FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ N.O Return Address ❯ uno ( Chapter 1 )

The scene opens. There's a back alley in clear aerial view, standing in which are five people who look to be teenagers. Like most alleyway congregations such as this, one of them is smoking pot.

 

It isn't me, though.

 

Exhibit A: Yamamaru Koutaro. From the aerial view, I'm the blond. I won't lie to you and say it's natural - I got talked into doing it and it's been that way since last month. I'm the one leaning against the half-filled Dumpster that for some reason is painted magenta. With blue spray paint, someone splayed graffiti on the side in English. None of us can read it.

 

I get punched in the arm. “Right, Taro-kun? Riiiight?” Exhibit B, the other aerial-view-blond, has apparently told a joke I should be laughing at. I chuckle half-heartedly despite the fact that laughing hurts. It still doesn't hurt as much as getting punched in the arm by Reiko, so I play along. Reiko's sitting on an upturned metal trash bin next to me, crossing her legs with their gigantic red-striped socks. She's not the one with the pot, either - her ganguro-lips are too busy smacking on horrendously cherry bubble gum.

 

“I don't get it,” says Exhibit C with his pot. Chisune was my best friend until about six months ago when the drugs started getting worse. I don't know where he is eighty percent of the time now. Aerial view: blue stocking cap. Seating place: standing, lounging, call it what you will but his back's against the brick wall of his father's autoshop next door. He's smiling stupidly and I can see the hole where I knocked out one of his bottom teeth when we were twelve.

 

Exhibit D isn't really speaking. You can see her best from the aerial view because she's lying on her back on the Dumpster with me. But her hair is black tinged with purple and her skirt is too short and I'm in love with her and her name is Mika. She's playing with the tab off her fourth can of this new sweet-but-sour soda that apparently everyone in France is drinking. She hated Reiko's joke and so she throws it at her. “You're such a douche, Rei. Remind me why we speak to you?”

 

“Because I'm screwing your sister,” Reiko responds with too much volume and too much laugh, and we'd all laugh too, even me, if it weren't true. Exhibit E sits on the fire escape above us and dangles her stocking feet down because Reiko took off her red vinyl boots. Come to think of it, you probably can't see her from the aerial view. Her hair is false-auburn and ultra-short if it matters. She chews on a red whip of licorice that's almost too short to be useful any more. They're both beautiful, but Suzume looks nothing like her sister. Maybe Mika is adopted.

 

“Anyway, tramp, you're not fucking supposed to make Taro laugh because his head's getting worse. Yeah?”

 

I get over the fact that Mika's officially said my name exactly five hundred times more quickly than I expect and answer with almost no awkward delay. “Since my half-birthday,” I agree. “I just realized that's what it was on the day it happened. It was my half-birthday.”

 

“Oh no, Taro-kun's half-birthday. We're so close to the end of summer. It bites.”

 

Suzume ignores Reiko's whining. “Significance? To school or your half-day?” I shrug in response and realize that Reiko will have left a bruise. I bruise so easily.

 

“You should take something, for that.” Chisune points at my head, and I think he meant to indicate the center of my forehead but his finger's level with my left eye. Reiko offers me her potato chips and I eat more than I think she wanted me to. “You'd be surprised how much it helps.”

 

“I don't want your fucking drugs,” I insist, but I'm starting to disbelieve myself.

 

“No, you just want all my fucking chips,” retorts Reiko. And I laugh. And it hurts.

 

“Knock it off, bitch!” Mika barks.

 

“Don't talk to my girlfriend like that!” says Suzume.

 

“Some sister you are.”

 

I swing my legs and kick the Dumpster. Some of the paint flakes off, and some of it is where the English writing is.

 

I guess we'll never know what it said now.

 

~-~-~-~

 

Fall means school and school means work and work should mean money but it's school and we're not getting paid to flunk pre-calc. I've hated math for as long as I can remember and senior year has yet to change my opinion. I am nearly asleep in class instead and would probably be snoring if my head didn't fucking hurt so bad.

 

I am awakened from my almost-unconsciousness by a ball of paper chucked at my skull. I sit up slowly to see my incompetent teacher sipping coffee at her desk (she thinks we do these assignments) and the crumpled paper by my foot. One edge is torn from the bottom side to the third note ring hole. It's code. It's a note from Chisune.

 

Unfolded, I am glad the note is in red ink or the crinkles would obscure his tiny handwriting. Look at that cold-sun, the note says. We are running today. It is a running day. The field, it calls, and it says to us `Taro and Cheeze, today is a running day.'

 

I laugh despite myself and my whopping headache. It's been so long since Chisune and I have run together. And he isn't lying - the sun is bright in the blue-white sky and we'd be warm enough while still being cold enough. I tell him yes with my eyes and he smiles from behind long bangs that also conceal headphones. The smile reminds me of the cold-sun day and I am glad to see it again, too.

 

It's last period. We might as well leave now. He yanks his blue cap on and I subtly slip my bag over one shoulder. Half the class is gone already anyway. I'm out the door seconds before he is and we roam the halls and jump the fence and at last, there is the track and there is the unkempt field beyond it.

 

“You heard the field calling us all the way in Ishikawa-san's room,” I say and it is only half-question.

 

“Through my headphones and everything,” Chisune replies with a bit of a grin - no smile, just teeth. He's already wearing nothing but pants and I move to do the same. “You are hard of hearing. It was plain as day.”

 

“A day with fog, maybe.” He shoves me, and I'd have fallen to the ground were I not already there stretching out.

 

“I'll give you a break, you were asleep.” We've both stretched, we're up, we're walking to the old tree stump that marks the start of our makeshift course.

 

“Easy today?” he wonders but I'm already speaking my answer.

 

“Hard. The cherry tree route.”

 

“I'm out of practice,” he reminds me as if I need reminding. “Lungs are weak, and all that.”

 

“Whose fault is that?” I manage to say before I can no longer contain myself and my feet move forward with their own minds.

 

Oh yes, oh God, yes, running.

 

When I'm running I'm not Koutaro. I'm not Taro-kun or Yamamaru-san or “that crazy blond kid”. I'm a separate entity. When I'm running I don't talk or see or hear or breathe, I just feel. When I'm running I'm not seventeen without a goal and I'm not flunking pre-calc. When I'm running I don't think about my dad that I've never seen or my friends that I see way too much.

 

When I'm running, my head doesn't fucking hurt.

 

I'm moving faster than I think I've ever moved now. I feel like that a lot when I run but this time I think it's true. No human being moves as fast as this. I am a machine, a god, the king of gods, the pirate king -

 

I don't know what that means but I am unconscious before I have time to consider it.

 

~-~-~-~

 

I wake up staring at metal rafters and a ceiling fan and it takes me a few moments to realize l am in Keiji-san's shop. I roll over, confused, and nearly fall off the bench he and Chisune have slung me over.

 

“You okay?” Chisune asks me from a chair in an opposite corner.

 

“Do I fucking look okay?” I snap, harsher than I intend. “I got hit.”

 

He looks at me like I'm retarded. “You tripped, Taro. There was a scuff in the dirt next to a rock and everything.”

 

“The hell?” I argue. “Cheeze, I fucking got hit! In the back of the head. With something hard, too, felt like pretty solid plastic.”

 

“I didn't hit you,” he defends automatically. “And no one else was out there. I'd have seen them.”

 

“I was in the cherry trees. You could have missed them…whoever it was.”

 

“Taro-baka, you were running so fast that you were already fucking past the cherry trees. You were way off into the field.”

 

“The hell?” I repeat. “That's not physically possible.”

 

“Look, can you just shut the hell up?” he bites, and now I know I've gotten him just as angry as me. “You're lucky my cell was charged, or you'd still be laying there like a dead guy! You tripped over your own goddamn big feet and he left a paying customer to come rescue your sorry ass.”

 

I am silent. I'm back to staring at the ceiling now, one hand absently fingering the small bit of bandaging on my head. The ceiling has never smiled at me before and so I can't hate it for not smiling now. “Who told you to do that, anyway.”

 

“Some punk named Taro-kun.”

 

“Taro-kuuuuun?” a female voice suddenly drawls from the next room. A helmeted head swings into view in an oversized doorway, all manic grins and golden eyes.

 

I realize then that my head hasn't hurt since I awoke, because seeing her face is what tears my brain to pieces.