01
Kaede Tsuguhara is an aberration.
She is an abstraction; a creation of the mind. Perhaps it may have been due to boring circumstance, or it was just a reason to waste time, hastily making the creation real. Case on point: when a boy and his circle of friends do as they usually do in summer camp, trying to creep out other boys, and probably even the girls, by the bonfire, having a stick split to look like horns, and some leaves stuck on it plucked for the hair, a wig so perfectly imperfect, it gave the impression that this Kaede Tsuguhara was nothing more than a myth.
This all happened probably not more than a half-decade ago, when record players ceased to exist, and people started getting into this video streaming site no one dared to talk about quite spectacularly in the present, perhaps due to different types of requirements, people started to get busy at the times when they weren’t that quite before.
Specific case: in a particular high school, no one was actually spectacularizing the abstractions of the mind anymore, when most of the class are actually grown, possibly old enough to drive, the only thing that they wouldn’t drive home like they did before was this. It was a general case of growing up, a time where chuunibyou tendencies begin ceasing to exist, just like the imaginary creations of the mind, else you might be put off as a mentally challenged, or delusional being worthy of an asylum, much like Arkham or Bedlam, or that asylum in The New Mutants or the hospital in The Silence of the Lambs. Alright, I’ll admit, the latter two were a little bit extreme of instances, but I believe that those instances, these examples, are hyperbolic instances of how the real world works.
And just like any other mundanity, today was just an ordinary day for me. Sitting in the blue line of the train, hopping in then dropping off, essentially going to school, or maybe just the building, no less no more, just in there to listen, probably merely hear the routine lesson that had the same boring formula, leading me to think if it was a better idea to let the Tsuguhara myth die out eternally, or I may have been thinking too much about it.
Thinking too much… not too deep. Philosophically speaking, if your rational thinking isn’t challenged by your own rational thinking, and merely large spews come out of it, you might probably be thinking too much. However, if that rational thinking is challenged by rational thinking and is guided by a theoretical frame from which a conclusion can come about, then that is thinking deep. It is quite similar, and different from the discussion of electric flux to electric field, but more closely related to the encouragement phrases of dreaming high or dreaming deep.
On many classes, causally, I took notes, thinking way too much about what I write, which oftentimes ended up just getting white-outed to be written again, although half-assed. Maybe it’s just me being me, or the mere fact that I wasted time in thinking about things too much, instead of thinking about the lesson, that I missed the more important gist of it all. Well, there goes my chance, I sighed. This happened on occasion, more than once on the same and probably different subjects, making me feel lucky that I actually have a set of books purchased for my own use.
Not long after the bell rang, and I immediately went up from my chair, actually being the only one standing, but I actually didn’t care. I waltzed out of the room, with my bento box, in the cafeteria place, or any place we are allowed to eat our concoctions that we call food.
The Academy is the name of the school I attend, or should I say would have been attended. It is much like any other high school, with a hyper-generalized name, is and has always been co-ed, but still the place where boys will be boys and girls will be girls… same old, same old.
A part of the graduating class, I’ll be the first lone ranger, without a Tonto, of the batch. I didn’t have that much friends, neither acquaintances. It seems like for the past years that I’ve been in The Academy, I have never taken a chance to liberally talk to my teachers nor my fellow students. Whenever papers are distributed, the last pages were given in such ways that they are not, and when report cards were distributed, mine was handed to a person near my seat, which will eventually reach my seat. Roll calls carried on in such manners too.
I never bothered with anything of the sort.
It feels very normal to me.
No one interacting with a nearly legal girl seems so suspicious, it’s as if the girl was pregnant of some kind. I’ve never ventured into sex, unlike the class vice-president who had a crush on our president, which was quite the cute, wholesome experience, until they exchanged sexual favors, sometimes escalating into sex, which the whole class never knew, neither the admin, nor their parents, not even the staff; pretty much everyone was oblivious except for me. However, since I am a proton to their electric fields, no one said a word even when I practically screamed it from the back.
That being said, I wasn’t pregnant, so the next thing that comes to mind is abuse at home, but I never felt anything homely or anti-homely in my house. It seems like the only one who actually interacts with me is my littlest brother Shuya, at around four years of age, which kinda pissed my mother, even mildly scolding him for dabbling with “non-existent things”.
I sighed, what a truly eventfully uneventful day.
As I had imagined, as I walked to the trains, it was still the same old place, probably defying the age old tale of you can’t set foot on the same place twice, because you have seen it before and you’ve turned into a different person now…
But I still live like I am not living. It’s like I was long dead and insignificant.
Perhaps it’s my own perception…
Though, for someone like me, it’s acceptable.
For me, who goes by Kaede Tsuguhara.
