Chapter 5: Inner
The ghost of broken ribs twitched in her side as Mio’s eyes opened.A phantom ache, deep and wrong, clenched her abdomen. She lay paralyzed, staring at the water-stained ceiling, the smell of burnt toast coating her tongue. For a moment, she was just a body remembering how to be a body. Then the impulse came, a directive stamped onto her consciousness: See Ishida.
She moved like an automaton, dressing in the grey dawn light, the cheap fabric of her uniform abrasive against skin that felt strangely new and yet imprinted with old bruises. The journal was under the mattress, its presence a cold truth. She pulled it out and flipped it open.Past entries, in her own neat hand, described humiliations she had no memory of. Then, on a fresh page, she saw the stark, commanding script from a self she didn’t know: Woke up.Must see Mr.Ishida.Before school. Don’t be late.It wasn’t a memory.It was an order. A chill that had nothing to do with the morning air seeped into her bones.She obeyed.
The hallway outside the teachers’ office was quiet, the linoleum gleaming dully under the early lights. Her hand was raised to knock when a wave of visceral dread washed over her.Her breath hitched.The image of Mr. Ishida’s ruined, concerned face flashed behind her eyes, followed by a blurred sensation of being dragged, of cold disapproval, of a final, consuming cold.She lowered her hand. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. Don’t, some deeper, scarred instinct whispered.She took a step back.Then another.
She turned and walked away, the directive in her head screaming static.She needed air. She pushed through a side door into the concrete-walled alcove near the garbage bins, a place seldom used before first bell.
The click of a lighter was her only warning.
“Well, look who it is.” Suki Tanaka’s voice was sweet as poisoned honey.She leaned against the dirty wall, a cigarette already between her fingers. Her friend, Aimi, stood beside her, a sharper, thinner shadow. “Skulking around before school.Didn’t take you for an early bird, Suzuki. Unless you’re meeting someone.”
Mio tried to step back towards the door.Aimi shifted, blocking her path. “We saw you,” Aimi said, her voice flat. “Hovering outside the creep’s office.Planning another little cry session?He likes that, doesn’t he? Likes ’em weak and weepy.”
“I wasn’t—” Mio began, but the words died.
Suki pushed off the wall, coming close. The smoke she exhaled curled into Mio’s face.“You think you’re so special? That just because you look like some broken doll, you get private meetings? You think we don’t know what you’re doing?” Her smile was all teeth.“You’re embarrassing yourself. And you’re embarrassing the whole school.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Mio whispered, the protest sounding feeble even to her own ears.
“That’s the problem,” Suki said.“You do nothing. You just sit there and exist, and it’s an insult.” Her hand snapped out, not to slap, but to grab a fistful of Mio’s neatly tied hair.She yanked. Mio gasped, stumbling forward. “Let’s see if we can’t make you look a little more… honest.”
What followed was not a beating, but a meticulous dismantling. They didn’t punch her face.They worked on what wouldn’t be seen immediately under the uniform. Pinches on her arms and sides that burned like fire.Sharp kicks to her shins. Aimi held her while Suki, with a cruel, clinical precision, tore at her clothing. The ribbon of her sailor collar came off first, tossed into a puddle. Buttons popped from her blouse, skittering across the concrete.A seam of her skirt ripped with a sound like a gasp.
They were quiet, efficient. When they finally released her, Mio slid down the wall to a crouch, her body a constellation of sharp pains. Her blouse hung open, revealing the strap of her threadbare camisole and a loose tie.Her skirt was frayed and rucked. Dignity was a concept that belonged to a different world.
Suki dropped her cigarette, grinding it out next to Mio’s hand.“There.Now you look like what you are. Trash.”
They left.The door clicked shut, leaving Mio in the sour-smelling silence. She shook, a fine tremor that originated deep in her shattered core.She tried to stand, but her legs refused. A high, thin sound escaped her throat—not a sob, but the whine of a wounded animal.She had to move.The bell would ring. Using the wall, she clawed her way upright.Her bag was still across her body, the journal a hard, comforting weight against her hip. She fumbled with the broken fabric of her blouse, clutching it closed. Her hair fell in disheveled strands around her face.She didn’t go to class. There was only one place left to go.The walk to the administrative office was a gauntlet. Students turning to stare, their whispers hissing like steam. Teachers pausing in doorways, their expressions shifting from curiosity to shock to averted eyes.She was a spectacle, a ruin on display.Mr. Ishida was already in the office with the vice-principal, “That Woman,” when Mio pushed the door open. His face, pale with worry, crumpled into sheer horror at the sight of her. The vice-principal’s stern mask slipped for a fraction of a second, revealing something like startled dismay.“My God, Miss Suzuki,” Mr. Ishida breathed, half-rising from his chair.“Sit down, Mr. Ishida,” the vice-principal said, her voice regaining its firmness, but her eyes remained on Mio’s torn clothes, the blossoming red marks on her arms. “What happened to you?”
Mio stood just inside the door, her vision blurring. The words were there, the truth: Suki Tanaka, by the garbage bins, they tore my clothes. But when she opened her mouth, a deeper paralysis seized her. The memory of the previous encounter in this office—the cold judgment, the word “perception”—rose up and clogged her throat. She saw the suspicion that would follow: were the marks self-inflicted?A desperate play for sympathy? Her credibility was already ash.“I fell,” she heard herself whisper, the lie tasting of dust.
“You fell,” the vice-principal repeated, deadpan. Her gaze was analytical, scanning the specific tears, the strategic placement of the bruises.“This looks… deliberate, Miss Suzuki.”
Mr. Ishida could not stay seated.“Vice-Principal, look at her!This is clearly an assault! We need to call a nurse, we need to—”
“We need to establish the facts,” the woman interrupted, though her hands were clasped tightly on the desk. “Miss Suzuki, if you are a victim of bullying, you must say so.Clearly.”
Mio looked at Mr. Ishida, his face a map of earnest concern, and then at the vice-principal, a fortress of procedure.Between them lay an abyss she could not bridge. To speak would drag him further into the mess, would invite more scrutiny, more of those sideways looks. It would validate the very “perception” that had ended him before.A strange, hollow calm settled over her. She shook her head.“I fell.In the alcove. It was… clumsy.”
The vice-principal’s lips thinned.She saw the lie. She also saw the unspoken plea in Mio’s deadened eyes: Let it be. For a long moment, she was silent.Then she picked up her phone.“Your foster parents need to be informed. You are in no state to remain in school.Mr. Ishida, given the… circumstances… your leave stands.It is for the best.”
The phone call was brief. Mio could hear the metallic rage in her foster father’s voice even through the receiver.Promises of discipline. Assurances of shame. When the vice-principal hung up, she didn’t look at Mio.“A taxi will be called to take you home. You are suspended for unsightly disruption and damage to school property.” She paused, and for the first time, her stern façade showed a hairline crack.A faint, tired remorse. “You may wait outside.”
As Mio turned to leave, Mr.Ishida’s voice, ragged with helpless anger, stopped her. “Why won’t you tell the truth, Mio?”
She looked at him, this kind man caught in the gears of a machine she was starting to understand was built to grind them both. She had no answer he would accept. The truth was a tangled, impossible thing involving journals and loops and deaths she could only half-remember. All she had was the lie, and the certain, leaden knowledge of what awaited her in Apartment 3B. She saw in his eyes not just concern now, but a flicker of doubt, of confusion at her refusal. She had broken the script of the victim, and in doing so, had isolated herself completely.
Now she was now alone in the classroom.