美 Mi Beautiful

 

 

 

美 Mi Beautiful

 

 

“Hey, wanna play a game?” My old friend’s elementary doesn’t have much of a dress code, no miniskirts, no jeggings, etc. The girl I leaned down to greet looks like she’s fresh from prep school. Her face is a bit flat, a cute nose popping out, the healthy tan skin of East Asia and almond eyes that dart around my shaggy hair, “Well?” Like a little doll she has a black sailor uniform with a knee high skirt and a white ribbon strung around her collar.

I haven’t seen her around, a transfer student?

“I’m Sky?” I say pointing to myself, “Do you have a name? Bet you do.”

“Mi,” she replies as I slide into the space next to her.

“You don’t want to just sit here do you?” I’m not the best with kids but Mi felt familiar, “Then what do you want to play?” Despite her rigid posture and wariness Mi felt like someone I knew. But Mi wasn’t her name.

 

“You forgot your Gameboy?” I can’t help but laugh, as I walked up she’d been fiddling with her fingers, what I thought was a mental quirk turns out to be ‘practice’. “Practice?” I repeat chuckling as a loose ear bud bounces off my cheek.

Mi takes a pitiful look over to the playground and looks back to the black tar muttering a complaint under her breath. I only meant to joke but kids her age are ‘ fickle’,  was I always that way? Was she even that much younger than me?

“How about,” I take a glance for teachers, they seemed preoccupied with the tussling of the playground, “You try this,” I pull out my new Nintendo cracking open its dual screen and passing it over, “Try it out, I’ve only got some RPG’s on it but it’s better than ‘practice’,” I say cocking my eye.

Mi recoils her hand as fast as she put it out, almond eyes brimming with tears, “I can’t borrow,” she says resigning herself back to the tar of the play area.

She seemed dead serious, her porcelain thin fingers shaking.

“Ok then,” I slide up next to her powering on the system, “Back seat me then.”

“Huh,” the noise from her throat bursts like a pop of air.

“Tell me what to do, so to start off are we a boy or a girl?”

Mi’s attitude takes a new shift practically laying on top me as we progress through the first levels the ding and dong of the menus ringing off the 3DS.  When I first saw her she looked a bit like a specter hanging over the playground nothing approaching her hollow appearance.  She felt lonely but like I said before, it felt like we’d meet before.

“Sky!” Mrs. Daisy yells, “Weren’t you supposed to help with the Little Owls?” I was supposed to be helping out the first grade hellions with their after school activities, “Woops got caught up playing with Mi, I’ll head over now! See ya tomorrow,” I hold out a pinky finger, Mi looks a hundred miles away from me. She lets out a shallow breath wrapping hers around mine.

I clop off with the teacher escorting me to my next destination.

“You were playing with Mi?” the bulky Ms. Daisy asks, a tone of shock in her voice.

“She’s a sweet kid,” I stick my ear bud back in the familiar soft rock of Linkin Park echoing through my ears.

“Well then,” she stops looking up to me. I’m only a freshmen in high school but I’m still taller than short and stocky Mrs. Daisy, “Can you play with her tomorrow, that would no lie be the most wonderful thing,” she says sweeping her arm out.

“Was planning on it, is she new here?”

“Ohh, uhh ya new in a different sense, hmph, you’re a better kid than I thought, Sky,” she says laying her contempt of me on the floor, “The worlds full of wonders,” she says leading me on.

“I’ll take that as a complement,” we head to the little monsters, first graders are hell.

 

 

Ms. Daisy seemed content for me to play with Mi instead of the monsters as my service project. We enjoyed the warming spring air, and in the fresh smell of mud and the returning chirps of the bird I began to remember the spring days of third grade.

I had a little Japanese friend who was a year behind me. She had a pudgy face and small little nose. We’d walk home together hand in hand singing one Disney song or the other. I preferred ‘At the Beginning’ it was from Anastasia one of the few movies we watched that wasn’t a Disney. The song was about two lovers embracing their walk through life. It always made me tear up whenever we listened to it. “Life is a road and I want to keep going,’ it left me with a lonely happiness I still can’t fully express.

Beautiful, that’s what she had me call her. It wasn’t her real name but she insisted I call her, Beautiful, “It’s my name in English,” is what she’d tell me. Beautiful left in the spring of her Second and my Third year of school. Families move, I recognize that now but then it felt like she was being shipped off to Auschwitz. I thought we’d never see each other again. I suppose I was right, I never saw Beautiful again. I saw Mi.

The fat in her cheeks had gone away but I could still recognize my best friend from years past, I suppose she didn’t recognize me. That was the last thing on my mind, I decided to enjoy our time in the spring air, the ding of the DS playing in the background of my head.

After a few weeks we both new, and we each new that the other new. We didn’t say anything. We kept playing till we hit the final boss, we were screaming at the boss, the final round of spells went out and we won. The game was over. Orchestra played in the background as we took the princess in our arms, Mi was brimming with joy. I can’t say why she was so somber when I found her, I can guess that the new school hadn’t worked out. That her parents touchy relationship got worse. That Mi struggled with all that but, I don’t know how it came to this. To us knowing that the other knows, but hanging on to this illusion. I blame all the idiots who must have set it in her mind, who through whatever stupidity broke her. I don’t blame Mi.

The credits roll.

Mi’s the first to start singing, “We were strangers starting out on a journey.”

I add my dry voice to hers, “Life is a road and I want to keep going,” I have a funny feeling that Mi won’t be there when I turn around. I have a funny feeling that I ‘thought’ I shook her pinky, I have a lot of funny feelings.

I’m not dealing with the hellions today, I walk home, imagining the Mi I knew skipping beside me.

It was few weeks ago when I first heard my childhood friend died. A week before I went to help the hellions. I thought I’d never see her again. I cry the rest of the way home.

 

Hey you made it to the end, thanks for reading! This technically started as the prompt Ghost Girl and took a bit of inspiration from the kind of ghost stories I’ve read (at least I think I read? My minds a confused space) in Manga. It had a lot more moving parts than my previous prompts and its in first person so character starts to be a lot more important, not sure how its turned out honestly. If there’s a host of faults I think they’ll be found in the stories internal logic. Been awhile since I’ve had this many moving parts in a story be sure to tell me what you think in the comments! Thanks for reading, God Bless, Ransom.