1.2 Chemical Burn (Or, How I Broke the Ice With Miki)
 
“Today, we’re gonna talk about chemical burn.” Mutou announces, in a matter-of-fact tone.
 
“Before we do any experiments, I have to explain just how hazardous certain things are. Compounds like hydrochloric acid, potassium chlorate, that kind of stuff. Stuff that we may or may not work with during the year. The school gives me a laundry list of things that you’re supposed to be afraid of, which, actually, includes your laundry.”
 
Mutou leans back in his manager’s chair, and lowers a projector screen that’s rolled up above the blackboard.
 
“Now, as opposed to telling you what exactly is harmful and each compound’s effects, I’m going to show you guys a clip from a film, if that’s all right with you all. It’s about lye, which we won’t actually be using in any experiments, but I’m gonna make “lye” a sort of buzzword here. If I compare something to lye, you should be very afraid, and only touch it with protective gear, or just let me do it for you. To drive that home,” Mutou says while getting up and shutting the lights off, “you’re gonna watch this clip.”
 
He turns the digital projector on and it creates a big light on the screen. He grabs a remote control on his desk, and presses down on it theatrically.
 
“If any of you haven't seen Fight Club, let me apologize in advance.”
 
I haven’t seen Fight Club. I’m really not one for American movies at all, really. I used to see some of the blockbusters with my friends at my old school during the summer, but I’ve always preferred literature. I think it’s a book too, but I heard the book was way worse. Anyway, the clip starts and from the corner of my eye I catch Miki swinging around in her seat, glancing at me. I try to focus on the clip. Two men are idling around. One is dressed really wildly, while the other sort of looks like a bruised-up everyman.
 
Brad Pitt, the stylishly dressed one who I do recognize, starts talking.
 
“Keep stirring. Once the tallow hardens, we skim of a layer of glycerin. If you were to add nitric acid, you’d  get nitroglycerin. If you were to add sodium nitrate and a dash of sawdust, you’d get dynamite. Yeah, with enough soap we could blow just about anything.”
 
Why is Mutou showing us this?
 
“Now, ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed them at a certain spot in the river. You know why?”
 
No, tell me why, Brad.
 
“This is lye -- the crucial ingredient. The lye combined with the melted fat of the bodies, till a thick white soapy discharge crept into the river. May I see your hand, please?”
 
I watch Brad Pitt leave a wet kiss on... Edward Norton? Anyway, I watch him kiss his hand.
 
What is this?
 
Brad Pitt then dumps lye on Norton’s hand.
 
“This is chemical burn.”
 
That’s when I see quite possibly the most revolting thing in my life: Edward Norton’s skin starts to burn and MELT. I was about ready to heave three seconds into it.
 
“It will hurt more than you've ever been burned and you will have a scar.”
 
Thanks Brad, I think, just before averting my eyes. For the next two minutes, my ears were subjected to Brad Pitt monologuing Edward Norton, who was screaming in pain. Why the hell did Mutou get a Japanese dub?
 
“Stay with the the pain, don't shove to center.”
 
Shut up, Brad.
 
“The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. Like the first monkeys shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.”
 
My eyes were shut until I heard this:
 
“Stop it! This is your pain -- this is your burning hand. It's right here! Look at it.”
 
“No, don't deal with this the way those dead people do. Come on!”
 
I get it, I get it. He’s feeling the worst feeling in the world. He’s feeling just like I did with my arrhythmia. Happy Brad? You fucked with us. We’re feeling like shit.
 
“No, what you're feeling is premature enlightenment.”
 
...
 
And that’s where I lost the desire to vomit and gained the desire to... well... think.
 
After the lights come back on and Mutou shuts off the projector, I glance around the room. The range of expressions go from pleasantly amused to apathetic to utterly speechless. And Miki’s looking right at me, and... wait, Miki’s looking right at me, smirking. I swing my neck back around to try to make eye contact with her, but she’s already turned around.
 
Was she laughing at me?
 
Mutou began his lesson with the words, “try to hit me.”
 
I kind of started daydreaming after that.
 
---
 
My last class of the day was history in Room 204. I was loitering in the room now, at three-thirty, because I had gone to Mutou’s homeroom and seen that it was locked. He had left a sheet of looseleaf paper on the door which had “Get it Together” scribbled on it, addressed to yours truly. Figuring that he had intended Miki’s tutoring to happen in Room 204 for whatever reason, I figured it was a logical place to wait.
 
But of course, Miki hasn’t shown up yet. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because if Miki is like Amatol, she might have already blown a big-ben sized hole...
 
Shit, I need to stop using jokes from last chapter.
 
On a whim, I decide to take a walk around the campus grounds.
 
I’m reminded what a pleasant place Yamaku is. There’s green everywhere, unlike my old high school, which had a decidedly more urban, modernist feel to it. I make my best efforts to dodge the view of the nurse’s office on my trek around the school’s quad. I walk past the school’s swimming pool, track and soccer fields, and equipment sheds at a good place. In the periphery, I end up seeing a small wooded path at the very edge of the campus. I decide to follow it...
 
.. And what I thought would’ve been a short walk has turned into a hike. I might have passed that tree once or twice, but I always seem to be going in the opposite direction of, well, the way out, wherever it is. And to be honest. I’m feeling a bit winded. Getting increasingly fed up, I just decided to cut through the nearest patch of brush I can, and inch my way towards a creek I can see in the distance. Trampling over bushes and thistles, tripping over roots, it’s an awful affair. I’m not much of a nature buff, and the further I go, the more this seems like one of the worst ideas of my life, ranking right up there with that little episode in the park all those months ago.
 
I arrive at the stream, winded. There’s a large rock right by the crystal clear water. Trying to absorb as much of the quaint scenery as possible, I hobble over towards the rock. My lungs start heaving up and down as my chest starts to tighten. I make it to the rock, just barely, and sprawl out on it. Thankfully it’s not covered in moss. My breathing starts to get much shorter, shallower.
 
Oh what the hell, I’m gonna die.
 
What a place to kick the bucket, too, in the middle of Nowhereville, Japan on a forest path that I got lost on. The idea of struggling my way back crosses my mind, but escapes me as I find that I’ve lost all the strength in my legs. After darting around, my eyes finally settle on the creek, and it’s soothing continuity. My hearing focuses in on the sound of the fast-moving water rushing against the stones. I feel nothing at all. If this is the zen that people experience before the curtain falls, then it’s not so bad after all.
 
“What a nice feeling.” I managed to mumble before I close my eyes.

 
“No,” I hear a voice say, “what you’re feeling is premature enlightenment.”
 
---
 
I open my eyes after what seems like an eternity. I bring a hand to my chest. It rises, and falls, with a sense of normalcy. The tightness is still there, sort of, but it doesn’t hurt. I adjust myself on the rock, trying to straighten up.
 
“Hey there, sleepin’ beauty!” shouts a female voice.
 
I shift over to the left, where I think the voice is coming from. And who is it but Miki Miura, dressed in her track shirt and gym shorts, sitting at water’s edge, cooling off her feet at the stream. She stands up, but the water’s only deep enough to cover the area slightly above her well-defined ankles.
 
“You looked like shit about a half hour ago. What’re you doing out here?”
 
I rub the sleep from eyes.
 
“I felt like shit an half hour ago.” I blurt out without thinking.
 
A frown envelops her face. My chest tightens even more. I’m not sure why, but I don’t like seeing girls being unhappy. Or worse, concerned about my well-being.
 
“You wanna see the nurse?” She inquires.
 
“No, I think I’ll just stay here for awhile.”
 
“You sure, man? It’s no big deal if you want to--”
 
“No, no, thanks for asking, Miura.” I reply earnestly.
 
The frown on Miki’s face recedes. Thank god.
 
“Miki”
 
“Huh?”
 
“Surnames are for losers. Call me Miki.”
 
“Sure, Miki. Same goes for me, too.” I say, in between breaths.
 
“Cool.” She said with her smirk-smile, “I was just gonna call you Hisao anyway.” She noted, inviting herself to sit down across from me. She sat cross-legged, making a Herculean effort to tuck her feet under her long legs. Her bandaged stub of a right arm descends behind her back. Noticing me noticing her, she immediately started talking.
 
“So you didn’t answer my first question, Hisao.”
 
“What?”
 
“What’re you doin’ out here? This is sort of like my spot.”
 
I straighten up on the rock even more. Taking a breath, I say “looking for you, actually.”
 
“Oh really?” She said, smirking even wider, “wanted to find me and do dirty things to me?”
 
“Er... Mutou asked me to tutor you.”
 
“Oh shit! He was serious!” Miki exclaimed, rocking back and forth on her ankles.
 
“I guess so, he told me to tutor you today.” I remarked.
 
“Yeah, he told me today too, but I thought he was, you know, like just pulling my leg or something.”
 
Something tells me that her particular joke wouldn’t mesh well here given the student body. Note to self.
 
“You didn’t see the note he left me on the classroom door?”
 
“Nope, I went straight to track practice.”
 
“Oh.”
 
Miki’s smirking again.
 
“What’d it say?”
 
“What?”
 
“What’d it say, huh, what’d it say?”
 
“Nothing important.”
 
“Let me guess -- get it together.”
 
“Oh, that was hard.”
 
Miki pauses for a moment, attempting to think of a wry remark, probably. She must have settled on something, because she’s smirking and--
 
“So~r~ta like somethin’ else, huh, Hisao?” Miki purses her lips and looks down towards my nether region. Realizing that a sweaty, lightly-clad, barefoot, cute brown girl is looking at it lustfully, my manhood perks up and tries to meet Miki’s gaze.
 
I close my legs and my eyes meet her shit-eating grin.
 
“Touche.”
 
“French is for gaylords.”
 
With that, she stands up, shuffles back to her initial “spot” by the water’s edge, and slips on a pair of flip-flops.
 
“Are you a foot fetishist, Hisao?” She asks with a seductive accent.
 
“Er.”
 
“Don’t answer that.”
 
She walks back over normally, and offers her hand to help me up. I gladly take it.
 
Miki helps me back to campus, guiding me along the wooded path with a friendly-arm-on the shoulder. Her hand might have been dangling over my shoulder, too, if she had one. She’s navigating these woods better in flip-flops than I was in converses. She must come this way a lot.
 
In a short time, we arrive at the nurses’ office.
 
“You should go get checked out, Hisao.” she advises. She slips her arm off my shoulder.
 
“It’s not a big deal, I’ll be fine.” I lie.
 
“Yeah well, do what you’ve gotta do, man.” She shrugs, starting to leave.
 
“Thanks, Miki.” I say. She turns around and smiles.
 
“Don’t mention it, Hisao. Mutou’s room tomorrow?”
 
“Huh?”
 
“Tutoring, Princess -- tomorrow in Mutou’s?”
 
“Sure, tomorrow.” I say, as I turn to the nurse’s office.