We both left home to head to our respective schools, feeling like any student: completely unenthusiastic.
Luckily, all I have to do to get to my school is take the subway and walk a bit, but Amaya has to perform acrobatics to get to hers—or so she says. I was only a week into the second term, but I was already tired; my face screamed it. Well, my face isn't a reliable indicator, since I naturally have a calm and weak voice.
Everyone who sees me for the first time asks if I'm okay; my mother used to ask me that all the time when I was little.
I'm already pissed off just thinking about it…
After traveling on the train and saying goodbye to my sister, I headed to school. It wasn't far from the station, so I got there quickly, and I ran into three other weirdos at the entrance.
"Dude, you owe me dinner from almost a month ago! If you don't bring it tomorrow, I'm going to charge you taxes!"
"It's you, hahaha! We all know I won that game."
"…"
Is that jerk telling that asshole to pay him back again? I can't believe they're still going on about it. That jerk looked to his side to talk to the third guy there, "You know he owes me money right?"
"Don't listen to him! He's definitely ripping you off!"
"And you shut up, you lying piece of shit!" They both pressured poor _¨*^?¿· to give an answer, who after a while of thinking, and another while of being nervous…
"...=@º\' , you were the one who said 'double or nothing!', and then lost in the worst possible way." _¨*^?¿· put a finger to his cheek, a little shy about giving the answer.
"_¨*^?¿·, liar!"
"Nah, don't pay attention to this guy, he's a loser."
"I'll break your neck!" Daiki started pointing at =@º\' with his thumb as if he were a freak. The atmosphere calmed down, more or less, when I got their attention, raising my hand slightly to greet them, while I took off the headphones I was wearing.
"Hey."
"Ah, hello hello!"
"H-hello."
"Oh, hello, Riku. Dude, can you believe that &$% thing!?"
I wish I could say something happened the rest of the day, but unless I want to start talking about a montage of bad jokes and moments that aren't funny, but make me laugh anyway, well, I don't have much else to say...
...if it weren't for the fact that in 4 days we're going to an anime convention.
I'm not going to say much for now, but I'm really excited to go. It's the second time I've done something like this, and I've been wanting to go since the beginning of summer, even though only one person is going—the rest of us didn't like it the last time we went.
Honestly, it would be ten times better if my sister came, but she says she doesn't want to, and even though I keep pestering her to go, she always ends up saying no. I stopped asking after the fourth time.
There are still 4 days of class left…
Classes are usually boring—no, sorry, they're boring. The only interesting thing about all this is a discussion straight out of a manga about some loser who owes another kid dinner. How relatable. It must be trendy to owe money to other people.
Anyone might think they're having a typical day that could be taken from a comedy or romance manga or anime, but life isn't usually that entertaining.
In my case, it's even harder to have something like that, since =@º\' usually plays basketball at recess. Although it's also my fault, since I always go to the library.
Literally only one girl uses it; I think her name was Tsukiyomi, or at least that's what the girls who come to get her from time to time call her. I've never spoken to her, and I never will.
And neither of us uses the books there; we bring our own books—in my case, manga and light novels. We both know the other exists, but we never do anything about it.
My routine in class is pretty much that, aside from talking to them between classes. I'm not in any clubs, unlike =@º\' , whose club anyone could never guess, so I don't have much to do here after school. I sit through three classes, then I read whatever's available in the library, and when the bell rings, I go back to class and sit through another three subjects. At least I get a few laughs between classes.
After another productive and entertaining day of classes, I said goodbye to my friends and took the train home.
I've had the habit of listening to music for a while now. I always do it on the way back. Amaya and her parents pick them up, and she doesn't need to take the train, so I don't have anyone to talk to.
I'm not much of a talker anyway. I'm a bit reserved and shy, but when I'm in the mood, there's no stopping me. The only people I'm always like this with are Amaya and her. ...It surprises me how I'm only able to find something to talk about with those two.Even with similar tastes, you run out of things to talk about after a while. Ah, the magic of sisterhood and friendship is beautiful! And how tiresome they both are...
We mostly talk about video games, anime, and TV series, and if we're not doing that, we're just goofing off completely. Sometimes we even do both at the same time. Talking so much about my sister... I sound like a siscon...
You can only sigh after hearing a monologue like that in my head. The rest of the day was even more productive; I ate, locked myself in my room, talked to my sister for a while, read, played a game, went downstairs for dinner, and went back upstairs to read again.
Whenever I think about it, my life seems rather boring from an outsider's perspective. After all, what would be interesting about reading about a hormonal teenager wasting his precious youth?
I don't see the appeal, although I can't really say much. There are much stranger things out there.
Amaya is probably one of them.
After dinner, while I was reading a novel, Amaya came into my room, and for some reason she just stared at me without saying anything.
"Am I uglier than normal, or less handsome than usual?"
"Probably both."
I'm as sorry that she's right as I am that I can't say the same to her After that great offense, I put a bookmark in the novel and set it aside, waiting to see if she really wants something or not.
"And are you here for something other than seeing my face? You're not here to complain about your class like you always do, are you? Oh, right, they changed you because you're autistic."
After a brief silence, and without any comment, I stare at her as she approaches my desk, picks up the snacks I had next to the keyboard, and starts eating them.
"Nothing."
"Hey, hey, hey, hey! What the hell are you doing? That's mine, I earned it with sweat and blood!"
"If by sweat and blood you say, munchMunch, crying to Dad, we're in trouble."
Seeing that she wasn't going to stop, I got out of bed to take the bag from her hands. When she saw me approaching, she raised the bag as high as she could so I couldn't reach it. And yes, I couldn't reach it; she was too tall.
"Give it to me!"
"Please, sir."
"Can you be any more awful?! So you come in, call me ugly to my face, steal my snack, and now you're asking me for manners..."
"Exact."
Without a care in the world, perhaps even mocking me, Amaya completely agreed with me.
"Look, you can keep it, I don't care."
I gave up, which was to be expected given the situation. I went back to bed, sitting on the side. She, meanwhile, put the bag back after having enough.
I don't know if it's going to end up being even more miserable... And it's understandable that you're not taking anything, we just had dinner. Ugh.
I sighed, seeing the smile on Amaya's face, clearly bothered by her. This might be more or less common, but she's definitely never this persistent. When I have to get my revenge, she'll be sorry.
"Now seriously, do you want something? Because if you're just going to bother me, leave. Really, leave." She was a little annoyed, and this was hardly a joke anymore.
Now calmer, Amaya confessed.
"Okayyy. I came to steal another volume of ManMan."
"If it were up to me, you'd take them all..."
"And so?"
"Because I don't want to collect books by someone who likes incest. And besides, I didn't like the ending."
"And I didn't even know it was finished. I might still want to keep reading it."
I was disappointed to find out. It only took seeing one video on social media for everything to fall apart. After all the times I'd defended him...
While we were talking, Amaya came over to my bookshelf. Just like hers, it was full of manga, novels, and the occasional figure or piece of merchandise. It was the only part of my room that I'd kept tidy; the rest was a mess. She found the volume she wanted to read, and when she finished speaking...
"Don't touch it. If you touch it, I'll kill you."
"By?"
"You're the one who carries it around with your hands like that. Don't you even wash them? You're a filthy pig."
"Yes, I wash them and take a shower. Do you even know the word 'shower'? I bet you don't, with the smell in here."
"Don't project your problems onto me."
We started throwing mud at each other just for the sake of common sense. It's obvious, how could she handle it with dirty hands? I don't even want to know what his sleeves look like…
"I'm too lazy to go wash my hands just for that, I'll steal it from you tomorrow after I shower."
"Then I suggest you leave."
"My God. The rush to kick me out…"
"You shouldn't have even come in in the first place."
"If you come to my room to bother me later, I'll break your legs."
"You've got another thing coming."
Displaying a hint of hostility on both sides, Amaya turned her back on me and headed for my bedroom door, finally listening to me for the first time during this whole interruption.
As she left, I picked up the novel I was reading and removed the bookmark. I still had to finish the chapter I was on, and I certainly wasn't going to leave it unfinished.
Deep down, interruptions like that don't bother me that much. Actually, they do bother me a lot, but I feel like there's a part of me that appreciates them. Even so, it feels weird spending time with my sister like that. We're not kids anymore; we can't be glued to each other all the time.
Now all we do is insult each other, and every now and then we have a serious talk. It's like we have an agreement between us to be able to vent. I'm usually the one who vents.
I should stop doing that.
Although today, she didn't even bother trying to talk about anything. Normally, she forces herself to say something to me, anything at all, but today she just hesitated, and in a somewhat drier way, she seemed less lively.
I suppose it's normal, she's changed classes and just finished taking exams.
And it's true that, even though she does all this, she's nothing like my mother, and thank goodness for that. And I know she's not a bad person because of things like this.
"...Good night."
"Good night."
She closed the door the moment she stepped into the hallway