'special' club?
"My sayso."
I'd been dealing with this kind of arrogance from a young age, so I merely raised an eyebrow.
"It's not something you can explain!"
The bell rang for class. As I turned back to the front of the classroom, I caught a glimpse of Masaru directing all his annoyance out the window.
Another day, another page completed, another conversation.
"I never would have taken you for fast-paced serial monogamy."
Masaru looked utterly blank. "...what?"
I sighed. "Quickly dating one person after another. It's what I heard from--"
"People can say what they want about me. It's probably true."
What, the truth was too absurd already for anyone to invent anything plausible?
"Exactly."
With the nagging feeling that Masaru had understood only half of that sentence, I returned to the original subject.
"Were you simply unable to find a girl you truly cared about?"
"Nope. They were all so ordinary."
"In what manner?"
"Everything."
"So what kind of girl would you find interesting? Would they have to be an alien or time traveler or...whatever?"
"An alien or whatever," he seemed to be smirking at my use of the word, "would be cool. Wouldn't even have to be a chick, as long as they're not normal. Or even if there was someone with that extra, kind of, I don't know, spark. I could tell if I saw them, but it's not something you can explain."
It sounded as though he was already looking for the love of his life.
"Not even! Love is such a waste of time that could be spent fighting. And it's just another form of retardedness. It makes people act stupid. Like hell I want to be part of that. I mean, the girls who asked me out? They all asked by phone! What is up with that? If you really like someone you should put all your heart into it and be a man about it, even if you're a woman!"
That last part made no sense whatsoever, but I could agree with part of his rant, at least.
"If I were to court a girl," I ignored his sniggering at my terminology, "I wouldn't do so by phone; I would ask in person, or send a formal invitation--"
"And that's why you ain't got a girlfriend."
My love life had nothing to do with this conversation.
"Hit a nerve there, eh, Tonma?"
"Well, why did you pursue a love life so avidly, then, if you think so little of love?"
"Aliens always go for the women first."
I could feel my jaw dropping open despite myself. That was seriously why he dated?
"So I figured, a tough guy like me, I'd protect girls from alien invasion. Or even just from jerk asses out to hurt 'em. I thought a really exceptional girl might attract aliens, all the way from outer space. But they were all so ordinary no aliens would bother with them."
Fortunately I had already long reached the conclusion that Daimon Masaru was insane. However, once again I found myself agreeing about one thing.
"The earth is full of ordinary people. If aliens do exist, and if they've developed the technology sufficient to travel to our planet, then it's extremely likely they also have the technology available to observe us from afar. They must have realized that there's nothing of worth on our planet. Or instead of mere boredom, they may have observed the atrocities of the human race, such as the wars and genocide, and been utterly appalled. Either way, if aliens did exist, they wouldn't bother with earth."
Masaru suddenly stood, slamming his hands onto the desk.
"That's why I need to get their attention!"
That made even less sense than he usually did.
"Aliens who would bother with us are special! They're something different! They're--"
"Disrupting the start of showtime," said the teacher from his desk. "I see you've done at least some of your homework this time, at least. Sit down!"
Glaring at me, Masaru returned to his seat, and didn't speak to me again for the rest of the day.
At the beginning of lunchtime, I was called to the teacher's desk. As my work had been nothing short of stellar and I was in no way disruptive (unless one includes provoking Masaru before class), this was a rather puzzling development.
"Norstein-kun," he said, baring that smile that always disturbed the class, "I'd like to congratulate you."
I had been anticipating a scolding. This, however, caught me by surprise.
"Kurata-sensei?"
"Whatever you're doing with Masaru, keep at it."
He was encouraging me, yet almost sneering Masaru's name without so much as an honorific. Odd.
"His grades have been steadily improving, and as I've seen you working with him before school in the mornings, I believe it's due to your influence."
"I hardly influence Daimon-san, Kurata-sensei. If anything, I simply have the patience to take him through the problem and put the terms into a language he understands."
"I see," Kurata-sensei murmured, before smiling again. "Well, keep up the good work!"
It seemed to be a dismissal. Bowing, I retreated and went to fetch my bento.
"Are you in trouble?" Ikuto asked. "Kagura-san said the teacher wanted to talk to you!"
"Not in the slightest," I assured him. "Kurata-sensei merely wished to congratulate me on my progress with Masaru. It seems his grades are actually improving under my tutelage."
"People are already starting to talk," Kagura warned me.
And if it reaches the adults, it would merely sound as though my genius is an improving influence on even a delinquent through our tragically forced interaction in the public school system.
"How did you do it?" Ikuto burst out. "Since he got cool, he never gives me the time of day!"
'Cool' was certainly a unique way of labelling Masaru's fanatacism for the extraordinary.
"I'd like to know that too."
Suddenly the smiling face of Ohashi Nanami was before me. I was amused to observe Kagura, who was usually never one to become flustered, almost falling over himself to bow to her.
"It's good to see Daimon-san finally making a friend in the class," she continued, bowing in return. "I've tried to talk to him a few times but nothing happens. At least with a good friend like you he won't be so isolated any more."
I could hardly call an uncivilized oaf whom I was merely tutoring my friend.
She giggled. "You are such a kidder, Norstein-san. Well, if I have any messages for him," she had, after all, recently been elected class monitor, "I'll let you pass them on!"
Do I look like a courier?
"You look reliable."
Ohashi-san smiled brightly, assuming my agreement, and backed away to leave. Yet she paused, looking at Ikuto.
"Who's this?"
And what was he doing here, read the subtext in her slight frown.
"Kagura-san's little cousin, Noguchi Ikuto," I invented. "After school he's quite occupied with clubs, so he drops by at lunchtimes for some tutelage from his dear older cousin."
Ohashi-san looked pointedly at our utter lack of paper.
"But first we like to eat lunch together. Tutoring makes one very hungry."
"Yes, you would know, wouldn't you?" Ohashi-san nodded. "Keep the good work, you two!"
She returned to her group of friends, leaving us to our own devices. Kagura let out a huge sigh.
This high school seemed to have an obscure rule that required a change in the seating plan every month. Our class's arrangement was done at random; I was pleased to find myself by the window, near the back of the classroom. A breath of fresh air was good for the circulation.
Yet once again, one Daimon Masaru was seated behind me, complaining as per usual. The set changed, but the characters did not.
"I joined the mysteries club yesterday."
"And how did you find it?"
"Ha! Those losers were just waiting for mysteries to come to them, and in the meantime, they read mystery novels. They might as well take over the literature club!"
"What exactly are you looking for in a club?"
"Something interesting!"
I was coming rapidly to the conclusion that even Masaru himself had no idea of what he was actually looking for. He never had a definition of 'interesting' to offer; one could only deduce from his long list of rejected clubs what wasn't interesting.
"I thought there'd be some kick ass clubs at high school! But nothing's changed."
"Most changes and advances occur under a few conditions. One is out of necessity, such as the development of Braille and sign language. Another is when there's a benefit to the quality of life of a significant number of people. The invention of automobiles, trains, aeroplanes; the discovery of penicillin, pasteurization, medical uses for radiation: These were all to aid people. Advances where any need or benefit to society is unclear or dubious were at least made with specific goals in mind. When America put man on the moon, they did so deliberately, with plans in mind. It didn't just happen because someone at NASA said, 'I'm bored.' When Rutherford split the atom--"
"Do you ever stop talking?"
I usually let him speak; it was about time I gave him a piece of my mind!
"My point is, everyone else is content with the clubs the way they are. You're the only one who thinks there is any need for change, or would see any benefit from change to their activities. So any change has to come from you. And it has to be deliberate. You have to do something concrete rather than sitting around whining."
"Like what?"
Hm. Bring it back to him and suddenly he's interested again. When debating with Masaru, leave your examples at home.
"Why don't you make your own club?"
And then he'd be too occupied with discovering that running a club is harder than it sounds to complain to me. A win-win scenario, I thought.
Masaru appeared to contemplate it for a second.
"Okay!"
Little did I know what damage I had inadvertently wrought.