Hello,

I must say, I didn't realize until now how much fun sleeping was.  There's
no window in my room, so the room stays dark all day unless I turn on a
light.  I've slept through more days than I care to count catching up on
lost REM time.

However, I haven't forgotten my deadlines.  I'm 67-75% done with Episode
02, but I don't want to rush things.  So, here's a 1400-word consession.
It's the first sequence in Episode 02, with one of my favorite scenes so
far in the story.

The rest of the story may be a week or so.  If I don't get it done and
posted by Tuesday, it won't get posted until a few days after Christmas.
I'll work hard to get it to you all by Tuesday.  And I'll have Episode 03
posted during the first week of January.

--Matt


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     "Can I come in yet?"
     "Just a second," Kaori called from inside Satoru's room.  
Satoru stood in the hall, hoping nobody would notice that he was 
in his pajamas.  He knocked on the door again.
     "C'mon, Kaori.  I'm freezing out here."  It wasn't entirely a 
lie.  He looked down the hall again, and cringed.  The one person 
he didn't want to see turned around and smiled.
     "Hey, Nobata!"
     Satoru nodded half-heartedly and tried desperately to act 
cool.  "Hi, Ishiki."
     "Going to class in your underwear, eh?  I respect a man who 
can live out his dreams, you know?"  Masao Ishiki's smile widened.  
Satoru felt his ears heat up.  "Well, don't forget to take notes." 
     Satoru hung his head.  "Why me?"
     He felt his world fall out from behind him.  When he hit the 
ground, he saw Kaori, dressed in trousers and a tee-shirt, looking 
down on him.
     "Leaning against the door?  You pervert."
     Satoru instinctively covered his eyes.  "Nonono!  I 
wasn't..."  He took a peek from between tense fingers.  "Oh.  
You're dressed."  Pulling himself up to his knees, he frowned.  "I 
wasn't leaning.  I was stepping backwards.  Now, wait outside.  
*I* need to get dressed."
     Kaori nodded, grinning maliciously.  "Yes, sir.  You can 
count on me, sir.  I won't let you down, sir."  She turned to him 
just outside the doorway.  "Don't open the door too quickly 
though.  You might catch me peeking."  She stuck out her tongue 
and shut the door behind her.
     Satoru could feel the heat in his ears flow fiercely across 
the rest of his face. He could just see Kaori deriving as much 
enjoyment from seeing him blush as Masao had.  He tossed off his 
pajamas and dressed hurriedly.  As he yanked the door open, he 
half-hoped he could actually catch her unaware.  But Kaori didn't 
fall in on him.
     In fact, he didn't see Kaori at all.
     "Kaori?"  Satoru mumbled to the air.  He poked his head out 
the doorway.  No Kaori to the left.  "Kaori," he repeated.  No 
Kaori to the right, either.  "Kaooooori!  Where are you?"  He 
didn't say it too loud as he stepped out of his room into the 
hallway.
     Satoru locked the door to his room and stepped cautiously 
towards the front door of the dorm.  He didn't dare let his guard 
down.  He knew she was planning something.  "But, if she's outside 
already," he mused.  "I'd look pretty stupid creeping out like..."
     "Gotcha!"
     "Aaaaarrgh!"  Satoru felt hands grabbing him by the 
shoulders.  He whipped around.  "Why you little..."  He growled 
and looked down at Kaori.  She was smiling.
     Honestly smiling.
     "You fall for that *every* time!  You really need to work on 
your peripheral vision."  She giggled and trotted past him to the 
front door.  "Well, are you coming or not?"
     Satoru hadn't seen Kaori smile since she left for college.  
Not since she had...
     "Satoru!"  When Satoru shook his head back into the real 
world, he saw Kaori.  She wasn't smiling anymore.  "Let's go!  You 
said the cafeteria closes at ten."
     "Right!  Sorry!"  He jogged up to her.  "I was just 
thinking..."
     "This isn't a time to think," Kaori stated as she opened the 
front door.  "This is a time to eat."  She motioned to the bright, 
crisp outside.  "Shall we?"

     "Breakfast at one college cafeteria is the same as breakfast 
at any other college cafeteria, if you think about it."
     This was the lesson Kaori set out to teach Satoru.  She 
expounded about the starchy, flour-covered similarities that lay 
hidden in even the most indigenous meals.  For as much as each 
society claimed to be unique in their culinary presentations, all 
the ingredients were essentially the same, coming from the same 
warehouse somewhere in the Pacific.
     "At least," she finished while chewing.  "That's what I heard 
on the radio."  She reached for a glass of juice, but her hand 
wasn't open wide enough, and she knocked it over instead.
     "Ack!"  Kaori gasped as the contents flowed from the glass to 
the table.  "I'll be right back!"  And she ran off to find as many 
napkins as possible.
     Satoru could think of no other words.  "Weird," he murmured.  
"Simply weird."  To say that he had heard the majority of what she 
had just said, let alone understood that much would have been an 
exaggeration.   At the moment, however, Satoru's mind was 
wandering beyond the spilt juice and conspiracy theories.
     He remembered fifth grade well.  Lunch time in fifth grade 
wasn't easy for any of the kids.  Rumors about the origins of the 
food and the people who served it abounded.  And eating it was no 
picnic, either.  But his thoughts didn't linger on the food for 
very long; he thanked himself later for that.
     He remembered seeing Kaori running across the grassy play 
field after school.  She wasn't running on the track that 
surrounded the field, which she had done often enough before to 
make this incident seem unusual.  So, he stopped to take a quick 
look.  "Just a little glance to see what's going on," he had 
justified in a whisper to himself.  She didn't know he was 
watching, and he supposed that was a good thing.
     She was just trying to run, not anything else special.  Just 
run.  But she tripped.  Satoru assumed that it was a rock or maybe 
a dirt clod that tripped her.  She got up, dusted off her bare 
knees, and continued to run.  This time, she ran harder than 
before, leaning forward for an imaginary finish line.
     She tripped again.  This time, Satoru saw that there was no 
rock or dirt clod tripping her.  She didn't really fall all the 
way to the ground; she caught herself with her hands and sprang 
back up.  And she was running again.  Her arms pumped in time with 
her legs, faster, faster.  He could hear a distant growl, light 
from distance, and too familiar to be anybody else's except hers.  
She was screaming as she ran, and she tripped again.
     Satoru turned and walked home the long way around the other 
side of the school.  He didn't see her that evening.  When he did 
see her the next day, he didn't mention what he saw.  He never 
mentioned it to her.  He eventually realized, after *those* 
classes on *that* subject, that it probably had something to do 
with her growth spurt; she was taller than him that year.  But he 
never really bothered to keep the memory in the front of his mind.  
He did notice that she didn't play much on the field that year.  
But the next year, she was playing as well as she ever had.
     The memory felt both out of place and perfectly appropriate, 
resurfacing after so many years.  There it was, floating before 
him like so many sparkles of nothing.  When he focused his eyes 
away, he saw Kaori approaching, carrying more napkins than he had 
previously seen associated with any one person.
     Satoru tried to look busy helping with the spill.
     "There!"  Kaori dumped the two gargantuan handfuls of napkins 
on the creeping orange mess.  "That should do it."  After a few 
moments of fervent soaking, she took the sopping napkins to a 
nearby trash can.
     "I think we've done all the damage we can do here," Satoru 
mumbled.  "Why don't we head back."
     Kaori lowered her gaze to her tray.  "You're probably right."  
Her voice fell softly to the ground.  Satoru hoped she wasn't 
crawling back into whatever shell she had been in at the airport.  
He turned and started walking towards the tray deposit.
     "We'll do something fun this afternoon.  How's that sound?"
     Kaori didn't say anything.  Since she was behind him, he 
could only imagine that she had nodded or hadn't heard him or 
something.  But his mind, awakened by his recent and distant 
memories, raced with less hopeful thoughts.
     He could see how they must have looked; him leading the way, 
and  Kaori following two steps behind him, head low, taking the 
small, obedient steps of someone wilted and vacant.
     "Like what?"  The response came so long after the question, 
it took a few moments for Satoru to figure out what she meant.  He 
put his tray on the blue conveyor belt that eventually disappeared 
behind a wood-paneled wall.
     "I..." he almost said that he didn't know, but he bit his 
tongue.  "It's a surprise."  He smiled and winked at Kaori, who 
frowned skeptically.
     "Okay," she finally sighed as she finally relented a smile.  
"But it had better be good."
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"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."   -- Rod Serling
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