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seiin-translations · 3 years

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2.43 S1 Chapter 5.2 - Stand By Me

2. ESCAPE

Random girls: oh no the girls are fighting

Translation Notes

1. Koutairen is the abbreviation for the All Japan High School Athletic Federation.

2. Kuroba calls his relatives おんちゃん and aunt is おばちゃん, so yeah

3. Economy class syndrome is “deep-vein thrombosis said to be caused by periods of prolonged immobility on long-haul flights.”

4. Murderer was in English in the original text

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The bridge in the middle of Monshiro Town and Suzumu City was the goal of Haijima’s daily jogs. At the end of his jog, he dashed across the concrete bridge that was shining silver in the scorching August sun, then made a U-turn at that same speed and ran down to the riverbank. “Uwah!” His soles slipped on the overgrown summer grass. He ended up sliding down to a flat area of the riverbank on the enamel bag he carried on his back.

Hah, hah…He lay there for a while, breathing heavily. In the shadow of the bridge, the temperature felt a little cooler than on the bridge. He could feel the dampness of the summer grass soaking into his hair.

He got up unsteadily, put down his bag and took out his ball. He imagined that he was tired at the final stage of the game and purposely began to do one-person passes before he could catch his breath. With an overhand motion, he threw the ball directly above him. He continued to set the ball rhythmically no higher than a centimeter. The sound of the ball being softly flicked echoed in the quiet riverbank for a while.

The concrete piers rising from the riverbank had several colored chalk marks on them, though they were already fading. The marks were used as the attackers’ positions, and he set the ball to them. He spun around and hit the bouncing ball with a jump back set at the exact same height. He turned forward again and set the bouncing ball again. This time he intentionally changed the spot he hit it to. The ball deviated somewhat and bounced up. He then ran to chase it and crouched down and set the ball while he was underneath it. Gradually, he purposefully shifted to spots where he hit the ball to harder and harder places.

Haijima’s sets were characterized by their “speed,” but they were sets that crushed the attacker’s will, or sets that didn’t “allow for themselves to be hit,” so to speak. As the ball moved in a parabolic position, it had time to drift near the top before it began its free fall. If he set a ball that overlapped the top of the parabola with the attacker’s highest jumping point, the attacker could use that time, even if it was only a few tenths of a second, to draw out his power and hit the ball as hard as he could. In order to always have that kind of set, he had been refining his technique by focusing on unparalleled accuracy in ball handling.

Immediately after hitting the pier with a back set, the ball bounced back with a bang and he flipped it up with his elbow, still facing backwards. He jumped up to the high ball and hit the mark accurately with one hand. Technically, he could keep on doing this for an hour or two without dropping the ball. However, his legs couldn’t keep up, his toes got caught in the summer grass and he pitched forward. As he slid forward, he stretched out his body hard and thrust the back of his hand into the gap between the ball and the ground.

Although he connected with it through willpower, that was as far as he could go. The ball was flicked low in front of him and crashed into the grass.

He sprawled out on top of the grass, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. The blue summer sky spread out above the slope pierced his eyes, and he raised his arm to cover his face.

“Shit…”

He let out a curse under his arm.

“Why do I have to do this…”

In addition to withdrawing from the semifinals of the Fall Tournament, the school gave them the severe punishment of refraining from club activities for the time being. It wasn’t that it was settled that they were guilty, but rather that the current situation was completely grey. Okuma said it was in fact because it was grey. If the fact that the scandal was real were to leak through some other channel and the school had received the report but not taken any action, the school would be on the hook. There were several such incidents a year, regardless of the type of sport. Okuma was a little more familiar with that sort of situation—it was the school’s way of protecting itself by taking strict measures, he said.

Since they weren’t banned from practicing on their own during the summer break, Haijima continued to practice on his own, just as he had done when he wasn’t a part of the team. Since he didn’t know when the next competition was going to be, he hadn’t made any adjustments for a tournament, just blindly practicing everyday to beyond the limit of his stamina, much less stopping at the limit. However, even if he practiced until he couldn’t move, he couldn’t see the effect by himself. There was only a growing sense of futility, no sense of accomplishment at all.

What am I doing here all by myself? What’s the point of practicing by myself? There’s no point in this unless I’m in a place with a net and there’s someone to set the ball to——.

Fading chalk marks on the bridge piers. The reason they were fading was because he didn’t have to practice alone anymore before, and because he didn’t draw over them these days, even when they were getting fainter.

---

It had been a month since club activities were suspended. September 2nd, the second day of the new semester—they only went to school for the morning yesterday, so today was the real first day of the new term.

When he pedalled his bike to the station, he saw the train arriving at the station building. He pedalled faster and charged in front of the station, then immediately got off his bike and jumped over the ticket gate. Monshiro Station was a desolate little hut, so the platform was right in front of the ticket gate. He ran and made it just in time through the gap in the doors as they were about to close.

A dark green afterimage intruded his vision and he momentarily felt dizzy. He took off his glasses, wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt, and exhaled. The fan spinning on the ceiling blew a strong and lukewarm wind that ruffled his hair.

I pedalled my bike as hard as I could for just a little bit, but I’m tired…

As he leaned against the railing by the doors and put his glasses back on, he noticed a tall person wearing the same uniform as him standing in front of the priority seats.

“Granny, if you don’t tie it up properly, they’ll all fall out.”

While giving something that sounded like honest advice to the old lady sitting in the priority seats, the person was tying the mouth of a supermarket bag that was filled with some kind of fruit and then putting it on the overhead rack.

“Thank you, young master. I wish my son was as big as you.”

“Your house would get more cramped with people like me in it. My mom keeps saying I’m getting in the way.”

“Well, isn’t your house big enough?”

“Our house is wide horizontally, but it’s stuck verti…”

Kuroba also noticed him and cut himself off.

“Oh…hey, you’re kinda sunburnt.”

I was wondering what he was going to say first, but it was that? He sure has it easy.

Kuroba was dressed in his uniform, a white shirt and pants. There was a rule about ties, but few male students wore them in the summer. A colored T-shirt was showing through under his shirt, and Haijima couldn’t judge if that was cool or tacky because he didn’t have the evaluation standard for that. Haijima was just wearing the white shirt.

The only bags he had was the flimsy school bag designated by the school (it wasn’t designated to be flimsy, Kuroba just flattened it himself), and he wasn’t carrying the enamel bag for club activities. When he clicked his tongue with the implication of Look at you, just enjoying your vacation like it’s natural, Kuroba flinched a little and pouted.

They averted their gazes and leaned against the railings on either side of the door. There was no conversation that would stimulate them, so there was silence. Haijima planned on going home after doing some more self-practice today, so he had his usual enamel bag slung over his shoulder, but he couldn’t bear the weight on his shoulder and put it down on the floor. The single ball, his own that was used for outdoor practice felt terribly heavy.

He might be right when he called me sunburnt… When he turned the direction of his face, he could faintly see the frames of his glasses faintly reflected in the door glass. He had been practicing outside for overwhelmingly longer than usual, so he felt unusually burnt. I spent a lot of time outside yesterday too…so much that I don’t even remember how long I practiced. He wondered if that showed how tired he was.

Even though it was September, it was still blazing outside. However, the scenery of the paddy fields flowing outside the train window had become quite autumnal before they knew it. The growing rice plants were beginning to hang down their ears as though bowing. He squinted his eyes at the dazzling golden glow of the paddy fields reflecting the sun that had been shining brightly since morning. It seemed to overlap with his current situation, where he could only look on at a brightly sparkling world from a dim place, which made him feel even more frustrated.

Their participation in the Spring Volleyball Tournament’s preliminaries was hopeless at this stage. The semifinals would be held at the end of this month, and the two schools that would advance to the finals for both the boys’ and girls’ teams would be decided. Two months later in November, the finals will be held for the right to represent the prefecture at the National Tournament, where there was only one spot for both boys and girls. The Spring Tournament Final Selection, where representatives from all over Japan would gather, would be held in January of next year.

They had completed the application, so it seemed that they still weren’t officially non-participating yet, which was rather like a state of limbo. Even if they were allowed to resume their activities in the second semester, it would be difficult to rebuild a team that had fallen apart during the summer break in less than a month. It would be fine if their goal was to participate—but what Seiin, Haijima, Oda wanted was a ticket to Nationals. They needed the ability to beat all the teams in the prefecture and rise to the top.

What about Oda…he wondered if he had already given up on the Spring Tournament. As the days went by, he had a feeling that he was the only one feeling irritated like this every day, but when he saw Kuroba’s reaction, like he had forgotten something completely important, that worry turned into certainty.

Every time the train stopped at a station, the number of passengers and density within the train increased. Right before Nanafu Station, it became congested like it was rush hour, and the two stood side by side with their backs against the door. The two tall boys blocked the door glass, turning the inside of the car dark and causing the passengers near them to somewhat keep a distance from them.

There was a group of girls in Seiin uniforms chatting animatedly. He could tell from a glance that they belonged to a sports team, and from the logo printed on their bags, he could tell that they belonged to the girls’ softball team.

“Oh, you’re the first-years from boys’ volleyball.”

They seemed to know their faces and called out to them.

“We heard about it. Your club activities got suspended.”

They said in a teasing tone. “Yeah, well,” Kuroba said with a stiffened face and took a step over to him. While pulling his bag to between his legs with his foot, Haijima gave a side-eyed glare at Kuroba. …Don’t chicken out. What’s with that “Yeah well” and that half-smile. Aren’t you the reason why.

“…You, get a clue. It’s thanks to you that the Spring Tournament has become a total waste. We missed out on Inter-High and the National Meet, so this was our last chance to go to Nationals…”

He spat out in a biting voice, with the back of his head against the door glass. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kuroba’s shoulders jump.

“I, I know that much. It’s Oda-senpai and Aoki-senpai’s last year, and I feel awful about that. But if that’s the case, then you should trust me even more.”

He was just as persistent as he had been a month ago. Haijima had no idea what he was being so stubborn about. Was there anything in this world that required him to stubbornly prioritize it over the Spring Tournament? If it were him, he would say no.

“It’s not just the third-years. Why don’t you think about yourself too? We’ve only got three chances.”

He emphasized “three chances.” If he could, he would do it dozens of times, but he could only go there three times in his life.

The Spring High School Volleyball Tournament had been held in the first gym of the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo for a long time as a March tradition, although there had been some changes to the outline of the tournament since it was moved to January. Since elementary school, Haijima had watched those recordings to the point where the tapes were literally worn out (some games were only recorded in analog form, so he went out of his way to have them shown to him on a VCR). He had imagined dozens of times, hundreds of times, that he would be fighting on that orange court—not the multi-sided court they had been playing on until the quarterfinals, but the center court right in the middle of the gym. Ever since elementary school, he had only been imagining that both when he was asleep and awake, only to suddenly realize one day that he had only three chances to actually try to go there, and that truth felt absurd to him.

When he decided to leave Meisei Middle School and go back to Fukui, he thought that with this, he had nothing to aim for anymore. But Oda’s words shone a light on what he had once stored away in a dim place.

“I honestly believe that this year’s Seiin will definitely be a team that goes to the finals.”

“Lend me all your strength.”

Can I really trust him…? If that’s the case, as long as I give it my all, I’ll get us there. After the summer training camp, he was at the point where he was becoming more and more convinced that he could make that a reality with this team, and he couldn’t step on the brakes twice.

“I can’t wait until next year. If this year’s ruined, then we lose one chance. Three chances will become two. And even if we could go there three times, it still won’t be enough.”

Why doesn’t he understand…really, how many years does this guy plan on being in high school?

“Were we told that… You seemed to be attached to the Spring Tournament, but that’s because you’re from Tokyo, right? What’s the difference between this and Inter-High or the National Meet?”

Kuroba’s tone of voice also became a little stronger. What had been sulkiness gradually became something like resentment and lashing out.

“If you wanna be in the Spring Tournament so badly, I’ve got an idea for you. You should go back to your old school in Tokyo and compete with them. You don’t care what team you’re on, as long as you can be in the game, but not Seiin. You’re only thinking about yourself anyways, aren’t you?”

“…? Why do I have to be told that? No matter how you look at it, you’re the one who’s not thinking about the team.”

Their voices, getting louder and louder, attracted attention from around them. The girls’ softball team was exchanging whispers that sounded like “Boys’ volleyball is splitting up.”

“You don’t know the rules of Koutairen (1) in the first place, do you? There’s one where it’s a general rule that if you transferred schools, you’re disqualified from participating in games unless six months has passed. If I transferred to Meisei right now, even if I get accepted, there’s no way I’d be able to compete in the Spring Tournament preliminaries anyways.”

He was starting to feel very annoyed, wondering why he had to explain all that in a place like this. As expected, Kuroba looked as though he didn’t know about such a rule, but he still snapped back, saying, “W-Well, if that’s the case…”

“You want to go back if you can be accepted, right? I knew it.”

“I didn’t talk about that at all. Let me say this clearly, even if I’m accepted, who’s gonna want me as their teammate again? I…”

His voice caught. The words that had congested in his throat were spat out in small chunks.

“I’m…the setter who caused his teammate to attempt suicide…after all…”

Kuroba widened his eyes and became speechless.

That face suddenly disappeared from his vision with a surprised “Oh?”

The train had just appeared at the station and the doors had opened. Having suddenly lost the support of his back, Haijima almost fell onto the platform.

Passengers, including many in the Seiin uniform, surged towards the doors. The current of people pushed him and he jumped onto the platform on one foot, but his bag he had put down on the floor was left behind and he hurriedly pushed his way through the crowd to go back. A large rectangular bag was slumped between people’s feet. While almost getting kneed several times, he reached for the strap and retrieved the bag.

The departure bell began to ring, so he quickly retrieved it and was about to jump off the train, but just as he put his foot down the edge of the train car, he suddenly felt hesitant.

…What’s the point of this whole day? I’m just going to school and killing time between classes, not even doing any club activities, and yet I’m just going to go home tired.

He saw Kuroba’s head in the stream of people heading for the ticket gate. It was like a rock sticking out of the shallows, his height one head above the others. While walking with the current pushing him, Kuroba turned around and shouted something at Haijima, but Haijima turned back and went back inside the car.

He sat down on a vacant seat and threw his bag out onto the aisle. Of course, the Seiin students had all got off at Nanafu, so there was no one else left who was wearing the same uniform as him.

That’s what he thought, but then he saw Kuroba’s trouser-clad legs step over the bag in front of him and stop.

Blinking, Haijima looked up.

“What the hell are you thinking…”

Kuroba, looking a little flustered, was panting heavily.

“Why are you coming back here too?”

“You’re skipping school? What are you gonna do?”

“What, you say…”

He was about to answer “Nothing really,” but then fell silent.

It wasn’t as though he had any destination or goal if he kept riding. But…

He just thought of one.

“…Kuroba. Come with me.”

“Huh? Where?”

Kuroba darted his eyes about.

“Tokyo.”

“Huh? What are you doing there?” He looked like he still didn’t understand yet.

“I’m going back. ——To Meisei.”

***

“…Huh, Yori-chan came back? …No, it’s fine, yeah…I owe you, Uncle. I’m begging you, please don’t tell anyone until tonight. It’s not like I’m running away home, I’m with a guy who knows Tokyo, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Kuroba, who had been talking in front of the station attendant’s office, came running back and said, “I kept you waiting. Here.” He pushed half of the bundle of tickets into his hand.

Fukui Station was in the center of the northern part of Fukui Prefecture and a terminal station where limited express trains stopped. The express train from here to Maibara in Shiga Prefecture and the bullet train from Maibara to Tokyo cost about 13,000 yen for a one-way trip—not an amount that a high school student could afford after making up his mind on the spot, so they had Kuroba’s relative who worked at the station to arrange the tickets for him. He didn’t know if tabs were a thing at train stations, but it felt like it was Kuroba’s tab.

With a humble look on his face, Haijima received the ticket.

“You asked me to come with you, but you used me as your wallet.”

“It’s not like that. I’ll repay you. My dad will be there when we get there.”

“Well, I don’t really mind. Oh, that relative of mine just now is my aunt’s…Yori-chan’s mom’s younger brother.”

“I don’t get it.” The relatives and aunts got mixed up in his mind. (2) Were there really hundreds of relatives related to the Kuroba family around here?

“Yori-chan went out of the prefecture to play again during vacation, but he arrived on a night bus a little while ago and came back to town the same time as us.”

Since the departure time of the special express train was approaching, they talked as they ran up the stairs to the platform and jumped in through the nearest door.

It was a weekday, but the unreserved seats were quite packed. Most of the passengers were in two categories: groups of young people on summer vacation since universities were still on break, and businessmen on business trips. They looked terribly out of place in their high school uniforms, but thanks to Haijima’s enamel bag, which was easily recognized as something for club activities from an outsider’s perspective, they should look like they were going to an away game or something.

Kuroba found two empty seats and took the window seat first. Haijima shoved his bulky bag into the overhead rack and sat down in the aisle seat. The two of them were taller than most people, so it was quite a bit of trouble for them to tuck their legs in.

“The seats are so cramped in limited express. Won’t we get that economy class syndrome thing?” (3)

“It’s only a little over an hour to Maibara. Bear with it.”

“Accused of misconduct, then skipping school in the new semester and escaping outside the prefecture, can my situation get even worse…umm, how do you put the seat down, oh, here?”

As he continued to complain, Kuroba pushed down the back of his seat one notch, and when he thought he was going to rest his back on it, he pressed his face against the window and said excitedly, “Oh, it looks like we’re setting out already!” Even though he had been complaining about his situation, he was completely acting like he was on a school trip, saying, “Let’s buy a station lunch if they’re selling food in the train. I’m starving.” This guy fundamentally has weak self-awareness.

It shouldn’t have been reassuring at all to bring along a country bumpkin who got excited just by riding the express and having to take care of him, only adding to his burdens—but he convulsively invited Kuroba. Even if he hadn’t depended on his wallet, he didn’t think he would have even thought of going if he was alone.

Kuroba made an “Mmm?” sound and stirred, rising from his seat. Haijima was fed up, wondering why he couldn’t stay calm like that, but it seemed that he got a call as he took out his vibrating cell phone from his back pocket. As soon as he checked the caller, he got a startled look on his face. “Itoko…ah, not Yori-chan, but my cousin, Itoko.” “Your relatives sure are complicated.”

He thought he was going to answer, but he only indecisively stared at the message, not even attempting to respond.

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“No…we had a little fight, and she was staying angry at me, so what’s with the sudden…”

Kuroba clamped the phone between his hands and the vibration eventually stopped.

“Ah, she stopped.”

His voice when he said that sounded a little disappointed as he breathed a sigh of relief.

The gravity from the front lightly pressed him against his seat. Haijima imitated Kuroba and lowered the back of his seat down a notch, resting the back of his head against it and relaxing. He slowly closed his eyes and turned his attention towards the vibrations beginning to come from underneath his buttocks and the muffled sound of the train as it gradually picked up speed. He didn’t mind the feeling of being wrapped in a thin barrier, something characteristic to long-distance trains.

It’s been a while since I felt this feeling. In the winter of my second grade of middle school, I rode the express train in the opposite direction…

“Haijima.”

It came from next to him. It was no longer high-spirited, but calm.

“You’re not seriously going to transfer schools, right…?”

“You’re still saying that?”

Haijima answered curtly and opened his eyes.

“If you’re not, then what…”

“Who knows.”

“What do you mean, who knows?”

Kuroba’s voice became a bit wild, as though he was impatient, but even if he said that, it wasn’t as though Haijima had any specific predictions about what would happen.

After that “test of courage” incident at the summer training camp, he began to have nightmares from time to time. He didn’t really hold a grudge against Okuma and the others for their prank. It was just that those people didn’t know his circumstances, and it made him realize that he was still dragging along what happened at Meisei.

It might be that something would be put behind him for the better, it might be that something worse would happen. It might look foolish to be desperate and going out of his way to have his wounds gouged out, but in any case, if he stayed here, then this summer would end fruitlessly in a state of limbo. For Haijima, this current situation where he couldn’t go forward or back was unbearable, to the point where he thought that it would be better to just destroy everything once and for all.

“I thought if I met Souta, it would play out one way or another.”

“Souuuta.”

Kuroba repeated the name in a strange monotone, then cleared his throat like there was phlegm stuck in it.

“Hey, if you don’t mind me asking…what happened at your Tokyo school…?”

“I might as well. I’m the one who made you come with me, so it makes sense for me to tell you. We have time while riding anyways.”

“I-It’s not like I’m curious or anything, okay? You don’t have to talk about what you don’t want to talk about.”

“Don’t get so weirdly worked up over it.”

Although he said that, this guy was someone who paid attention to the needs of others by nature. Unlike him, he could be considerate in order to not hurt others. …Oh, was he coughing because he found it hard to ask? It was then that he realized that the excessively high-spirited chattering might because he was finding the right moment to broach what he wanted to ask.

“He’s the guy who…attempted suicide, right? What kind of person is this Souta…?”

“Yoshino Souta. My volleyball buddy since fourth grade.”

Haijima began to play volleyball when he was in fourth grade. The Haijima family was a father-son household, but his father came home late and he had to stay home alone for a long time, so he was enrolled into a local elementary schooler volleyball club as a substitute for after-school childcare. The club itself wasn’t a full-fledged one, as its main objective was to improve the physical fitness of children, but Haijima became more and more absorbed in it, to the point where volleyball became everything to him before he knew it. Volleyball might have become something like a parent to him.

It was at this club that he met Yoshino Souta and Komukai Tetsuto, and they would later play together at Meisei Middle School. Although they went to different elementary schools, they invited each other to continue playing volleyball at the same middle school, and they all took the entrance exams for Meisei Private Academy Middle School.

“Our coach was named Minami-sensei, who took care of us older kids under the head coach, and the one who told us about Meisei. Sensei told us that it was a powerhouse school in Tokyo, with great facilities, and that they worked closely with their high school to nurture their players over the long term. So we all promised Sensei that we’ll definitely go to the Spring Tournament from Meisei High.”

“Heh…With such a good team and environment…” How did something like that happen? He seemed to want to say.

Why did it become like that, really. When he was in elementary school, everyone got along well. They all looked forward to the days they had club, and there was never a conflict of opinions that created a bad atmosphere.

However, that was probably because their positions were fluid and they were playing volleyball half in fun. As they started to play a serious and strict team, the disparity in ability and physique became more and more apparent, and their old relationships changed before they knew it. Haijima himself probably realized it quite late, but it seemed that everyone distanced themselves from him from the very beginning.

“Can’t you get it up there? If you don’t do that, I can’t do anything either.”

There was a time when Haijima lost his temper because the attackers’ serve return rate was terrible.

“You don’t do receives, so don’t talk to us about anything. If you’re gonna tell people to do something, do it yourself first.”

“If I do the first touch, then I can’t be the setter. If I’m not in the middle, there’s no offense. The left’s job is to receive first and foremost. It’s the job of all of you to connect to me. I’m not gonna let someone who’s not gonna do that to spike.”

Haijima thought he had said something obvious. Even thinking about it now, he was sure he wasn’t wrong in theory. No matter what formation it was, the setter didn’t take part in the reception. However, his statement made the atmosphere rough.

Apparently, this kind of thing would happen so often that his teammates would go online to enthusiastically badmouth Haijima to each other in order to vent their frustrations. Someone’s mother must have happened to see their screen, and shocked by the situation, the mothers overreacted and it reached the coach in the form of harsh advice from the parent’s association.

“Haijima, why did you have to say things that way…? I’m not a teacher at this school, so I won’t delve into it that much, but could you please think over your words a little bit more? That’s why, even though it’d be fatal for us if we don’t have you, you’re benched for the next game.”

The mothers’ cooperation was important not only in terms of funding, but also for training camps and away games, so the coach was probably reluctant to speak out. He decided to temporarily drop Haijima from the starting lineup for the tournament in the fall with the sense of “appeasing them.”

It was on the very day of the tournament.

Yoshino Souta attempted suicide by slitting his wrists.

The direct trigger for this was the fight with Haijima during practice two days ago, apparently.

“MURDERER…do you know what that means?” (4)

“…? Um…what was it again?”

He was suddenly asked a question and gave a quizzical response. He didn’t want to give him a quiz, so he immediately said the answer.

“A killer.”

Kuroba’s seat suddenly creaked as he sat up and looked at him. Haijima only gave him a side glance and purposely continued to speak detachedly.

“I also didn’t know until I looked it up in the dictionary, so I guess they weren’t really good at bullying. Even if they drew graffiti with a word I couldn’t read, it didn’t really affect me. …Until I went home and looked it up.”

The Yoshino incident spread outside the club, probably embellished, and he ended up being harassed in school. When he came to school in the morning, there were words carved on his desk, or his textbooks and school shoes went missing. It was of course unpleasant and disgusting to see his shoes lined up in front of the fence on the roof (which was of course off limits as a general rule). Going to school because he had club activities remained the same in middle school and now. Haijima didn’t have any reason where he had to cling to his classes to the point of struggling to find what he had lost and being treated as entertainment as he did that. Staying home from school was an easy decision.

“So with the end of the second semester, I stopped going to school for a month, and I transferred here for the third semester…and you know what happened after that. …That’s pretty much it.”

The blood drained from Kuroba’s face. It rubbed him the wrong way a little, wondering why he was making that face even though he wasn’t the one who had those things done to him. He understood, though. He’s got that kind of personality, so he sympathizes with me and feels sorry for me. But it actually hurt him to recognize anew that he had been through something that made him be pitied.

“…Haijima. After hearing your story, I have a feeling that you really shouldn’t go there… I think going back to a place like that would make you feel painful feelings again, and nothing good will come of it…”

“You’re the one who started it. You told me to go back to Tokyo right now.”

“Oh, that, well, that was more like tit for tat…”

“Take responsibility. I don’t need you to get cold feet. Because…I might be the one who’s getting cold feet.”

“…”

Kuroba kept stiflingly silent. The passengers sitting in the seats in front of them reclined their seats like they had arranged it beforehand, making it too cramped for them. Still silent, the two obediently bent their knees. The four knees in black pants tightly lined up before them.

A small vibration began sounding at the window. Kuroba’s phone, placed on the window frame, received another message. Kuroba took his phone and muttered, “Ah…it’s Itoko again.”

“Why don’t you just answer her?”

Haijima moved his legs aside to make room for him to leave, but Kuroba shook his head with an “Oh, no…” and pressed the power button on his phone. “It’s fine.”

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#2.43 #2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu #2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club #2.43 translation #2.43 book 1 #2.43 seiin high school boys volleyball team

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subarashiet · 3 years

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lifes been weird and sad , got so much stuff i wanna say dont even know if thats the right subred to but here goes.i m 18 , from Greece , first year in Uni and life is not the way i want it to bei live on my own , rent is being paid by mom and her husband , month pocket money given by dad and by my part time jobat some point in high school i understood that our school years were our most carefree years , tho only now do i really understand itman this post is gonna cramp my fingers shouldve used the pcused to hang out a lot till 2nd year of high school then in 3rd year cause of me studying more i was hanging out less , used to have around 4groups of ppl to hang around then only one , cliche but i wasnt anyone special in school , gotta mention i went to a music middle-high school , only highlights i remember are in 2th-3rd grade trading blows with a girl (think she was 5th grade) ,3rd grade kissing a girl in her cheek then running away from the boy-horde coming after me , 4th grade trading blows with a 6th grader ,6th grade punching a guy for calling names my little sis (we good now see him out we talk he a nice dud) , 9th grade a girl i had a chance with but fucked it up big time , 9th grade breaking a cello almost getting expelled ,12th grade playing bass at a concert in Thessaloniki with a music group of my schooldidnt really have many close friends but there were some from school and other places you can call closer friends , but now even with them i ve started to fade away which i cannot bear but i m the type of giving up and not trying until i m lategot laboratory this morning and this is gonna take a while hope i can get some sleepfeels weird using reddit to express my thoughts i even find it a bit cringy talking to myself but oh welli wanted to visit a physiatrist because i ve been so mentally tired that i think i might have crippling sadness xD but i tried to arrange that back in July-August pre my 18th bday so she said a parent was required to be present so i just kept all the stuff to myselfi was learning classic guitar from 1st grade to 8th still play to this day , in music school i kinda learned h2p electric but didnt practice enough to be able to play good , also know some pianobeen listening to post rock and mostly fate music these past 10 monthssucker for good anime tho i ve been out of it lately havent even finished my summer ones , oregairu has a nice ending from what i got spoiled fromanyway thing is i am sad most of the time , i try not to show it cause i like the stereotype of being the strong guy that everyone can depend on and almost never see being emotional and also like the cool tempered guy type , tho lately i ve been craving a lot of attention that i drop the act of the calm n cool sometimesthings with my parents didnt go to well these past years , only now i can say that we ve finally kinda calmed down , mom and dad started falling out of it around 8th grade cause lots of fighting , big sis kindof took the role of mother while on her teen years , feels like she had it much worse than me10th grade sis leaves home to go elsewhere to start studies for uni , i m left with ma and lil sis back homethen i understand that i have to be there for my little sis which also got in my school that year (3kids-3years difference each) so i tried to assume the role of the big brother but she was closer to her older sister than me , i was closer to my older sister as well , feels like i was doing my lil sis wrong but i cpould relate more to big sis and could chat with her more about stufflil sis didnt open up to me a lot even to this day , she has been a lot more comfortable with me through the years i think cause she told me something important recently , kinda feelsbadman tho cause i wanted to be closer to her and i kinda tried but i think not hard enough cause she didnt seem to get any closer , cried once about it in front of my mother which was the absoluteliest worst cause i didnt want her to see me being fragile jesustho even now that i m not home i talk to her play some among us tried making her start xenoverse 2 that didnt go farhave some friends from school , we would only go all together at internet cafes , but mostly 4 of em would go out togetherin my school i had some friends from scouts tooi have an insta , used to post "cool" pics kinda stopped cause i like looking cool in front of others but i havent been in the mood to try in around a year nowused to be in some conservatory guitar groups with some other kids there , with one girl from there i used to be quite in touch until recently that i stopped seeing her for some reasons maybe i ll explain l8rwe had fun and i really mean it , we used to go on trips to play songs on different cities and stages , our group became kinda known the 2-3 good active years we were active , it still is but these years were the originals , now there are other peoplefucking christ its 2:27started playing in that group with the originals in 2017 till 2019 , we were kids from different ages going from 6th to 10th graders but i didnt understand the different in our ages until recently that i found one of the guys from the group in my cityanother closer friend is a guy from my school , met him in grade 7 still talk to him , used to sit together most of the years pretty neat guy , peculiar character but really interesting kind smart and hard workingman why couldnt my teen years be like shirou from fsn that would be awesomehad entrance exams 4-5 months ago , didnt really go as planned , shooted for Corfu didnt get in cause rather than 15 i got 10 in my last exam so i m still in my city , tho i live alone and go to my local uni insteadJuly 2019 i moved out of my old house moved in with ma and her husband with my sis , stayed there till september then till june-july 2020 i was living with my fathertbh i decided to write this post after watching a vid of Korone talking about Okayu thinking that i ve never been in an actual relationship and that i eould want to experience that but dont know where to start from , losing weight ? becoming outgoing again ? learn how to talk to girls ?i started watching anime back in 2015 on my 3ds i remember watching dubbed Inazuma Elevensince like 2 weeks ago i reached 201 anime completedok i ll stop here for tonight cause i got online uni classes tmrw i keep stimestamps for whenever i finally post this -Tuesday 3/11/2020 02:41used to be around 85-90kg in 12th grade , put on around 20-28 kilos since March 2020 , managed to lose 8-10 kilos in the summer but i m still around 30kilos up from the normal amount based on my height , got a subscription to a gym jan2019 but only managed to get into it for a short period on spring 2019 then autumn 2019 then lost motivation and let go , since March2020 i ve been doing some weights at home , tho when i look at myself in the mirror it doesnt really change how bad i feel about my body , i think my old motivation used to be a girl i used to have a crush on but not surethings with my parents werent all that great and i was mentally better when i would talk with them , they are openminded af and supportive too but puberty makes you see stuff differently like everyone is against you like the world is against you (last one might be true dunno yet) , living on my own now seems to be a bit better but as our Greek ancestors used to say theres no good without bad and the bad in this scenario is that its lonely as fuck , having lived for 18 years with my family it really hits a weird spot , everything feels lonelier now with the virus spreading around not being able to see others as much as we used to , uni doesnt feel nice , many people dont pay attention and its like the second half of 12th grade all over againgot my monthly money 4days ago , went from 200 to 9.28 quickly , when i have money i spend when i dont i m stingy , mostly like to build computers , watch lots of Linus , Paul , Kyle , Jay etc. most of my money goes to buying stuff about computers food , used to give lots of money to internet cafes when i used to hang out with the guys from school , not anymorewith the start of uni we all met new friends even i but i still feel like i am drifting apart day by day , stopped talking to my old girl friend cause i was kinda done with her attitude , called me some names i didnt appreciate because i put up with her attitude , most of the time in her own world , only would really pay attention and try to change herself when it was something she cared about , one of them wasnt her character , but to give the goods of her she was a good friend dont know if i can say she still is a friend or just someone i know , she helped me even with the girl i had a crush on , was really fun on trips with the guitar group , all in all a fun person , thing is i stopped texting her and telling her to go out cause it was 80% me trying and the other 20% her and i think that proved right when i stopped talking to her cause i thought she will see that i m not talking to her she ll think somethings wrong she ll message me to go out and have fun , send me a happy bday message posted some pics of me , didnt send me anything else after , stopped talking to her around the start of October , if i hadnt asked her something about her uni and if it wasnt my bday i dont think we wouldve talked in all of october . last saturday i was working in the area she lives in my city decided to call her sometimes didnt answer tried to suprise her and see how she is by going to her house , noone answered maybe they were on a trip idk , but it feels weird man , in the first half of the year me and a common friend of her and me went out one night , ended up being the bad guy to make her understand that she did something wrong that night , after she left i was left with our common friend talked about stuff and mostly her and i expressed myself , i knew that coming summer me and her would end up at different places so i wanted to tell her all the wrongs with her so that she could finally understand what i ve been putting up against and make her understand that she HAS to pay attention to people around her and that she will meet new people and that she ll have to be careful about her character , used to have a bit of crush on her back in 7th grade , can kinda understand why that went . On the other hand i didnt want to part ways with her with our last words being me ranting , one thing brought the other and she wont be going to her uni's city until early 2021 so i managed to go out with her some more in the summer and september . kinda feels bad to see that almost noone remembered my bday cause i remember in cram school when someone had their bday they would get a fucking cake , dont mistake me i got one , from my ma my two sisters and my moms husband , thing is i wanted to have something happen with friends , nothing happend , around 4 people remembered my bday and the others just send me some happy bday messages after seeing posts from the girl i m talking about .also heres a good song to listen to while reading stuff on reddit Sorrow from FSN by MN64 cant post links from what i understandgonna stop here for now might edit later -Tuesday 3/11/2020 15:15thing is reddit is not the right place to get help and i need a friend but it seems i cant get any from my friends , even my other friend the guy i used to sit with in all middle-high school he has drifted apart , talking more with other of his friends doing other stuff etc , that one time i needed to talk to him he said i ll call you in a while , waitied 1 and a half hour then asked him why he didnt call he said he forgot (i think) , feelsbadmananyway i dont think i m gonna keep editing this i ranted enough , gonna leave the post up for a day or so in case anyone wants to add anything then taking it down -Tuesday 3/11/2020 23:58

#personal rant #confession

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moodybluthcomic · 4 years

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From Thumbnails to Comic Page

This is the second in my series of Behind-The-Scenes posts about Moody Bluth: Anti-Neoliberal Sleuth. Next full page is scheduled to go up December 30th- I will let you know if that changes, which it might since December is a busy time of year! For this post I wanted to run through the process of deciding what goes on a comic page. I presume that are much- much- better and more controlled ways of doing this that what I’ve done. Personally, for other comic projects after this, I would do way less scripting and thumbnailing and save those for later in the project, starting instead by just laying out how many pages each major plot point should take up, and which actions should happen on each page. Then I would make looser scripts and thumbnails for guide, to give myself more flexibility in changing the script later, and to keep the page count from getting too big.

Buuut. I didn’t do that here. I did something miles more convoluted and indecipherable. So here I’m going to run through page 21 (read the finished page here) from my first scripts to the full page. I thought this would be a good example page to use since it barely even existed in the first iterations of the script and has changed a lot since then.

I wrote the initial script for Liptstick Don’t Lie in summer 2018. I kind of knew what all the central plot points would be (or so I thought) but not having drawn a lot of comics before, I had no idea how much action/dialogue I was going to be able to fit on a page and have it be readable. I went about figuring this out the most time consuming way possible: by starting at the beginning and working my way through the story making full-size stick-figure sketches of each page and hand-writing in the dialogue. I knew I wanted the comic to be printable on 8.5x11 paper so I just took 8.5x11 note paper and drew two pages per side. This was a slow process, often interrupted when I would turn to a fresh page to start drawing only to realize that I’d left myself an awkward amount of action or dialogue for the next page and I had to go back and re-sketch pages. I would stop and make quicker, smaller thumbnails for the next several pages, and then thumbnail in those pages larger, and then still find myself going backto revise the whole thing. I would scan those in, type out the script above, send it to Margo (my research supervisor and editor, god bless her soul), and then go back and revise the whole thing again. I don’t remember the details of this process, but I know there was a lot of change, hashing and re-hashing of just what the plot points and dialogue would be.

{Image Description: Two numbered images:

1. A scanned script document containing a 4-quadrant chart. The top two quadrants contain scripted dialogue for two pages in which Moody wanders lost around the Disability Services Centre saying things like, “Am I imagining things? It’s like I’m walking in circles,” and, “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building.” The bottom quadrants of the chart contain scanned illegible thumbnail drawings of layouts for the above pages, with Moody wandering through empty hallways. The gist of it is that these scripts and pages hardly resemble the finished page at all. There are also a number of sketches of Moody’s face, eyes, and facial expressions in the margins that don’t look much like current Moody.

2. A pencil sketch of a page layout done on lined paper. This page has Moody standing in an empty hallway with a chair and two doors, looking down the hallway purposefully with their hands on their hips, walking around a corner, and then standing with their hands in the air in front of a wide open space full of trees and obstacle course equipment.} _____

Parts of the initial script have stayed the same from the very beginning, but parts of it are unrecognizable. Page 21, the one in question, didn’t even exist there in its current form. In fact, most of the second half of the comic didn’t really exist. Initally I had Moody simply getting lost in a maze of unending hallways in the Disability Services Centre. "Remember the scene from I Heart Huckabees where he’s running through this white hallway and there just keeps being hallway and he keeps running and it keeps being white and it there just keeps being hallway?” I asked everybody who read the draft script. I wanted it to be like that. (Nobody remembered.)

The closest thing I can find in that initial script to the current page 21 is Figure 1, above. Some of the dialogue that happened on those two page now happens on page 21. Some of it happens other places. Some of it I’m pretty sure no longer exists. Those two pages had Moody essentially wandering through the hallways of the disability services, becoming more and more lost, and beginning to feel desperate. That script was a whole was a bit longer than I had hope, but still comfy at 28 pages - the two pages pictured were pages 15-16. Now, the action and dialogue of those two pages is interspersed with other things across many many more pages in the final comic, from page 18-ish or so to page [SPOILERS REDACTED]. But that didn’t happen until later.

First, the initial, white-hallways-only version of the script went through many edits and revisions. Margo and I sent it to friends and family members for feedback and sensitivity reading and suggestions on how to make the disability theory and anti-neoliberalism read clearly. We finalized the script- there were a few sticking points (I can’t remember what they were) but we seemed almost ready to move on.

And then, in early August or so, at a meeting about one of those final revisions, I had my Great Big Terrible Horrible Very Good Idea. What if, instead of hallways, I had Moody wandering through impossible, magical rooms: like the fairground, the obstacle course, and [SPOILERS REDACTED]. This seemed like such a better choice metaphorically and artistically and theoretically that I knew instantly it was now the only option. Not wanting to add too many pages or revisions, I frantically took the already finished and proofread script and tried to fit the existing dialogue to new thumbnails- which became Image 2. above.

You can see in Figure 2 above, we have something at least with the same basic premise as the current page 21. Moody is in a hallway that looks just like every other hallway, they turn a corner, and then find themselves in the forest with the obstacle course. This version only has 4 short dialogue lines for the page: “Wasn’t I just here,” “I must’ve gone the wrong way,” “what?” and, “Where the heck am I?” In that version of the script this was page 17, but I had managed to move and condense things to keep the script still at around 28 pages. I scribbled those revised pages in the back of a notebook and then left them there. “That will be good enough,” I thought, “I’ll worry about that later.” It was the end of the summer, Margo and I were no longer having regular meetings, I wanted to start drawing. I pushed the later pages to the back of my mind and started at the beginning. I designed the characters, I figured out fonts and line weights and style guides. And then finally I started drawing.

{Image Description: Four numbered images: 1. Two stickynotes showing tiny sketches of a revised page 20-21, labelled Autumn 2018. 2. More stickynotes showing a revised pages 20-25, labelled Feb 20, 2019} 3. My big wall of stickynotes containing the whole comic laid out in 2-page spreads. 4. Stickynotes with a once more revised pages 20-23, labelled present (Nov 2019)}

_____

I drew. I moved across the country. I drew. I, unbelievably, began preparing to move houses a second time. I kept drawing. And then, sometime between moves, around October 2018- Panic! I realized that somewhere in the kerfuffle of moving, I had ended up referencing a wrong, older version of thumbnails. At this point I had completely finished drawing 8 pages, and at least a couple of them had mostly-correct-but-just-wrong-enough-to-be-a-problem layouts. With comics, it is important to maintain rhythm: for example, a big surprise reveal will feel wrong in the middle of a page- it should come at the bottom of a page, or at the top of a new one. And in the careful dance of condensing pages without messing up those rhythms, my little errors was going to throw off the entire rest of the story. I stayed up that night with a pack of stickynotes, moving around pages until I got something that worked. It was, if I remember correctly, around 34 pages or so long. It was going to take me a month or two longer to draw, I was tired, but this was fine. It was fine. That reshuffle was where page 17 became page 21 (Figure 1). At this point, this page has moody tumble through the door from the fairground, and dust themself off, and then much like the previous thumbnail sketch the script is: “Wasn’t I just here?” “What?” and, “Where the heck am I?” as they presumably move around the hallway and then enter the forest.

I kept on working and thinking and over time and a number of minor changes and re-shufflings ensued. I have a bunch of scanned images saved in my computer of stickynotes dated to February 20th, 2019 that include more re-working this section, moving around panels and dialogue (Figure 2 above). They are pretty sparse to look at, but I could remember what they meant. (Or so I thought.) These stickynotes have the action of what is now page 21 spread across 3 pages: 21-23. Since I always wanted the comic to be printed as a booklet, from the very beginning I was always planning all the pages in facing 2-page spreads. And in this case, I thought it was important that the big reveal of the massive forest view come either at the top or bottom of a new spread, not in the middle of a page somewhere. I guess that moving around panels on the pages before this must have pushed this action forward into it’s own spread, which explains why this version has “Where the heck am I?” on it’s own page- so that a big, full-page climactic view of the forest could close out those two facing pages. Interestingly, in these layouts, the line “Celebrated Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Way Out Of Administrative Building” was still on page 25, somehow. I can’t remember if this iteration of edits made the page count longer or shorter. I think around here was when it reached it’s longest- a devastating 36 pages.

There were more shiftings and shufflings and the final page count is back down currently to 31(ish) pages as per the massive pile of stickynotes currently sitting on the wall above my desk (Figure 3, above). Somehow, even my most current stickynote iteration (Figure 4) doesn’t have page 21 correct, with “Where the heck am I” still a line, and it’s accompanying reveal of the forest still taking up most of page 22 as opposed to it’s final place on page 21.

{Image Description: Two numbered images: 1. A digital sketch laying out the panels and action for page 21 in transparent blue. 2. The final completed page 21 as it appears online.}

_____

So when I finally sat down to draw this page a couple months ago, I was faced with, mostly just a bunch of illegible stickynotes and an inaccurate script from over a year ago. You can see I relied heavily on going back to those lined-paper sketches from last summer, although I added several more panels to make the layout more dynamic and accurately convey the space within the hallways that Moody is walking through. I knew I wanted them to be able to be walking to the right so it would look like they were venturing forward down the hallway and into the forest space. But I also knew I wanted them, when faced with an identical hallway from last time, to try walking in the opposite direction. (You’ll notice on page 19 they walk to the right of the chair to get to the double doors that open to the fairground, so this time I needed them to walk to the left. But walking left on a comics page reads a lot like moving backwards. You can make it work, but in this case I thought it would disrupt the forward-motion that makes this page feel adventurous and like you are moving energetically through the space.)

Dusting off the cobwebs from the only thing I learned in that one film class I took in school in like 2014, I knew I didn’t want to jump too quickly from left-facing to right-facing because that could be visually disorientating. Instead I added two new extra panels to give the framing a camera-panning-like quality. We see Moody from the front, then they turn to look down the hallway as the camera pans around and above, and then down behind them, following them around the corner until ultimately we see them from right side of their body, so that we can still see them walking to the right of the page in a way that reads as going forward, while knowing that they actually walked in a different direction than before.

When I did the final layout sketches for this page (figure 1 above), I actually also did the layout sketches for the following 2-page spread as well. That’s not my typical workflow- I usually try to work one spread at a time, otherwise it gets hard to post new pages on a regular schedule- but at this point it felt necessary to understand how Moody was going to move through the forest and obstacle course on the following pages, before I could know what it looked like and thus be able to draw it from above. It ended up being simpler than I thought, since the part of the obstacle course that Moody climbs through in page 22 didn’t really end up being visible from here, but I still was glad I planned it out.

Working on that blue layout sketch is where the dialogue got finalized for this page. The text layers are turned off in this screengrab, but I actually laid the whole text out here so I could make sure it fit and plan the drawings around it. I also had to come up with more dialogue to fill this page and make sense with the action, since the 4 sad lines of dialogue I’d been moving around on sticky notes weren’t really cutting it for me any more. I went back to that original script from last summer to check if anything important was missing, and decided to add the line “What’s wrong with me?” back in from the original script. I think that was when “Youth Sleuth Can’t Even Find Own Way Out Of Administrative Building” finally made its way to its rightful place on the page as well. I’m pretty sure I came up with the lines “Nancy Drew on a sweet blue roadster-- what is going on here??” on the fly as I was laying out the panels for this page. In the back of my head I had always known “Where the heck am I?” was a placeholder line because, since Moody doesn’t say any real-word curse words in the comic, I knew that at some point I was going to have to come up with something else clever. Some other time, I’ll do a post about going from a layout sketch like this one to a finished an inked page. But for now this has gone on way way long enough. ANYWAYS. This is a very long post. If you read this far, I hope you gained some understanding of the the convoluted decisions that get made while working on a comic over time. And also a good idea of some things to absolutely not do (Spend too much time on the initial script and thumbnails, leave yourself indecipherable notes, move across the country and then move again two months later...)

As I’ve worked on this comic, these kinds of edits and changes have become a necessary part of the process. Not only am I working from scripts and thumbnails that might as well be inscrutable runes, I’ve also had new ideas, made interesting mistakes that need to be fixed, and learned new drawing skills that have changed what I can and want to do. As I’m writing this blog post (in mid-November- a bit ahead of time), I’ve just had to recently re-organize, re-thumbnail, and re-work dialogue for most of the next five pages of story, just because of accumulated errors and changes from previous pages (ie: some of the dialogue I was planning on using for a page I accidentally used elsewehere...) or changes in what I can do (ie: wanting to fit more action on a page now that I have better drawing skills). That’s a part of why I’m sharing these behind the scenes posts- to buy myself some time to reorganize and get these next pages right! As always, thanks so much for reading and supporting Mood Bluth! Talk to you soon :)

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nauseateddrive · 3 years

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4 POEMS by Jake Sheff

Elegy for Dog I: A Failed Acrostic

January was tired when it became king. Apples here love being red in the spring, Casting shadows against the stone architraves our Kapellmeister will never live down. You Stole Apollo’s cows, and let them graze to show me Heaven’s template. Where do failed heroes go? Eucalyptus cupolas and polar icecaps Frame the downtrodden gods. But you weren’t Freakishly wrong, as I so often am, on your

Joyride through nearly twice eight years, Á la someone far from beauty’s stepmom. Copper coin or grimacing sun? I’ve got 20,000 Kor of crushed grief on this threshing floor. Shark-sparks of sadness flood the impetiginous air… How, and why, do clouds cobblestone Entire days, and lakes, when you’re not here? Fixing every broken thing, poets go where Ferns and geraniums baptize the morning.

“Jur-any-oms,” is how you’d spell it; After all, a dog’s a dog, and wisdom knows futility. Cassations make a rusty brew, to drink the truth of truths, and Kill whatever ceases wanting to be new. Stewardship, the color of gravity’s silence, naturally Houses every “glur” (a glittery blur); go chase what plays Eternal games. I hear the swans by Rooster Rock. Your handsome Face, its happy handsomeness, in memory’s eye, goes in and out of Focus; in love’s better eye: your goodness neath its everblooming ficus.

Gravity and Grace on SW Murray Scholls Drive

“Impatience has ruined many excellent men who, rejecting the slow, sure way, court destruction by rising too quickly.” Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

The traffic lights control the people’s actions, but Not their feelings, as the limits of philosophy Collide head on with the nose of a Dalmatian.

I tell you, the day is stress-testing itself, and these Sidewalks wish that it’d just gone straight. Geese Take this sky-hairing wind for granted, as they

Land on the lake like memorable speech on The sensitive soul. Time is never sharp, but it’s Cutting something in the credit union. Maybe

It’s dancing a back Corte for the woman in line Thinking about the taste of limes from Temecula As she waits for the teller. Air Alaska and that

Haunted pie in the sky are not the only reasons For all the volatility in the air today. Rushing And perfectionism both produce a loss; behind

The Safeway Pharmacy, you’ll see the small Smells of both, sloshing around to the ticking- Sound of the ocean’s tides. I must admit, I am

Frozen in place by the sight of steam from Joe’s Burgers; it is poetry’s pale tongue, rising in And arousing the air. This neighborhood’s street-

Lights are more serious than kokeshi dolls. Lights From its windows outshine poison dart frogs. Maybe to forget about life for awhile, the lamps

Are focused on The Population Bomb? ‘Easy Tiger,’ all these incidents whisper. Each day’s A sign twirler’s dais; each corner a promise

Of something more in a different direction: it isn’t A marriageable daughter or impoverishment, But inguinal ingenuity plays a part, and that isn’t

Bad at all. What oaths and paths went here Before Walmart? What voices were voided by The liquor store? What are vague’s values

When the library shares a parking lot with a 24- Hour gym and a cargo cult? Gas stations satirize The Queen of Hearts; I tell you, it makes every

Question seem incidental. Treaty-breakers in Pajamas swing on the swing sets. Was August That full of angst? It feels like autumn went too

Far on accident. Desertification, in a sugar tong Splint, takes a shot of ouzo and talks shit About the death of Brutus, but my Bible-thumping

Memory – on a ski hill in Duluth – is also too busy Watching some ducks on the lake to notice; and Desertification makes a face at me like a Swedish

Film. Poets make for poorly picked men to Familiarity’s paymaster-general. The Calvinistic Rain is an ill-starred attempt to make mayonnaise-

Fries just for me, but I must admit, it all seems – You know – cybernetic. And step-motherly as all Get out, if you ask the trees. They prefer “You

Can’t Hurry Love,” by The Supremes, to any Changes that take effect in one to two pay periods. Pretext ricochets; a perfect reverse promenade.

At Summer Lake, When the Vegetables are Sleeping

Cruelty drinks all the wine, and never gets drunk On these shores. When Summer Lake speaks, In every word, an introduction to the world. I am

Easily duped. The greatest duper duplicates my pride, Which always lingers, in the hallways of my heart And beneath the surface of Summer Lake. The sky is

Supplicating, it’s literally shaking. An hour passes Faster here, the hour always held too dearly dear In paranoid and ivied walls. The ducks can do

An unwise thing correctly, and it sounds more like Dusty than Buffalo Springfield to the enokitake Sold in Springfield, Illinois, which is the opposite

Effect it has on the wild mushrooms on these shores. On cables capable of love, the geese convince The weather to taste like kvass today. Basically,

Another Cuban Missile Crisis drowned itself just Now. The clouds might ask themselves, ‘Is lowliness Allowed here?’ To which the crows might ask,

‘Does omertà sound like lightning?’ The answer’s Oubliette is ten times worse than impotence. Summer Lake isn’t smart, but it stays quiet, like

Someone too smart to say all they know. ‘Whoa, Sweet potato,’ the capital gains tax mutters To itself, knowing that what matters doesn’t mean

A thing. Some say the lake bottom’s sands receive Commands from Hearst Castle, others say Its hands are King City’s hands, and still others

Maintain more sins have been than grains of sand Times secondary gains, and that explains The beauty and industry that none can see but

All can feel on these shores. (Some possibilities Play possum, or get opsonized by hate; this one snores Like Rip Van Winkle.) This orb-weaver spider is

The Milton Friedman of Summer Lake, the wind On her web is Grenache from The Rocks District Of Milton-Freewater AVA for the eyes. The day is

Stereotypical, although it feels like three days In one…But for the lake’s good counterfactual Questions, I would forget that some die young,

But most die wrong. I’ve tried to pick up Summer Lake’s reflections in three lines or less, but The hardest truth is your own impotence. Oh,

It’s hard to hand your power over to a thing No one can see. Hopped up on distinctions – not The obvious distinctions – Summer Lake is pretty;

Cold, but pretty! In the distance, with so many Intercessory prayers, hot air balloons are rising; Shaped like teardrops, upside down and rising.

This lake re-something-or-anothered me. Are first Impressions wrong sometimes? I am a season’s Golden calf, according to the sunlight, doing

A prospector’s jig on the surface of Summer Lake. If not for the Weimar Republic’s wooden- Headedness, I’d set down my heart-song and

Listen to reason on these shores. I never trust An activist guitar, if the weather is socially clumsy. The future is reflected on the lake: it always

Laughs at us – between its math and gratitude Lessons – and never thinks of (or gives thanks to) Us enough. The presence in the lake juniors

My ears. The day is not too baffling, nor is it Jane Eyre. Space-themed and spiritual, some autumn Leaves are swimming in the rain. The ducks arrest

My attention in the mardy weather, even though they Must know my attention is dying. The barbed wire Around my stated goal is an outcome out of

Their control. Picnickers picnic with acorns and apricots, On blankets covering Holy Schnikey’s death mask. My unsandaled thoughts thrive and increase on these,

And no other shores. They are pets for the days less Important than love, when Summer Lake says it’s Humble, because it knows the right thing to say.

Summer Lake gives the comfort of commonly held And seriously absurd beliefs to the blue heron. Nothing is wrong with this lake or anything in it,

Not even the ghost of Amerigo Vespucci. It’s all so Simple to the stiff-necked molecules of water, made out Of frogs and snails and puppy-dog’s tails. These thoughts

Are fine manna in a fine ditch. Post-structuralist squirrels Can tell my heart’s in Italy, and I’m in the intellectual Laity. Chivalry’s technician sees my shovel, and they say,

‘You’ve got to hand it to him.’ Neurocysticercosis Sets the bar high; it looks at this park, and thinks The smartest monkey drew the perfect landscape.

That’s this maple tree’s previous disease, its precious One. It unfurls the ferns of my firm and foremost Beliefs, I’m told, to partialize insufferable vastidity.

We Install a Sump Pump on (What Used To Be) a Holiday (Take 2)

The oppressive heat was born a fully grown Man. I admire the result of its effort, but Despise the means of achieving it. My wife Asserts her individuality in the gunk; her Body’s allegations aren’t too soft or hard today. Her self-interest seems to have drowned in the vortex.

Our little garden knows flippancy with regards To privacy is unwise. The stepping stones can Only blather, as slugs draw nomograms on Their faces. My wife’s body speaks Proto-Indo- European in the vortex and denim overalls. Marc Chagall’s The Poet studies her. He calls her

‘Innocence: The opposite of life! A criminal with A badge!’ I hand her the tools of a crude and Rudimentary faith, and she says, ‘Jill, great books Make fine shackles.’ Her arms only have An administrative objective in the vortex, but They are where good things come from.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon and veteran of the US Air Force. He's married with a daughter and whole lot of pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate's Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems and short stories have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).

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