Chapter 11:

To Start Something New

***

Kaori was utterly frozen. Sakaki, in a state of full freakout herself, uttered some kind of quiet terrified noise and scampered out of the room. Kaori had only just minutes ago begun to move again, trying to process the reality of what she'd seen. Obviously Kaori's nerves were shot or something. She had been hallucinating. That's right. That person didn't exist anymore, did she? That person went away and was gone from everywhere except the occasional unwelcome dream. The stress of worrying about Momoko the pregnant heifer (isn't it high time you knew her name?) had simply caused Kaori to snap and hallucinate waking up next to an adult Sakaki in cable-knit shell top plus pencil-skirt plus lab-coat attire.

Awakening next to each other was too close, too fast, too shocking, too strange. The natural response was to pull back, Sakaki by physically removing herself, Kaori by retreating into a comfortable delusion. What had seemed like a pristine freeze last night was being desecrated this morning; a lukewarm rain was mixing the snowdrifts and soil into a dirty sludge, and Kaori, normally alert in times of distress, felt sluggish and languid. Yuuka came in for a little bit and told her that a few of the other girls had taken the doctor down to the pens to see to Momoko, and that she'd better take it easy since she was in pretty rough shape when she got carried in last night, here's some ocha and miso soup and some grilled fish and rice and a croquette and some pickled squash and some minced daikon for good measure, and here's half of the bread i had last night, and here's this onigiri I was saving for lunch you need it more than i do my goodness. Oh Yuuka, helpful Yuuka, you're always there for her, aren't you? Kaori is not so sullen as to fail to thank properly her benefactor, who smiles indulgently like a big sister, despite being a decade-plus Kaori's junior. Yuuka's secret smile.

And then Yuuka leaves. Kaori begins to settle her ruffled feathers. A little food (a lot of food) in her stomach is good. Kaori is sober, calm. This is happening. The girl named Sakaki is here. It means nothing. It means nothing. (who are you trying to convince, kaorin?) Sakaki is a past-person. She would never remember Kaori--remember "Kaorin", of course, she would have been Kaorin, *if* Sakaki remembered--in a million years. She had freaked out--why had she freaked out?--(obviously because she woke up next to some weird fucking girl i mean duh anybody in her situation would probably, like, freak out and think she had woken up next to some kind of, weird lovelorn pervert)--she had freaked out and ran off, and all Kaori would need to do would to be to chill for like, a fucking minute or so, and then she could pick herself up and go about the business of going up to the certain visiting veterinarian and saying, hello person who I've never met in my life, sorry for waking up next to you, thank you for hopefully saving our literally indispensable cow, hey before you present me with that big old bill do you got any coupon codes we can use? Ha. Ha.

Ha.

Kaori kepting looking out the window, watching the pelting rain.

***

Flanked by a few women chattering amongst each other as they made their way to the cow pens, Sakaki was feeling stiff and unnatural. The mud was sullying boots that had once been city-pristine. There was always a feeling of ominous unknowing when it came to diagnosing a sick animal. What is it? Can anything be done about it? Is what can be done better than not doing anything at all? And perhaps she was trying to focus on that feeling, on her worries about the surely adorable cow named Momoko, in order to blot out the far weirder and more existential feeling that was in front of her.

At least with Osaka--at LEAST with Osaka--there had been that immediate sense of nostalgia as soon as she'd seen her, the sight of Osaka connected to a jumbled archive of precious memories with Osaka, Osaka a part of the friend group, Osaka sparking associative chain-reaction-explosions of reminiscence inside her. That was a knowable emotional quantity. Seeing Kaorin was... completely different and altogether entirely more difficult to classify.

Nostalgia for memories you don't have. The memory of a what-if, the ghost of a connection, a phantom-limb feeling of touching but not touching, present but not close, a hopelessly distant curiosity desert-island estranged from manifestation. What kind of conversation comes from that? "Golly, Kaorin, remember the old days? Remember when I thought about how it might have been nice to hang out more but never said anything? Remember when you would get excited around me in a way I couldn't understand and I didn't know how to meet that excitement and I wasn't able to explain to you that I didn't exactly hate it? Remember when I loved stargazing with you as the guest of the astronomy club but fell away from it and we both seemed too shy to keep it going? Remember when I forgot to tell you I was glad you came along on that last summer beach trip? Remember when I failed to reach out to you on those days where I saw you looking gloomy? Remember how we took a photo together and graduated and that was that?" Yes, of course, what a fun trip down non-memory lane that would be.

Then what? Best to let it lie? I mean, school was decades ago. Was Kaorin the only girl she'd ever spotted having a gloomy day? Didn't Kaorin have her own friends anyway, Chihiro and whoever else? It was so stupid to be worrying about this stuff, what was she even worrying about, did Kaorin even *remember* her so many years hence? Surely not. Sakaki would talk to Kaorin next and Kaorin would be looking cheerful and bright-eyed like she almost always did and she would say something like "wow, it's been a long time...!" and they'd both have an understated chuckle about how and go on talking strictly business from then on, with the occasional dispassionate brief exchange about the old days peppered in. Right?

Right?

***

It took about an hour of Kaori playing a role-playing game on her cellular telephone before she felt like she could suck it up and make the walk across the compound to the barn. The muddy slush wrought havoc on her shoes and socks, but the cold, bracing rain on her face honestly felt nice. It washed away those weird, sticky emotional-residue feelings from her body. The uneven cloud cover parted for a few moments, providing a glimpse of hazy, dim sun. She had been looking at this the wrong way. This was a cleansing! This was catharsis; a purging of feeling and memory. By treating it as normal, by treating Sakaki as any other person, by accepting how completely *ignored* and *forgotten* and *irrelevant* she was, how *hopeless* things were for her from the very beginning when she insisted that Sakaki come stargazing with her. Surely, her ego thus destroyed, Kaori could finally move on and start living her adult life assertively rather than as an experience of endless retreat.

Yeah. That was what was happening. Destiny. Purging. The acceptance of futility. The annihilation of the worthless ego. These were the kind of things Kaori was deluding herself with as she threw open the barn doors and strode past the rows of cattle, towards the back where Momoko's pen was at. She was staring at the back of Sakaki's head and she was perfectly calm. Sakaki looked beatific in the ritual of kneeling and palpating the cow's abdomen, checking its ears and eyes, placing her stethoscope to listen for dissonance in the song of lungs and heart, her raven hair an onyx shine in the midst of the drab brown and hay-yellow and corrugated blue of the barn. This was fine. Catharsis was imminent... Kaori made a little noise that was supposed to be a greeting but came out as a dry, silent exhalation. No response, of course. She took a deep breath and was about to try again...

And then, in an instant, before you can say "kokoro-no-junbi" three times fast, Sakaki glanced behind her, her dark, shiny eyes wide with shock, perhaps in response to the faintest audible edge of the quiet failed greeting. Frozen again, but with nowhere to run this time, Sakaki said the only word that could truly shatter Kaori:

"K-Kaorin...!!!"

And then a universe of glass breaking. Not even glass. More fragile. Her shattering was a pane of translucent movie-set sugar. A complete disintegration and melting down to primordial constituent elements. Anti-catharsis, a vengeful explosive updredging of everything inside her. Sakaki's voice. Her face. Her eyes looking at her, not in stranger-bewilderment but in recognition-confusion-startlement-awe. That N!! That telltale N!! Not just her legal name, but her ***special high school name***!!

(ecstatic) She remembered!! (elated) She remembered!!!!!!! (shocked) She remembered...! (furious) She fucking remembered!? (nervous) She... remembered!? (desperately hopeful) She... remembered? (quietly and calmly amazed) She remembered.

She remembered... Not just distantly. The name had passed her lips instantly. Kaorin. Kaorin. Kaorin. What a terrifying thing it was for Kaorin to be here--could she really be swept away this easily?? She took...

A deeeeeeep, deep deep cleansing breath, and let it out. Let's be calm here. I am an adult. I am not some hormonal geyser of teenhood. We have business to discuss.

***

The shock of Kaorin's stealthy approach temporarily banished the things Sakaki had been thinking of. After a few moments of silence, Kaorin, her face masked with a complicated smile, strode into the pen and knelt next to Sakaki, shaking but clearly trying to make herself be calm. Strangely, seeing this very human response in Kaorin caused Sakaki to calm down.

Sakaki tried to speak, something, anything, placeholder words she could fill in later, "K-Kaorin, I..." Kaorin tilted her head a little, that complicated smile widening by only the faintest degree or two. "It's been such a long time." A rueful chuckle from Kaorin, who couldn't help but break out into an honest grin.

KAORIN: "A long time, haha, yeah..."
SAKAKI: "I had no idea, I mean, when I signed up for this job, there are plenty of girls named Kaori, but I only knew you as--"
KAORIN: "Yeah. As Kaorin. Right. It's funny... I haven't heard anyone else call me that in years. I've always been Kaori to everyone working here."
SAKAKI: "Oh!! Sorry... I didn't... Do you want me to?"

Kaorin turned away, not wanting Sakaki to see any more of that increasingly broad, sheepish grin.

KAORIN: "Hahaha, no, please. It's... I don't exactly mind it."
SAKAKI: "O-Oh... S, sure. Kaorin... Kaorin it is, then."
KAORIN: "Mm hmm! That's right! Nice to properly meet ya! Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, and all that!"
SAKAKI: "Haha..."

Oh... Oh this was really bad. Seeing the ice melt from Sakaki's eyes, seeing her muscle-tension relax, seeing her start to feel at ease, that sublime subtle change in her body-expression and demeanor... Noooononono. We are not fucking doing this, Kaorin. Not when things are going so well. Kaorin adeptly veered the course of conversation away.

KAORIN: "Well! We have! Business!! We can catch up on all that other stuff later, who's named what and what's been happening, I'm sure we both have tons of stories to tell! I really do have to ask though, do you have any idea what's been going on with Momoko?"
SAKAKI: "Ahhh... Right!! Right, of course. Your little cow-chan."
(KAORIN: "Little cow-chan...?")
SAKAKI: "She doesn't appear to be in any immediate danger; at least, that's what I've been trying to check for first. But there are a few things that... that I just don't understand. Some sound-muffling when I listen to her heart that's hard to parse, and could relate to anomalous cystic growth. I've contacted your... your usual veterinarian to update him on the situation, and we have a couple of exploratory tests we've agreed to run, most importantly a biopsy. I've requested a couple of supplies from their office, which should be arriving with the courier in an hour or so, and in the meantime I've given Momoko something to calm her down..."

Sakaki looked like there was so much she wanted to say. Whatever she may have thought of Kaorin before, it was clear that she was not a non-person in Sakaki's eyes. Her gaze darted away from Kaorin, towards the pen door a couple of times.

SAKAKI: Would you like to maybe... walk and talk?

Kaorin laughed out loud, to Sakaki's welcome surprise. Sure. Yeah. Let's walk and talk a little bit.

***

It was a few hundred feet of walking before they started to really find the words. Slowly, at first. Kaorin asking Sakaki how she was feeling, did she need anything while she was staying here, did insurance require any pre-authorization for any of the tests she was taking (they didn't), the rain had receded to a soft misty early-spring drizzle and they were apparently enthused enough about this to have an exchange extending into several sentences about it. 

And then Sakaki gave Kaorin a sort of pleading expression. As if to say, "Is that all you want to talk about...?"

KAORIN: "Yeah, that's great and all, about the prior authorization stuff, no last minute surprise bills or charges, right? Haha... But uh... Seriously... H, how have you, um, been...?"
SAKAKI: "Huh..."
SAKAKI: "I don't... I don't really know... I mean, I know what's been happening to me. I just don't know how to feel about it."
KAORIN: "Well... What's been happening to you, Sakaki?"
SAKAKI: "For example... Hfff... Well, recently I had to close down my clinic. I've always been serious about my work, and it means something to me, but I don't have a lot of business acumen..."
KAORIN: "Jeez, I think we have something in common..."
SAKAKI: "Yeah... And I mean, I have clients who can't pay. I do work that no one tasks me with. I've lived in some pretty rough places. It's really no wonder I couldn't keep a practice open. But it's not just that. I'll never really be without work given my degree and career experience. My, um, you know, my, acquaintance, he helped set me up with this job when he realized that he was stretched a little too thin to take on this job himself. So it's not just the financial stuff that's dampening my spirit. I think the real issue is more like..."

Sakaki glanced away towards the horizon, as if looking for the words...

SAKAKI: "For a long, long time, I've found it difficult to brush too close to people. It felt like there was a paradise land long ago where I was always close to people who felt like they were worth being close to and everything since then has been a slow, entropic drifting-apart of all things. Part of the reason I panicked when I saw you is... I don't think I've seen anybody from the old crew in about ten years. The last time I did, she... I guess you could say that Osaka invited me to be part of a whole new paradise land. One that seemed... more durable than the one I'd left behind at the end of high school. Maybe one even more fulfilling. And when I saw that, when I saw the portal leading to a world of unknown happiness and endless reunion, I... I turned around and ran. And hid. Hid, and ran for ten years after that. Why is that? Why would I do that to myself?"

Kaorin tipped her head quizzically at Sakaki. This... this was why Sakaki had panicked when she saw Kaorin? Because she made her remember the old days? She... remembered? Remembered more than just her old nickname?

KAORIN: "It can be very easy to sabotage your own happiness, haha. It's scary to actually... to actually *seek* what makes you happy. Life can be very random and awful... you know? Like... You can have something very precious that makes you very, very happy and that thing can be taken away. And that hurts so badly it makes you wonder if it was worth it to care about anything in the first place."

Kaorin... looking at Sakaki... looking off at the horizon that apparently tells you what words to say since everyone keeps fucking staring into it when they're trying to find delicate words.

KAORIN: "But I think it's worth it. Haha, maybe I'm not the best example, Sakaki, I'm sure you have to wonder why I ended up alone among eleven other women at a fucking dairy farm in a place that might as well be a different country from where I grew up. Guess it feels like I never had a chance to see the paradise land in the first place, maybe I was upset about it, maybe I was just licking my wounds. But the point is that it's... it's... aha... never too late to start something new, right...?"

Kaorin and Sakaki let this last sentence sit, and then Kaorin absolutely freaked the fuck out when she realized the implications of it, the barely-even-subtext subtext. She went into full babble-overexplain mode but Sakaki waved it off with a gentle smile.

SAKAKI: "No, I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right and that we're silly when we let ourselves forget it. Maybe the last ten years or more has just been a sort of... childish refusal to let myself see that, a long, slow, quiet tantrum against eating the good-for-you green peppers at the dinner table of life. Forget the failed practice, the failed attempts at social connection, the missed reconnections from who knows how many years ago. I'm here right now, standing on solid earth. The world hasn't stopped turning... and really, I don't know, maybe this is a sign. Maybe me being here, doing this, having this conversation, is a sign that things have started turning again..."

Kaorin allowed herself to be fully tantalized by this possibility. We humans are such very susceptible creatures. Regardless of whatever barriers we think we have against the things that truly affect us, regardless of how calloused we think the years leave our hearts, regardless of anything it is so easy to be swept away in the warm tide of feeling.

KAORIN: "Yeah! I mean, maybe it has started turning again! If it's been ten years since you've seen anybody from the old crew, it's been that much longer for me! And I... I mean... Sakaki... Like I mentioned, high school wasn't exactly a paradise land for me." A long pause here, not a theatrical one, more like a fretful one, like other emotions were threatening to claw their way into the positive zone created by this conversation. Sakaki, who was really paying attention, felt slightly taken aback to face the implication that not everyone in the high school crew had had the same intensely sweet nostalgic raspberry-heaven experience. "But... But I think this is a sign for me too. There are some memories worth taking with you going forward. There are ways to still honor the person you believed in becoming all those years ago. What's that saying? Banbutsu ruten? 'In the cosmos, all things are in flux...'"
SAKAKI: "Huh. That's right... Life will change, won't it."
KAORIN: "It will! I mean--change is everywhere--the changing of the seasons, the changing of eras and ideals of humanity... Think about everything that's happened in the past decade. in this country. The old one-party dynasty that ruled over this country like a viceroy puppet for almost a century--who would have guessed we'd see the LDP crumble in our lifetimes? All those decrepit old politicians swept aside and sent off to the old folks' home so that something new can grow in their place..."
SAKAKI: "Yeah. Maybe that felt impossible to imagine for a lot of people for a long time. It must have felt like things would stay stuck that way forever..."
KAORIN: "Right?! And they didn't stay stuck like that. It's not the nature of things to stay stuck forever. I mean, think about it, Sakaki! If Japan changing its ways was a long shot, America changing its ways was an unthinkable miracle. I mean, you can pick up your phone right now and look at the news! The President of the United States is in our country right this very second to attend the closure of that last American air force base in Okinawa! We are living through histo--"
SAKAKI: "Wh-What?! The president is?? The president is here???"
KAORIN: "She is!! Jeez, and I thought I lived under a rock, it's the only thing everybody's been talking about for weeks!!"

Sakaki didn't respond to this. She looked up, not at the horizon, but at the vaulted dome of sky directly above her, at infinity itself.

SAKAKI: "Chiyo-chan... I can't believe... Chiyo..."
KAORIN: "W-w-wait... You're on a firstname-chan basis with the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?!"
SAKAKI: "Aaaah... Yeah, I mean... You are too, aren't you...?"
KAORIN: "Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!! That's impossible, you don't--"
SAKAKI: "I might be living under a rock myself, but... You do realize that Chiyo became the President of the USA, right?"
KAORIN: "WHAT!!! Our Chiyo?! I mean--I knew America had their first Japanese president and that she was an energetic woman with orange twintails but--but I had no idea!! I don't really understand or keep up with American politics, I... I... wh... I thought it was a different Chiyo Mihama!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Sakaki glanced sidelong at Kaorin while she was flipping out over a revelation that everyone else in her friend group had had years prior. A sweet, good-natured giggle, honest and pure as river-water, came flowing out of Sakaki so naturally and effortlessly, a little melodious accompaniment to the cacophony of Kaorin going "what--huh--seriously--no way?!--holy shit!!--no freaking way!!"...

By the time Kaorin was done flipping out and Sakaki's giggles had quieted down, Kaorin saw Sakaki's eyes go far away again... There was a slight pang of worry, like the tone of this unthinkably perfect conversation had gone wrong. But Kaorin was warmly relieved when Sakaki buried her face in her hands and began murmuring to herself as if in a daze...

SAKAKI: "Chiyo-chan... How long has it been... How many times have I seen you on TV and just... wondered..."

Kaorin saw the flush of Sakaki's cheeks as she thought of her old friend, now decades into adulthood like the rest of everybody. Maybe it was personal growth, but neither Kaorin's first, second, third, nor last reaction was to feel jealousy--there was something much warmer and more joyous bubbling up, it was--it was Kaorin thinking, for just a little bit, in mischievous mirth and wild hope, 'ohhh, doesn't this sound like a late-onset crush...? ahaha, no way, no WAY, is it not just me, is sakaki--is sakaki also--is sakaki a *kindred spirit*?? oh my goddess what if she's a *kindred spirit* oooooh hahaha what if she has a big poster of american president chiyo mihama on her wall and has every volume of Slowly, the Melody on her shelf oh my GODDESS WHAT IF SAKAKI-SAN IS INTO GIRLS??? WHAT IF??? SAKAKI-SAN??? IS INTO??? GIRLS?!?!?!'

SAKAKI: "Kaorin, are you okay?!"
KAORIN: "A-AAAHH!!! WH-WHAT--YEAH--NO I'M TOTALLY OKAY--I MEAN WHY ARE YOU ASKING!!!"
SAKAKI: "You suddenly started rolling around on the slushy earth, clutching your face and kicking your feet!!"
KAORIN: "OH... AHAHAH... YEAH... UM... OOPS!!"
SAKAKI: "Ahahaha... Well, as long as you're okay. Let me help you up..."

Sakaki extending a hand from above. Kaorin grabbing it, the burst of ecstasy from physical contact, the total entrusting for the span of the seconds it took to lift Kaorin to her feet and brush some of the muddy slush off her...

KAORIN: "TH-THANKS... I mean... Thanks..."
SAKAKI: "Ahhh, yeah..."
KAORIN: "I, um..."

Long, slow, flushed pause... Sakaki looks down at Kaorin... Kaorin looks up at Sakaki...

KAORIN: "Sakaki-san..."
SAKAKI: "Just Sakaki is fine... I don't know why you started using -san again all of a sudden..."
KAORIN: "R-right... Sakaki..."
KAORIN: "Sakaki... Umm..."
KAORIN: "Ummmm... Sakaki... Are you... Are you into..."
SAKAKI: "Am I into...?"
KAORIN: "SAKAKI-SAN ARE YOU INTO THE IDEA OF GETTING A MEAL! I'M REALLY REALLY HUNGRY AND I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO EXPLODE!!"
SAKAKI: "A, ahhh... y, yeah, no, I could eat... Wait, does being hungry cause you to explode? I thought that was being too full that did that--"
KAORIN: "DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT!! FOOD!! NOW!! EAT!! YES!! GO!!"

Kaorin turned her and Sakaki around on a hairpin 180 degree curve and started walking back towards the compound, to where the kitchen was located adjacent to the dorms. This was good. This was really really good. But if she had any more of it right now, if she was *any* more full of good and hopeful and possible feelings, then she might really explode, hungry or not...

Sakaki and Kaorin walked alongside each other towards the lunchtime that awaited them, chatting all the while.