Chapter 7

“And that`s it for today. Remember to revise the exercises that you didn`t get right and do your homework. Osu!”

Everyone packed their books and stood up. Even though it was a summer evening, this cram school was bustling with elite students. As soon as one is given the opportunity to study in one of the top ranking private high schools, that person knew he or she had no time to celebrate. The competition to get into a good university, such as Toudai, is fierce. School life becomes a marathon of homework and tests, and one must run with all, or lose all. School drama rarely happens in top schools, but that also means relationships were purely for studying. With “good” students, the most sincere thing they can share is homework and complaints about homework. The rest are just manners and lies. None is going to slow down for others, and relationships must benefit both sides. That`s why groups of students with similar goals will be formed in the first few days for work efficiency. They politely help eachother with studying and occasionally use their relationship for stress relieving. Last but not least, the relationships have another very important purpose: to keep students from becoming insane or depressed. Humans are naturally sociable creature that cannot live without one another. No matter how many reasons you have to be alone, your emotions will simply not follow.

Kyoya was staring at the passenger`s window. It has been over a month since he was stripped of the privilege to go home on an expensive mountain bike. The divorce had left him and his mother financially struggling. Tatsuya offered them a bank account and some furniture, but Kura denied. She was too hurt to have anything around that reminded her of the man. So they had to move back to the shabby apartment from before and tried to get by.

In the place that formerly homed Kura and Kyoya

“I`m off.”

“Wait! Emiko! Do you know what time it is?”

“6:00 pm. So?”

“Why are you going out at such time? What about dinner?”

“You guys are just going to buy food anyways. You don`t cook, remember? So let me eat what I bought myself.”

“Emiko, wait…” *Slam*

The door shut in front of her face. Narumi sighed, and dragged her heavy feet back to the kitchen. In her memory, their cooking space had always been nicely maintained by a hired janitor, but rarely ever used. Now, for one month no one had even touched the place.

(That girl's family runs a restaurant. So she cooked for them, everyday…)

Narumi could only imagine how great it would be to hear the sounds of pots clattering, knife cutting, and oil sizzling everyday you return from work. In her eyes, the scene would be like from a fairytale, with the kitchen appliances moving on their own and creating amazing dishes. That is, because she can`t cook. Nor could she pry out whatever feelings Emiko had upon her return, even with her ten years of business management experience. Day after day, the thought that her return brought nothing but more pain to the family loomed large. Tatsuya was still a workaholic as always, and she was lost of what to do with all the free time she suddenly had: Narumi retired in an effort to mend the relationship with her daughter, but Emiko openly rejected all of Narumi`s movement.

As for the daughter, ever since Narumi returned, she had been drugging herself with liquor every night. The first few weeks of university were very lax, so she would go to club or something similar whenever she had the chance to. And of course, to create “relationships”, Emiko was always trying to appear rich and generous, treating her friends like siblings. A human has no social value if one is not in a society, moreover, it is considered meaningless to live without any social value; that one`s life would not be different from an animal`s without it. Thus, it is inevitable that some unordinary people would need to hear praises five times a day and seven days a week, with a side of other people`s failures and pain to stay sane. Emiko was like that, an overly sociable human, a narcissist.

Drinking the last shot of sake in the bottle, she ordered another one as her group of friends cheered her on. Just then, the sun was completely gobbled up by the night. It smiled, wickedly.