Blank strips of light, a natural hue, lit the curtains’ gaps, and from the open door to the corridor, it broke the faint shade and the lingering night of the room. The thwack of a toaster sounded, but it seemed far, with footsteps shuffling on the ground floor below. Over the plates settling on a glass surface, the music played out of the speakers of earphones dangling onto the pillow below, ever just so faintly, as it hung from the desk that was messy but arranged. Books and stationary were all piled to one side, warring against a bundle of electronics invading from the other. A clothe hanger stood shorter than a small, contemporary wardrobe, but on it, there were not many pieces of apparel, nor belongings for that matter. The modest room was not poor of decorations, but the lack of non-essentials made it appear rather spacious. Not a single photo resided in that room. Its objects were almost brand new and modern, except for one, for they were at most two years old. A wooden sword, worn, and with a slight curve had indentations running along its edge to the handle blackened by burn marks. For however long it existed, it always stayed beside its master’s bed, within an arm’s reach. But it would have only worked had he detected the intruder who drew awide the curtains, allowing the strip of light to become an illumination of the sun’s entire power. Warm. Vibrant. It shone through. Apollo had already risen above the horizon and began forging the shadows of day, planted on the face of the house behind the thin arms of a tree in the garden whose branches were dry and naked of leaves. The last orange of autumn was plucked when a squirrel leapt from tree to tree. Seagulls cawed afar in great flocks, and remaining there further inland, was a sparrow who flew. Fluttering into the garden, it landed and was perched on its nest. With a caterpillar in its beak, it soon discovered the horror that was the emptiness of its home. Searching, frantically for its family that was nowhere to be found, the poor bird was put in a panic. Not chirping any longer, it was stumped on the spot. With its eyes fixed elsewhere, the little sparrow began plucking its own feathers with strength and grief. Until it was cold and shivering. Until death, it hoped. No one else seemed to mind. Not even the boy of the bedroom it faced, for he would typically care. The sun blared, but it was ignored, and the alarm’s unending ring, he did not hear. A voice tried calling him, but it was also faint, when he was still wrapped in the warmth of his blanket cocoon.
The lack of any response annoyed the girl who leaned over and patted his arm. “Wake up, Armin!” She called, finding ways to move him.
The boy gave her a false sense of hope when his only reaction after all that was done was a slight squirm. Ever more bothered, she sharply huffed and prepared herself for her rude wakening power. Grabbing his blankets by its side, she lifted and flapped it, sure that it would force him out of slumber. But knowing that was her plan, for the same strategy never worked twice against him, the boy snatched his blanket, and by surprise, yanked it, though without might.
The girl fell onto the bed with a short, startled cry as the slothful, still pretending to be asleep, hugged onto his blankets tighter. “Ten ya, ni shi hitsushi sō bi sensei hatsu ryūtō wha, heisō? (Gosh, do you want another strike on your attendance?)” His younger sister reminded him in their mother tongue of the North Seriker as she got up from her fall.
Not that it would trigger him to suddenly prance awake, the boy’s eyes did open upon hearing those words, but his eyes were wetted and blurred, facing the undercut of the window sill with his dual-colored irises which were forever enemies. Green like the spring of summer and the blue as winter was. As he kept his sister in wait, he came to terms with morning, finding difficulty to fall asleep again. Sat upright, and quickly too, it gave himself a rinsing headache. Holding his head, he calmed down in the face of the rich yolk of the sun, lighting his messy, soft brown hair. A yawn broke free of his lungs as he rubbed his eyes, wiped dry of a mist of tears before looking out of the window where a flash of light forced him to recoil. Adjusting to the brightness of his sight, the boy saw a bundle of feathers over a nest, but the sparrow had disappeared. Wondering where it had gone and where it was not, his short-spanned attention returned indoors to the dimmer room. There ahead, a girl faced him. From her skirts to her boyishly wide stance of dominance, he looked up and saw her crossed arms.
Who she was he knew without recognizing her face, but he had yet to have grasped why she was there. “Elise…?” The elder brother named, not with uncertainty, but it was an ask rather.
Her short pony tail and hair were neat and straight, inherited from her mother perhaps, there was not a strand that was unbrushed. With great roundish eyes which were similar to her brother’s except, they had taken after, fully, their father’s blues. Formal and well-dressed, in a white and naval blue uniform of a girls’ school, how she was presentable that her teachers would often name her as a valid example before her peers. Though she hated fame. From the earliest hour of the morning, she was always the first of the siblings to wake. Sharing no similarities in mannerisms and behavior, Elise was always asserting her influence, at least within the household, but despite all the differences they had, they would often deny the fact that she and her elder brother both looked alike. From appearance alone, neighbors and strangers would collectively mistaken them as sisters which, that thought, only faded away a year ago. But once you had met them twice, it would always become clearer who was who from how each acted.
Then there he was. Empty-mindedly searching for his school uniform to dress into. Swiping his hand on his bed with half-asleep eyes, he yawned and made little progress in his preparation for the final school day of the week. But as he did nothing, Elise spotted a set of homework, on his desk, unfinished. Scrolling her eyes through it, she reached the half way mark down the page where questions were abundant, but their answers were left unfilled with scribbles and meaningless dots everywhere. A pencil laid boredly beside that had a blunt and a fat graphite tip.
At her brother who had continuously failed to find progress, Elise bore an expression of concern. “Yo motsuyo ensei kōho ya? (You didn’t do your homework again?)” She seemed sure that it was almost every week by then that her brother had refused to complete his school’s assignments.
With a hatred for unfinished work, Elise turned to the paper and read it over as her brother, who had finally found his clothes at the foot of his bed, started dressing. Pulling on his shorts and buckling his belt, he was unconcerned by her ask, having no energy yet to care. But the younger sister’s blood steamed as her impatience of waiting for an answer grew heavy.
Puffing up her chest, she released all her annoyance and the irritated air that harbored within herself. “Hō yo! Saiho kanchi ya… (Fine! Just this once…)” Elise pulled the chair back and straightened her skirt before seating herself.
She stuck a pencil into a sharpener and pressed it against the blade’s edge. With a few good twists, wood shavings curled out of the gap and the dust of graphite powdered the desk. A sharpened tip was revealed anew, as her head turned down and her eyes went over the previous questions that her brother had bothered to answer. They were flawless, just that the boy was too lazy to continue. His sister began answering the remaining, scribbling away, as if she knew every answer needing not a second to think. Understandable, being the brightest of the siblings, but sometimes even her intelligence would fail to hide the weakness of her heart.
“Ni sōkai mai dō kan kō… (That’s what you said last season…)” Her brother recalled, pulling on a shirt over his head.
His sister paid him no heed as she minded her calculations and writing. When all that was left were the details of his uniform, from the ruckus that was made it had stirred the attention of a voice from below which was raised, but not in a shout.
“Kiya, Sekiya hisei mi ya? (Kiya, is Sekiya awake yet?)” Their mother summoned her children, an awfully noisy bunch for a school morning.
Refraining from an answer, Elise had reached the final question. But how schools had structured it, she knew it was always a trick. For a little while, she was paused before finding out that the answer was a blatantly obvious one and in an instant, she wrote it down. Quickly checking over her previously answered questions, spinning her pencil all tensely, it seemed that it was good enough for her.
She finally relinquished her grip on the pencil, pushing her chair out, and stood to answer their mother, “Hai! (Yes!)” She dashed out and skid around the corner of the doorway into the corridor where she was soon unseen.
But her steps were still heard, running down the stairs in what hurry that the boy could not comprehend why he should ever act the same. Buttoning up his collar, he slipped into his black blazer with the emblem of his school sewn into his chest pocket before pulling a pair of socks up to his knees. Still sat, never did he seem ready for the day, though at least, it was the fifth and the last before the weekend. Sighing, slouched over, he took a look at his sword leaning on his bed frame and remembered what had to be done. Picked up by its blackened grip, as it was every morning, the sword was held in front of him, pointed at the empty hallway. With both his hands, he stretched his arms and the wooden blade high, sure that the tip would not scratch the ceiling that was still far and high above. Straightening his body with a meditative breath, there was not much for him to think when it came down to a strike. The slashed air was like a short whistle, bursting with energy. As the sword was lifted up and struck down again, behind, the window rattled from a slight draft that fed through. The breeze was caressing and whispering on the walls whilst a total of eighteen swings were dealt. His blood flowed smoothly, warming himself from within. Gently, he calmed and restored his breaths to a regular pace. Settling down his sword, he finally brought himself to stand when he launched himself onward onto the path out of his room. Without the keen care of organization, what books and electronics were swept from his desk and into his cotton schoolbag. In one move from a clothe stand, a flat cap and a bright red scarf were swung off by the snatch of his hand. Drifting around the corner of the doorway, he spun into the bathroom where the twist of the squealing tap and the running of water soon echoed.
107Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNsEx0tgU03
