Punctual

Punctual (Part Four)

I feel as if I should say something profound.

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Another sour note cuts through the air, the furrow in my brow deepening as I growl in frustration. I try again, silently scolding myself to concentrate, which simply causes my entire arm up to the shoulder to tense as I butcher an entire phrase of complicated chords. My piano teacher gently places her hand on top of my own, bringing an end to the horrendous sound. She gives me a slightly pitying sidewards glance.

“Perhaps we should stop for today.”

Fine with me. I’m late for swim practice anyway.

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I can’t focus here either. Two other girls rocket past me during warm up laps and I let them, too exhausted and apathetic to bother catching up. Halfway through, I lift myself out of the pool, ripping off my goggles and swim cap as I give a flimsy excuse to the assistant coach and grab my bags.

Hair still dripping wet, I lethargically make my way to the public park, finding a bench and taking a few minutes to sit and stare at my shoes before I have to rush out to cram school.

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I am rooted to the spot, a strange feeling of déjà vu washing over me as I gape disbelievingly at the exam score sheet for the grade-wide practice test. A lightning-fast montage of the grueling hours I spent studying flashes through my head, recalling how I barely had time to breathe in between all my extracurriculars.

There is clearly something wrong here, but I feel much too tired to figure it out. I yawn again, stepping away from the ranking sheet and starting for lunch before I realize that I’ve three articles due for the school newspaper in a scant two hours. I head to the library instead.

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I fumble around wildly for my phone and blearily check the glowing display. I’ve been out for just under three hours. I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, opting instead to clumsily throw off the sweat-soaked sheets and stumble into the bathroom haphazardly, feeling for the light switch and squinting furiously once it’s on.

I take in my appearance in pieces, not quite assembling everything as a whole until I rub my eyes a few times. I smooth out a few strands of black-brown hair sticking up at the crown of my head, rearranging my straight fringe to lay down flat and grimacing as I splash cold water over my puffy eyes.

I shiver. It’s freezing.

I glob concealer over the dark circles below my weary eyes, smear tinted gloss over my cracked mouth, rub some rouge into my sheet-white cheeks, nearly poke out my eye with a mascara wand. Throwing the plastic cases back onto the vanity, I step back, satisfied that I look as though I actually had a decent night’s sleep.

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“You look tired.”

I don’t bother lifting my head from my desk.

“You know, sometimes it’s all right.”

The words trickle in slowly as I quirk an eyebrow, not quite following his train of thought. Once again, I find myself wondering why this guy can’t just stay in his own classroom.

Yoshiharu raises the corners of his lips in a tentative smile. “It’s all right. Not always being perfect, I mean. There are some things that you don’t necessarily have to always do one hundred percent, and they still come out fine.” He shrugs, fingers rifling through the overgrown hair covering his forehead.

I scoff, still lacking the energy to look into the fool’s face properly and not quite believing that I was receiving life advice from someone whom I met just two weeks ago. “That’s easy for you to say, I suppose.”

“Hmm?” A flicker of confusion encompasses the boy’s face for a split second. I sigh, my voice a barely audible mutter.

“For someone who consistently places first in the exam rankings, I mean.” In spite of my equally consistent and back-breaking efforts to prevent it, I thought as an aside.

Yoshiharu looks up to the ceiling, smile fading as he registers what I’ve said.

“Ah,” he says finally, clearing his throat. “Yeah, well, that’s different.”

I shoot the idiot an look, a dizzying sort of pain swelling behind my eyes as I raise my head and the blood rushes up. “Oh really. How so?”

”I’ll tell you later.”

My face tells Yoshiharu that I am not amused. The idiot simply smiles, waving away my deadpan expression in an infuriatingly dismissive manner. He gently claps me on the shoulder when my countenance doesn’t change.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, laughing.

“I won’t,” I grumble to myself. I guess I’m not very convincing when I’m so tired.

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