chapter twenty-two

pass the nirvana

The six months after the Bordertown Battle were quiet, just the way that I liked it.

Exam season was fast approaching, so my time at Oya had decreased as I buckled down. Even so, Oyakou had been divided into multiple fractured groups: those who were buckling down so that they could graduate (Tsukasa, Jamuo, Shibaman, Toya, Junji and a few other guys), those who would be sticking around a little longer, and those who were already too old to be there (Todoroki, Kiyoshi, Tsuji). Midori had also managed to kick Murayama's ass in gear, and this was going to be the year, the leader decided, that he got his GED.

Every week, Midori had the Hope Hills kids at her bungalow in Kendou, helping them study and offering them food as she finally filled out her application to culinary school in Sannoh. I found that I was also frequenting the bungalow in Kendou, appreciating the company as I buckled down and studied for my math exam.

As for me and Tsukasa? Things between us were fantastic. He stayed over almost every night when my mom worked late, helping me study for exams and tests, or baking something with me, or even just curling up with me and the cat on the couch while we watched some television drama. We went out as often as we could manage between my hectic schedule and whatever the hell being a Faction Leader at Oya involved. We went to the movies, late night snack adventures at the Hawasada market, and he was even willing to wander around a bookstore with me.

When he offered to buy me a hardcover book that had only just come out the week before, I swear I fell even more in love with him.

With exam season came the warmer weather, and with it, my eighteenth birthday. Mom and Seki had both bene home that morning, and we had celebrated quietly: foil balloons in the living room, waffles with a candle sticking out of the top and a small cupcake in a protective container for me to eat with my lunch. Mom bought me a set of tiny gold earrings that looked like dinosaurs, the studs shimmering in my earlobes as I walked out of Sehio Secondary School with Madoka and Yui.

"Whoever gave you a driver's license should have their testing license revoked." I remarked with a laugh, curling my fingers around the handle for the passenger side door of Madoka Ishii's bright red Honda Civic. Her mom had just gotten a new car, so the Civic was Doka's.

"You won't be laughing when it's time for you to get your license, Sakura-chan." Madoka rolled her eyes as she ungracefully threw her clarinet case in the trunk. "Driving is hell."

"I know, that's why I waited so long just to take the written test for my learners."

The three of us clambered into the car, the Gudetama bobblehead on Madoka's dashboard shaking as the three doors slammed shut in unison. The radio kicked on, blaring the latest release from Generations as Madoka started the engine.

The girls insisted on celebrating my birthday properly, even though I would have been content just to grab dinner from a hole-in-the-wall type ramen restaurant with two of my closest friends and my boyfriend, but the devious looks that Yui and Madoka had been giving each other all day worried me.

What the hell did they have planned?

Madoka drove at the speed limit all through downtown Oya, somewhere that we used spend almost half an hour on the bus to get to after class if nobody could get their mother or grandmother or brother to drive us. Our Jr. Exile sing along continued as Madoka yelled at passing cars.

Driving never had been something that people who lived in Oya were any good at.

Finally, as the bridge of "Shoot It Out" played, Madoka pulled into a parking spot in front of a low brick building with a so-called kawaii nail polish bottle in the window that used to give me nightmares when I was younger. It was a nail bar that the three of us had been to more than a dozen times, somewhere we always turned to for any major event or when we just needed to unwind.

"The nail bar?" I raised my eyebrows, unbuckling my seatbelt as Madoka cut the engine. "This was my birthday surprise?"

Yui shook her head. "Think bigger, Kiri-chan! It's what you need to get your nails done for that's the big surprise!"

"That sounds horrible." I joked, stepping out of the car. I had never been one for surpises, but a lot of things had changed over the past six or seven months in my life. I liked the person I was becoming, even if it meant putting up with so-called 'surprises'.

Inside the nail bar, an episode of some long-running TV soap that I didn't know the name of played on a flat screen television above where the nail techs, dressed in Hello Kitty scrubs, chatted amiably with their clients. At this hour, it was mostly schoolgirls from around Oya. There were a few girls in trademarked Katsunari yellow sitting in the back corner and giggling among themselves. They were dressed in Adidas. Runners, by the looks of them.

The people who had turned their backs on Shizuka Morita when she needed them most.

The three of us traded the keyrings of shellac samples among ourselves, holding up and comparing hues as we decided on colors. While I found it tempting to revert to the pale shade of lilac that I favoured, one of the two colors I seemed to keep coming back to no matter how many times I tried something new, something in my gut was telling me to go bolder, to change up the look a little bit.

"What do you guys think of this one?" I asked, holding out the plastic stick with a false nail painted a bold, glittery midnight blue.

"I like it." Yui nodded. "But do you know who'd like it more?"

"Don't say it." I giggled as Yui and Madoka exchanged looks.

"Tsukasa-chan!" They chorused together, garnering looks from the Katsunari girls in the corner.

"You two are menaces."

We sat down in the salon chairs, right in front of a television screen and all lined up next to each other as the aestheticians stared filing and shaping our nails. Yui always got acrylics, whereas Madoka and I just allowed our nails to grow out and got them shaped instead, so Yui's treatment would take longer.

"Are you sure that you guys can't tell me what we're doing later?"

Madoka smiled. "Nope. But wear your Ferrari shirt, and I'll pick you up at six thirty. Sachio is going to drive Yui, and she'll meet us there."

Like me, Yui still only had a learner's permit.

"That's not instilling me with very much confidence, Madoka." I scolded as the technician set my palm inside the glass soaking bowl.

"Trust us, you're going to love it. Tsukasa-chan helped us plan it all."

"Do the two of you have anything planned for afterwards?" Yui asked cheekily, raising her eyebrows.

I knew what she meant almost instantly. It had been six months, and Tsukasa and I still hadn't progressed past groping and making out in the backseat of the burned out cars in the Hope Hills courtyard.

"Come on, am I seriously still the only virgin in this friend group? Are you really using that against me right now!" I whined as the technician prompted me to switch my soaking hands.

And it's not that I hadn't considered it.

There had been some days where the sting of want had been so strong that I had been so tempted to take that next step, to let Tsukasa Takajo see all of me, but that fear was still there, that mental roadblock.

I was more than just scared to make that jump.

I was goddamn terrified.

"Sorry for snapping, I know you guys mean well." My voice was softer as the first drop of polish hit my thoroughly filed nail. "It's not that I don't want to, because god knows that some of the things I want that boy to do to me are not to be spoken near my mother, but I am so fucking scared. Physically, I'm so ready for that next step. But mentally? Mentally, I'm not ready to have sex with him yet."

Yui reached over the plastic divider with the hand that her nail tech wasn't working on to pat me on the shoulder. "Oh, sweetie. It's okay if you're not there yet."

"He's so madly in love with you, Sakura. You'll be safe with him of and when you decide that you're ready. He'll wait for you. Babes, he will wait with you."