The clock on my bedside ticked away, and my consciousness swayed and blurred into a muddy focus.
It was dark. I could see traces of my bedroom, faintly outlined by moonlight. My bed, and my desk. The window, and the city outside it. The waning crescent moon.
…How much time had passed?
I looked at the clock. It read eight. An hour.
I must have fallen asleep.
Or maybe I just… lost track of time.
Raana was still on me, her eyes still closed. She was still dreaming.
I felt the weight and warmth of her body press down on my chest with every inhale and give way with every exhale. She was snoring, ever so slightly. Her breath tickled my neck. She sounded… cute.
I raised my hand up to my face and touched it, and I felt the traces of dried saliva she’d left there. Both mine and hers.
I rubbed them off, then stared at my thumb. It was lightly tinged red. …I felt a little lightheaded, looking at it.
I looked over at Raana; I could just barely make out her sleeping face, and there was… a small, blurry, crimson stain, left just below her lips. Seeing that made me even dizzier.
The rest of my body slowly started waking up, pins and needles washing over my chest, like a tide coming in. They spread to my limbs, and, when they reached my left shoulder, the pain came back.
It stung. I squirmed, and jolted upwards.
“Ah–!”
Raana’s eyes peeked open. She looked at me, squinting.
I looked away, off to the side.
I couldn’t bring myself to face her.
Then, as I turned, I saw the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, on the floor. It was rolling, ever so gently, and its plastic glinted a pale blue. The ball of cotton sat next to it.
I read the label printed on its side.
“Oxydol”. “Class 3 pharmaceutical.”
“Japanese Pharmacopoeia.”
“3.3% solution. For disinfection and cleaning of wounds.”
…I’d forgotten, after everything that happened. The urgency hit me like a bolt of lightning.
I reached for the bottle, and the cotton, and I finally looked up at Raana. She’d sat up, but her legs were still straddling mine. She was rubbing her eye with one hand.
She made a sleepy, confused noise.
“…Raana-chan. Let me… Let me clean it.”
I sat up, too, and spoke to her. She was… really close, now. I could feel her breath again, winding its way around my cheek.
I dampened the cotton with the peroxide and I reached out to her arm. To… the, mark I… left on her.
The cut was still bright red, but it had stopped bleeding.
I thought she would resist, but… she didn’t. She let me take her arm. It was really, really cold, and covered in hard, pointed goosebumps. I could feel it leeching the heat from my palm.
I lifted it up, and gently pressed the wet cotton against it.
…She flinched.
And, she made a noise. Like a mewl, or a hiss. Both, I think.
I looked over at her face. She’d turned hers away. It looked a little flushed.
“Hurts.”
She forced her voice, through pained whimpers.
“I-I’m sorry… Just, hang in there a little longer…”
“Mmn…”
Another… little… mewl.
Raana’s voice could pitch surprisingly high. I knew that already. But… I didn’t know what to think, now that I was forcing it to.
It felt, weird. Making her hurt.
I’m too scared to even touch people, normally. And this…
It felt like I was reaching past her skin, and touching her soul.
It made my skin crawl. It made my stomach turn, and, yet, I couldn’t stop.
My mind lingered for a few seconds too long. I hurriedly let go of her.
“S-sorry. I’ll… get you a band-aid, okay?”
I said, trying to sound reassuring.
I shuffled out from under her legs, set the bottle and the cotton down, and stood up, and walked over to my desk, and flipped the switch on the cable leading to my reading lamp. The room glowed a dim orange.
I started looking. Third drawer, bottom right. Band-aids, sorted by color. A pattern of white cats, on a blue background.
I recall buying this, a few weeks ago, at the local stationery store. I was planning on giving it to Raana.
She was still hiding her face when I came back to her. She turned it away from the light, cloaking it in shadow.
When I put a band-aid on, I always start by taking off the left half of the film covering the adhesive. You don’t take the other off until the first side is adhered. That way, you can just pull the other half off as you press the adhesive down, all in one motion.
When the pad pressed down on her cut, I felt Raana’s arm pull back, just a little bit. Then I ran my finger over the length of the band-aid, to make sure it fully adhered.
“…There.”
“You’re done?”
Her voice was… lower than normal.
“Y-Yeah.”
She turned towards me. Her gaze landed on mine, and made me flinch, and look away.
“Your turn, then.”
I think I heard her snicker under her breath.
“Ah… Y-you don’t, need to…”
She’d already picked up the cotton and the bottle by the time I finished protesting, though.
She tilted the bottle, and dumped the liquid over the cotton, until it was completely wet. The peroxide ran over it, then spilled into a puddle on the floor.
The liquid slid around and danced, along the gaps in the floorboards. It reached my knee, and I felt it touching me.
“T-that’s way too much, Raana-chan…”
“Mm? Isn’t more better?”, she asked, tilting her head. She was holding the dripping blob up to her eyes.
“I… I don’t… think so?”
I wasn’t sure, though.
Maybe it is…?
“Hold still.” She dropped the subject, and started inching her legs towards me.
“O-okay…”
Raana peeked over my shoulder, and pulled my blazer and shirt aside. I felt the cloth drag over the bite marks.
“Ow…”
She ignored me, and reached her hand onto the wound, forcefully rubbing the cotton over it. She held it down. Hard.
“I-iiiiiiii…”
My head jerked backward and my eyelids closed themselves. I felt my tears welling up again.
The liquid squeezed out of the cotton, and it ran down along my spine, and stopped at the small of my back, like, sterile, chemical sweat.
Then she leaned even closer, pressed down even harder. Her nose was right next to my ear, now. I could hear her breathing battering against it. It was… surprisingly fast, and it was ragged. It sounded like she was… excited.
Was she… paying me back?
I held my own breath in, trying to bear through the pain. Until I couldn’t, and the air heaved out of my lungs, and when I tried to catch it on its way, I let something slip into my trachea, and I started coughing like a sick puppy, desperate, and stuttering, and I fell onto my back.
She finally backed off. When the reflexes in my throat calmed down, I reached for my shoulder, instinctively, but I stopped myself.
Raana stood up, and started rifling through my drawers. Running her hand through their insides, then throwing them mostly-closed, ajar, when she didn’t find what she wanted.
“Where’s the big ones?,” she asked.
“Ah!”
I reached a hand out to her and tried to answer. Two more coughs leapt out of my mouth, then they let me speak.
“T-they’re… in the second-to-last drawer, and they’re sorted from dark to light from left to right and by their pattern from top to bottom, and, and…”
“Got it.”
“A-ah…”
I turned away, and stared at the ceiling.
I wiped my mouth, then I lifted my hand up, trying to reach out and touch the thin pane of glass that stood between me, and everything in front.
I think… I was having a really strange Friday night. Probably.
Raana put the bandage on my shoulder, then went back to fiddling with her guitar, without speaking another word. She was still looking over at me, though.
It was a big, square bandage, with the Milky Way printed on it. It was also the first one in the drawer, counting from the top right.
She didn’t apply it evenly. There were creases left all over it, leaving little gaps exposed to the air. I tried to press on them to flatten them out, but it hurt a lot, so I stopped.
I took my hoodie and my shorts out of the closet, and I walked over to our laundry room, and took off my skirt and my blazer, then my tie, which was loosened and messily hanging off the back of my neck, and my shirt, which was partly unbuttoned and scrunched up and wrinkled at the shoulder.
I held the white shirt out in front of me, and looked it over. It was stained a diluted pink with my blood and wet with long, comet-like streaks of hydrogen peroxide running down its back.
I threw it in the washing machine, with the water set to hot, hoping it would just fade away. Then, I put on my change of clothes.
When I got back, Raana was sitting on the floor. She had her legs and one arm wrapped around her guitar, like it was a body pillow, and she was looking at her phone.
The screen’s light colored her face a pale white, and cast shadows over the pores on her skin, like the surface of the moon.
Her cheeks looked perfectly soft.
She had her usual, monotonic expression, but her eyes were fixed on the screen.
A moment passed. She looked up. She caught me staring, and my gaze dodged down to the floor.
“Tomori.”
I jumped when I heard my name, but I didn’t look up.
“…Y-yes?”
“I’m staying over tonight.”
“S-staying over…? Here…?”
I hadn’t done that since… sixth grade, I think.
My… friend at the time, Mio-chan, wanted to stay the night. So she did. I still wish she hadn’t.
It was an awkward, and uncomfortable sleepover. I think I made a complete fool of myself. I couldn’t face her at school afterwards, and I think, because of that, we started drifting apart.
…I thought about it for a while, and as I did, I caught myself running my fingernail down the length of my cheek and neck, to calm myself down.
I wanted to say no.
I was scared. Scared enough already having her here, in my room, all on her own. Just looking at her was enough to raise my heartbeat and open a pit in my stomach.
I wanted to be alone, and turn the lights back off, and jump into my bed, and hide under my covers until everything turned black.
My nail dug deeper into my skin.
I thought she’d get sick of waiting for my answer, and start prodding me for it.
But instead, she said, “I don’t wanna go home.”
She whispered it. So quietly that I could have missed it just from focusing too hard on my own thoughts.
Raana always says things so confidently. Like she’s been ready to say them her whole life, like she doesn’t need to think about them at all. I’ve always admired it. She’s always felt so… unreachably comfortable with herself.
But right now, she sounded like she was wringing out every drop of her strength to pull the words from her mouth. She was right down here with me.
I looked at her. She wasn’t looking at me.
Her phone was on the floor, still bathing her with its glow, at a different angle.
I could see her lock screen, her mountain of unread notifications. I could see new ones popping up.
She was resting her forehead on the neck of her guitar.
She was hugging it with both arms now.
Before I even realized it, I was by her side, on my knees.
I don’t remember running over to her, or tripping onto the floor, or pulling my phone out of my pocket. But that’s what happened.
I looked her in the eyes. She gently turned towards me.
Her face looked different from usual. It looked like there was something… welling up inside her. Just the slightest amount, just a little.
I told her, “I’ll call my parents.”
Mom and Dad are out on a date tonight. It’s their anniversary. They said they won’t be home until midnight, and they left me some curry to reheat in the fridge.
I called Mom, and I told her one of my bandmates wanted to stay the night. She said that that was fine, and told me to have fun.
I think I heard a little, “ooh”, right after I told her.
“Raana-chan. Mom says it’s okay. You can stay over.”
I walked back into my room to tell her. She was still there, sitting on the floor, hugging her guitar.
Her phone was turned face down on the floor, so I couldn’t see her face anymore.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she sighed. I’d never heard her sigh before.
“…Do you want… to have dinner? I only have one serving of curry, but… we can split it, if that’s okay…”
I asked.
“Mmm.” She didn’t sound interested.
“Is that… a no?”
“Curry makes my tongue itchy. I don’t like it.”
“A-ah… Then…”
“Give me something sweet.”
We sat across from each other at our kitchen table.
I had my plate of reheated curry, with a serving of rice. I can’t cook at all, but I can at least work the rice cooker.
Raana had a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and a glass of milk I set out for her.
She was chewing on one of the cookies, and, at the same time, she was looking at me. Straight at me. Like, jiiii.
I was dodging her eyes with mine as I ate.
I concentrated on getting a perfect one-to-one ratio of curry to rice in every spoonful. Just to distract myself from the daggers being stared into me.
I fed myself another bite, then chewed it twelve times, like Dad taught me, then I swallowed it, then took another bite, then chewed another twelve times.
The silence and the clinking of my spoon against my bowl and the sound of Raana chewing her food filled my head. And it all felt as loud as a really loud car horn blaring right into my ear and all my thoughts started to turn into white noise and so I finally blurted something out just to break it up.
“S-sorry we didn’t have anything matcha-flavored.”
“Mmm.” She narrowed her eyes at me.
No response. …Of course, I should have expected that.
“…A-are the cookies good, at least? Um, Dad baked a big batch the other day, so, you can have as many as you want…”
“Bretty goob.” She said, while chewing on one.
“…”
“…”
“R-Raana-…chan.”
“Mm?”
I finally looked back at her. She was tilting her head.
I tried my best to swallow the anxious feeling building in the back of my throat, and I breathed in, and finally, I got myself to ask the question that had been slowly taking over my mind this whole time.
“…Why…don’t you want to go home?”
“…”
She didn’t say anything, at first. Instead, she raised her knees up to her chest, and tucked them in with her arms.
She was looking away.
The anxiety I’d swallowed came rushing back up from the depths of my stomach.
“S-sorry… Y-you don’t have to answer that, I just… Sorry, sorry, sorry…”
I looked down, and started to play with what was left of my food, dragging it around the plate in a circle.
“…‘cos they don’t get it.”
“…E-eh?”
“I said, they don’t get it.”
My anxiety turned to confusion, and my mind raced, trying to figure out what she could mean.
“W-who?”
I ate another spoonful of curry.
“Mom. And grandma.” Her voice got lower with every response.
“A-ah… And, what don’t they… get?”
“Anything.” She was speaking through her teeth, I could hear it.
I kept going through scenarios in my head. Things I’d heard about at school, things I’d read about, or seen on TV.
“Did they… did they hurt you, Raana-chan?”
I heard my voice raise, on its own.
“No. Not like that.”
“O-okay… That’s, that’s good…”
“…I’m sick of them. All they do is order me around.”
I could hear a fire, burning in her chest, rising up and spewing from her mouth.
I had never seen Raana like this before. Taki-chan did let her temper get the better of her sometimes. But not Raana. She was always so laid back.
She grabbed another cookie from her plate, and spread her knees apart so she could put it in her mouth. She bit into it, hard enough that crumbs spilled all over the table. When I saw her teeth come down on it and split it in half, I jumped.
She took another bite, then another. She’d stuffed the whole cookie into her mouth before swallowing any of it. Then she picked up her glass of milk and drank it all in a single breath, and let out a raspy breath when she was done.
“I’m full.” She still had a few cookies on her plate.
I’d finished my curry by now.
“O-okay. Um…”
I wanted to ask more. I really wanted to.
But getting this far had already taken so much out of me. I felt like I had run out of breath, like I do every time I try to run.
So I changed the subject, to try and catch it.
“Do you… want to take a bath? I can get the water ready…”
She looked at me. “Hmm.”
“E-eh…”
“Hmmmmmmmm.”
“…What’s, what’s up…”
Suddenly, she smirked.
“Take it with me.”