COTE: Starting Over

Chapter 2

* 8 *

I'm not really sure where to begin. Every little thing ended up different.

I mean it, I really couldn't tell you. If you compared the two and asked me "Where were they different?", I wouldn't know how to answer.

You need to have some common points to compare and contrast. You can't just ask someone to explain the differences between a merry-go-round and a pencil, right?

But in a word, I was ruined. Far worse off than one would ever imagine given my first life.
To give a few examples, let's see. I was bullied by my best friend from my first life, I was severely rejected by my girlfriend from my first life, and I failed the exam for the high school I attended in my first life... and so on.

I bet you're dying to know what change in my heart or whatever brought on such corruption. But I don't want to talk about that, at least not right now.

Basically, I'm not the type to moan about his worries.

Anybody who enjoys hearing that stuff's gotta be someone who love strangers' sorrows better than three square meals, some real rubbernecking gossiper types.

And this story's not for them. So let's just summarize the interesting bits.

I guess I'll put it like this. In my second go at life, a vicious cycle had created itself seemingly out of thin air.

One bit of misfortune led to another bit of misfortune, and that led to a third. As soon as there was a tiny misalignment in the cogs, all these other ones got mucked up, and those ones mucked up even more...

And in the end, the cogs had all come apart. I think that's a good way to explain what happened.

It was a friend of mine who put it that way first, though.

I was always a guy who could "fall either way," so to speak. I had the potential for great success, but I also had the potential for massive failure.

The more I think about it, I realize that's hardly something exclusive to me.

* 9 *

There were a lot of causes all linked together which I could point to, but what I would call the most decisive one was how readily the girl who should have become my girlfriend rejected me.

When my confession - which I was a hundred percent sure would succeed - bombed, well, it's not hard to imagine my dismay.

According to my memories, "that girl" always had sleepy eyes, but it only looked that way because of her long eyelashes.

When she appeared to be spacing out, the gears were in fact always turning in her head... That's what my "future girlfriend" was like.

Those memories about her were some of the most clear. Maybe memories have a hierarchy, where the highest-priority ones make the most concrete memories. Yeah, I guess that's memory for you.

At any rate, she seemed like the kind of girl I'd fall for. I've never been particularly interested in a girl simply because she's smart, but I guess I'm soft for "looks like she's spacing out, but always has her head on straight."

That sort of fondness for abnormality... Well, if you compare it how I choose my friends, it's a more pure, feeling-based thing, admittedly. Not something I wanna do all the time.

I seemed to recall that in my first life, I confessed to her in spring, my third year of middle school.

And her reply was something like "Thank you, I've been waiting so long," half in tears. And in the five years after that, we were more or less inseparable.