Editing Kamisu Reina:Volume 2 Reina Kamisu (section)

===2===

I find myself in the second music room, playing a song from a movie that came on TV the other day on the piano. The students that have gathered around me let out gasps of joy.

How did I wind up exhibiting my piano skills in an open place like this, anyway?

Obviously because I was asked to.

My classmates wanted to hear me playing the piano, so I started to perform here in the second music room, showcasing the fruits of practicing at home. I originally used the practice room, but my performance became popular among the students to the point that even the teachers got wind of it and, for some reason, suggested to use this room.

Thanks to them, I am now forced to perform day in, day out. Even though I do not plan to become a pianist.

With smooth motions I move from one piano key to the next. Because I have taken lessons since I was a child, playing the piano now feels approximately as natural as writing.

Of course, I did not take lessons because I wanted to.

The music reaches my ear.

<i>It sounds just as boring as always.</i>

Why do they all look so captivated as if I were performing like a first class pianist when I play so poorly? There is no emotion in my music, just raw, mechanical skill. <i>They cannot be moved by something like this.</i> I feel irritated, as if I was watching an apathetic conductor.<!-- きっと誰(だれ)も感動しない。何の感情も込めない指揮者を見ているかのように、私にはうっとうしく感じるだけ。-->

After I finish my playing, the audience surrounding the piano give me their applause, some of them even with tears in their eyes. <i>Stop that! This was just a crude performance by a student like you!</i> Without showing a sign of my true thoughts, however, I smile at them and thank them.

"I love that movie!" says Kawai-san, who became president of the student council after me. <i>Of course you do. It was your request, after all.</i>

"...You do?" I smile, again without showing my true thoughts.

"Your performance is so touching, Reina-san."

"Yes, indeed. I wonder why your music turns out so different."

"You are magnificent!"

"Thank you," I say and feel the same thing as always: a one-way mirror is extending around me.

A one-way mirror. A curious mirror that lets me see everything that happens on the other side but does not let them see me.

The girls on the other side are cheerfully chatting with the mirror in front of them, and even though I do not show any reaction whatsoever, they are delighted by the reaction of whatever they see in the mirror. <i>Girls, come to your senses! Do you not see that you are talking with a mirror? What is the point in reacting to your own reactions?</i>

But they feign ignorance and enjoy the conversation.

Everyone except for me, who is standing inside the one-way mirror.

With an unvoiced sigh, I start playing the piano and the girls around me fall silent. I prefer them to just hold their tongues rather than get engrossed in a conversation that I cannot take part in.

As I watch my audience, who think my performance were something special, I ponder. <i>At the end of the day, nobody is interested in me.</i>

Nobody wants me to talk. All they want me to do is nod to them and approve of them. I am not permitted an own will.

I wear a specialized, tailor-made mask for every single one of them, and they love that.

Therefore, I cannot talk about myself.

And yet—even though I have not told them a single thing about me—they act as though they were in an intimate relationship with me.

—Tell me, <u>what do you see in me?</u>

It was a terrible mistake to enroll at the Junseiwa school. I feel that negative phenomenons like my fake reflection or the one-way mirror have been aggravating and getting more frequent ever since I came here.

Hm? Why did I come to this school, anyway?

This is easy to answer. Because my mother wanted it.

In the end, my own will is not to be found anywhere. None of my actions reflect my will. I only move by being pulled by someone.

I focus on playing the piano and shake off my stray thoughts.

As always, the melody sounds empty.

I finish my performance and receive a grand applause.



After being forced to play for more than a full hour, I walked home together with a few students that live in the same direction. I commute to school from home. At the Junseiwa School students are obliged to live in the dormitory if possible, but because of some serious trouble during my time in the middle school section (it should not be difficult to imagine this when considering my current situation), I was allowed to live at home when I graduated to the high school section.

However, because I had been separated from my family for three years (except for holidays, of course) the distance between us had become insurmountable. My position in our family had always been unstable, but now they completely and permanently forgot how to treat me as part of it.

They started to treat me like I were fragile.

Having sensed that, I had no other choice but to take the same attitude toward them as to my fellow students, which entailed tailoring masks and looking at my family through a one-way mirror. Only Sakairi-san, our housekeeper, did not treat me like something fragile, but it was still far from normal.

There is no haven for me anymore.

I opened the door, greeted my family, had a mostly wordless dinner and took a bath.

From the three bathrooms we have, I went to the middle-sized one, added in some bath oil and soak in the bath. Our largest bathroom is big enough to accommodate us and our housekeepers and still have space for more, but it is barely ever used by anyone. The larger the bathtub, the longer it takes to fill it with warm water, and the faster it cools down, and the more gas it takes. It is a terribly unpractical bathroom, and with it losing its novelty, its bathtub has deteriorated to a merely big hole. There are many of these useless things in this house. Apparently, the larger a house gets, the more useless things accumulate. Even though maintenance gets costlier.

While showering myself off, I shift my thinking to my future.

What might become of me after high school? Well, I will certainly enroll at a first-class university. But after that?

I would make myself unpopular if I said this aloud, but there are not many things that I cannot become. It might be out of reach for me to become a specialist in something that requires training from an early stage on, like a competitive sportsman, but I am confident that I would be admitted by any university and I am just as confident that I would be hired by any company. I might even be able to make my way into the show business and become an actress or a singer, something that everyone dreams of but gives up on.

My mask can be customized to deliver the best performance in any job, and from experience I know that it performs outstandingly well.

<i>However</i>, I think. <i>What do I want to become?</i>

This may seem like a problem that everyone has, but my question is of a different nature. I believe most people know that they would like to become, but are either too embarrassed to talk about it, have set their goal too high, or are frankly not that bent on it.

I, on the other hand, can think of absolutely nothing that I would want to become. Not in the slightest. All I ever do is standing still in a white realm without a horizon, waiting idly for something to arrive because there is nowhere to go, and simply reacting to whatever is happening before my eyes.

Yes, even though I have the sense to do anything, I cannot become anything.

Powerless. Meaningless. Worthless. Yes, I do not have anything.

Maybe I should just die, then?

Die? Why?

I do not know, which is why I will probably not die.



Still gloomy, I leave the bathroom and go to our video room to watch a DVD. I have not decided on a certain DVD, but because my father has the habit of buying several DVDs every month despite not watching them, there are plenty of movies that I have not seen yet.

By the way, I do not study much when I am at home. Since the speed of teaching is adjusted according to the average of the class, it tends to be slow for me despite the reputation of the Junseiwa School. I repeat old knowledge and prepare for the new things in the spare time during my classes.

Efficient? Certainly. But I do not know for what sake.

When I enter the video room, I find that I am not alone.

"Ryoji-san."

I call his name and he turns around to me.

"Oh, it's you?" he says briefly and looks away.

I have changed into my pajamas. I am not concealing my body with a single bath towel. And yet, Ryoji-san averted his eyes in a way that I consider is unnatural for family, at least in my definition of the word "family."

But he has always been like that.

Ryoji-san is always averting his eyes from me. He only sees the parts of me that he likes to see.

When I wear my pajamas, I remind him that we are family, which is why he does not like to see me like this. He has shown signs of feeling attracted to me in a non-family manner and thus seems to have difficulty getting along with the other sex. Is he interested in me as a love interest? While I do not believe that is as simple as that, it might be something close to it. Ryoji-san is suffering from an inferiority complex that can be attributed to overestimating me by looking at me through rose-colored glasses of admiration. Most likely, he does not know the true shape of his feelings for me himself, so I do not know anything else, either.

"Want to watch something? I'm only trying to pass my time, so I can go if you want."

It does not seem like he is trying to be reserved; he really is just passing his time. He has a liking for action movies because they keep him awake and are therefore suitable as a way to pass time, which is the only meaning he sees in watching movies. Even now he is watching some Hollywood movie that is mostly known for its tremendous production costs.

"It is the same for me. Do not mind me."

"Uh-huh," he mutters without even looking at me. Not that it bothers me, but why does it not occur to him that we could also watch the movie "together"? 

Slightly curious about his attitude, I decide to ask, "Ryoji-san?"

"Hm?"

"What do you think is bothering me about you, Ryoji-san?"

Fairly surprised, he looks away from the screen and gazes at me. After pondering for a while, he replies, "Before I can answer this question, I need to think about the reason why you asked it."

"Yes."

"Your question makes me think that I'm less worth than you. That you are blaming me."

"Yes."

"However, you are able to predict my reaction and thus would not pose this question lightly. In other words, the true answer is more complicated."

"Yes."

Like this, he keeps complicating the intention of my question. I must commend him for his excellent imagination, but he clearly lacks the ability to tell apart right from wrong.

The answer is much simpler: <i>Why do I have to be so polite even though we are siblings?</i>

I suppose I am to blame for that, but you do not give me another choice because this is how you want me to treat you.

In the end, you have no clue what I want from you.

Dear brother, <u>what do you see in me</u>?



And this is how I spend my time, finding no rest in anyone's presence.

I enter my room and can finally be alone.

However, there is no rest even when I am alone.

The thing inside the big mirror of my dressing table is watching me.

I ignore it and quickly finish my homework. I then continue reading an interesting foreign novel in its original language, armed with an electronic dictionary on the table.

"Admit it."

What is <i>un avocat</i> again? Ah, of course, a lawyer.

"You are smart. You should have noticed by now that I am only telling the truth."

<i>...So do I hear this voice even without looking in the mirror now?</i> I sigh and perk up my ears. But I still have my novel open. Because I have not admitted anything.

"No one is looking at you. All they see is someone else."

Someone else? Certainly, they are not looking at me, but at themselves in the one-way mirror.

"And that someone else is me."

But why should that be you?

—Wait!

People are not looking at me but at the one-way mirror that is surrounding me.

<u>At the mirror.</u>

And that mirror is showing you?

Oh, the irony—

—<u>When I look in the mirror, all I see is you as well.</u>

"I will now talk to myself," I say, alone with myself in my room. Of course I am talking to myself. "Mind you, this is a soliloquy. I am not talking to anyone. I do not expect an answer, and even if I feel that I heard one, I will ignore it."

The thing in the mirror that resembles me remains silent. No ... Again, there is no one here besides me.

"Yes, I do get the impression that no one is looking at me. I sometimes even feel that they see something else instead of me."

The room is dead silent.

"But that is only because I have many faces. Because I make use of more than 30 masks to enact the role of a flawless beauty. I am certainly more skilled at using masks than an ordinary person, sometimes to the point that I forget which my real face is, but ultimately everyone uses masks. In psychology, there is a concept called <i>persona</i>. Human beings are thought to create a personality, or a persona, specialized for socializing. I simply happen to use personae more frequently than an ordinary person."

I am able to explain why I feel that others do not seem to look at me like this. It is absurd that my masks would get out of control and get a life of their own, let alone become visible to anyone else.

Exactly. This is a satisfying explanation that is clearly correct and in line with common sense.

But there is one problem.

The fact that I explained it to myself.

Obviously, I know what I just explained. <u>I think it is absurd to see someone else in the mirror.</u>

<u>And yet, I can see the girl inside the mirror.</u>



"But you are beautiful," she says in a voice almost the same, and thus essentially different, as mine

Ironically, the more rational I get, the more I realize that she is not a mere illusion. No, am I not contradicting myself with this very train of thought?

I do not know.

"You are beautiful like me."

I do not know, but I heard her voice.

"And <u>you are aware of your beauty</u>."

She says something that would not even occur to me. <u>That would not even occur to me</u>. In other words, if she were just a delusion, she could not have said it.

In utter surprise, a question slips out of my mouth:



"What ... What are you talking about?"



<i>No!</i> I think, but it is already too late.

This cannot be undone.

I talked to her.



And thus—I subconsciously admitted her existence.