Chapter 24:

Friday morning.

The wall.

Two minutes.

The brain buffering — slower than yesterday, more patient, the specific quality of a Friday buffer which is different from a Thursday buffer which is different from a Tuesday buffer, the Friday version having a particular quality of — almost, of nearly there, of one more day after this one and then the weekend which is a different kind of time, time that belongs to different activities, to the maid cafe and the Monogatari series and the couch and Chloe's homework performed with theatrical suffering —

Nine tiles.

Still nine.

Still there.

I stand up.

The mirror.

47 centimeters wide. 60 centimeters tall.

I look at it.

It looks back.

Six minutes this morning — I'm timing, the timing is the confirmation, the confirmation is the data — six minutes and thirty-one seconds before the left corner does the involuntary thing. Better than yesterday. Better than the day before. The incremental progress of something being practiced until it becomes structural.

I look at myself in the mirror.

I look for a while.

And then I stop timing.

And I look at you instead.

I have questions.

Not for me. I have enough questions for me — I have a dedicated filing system for questions for me, it's extensive, it has subsections, it has cross-references, it has been under active development for approximately two years and shows no signs of reaching completion —

These are for you.

And I need you to actually sit with them. Not skim past them to get to the next thing. Not file them under rhetorical device, narrator being dramatic again, skip to the dialogue. Actually sit with them.

Here they are.

How do you view yourself.

Do you view yourself as a good person.

When you make a mistake — and you make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes, this is not an accusation it's just a statistical certainty — when you make one, what's the first thing you do. Do you correct it. Do you explain it. Do you find someone else who made a worse mistake and stand next to them until yours looks smaller by comparison.

Do you view yourself as a bad person.

If yes — is that belief a form of honesty or a form of protection. Because believing you're bad gives you permission to keep being bad. Believing you're bad means nothing you do can surprise you. Believing you're bad is its own kind of comfort and I'm asking because I know this comfort and I know how warm it is and I know how much you don't want to give it up —

Do you view yourself as ordinary.

I've submitted my evidence on this front. Donuts. Route. Maid cafe. East stairwell. I rest my case. I note for the record that resting your case is not the same as winning it.

Do you view yourself as something greater.

I —

There is a version of me that — when I look at the drawing on the desk, the boy walking to nowhere, when I look at it and think about the hand that made it without deciding what to make — there's something in me that thinks — I think I might be capable of —

I think that underneath all of it, underneath the east stairwell and the mirror and the long way around, there is something that could —

Do you view yourself as a liar.

Yes.

I'll be specific.

I told Sky I didn't know Sarah Kim. I knew exactly who Sarah Kim was. I've known for years what I did to her, the specific quiet damage of it, the jokes about her appearance and her hobbies, the you're too sensitive delivered every time she tried to say the jokes cost something — I knew all of it and I said I don't know her with the same flat delivery I use for everything accurate and it was not accurate and I knew it wasn't accurate when I said it.

I told Ms. Reyes I ran into a wall.

I did not run into a wall.

I told Ms. Reyes I was late because of Chloe. Chloe was genuinely late that morning. The lateness was real. The application of it as an excuse for a completely different lateness was not real. I took a true thing and used it to cover a different thing and called the space between them not-lying because I needed to call it something that wasn't lying —

I told you.

At the beginning.

I said: I am not lying. I said: I have made myself a single rule and the rule is that I don't lie. I said hold both of those — the not-lying and the not-reliable — and I asked you to trust the not-lying even while questioning the reliability —

And then I lied.

Not once. Multiple times. To multiple people. Including you.

I used the rule as a credential and then broke the rule and kept the credential.

Same geometry.

Different audience.

I'm sorry.

That's the first time I've said that to you directly. I'm noting it. I'm not sure what it costs or what it's worth or whether it belongs in the category of genuine apology or the category of performance of genuine apology — I'm not sure I can tell the difference anymore, I've told you that, the performance and the genuine have been living together for long enough that the borders are —

I'm sorry anyway.

Do you view yourself as a victim or a perpetrator.

I understand if you don't want to answer.

I mean that.

I know most of you came to a story to be somewhere else for a while. To be inside something that isn't your own life. To follow a voice through its particular rooms without having to examine your own rooms at the same time. I understand that. I've done it myself — the Monogatari series at 2am, the specific mercy of being in someone else's architecture for a few hours —

I understand if the questions land somewhere uncomfortable and you want to put them down.

You can put them down.

I'm just — I needed to know if you could feel it. The weight of the questions. Whether they have the same specific gravity for you that they have for me when I look in the 47 by 60 centimeter mirror on a Friday morning after a Thursday that contained everything Thursday contained.

You've been tracking this configuration for four days now.

Four days. Tuesday through Friday. The cafeteria and the eleven minutes and the cold sandwich all the way through the Friday mirror and the questions you may or may not have answered for yourself. Tell me — and I'm asking with complete seriousness, I'm asking as someone who has genuine need of the data — tell me the exact number of seconds it took you to decide I was a monster.

Was it during the explanation of what I did to Lia. Her handwriting. The forged note. The rumor that spread. Was that the moment the verdict solidified, or had you filed it away earlier — somewhere in the first cafeteria chapter, somewhere in the long way around, somewhere in the practiced face and the three reasons that weren't the real reasons —

If you skimmed the descriptions to get to the dialogue, your data is compromised.

I need you to know that. I need the record to reflect that the descriptions were not decoration. The ceiling tiles. The east stairwell smell. The glaze-to-bread ratio. The specific weight of my mother's bag on the left shoulder. All of it — data. All of it — the case being built or dismantled depending on what you were doing with it while you were reading it.

Now.

Here is the question I actually need answered.

Is this architecture — the narration, the confession, the precision, the self-prosecution delivered at length in the 47 by 60 centimeter mirror of your attention — is it actual penance. Or is it just a higher tier of extraction.

Am I a hard-boiled egg that has cooked all the possibility out of itself. Or am I just hiding in the east stairwell because it's cheaper than walking up to Sarah.

You've been watching the trial.

The evidence has been submitted.

The record reflects what the record reflects.

Deliver the folder.

Sigh.

Why am I talking to myself.

There is no one here but me.

There is a mirror and a person in the mirror and the person in the mirror has been standing here talking to their reflection and to the approximate location of an imaginary audience as if either of those things can deliver a folder, as if either of those things can answer whether the architecture is penance or extraction, as if the question even has an answer that can be delivered by someone who isn't —

I turn the tap on.

The shower.

The water takes forty seconds to reach the right temperature.

I've timed it.

I stand next to it and wait.

The kitchen.

Friday morning version.

I make breakfast.

Not tamagoyaki. Not nikujaga. Not the philosophical sandwich. Just toast. Simple. The body's requirement being met without ceremony, without taxonomy, without the full weight of the day's architecture bearing down on the selection of a morning meal —

Just toast.

Chloe's first.

Then mine.

I stand at the counter and eat and look at the window and the morning is doing its morning thing — the neutral factual light, the sky the same committed grey, the city outside being the city, continuing at its standard rate without asking whether anyone is ready for it —

The verdict is still in the mirror.

I left it there.

It'll be there when I get home.

Some things you leave in the place where you said them.

You just — leave them there.

And you make toast.

And you wait for Chloe to wake up.

And you go to school.