Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 Page 4

  ***

  “Well, that was distracting to say the least…”

  After managing to lose her, Eiichi was inside the main building, on his way to class like a good little student drone.

  Aside from the prior excitements, most days were like this for him. He went to school, sometimes he skipped the classes that meant the least to him, found ways to kill time, and then it was back home. It was about as normal as things could be...well, almost.

  Before he could make it to his class door, he was greeted by a familiar mind with a propensity for furious outbursts that he had hoped to not run into at this time, given his tardy circumstances.

  “You’re late again, Kozuka!” The thin, irate voice stopped him in his tracks.

  He turned, and glaring at him with a set of light brown eyes that might as well have been fiery red, was the infuriated spectacle of a girl he had regular encounters with in very much this same manner.

  Her name was Ryoko Takahashi. She was a nice enough girl, it seemed, at least when she wasn’t around him. She, like a majority of the student body, knew of his negative reputation and had chosen to label him accordingly. And given her authoritative role as his class representative and a hall monitor, she made it her daily practice to give Eiichi a ration of shit he could really do without. He had given up on trying to make nice with people like her a long time ago, and simply decided to play along.

  Eiichi smoothed a coy hand through the air. “Wow, time really does fly.”

  “Where do you go off to when it’s about time for class to start?” Ryoko returned.

  A second year like him, Ryoko had a reputation of her own. Being in a position of authority, she had charisma, as well as a sense of duty and value for good people. As a result, she was a hit among many of the girls, who looked up to her in admiration. The guys, however, had come to a general decision to admire her from afar, doing anything to evade her temper. She had stellar grades, and was a star member of the Judo club. She had an athletic figure that was easy on the eyes and a head of brick red hair that was always tied in a ponytail.

  Eiichi spoke with an ease in his tone, “Takahashi-san...if you really must know, I’m a deranged serial murderer and there’s a special spot on this campus where I hide the bodies of my victims.”

  “Ha! You’re a delinquent, but I don’t have you pegged as a psychopath,” Ryoko sneered.

  “Okay then, I’m a drug dealer that hides his stash on campus.”

  “That one’s no more creative than the last one!” Ryoko flared.

  “Wow, you’re a tough nut to crack.”

  “Sarcasm won’t get you anywhere.”

  Eiichi was satisfied to be getting his desired results, even if it was causing him some cerebral pain. It seemed to really bother Ryoko whenever he didn’t take what she said seriously. It made him wonder why she kept it up. She was a goal getter after all, and must see him as an obstacle she had not yet overcome. Maybe there was a little bit of a control freak under all that temperance.

  The cerebral pain in Eiichi’s head had been quite literal, and he really was dealing with a headache, but suddenly, the dull throbbing in his forehead intensified. He placed his hand on it, beginning to feel a little dizzy. She wasn’t simply irritated with him.

  ‘She’s more frustrated today than usual...’

  He broke away from their usual routine to ask. He might as well.

  With a wince, he tried to look up at her. “...Did anything happen recently?”

  “Stop trying to pry into my personal life Kozuka! You see, this is why it’s so hard to be around you. Stop that fake headache crap and get to class!”

  Why did he even bother…

  Sometimes Eiichi had trouble talking with people. Or really it was sometimes they had trouble talking with him. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Things could go rather smoothly, or they could go the opposite. This was why he wasn’t crazy about school. Being around a lot of people in general could be a bother for him. There was too much output.

  In a tired walk that felt more like a wade, he pushed into the classroom and found his seat.

  Eiichi was marked up again for being tardy. Just a few more and he would have to attend detention. Nothing new, but just a few more detentions, and the penalty would be remedial classes.

  The upside was he only had twenty minutes of math class to sit through before the bell rang. Students got up from their seats and milled out into the halls before the next class would start.

  Eiichi had the usual mess of emotional output to sit through during class, so he usually decided to take advantage of the classroom having fewer students in it for a period. Stepping outside was even better though, and he thought he’d get something from the vending machines, though doing this was always a gamble.

  Cautiously, he made his way through the mess of black and tan Aki Guro uniforms. So far, a pretty dull day.

  Suddenly, he heard a girl sobbing off to his right. Thumping pains coursed through his head and he clutched it immediately as he turned.

  She was leaning against the wall, face in her hands, and surrounded by three of her friends as they attempted to comfort her. Her short pony tail danced as her shoulders lurched with every sob.

  A vision flashed in his mind. He saw her standing before someone, a male student. As the student was speaking to her, her vision began to blur, and Eiichi could feel a sinking weight in his chest.

  ‘He broke up with her. They had been dating for nearly a year. She was in love and he decided to end it abruptly.’

  He had to continue on before something bad happened.

  He walked right past a boy leaning against the wall. He was much shorter than Eiichi, and looked young enough to still be in middle school. His uniform looked ruffled around the collar, and his eyes stared dejectedly at his shoes from behind a pair of spectacles.

  In the next instant, Eiichi was suddenly looking out from a dark corner in a less populated part of the halls. There were three other students standing right in front of him, blocking his way, and all of them were bigger than him. One of them grabbed him by the collar and he was lifted up, just barely balancing himself on the tips of his toes. He was staring into a pair of rodent-like eyes, he could smell the guy’s rancid breath as he hissed threats into his face. He felt trapped, like he couldn’t do anything.

  ‘They keep picking on him. No one will help him if he doesn’t stand up for himself.’

  Eiichi kept moving. He didn’t care about getting something to drink anymore. He just wanted to get somewhere where he could breathe.

  He was just to the end of the hall when a sickly feeling of pompous narcissism washed over him. He looked and saw Hitomi Uoya, one of the other popular girls, known for being a gossip. She was talking with a few of her many hollow friends.

  “No, I totally told him everything is fine, we didn’t do anything. He’s being such a prude.”

  Another vision flashed in his mind, one of many that he wished he had never seen.

  ‘She’s lying. She’s been sleeping around behind his back.’

  He pushed ahead, but had to be careful not to trip himself moving down the stairs, his head, shoulders and chest felt so heavy.

  This was normal for Eiichi. This was why he couldn’t stand to be around people. He could tell when someone was lying before they even opened their mouth. When they were attracted to someone or hated them. When observing someone, he knew within moments what their favorite drink was, their favorite things to do, their secrets, their dreams, their ambitions, and their personality, the images were just a plus. As soon as someone focused hard enough, his mind’s eye would unwittingly pick up a short clip and play it over for him. Depending on their mood, he could suffer crippling migraines, sometimes ending with him needing medical attention. Or, he could be launched into spells of euphoria, as if he’d come under the influence of a barbiturate. This was Eiichi’s curse.

  There was in fact a medical term for it, but he always refereed to it as ‘reading
’. Or in particular, ‘reading other’s emotions’.

  His shoulder smacked up against the wall in the courtyard after he made it downstairs and outside. Eiichi heaved air in and out of his pulsing lungs as he watched the sakura trees in the spring light. His heart was racing. It took a while for his headache to go, but it had left him tired. It was also around this time that he found himself craving another smoke.

  He had time. There was no one out here. He could light up and kill one in a few minutes, and if anyone came by, he’d sense them and put it out.

  Eiichi drew the pack of Sparrow Natural 100’s out of his coat pocket and began patting it against his hand. He thumbed the top open, and raised it to his mouth, removing one between his lips.

  He didn’t understand why it was this way for him. No one else had to deal with something like this. How would any of them handle it if they had to deal with their mood changing every few minutes because of someone else’s? The intense migraines that sapped the blood from everywhere else in his body. Having to experience someone else’s memories as if witnessing them firsthand. It might drive most of them out of their minds. They wouldn’t know how to handle it.

  Eiichi had possessed this since birth. He didn’t wish it and he didn’t ask for it. For some reason, some invisible force of nature had decided that he should be born with this perpetually egregious thorn in his side. In the celestial lottery, his number, one of billions upon billions, had come up. He supposed it wasn’t all that bad, he counted himself lucky to still have all his limbs, and all his senses, although it seemed he had been accidentally given a sixth one. It was lonely, however. It wasn’t like there was a group of psychics and espers who convened in the market cafe every Thursday. However, Eiichi didn’t want to make the whole matter a spiritual one. This was just how things were.