Chapter 2 (1,619 words)

I

Sendoh awoke the next morning, not to the sound of the desperately ringing alarm clock, which was set an hour late, as it was, but to a curious tapping noise on his window. Sendoh’s bedroom was on the first floor, so it could have just been an officious neighbor, ingratiatingly and naïvely intruding on his privacy. When Sendoh saw the face of Kiyota, who was grinning with his nose pressed against the glass, he mechanically pulled the covers up to his chest, although he was fully clothed.

After ten or so minutes, Sendoh reluctantly got out of bed to open the window and let in the insufferably energetic boy. Kiyota hoisted himself almost effortlessly up onto the windowsill, and then into the room.

“What’re you doing here?” Sendoh wanted to ask, but Kiyota beat him to it.

“What’re you doing here?” asked Kiyota.

“Why, I live here,” said Sendoh defensively.

“I mean, don’t you have school today?”

“Don’t you?” countered Sendoh, and Kiyota’s composure faltered, with him laughing sheepishly and scratching the back of his head in a manner that was deemed uncool.

“I, uh, am bunking today,” said Kiyota with effort.

“Is that so?” said Sendoh uninterestedly; “I am too.”

“We’ll have basketball tryouts all day today, and a master like me needn’t attend them.” said Kiyota pompously.

“I see...” said Sendoh darkly. Kiyota had gone on as if Sendoh hadn’t even spoken.

“What about you, Captain Akira Sendoh?” asked Kiyota, and Sendoh was thoroughly taken aback.

“What about me?” said Sendoh laconically.

“What about Team Ryonan? How strong are you guys now? Without Uozumi?”

“We played you just yesterday and beat the crap out of you.”

Realization hit Kiyota, and with an enlightened and distant glint in his eyes and a sheepish smile on his face, he permitted a long, drawn ‘oh’ to escape him. “I’d forgotten completely!” he said.

“I thought as much,” said Sendoh dryly.

“So if you’re not doing anything today, maybe we could hang out.” proposed Kiyota amiably.

“I was afraid you’d say that, but all right,” said Sendoh.

“Well, go get dressed then.” And for the first time Sendoh became aware of his gauche attire.

“I was just going to,” blurted Sendoh.

II

“Do you know what I hate about school?” asked Kiyota as Sendoh and he walked down the sidewalk of another boulevard in the large city. Well, at least, only Sendoh walked- Kiyota merrily skipped along.

“No,” replied Sendoh.

“They don’t give us enough time to play basketball!” Kiyota said, answering his own question querulously, as if the offense in question was scandalous and liable to condemnation.

“Jerks,” said Sendoh lackadaisically, desperately looking around for something he could use to change the topic.

“I know! Aren’t they?” Kiyota said emotionally; “Would you rather you had more time for basketball?”

“Uh,” hesitated Sendoh, “I suppose I might have...”

“Well, of course, I have to put up with Coach Takato’s hellish training régime and all,” went on Kiyota, forgetting all about the question he had posed to Sendoh, “but I’d so rather play basketball than be cooped up with a bunch of people dressed in tuxedos and other horrifically formal things, as if for a funeral, and playing pianos and violins...”

Sendoh acquiesced with him mentally, although he had no clue in the slightest how the boy managed to put ‘pianos’, ‘violins’ and ‘funeral’ in the same sentence.

“... I for one think I was made for basketball, seeing, as I am so muscular and hot and...”

Sendoh was lost in an idle reverie, as anyone playing audience to Kiyota would be disposed to once the latter began his odious self-eulogizing.

“... Girls love me! I’ve been given a love-letter last week by this third-year girl, and she’s like the hottest...”

Sendoh had busied himself with counting pedestrians.

“... but Maki said she was just shitting me, but...”

37... 38... 39... Oh, why aren’t there more people, thought Sendoh forlornly.

“So tell me, Sendoh, how old was the oldest girl you’ve dated?”

“Forty-five,”... 46... 47...

“Come again?” said Kiyota incredulously, his jaw hanging unceremoniously low.

“Fifty!” There wasn’t anyone in sight anymore! What could Sendoh possibly count now? “Fifty? That’s all you could give me?!” Sendoh harangued the heavens.

There was a dull thud, and Sendoh turned around to see an unconscious Kiyota.

III

“Thank you so much, darling, for bringing home our Nobu!” Kiyota’s mother was thanking a rather embarrassed Sendoh profusely, her mass of thick brown hair bobbing in accordance with the rest of her ample proportions. Kiyota’s got her nose, Sendoh noted.

“Tell me once again, what exactly happened, young man?” ordered Kiyota’s stern and comparatively undernourished father, curtly.

“I just said ‘fifty’ and then he fainted. Took him to that neighborhood’s psychiatrist, and he said it was a case of ‘penta-deka-numero-phobia’, or the fear of the number fifty, although when I asked to look at his ‘Encyclopedia of Phobias’, he protested violently and threw us out.” narrated Sendoh animatedly.

Kiyota’s mother was close to tears when Sendoh had finished his poignant tale. “Poor Nobu! To think the poor, innocent little boy could have pentadekanumerophobia!” wailed Mrs. Kiyota.

“There, there, dear,” said Mr. Kiyota consolingly; “It’s all fine.” He drew in his breath sharply and his solemn features became twice as solemn. “We won’t be able to celebrate my birthday this year, then.”

And thus brooding, the couple went back inside, without acknowledging Sendoh, and shut the door.

“Oh well,” Sendoh said, shrugging; “Mental people have mental parents, I suppose.” He didn’t intend on being boorish- He was just citing what his own parents had once used against him in a moment of anger and impairment of logical thinking.

IV

“Come along, Akira,” said Mrs. Sendoh, hurrying out of the house, buttoning up her jacket in the process; “You don’t want to be late.”

“Coming, mom,” replied Sendoh, who was facing an implacable problem in the form of an intricate knot in one of his shoelaces. Giving up, he followed the direction of his mom’s call.

It was evening then and the sun had almost reached the horizon- That is to say, the horizon as far as a city is concerned. It was only about five o’clock, but there was no trusting these winter days.

Mrs. Sendoh turned the key, revved the engine of the car, and set off at a speed that would astonish a drag racer.

Within five minutes they had traveled the seven miles to the ‘Turbulent Academy of Turbulence.’

“Charming place,” Sendoh’s mother remarked casually, walking up the path to the main entrance, followed by an unduly apprehensive Sendoh.

They entered the plain-looking building and went up to the Receptionist. The young woman’s glasses nearly slid off her nose when she saw Sendoh. Evidently, the exposure to good looks the place got was unwholesomely meager.

“You may go inside, Miss. Miss Turbulence is waiting for you,” said the Receptionist, still not taking her eyes off Sendoh, who was feeling rather naked under her stare.

“Ah, Mrs. Sendoh! And Master Sendoh!” greeted who was taken to be Miss Turbulence once the mother-son duo entered the room on whose door was written the words “Elizabeth Turbulence”.

“It’s so very nice to have you both here!” went on Miss Turbulence, full of vim. Sendoh conjectured that it wasn’t often that people with mild temperament came to her. The place was called ‘Turbulent’ for a reason, you know.

“Very pleasant, indeed!” went on Miss Turbulence with what was seemingly a monologue. She spoke in a suspiciously put-on British accent, and rolled her R’s to an extent that would remind one of a vacuum cleaner that has just swallowed something unpalatable, or an opera singer recovering from tonsillitis.

“Good evening to you too,” said Mrs. Sendoh, although her timing was a bit off.

“Good evening, good evening,” repeated Miss Turbulence unconsciously, not taking her eyes off Master Sendoh, and giving him a toothy grin.

Sendoh shifted uncomfortably. The title ‘Miss’ when attached with the rare surname ‘Turbulence’ evoked the image of a young woman who was harassed to insanity because her would-be husband left her because of her wild temperament. The real Miss Turbulence, seemed not in the least bit mentally unsound, and was hardly young. She wore a little more makeup than her age demanded, and a solitary gold tooth in her upper-jaw reflected shafts of light into one’s eyes at unexpected moments, making them feel momentarily dazed.

“Anyway, getting back to business,” said Miss Turbulence gaily, hopping comically to the back of her desk, disturbing a trashcan in the process, and producing from her drawer a photograph.

“Oh,” she said in astonishment; “How the hell did this get here?” She was staring at what was presumed to be a photograph. She flipped it around to show Mrs. and Master Sendoh. “This is my late husband. Major Turbulence, they called him.”

“Oh, I see!” said Mrs. Sendoh, putting up an expression of utmost interest; “Was he in the British army, or the American, or what?”

“Uh, no, he was an entrepreneur.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Sendoh, the falseness of her smile becoming perspicuous.

“Oh, here it is!” exclaimed Miss Turbulence, extracting a piece of form that Mrs. Sendoh was evidently expected to fill out.

“What instrument or instruments will the boy play?” asked Miss Turbulence.

“Pianos and violins, of course.” replied Mrs. Sendoh matter-of-factly.

And Kiyota’s words flashed across Sendoh’s mind:

“but I’d so rather play basketball than be cooped up with a bunch of people dressed in tuxedos and other horrifically formal things, as if for a funeral, and playing pianos and violins...”

And it dawned on Sendoh how apropos the word ‘funeral’ was in that sentence.