novelember C-3

chapter 3: Spaghetti, part 1 (that settles it, I'm off the rails now)

Monday and Tuesday passed with their unchallenging classes - regular English, basic-level math, and so on. I was now at home, either reading "Spotlight on the USA", "A Primer on British History" and similar titles, or looking at the snow outside. Well, there were of course the imageboards - 8ch, as well as the country's favorite Tajik embroidery discussion group.

Friday came around before I could notice. At 6 AM the phone across the double-sized bed rang out with a high-tension soundtrack piece, as it did every other day. I uttered some inelegant combination of nasal vowels and crawled up to the damn thing in order to make it stop. I shook it around, as I had set up my alarm app to react to the accelerometer, and got out of bed, heading for the shower.

Breakfast was simple - a couple of pieces of toast with meat and butter, plus an orange. I boarded the 7:00 train bound for Katowice, got off at the usual stop at 7:39, and walked up to my school.

In the main hall the teacher was already waiting for me.

"Good morning, Anon. You have the permit, right?"

"Yes, here it is." I passed her the folded sheet of paper with my dad's signature on it. "I, Anon Anonowski Senior, agree for my son to return on his own from...", the writing went.

"Good. Here are your tickets.", she said as she passed me two bits of paper with a simple pattern on them, consisting of the transportation company's logo, the price in large print, and an arrow pointing in the direction one had to put it into the ticket-stamping machine in. Civilized countries had long had electronic systems for public services, and we too did, but ours didn't work because the original funders had backed off for reasons unknown. All that was left was a terminal displaying the hour and "Error: No connection to main network". Polnische Wirtschaft, indeed.

We soon boarded the route 134 towards Katowice. I slid in the first ticket and waited for the machine to whirr, as it did whenever it added a - quite literal - timestamp. We got off at a stop downtown, in a section being redeveloped. The sound of muddy snow sloshing around below my feet reminded me that it was now definitely winter. We boarded another route, 202 - to Świerkłowiec this time.

The whole city was gloomy and grey. Though I only visited it once or twice a year, I was quite sure it was the fault of the architecture, not the weather. As /pol/acks would have it, communism destroys beauty, what with its identical houses and towering panelaks. I wasn't around back then, but the theory seemed sound. The university buildings were modern, though they still managed to be ugly - with odd angles, a flat roof, and more windows than walls on the facade. /pol/ would have a field day ranting about "muh entartete Kunst" in either case. *Slop, slop*, the mud splashed whenever I stepped in it. When entering the university's lingustics faculty, I was extra careful to wipe it off my boots at the doorstep, as I had no spares.

Lilly was already waiting for us in the hallway with her cane out. I noticed that she wore a green skirt this time, instead of her usual navy blue, as well as the optional blazer - I guess the cold was getting to her. I think our school's regulations forbade brightly colored pants and skirts like that on school grounds, though I've never bothered to check. I decided to compliment her on it when I got an opportunity - the "how do I get grill" for-autists-by-autists guides from the American chans highlighted the importance of "noticing her appearance so she knows you think of her in sexual categories", though those same guides told one to approach random people in the street - to build up ">muh confidence". A grain of salt was necessary.

"Good morning. Have you been waiting for long?", started the teacher.

"Good morning, miss English Teacher. Not really, Akira has just left me here. Is Anon with you?"

Wait, she didn't really care, did she? I quickly reminded myself that the reason she asked was likely much more pragmatic than emotional.

"Yes, hello, Lilly."

"Hello, Anon."

"How much time do we have?", the teacher asked.

I glanced over the cork board opposite the entrance. A large notice stated "PARTICIPANTS OF THE NATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE OLYMPIAD: Wait near room 12 on the ground floor until 9:30. Special-category participants will be called into room 11, 30 minutes earlier." I checked the time, it was 8:40.

"Fifty minutes, we're early. Though Lilly..."

"I have only twenty minutes left, yes. I get extra time per the rules." She seemed to hang her head down a bit after that. Did she feel it was an unfair advantage? She certainly didn't seem depressed about her blindness earlier. I was also curious how she got the hour. Text-to-speech on her cellphone? I couldn't see any watch on her wrist.

All three of us descended the stairs to the ground floor. I heard a repeated, quick tapping - Lilly's cane. I was getting used to it already, it seemed. Me and the teacher turned in our coats to the cloakroom and pocketed the numbered tokens for them. The room we found ourselves in was a sort of great hall of the faculty, with the cafeteria on one end, the stairs on the other, and a mass of couches and tables in between, mostly taken up by young people in formal attire and middle-aged women in less formal attire, presumably their tutors. To the side were the minor lecture halls, including rooms 11 and 12. We took a couch with no people on it, and started waiting.

"How are you feeling? Nervous?", the teacher asked Lilly.

"Somewhat. I am afraid of the cultural and historical questions. You mentioned Anon had difficulties with them."

"Not really, they're just... unpredictable.", I interjected. Most were answerable with a basic level of knowledge, but once in a while there would pop up minutiae like "which president forbade the private ownership of gold?", meant to separate the nerds from non-nerds. Or was the term "buffs"? Well, I'd passed this twice before, though never the part after it.

I couldn't quite console her, though.

"...I guess we will see."

A member of the exam staff ducked out of a door on the side of the hall and broke the awkward silence.

"*Prosimy uczestników kategorii specjalnej do sali numer jedenaście!*"

"They're calling out for me, right?"

"Yes. You're learning quickly. Get out your ID now, before you're called.", the teacher reassured her.

"Good luck.", the teacher and me wished her.

Lilly fished out a rectangular card out of her purse as she stood up. I wondered for a while how she knew where exactly it was, but there probably was some way around that. A complicated system of pockets, maybe. Besides, a school ID has a pretty characteristic size, and it's paper rather than plastic.

Soon, the examiner's voice confirmed it as she listed all those invited - a "Satou" among them. With some guidance, she stepped through the door and we saw no more of her.

"You, Anon?"

"Huh?"

"Well, are you anxious? You seem to be."

"Eh. Can't be too optimistic."

Come to think of it, I was really not worried at all about the test. More about asking Lilly out. "Be spontaneous", "drag her out" and "you huge faggot" all echoed through my mind, most of all "huge faggot". I guess I deserved it for asking /b/ for girl advice.

Well, and then there was the oral exam next week. If I did pass to it, like in the previous two years, I would seriously have to *read those books*.

I got out my pen and ID, turned off my phone, and waited.

"Anonowski, Anon!"

I sat down in the lecture hall, as did a whole crowd of others. Before me was a stack of paper sheets, printed with

"NATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE OLYMPIAD

Voivodeship-level written test, 2015-12-04

Name:  ___________

School:___________

You will be given 120 minutes to write this test. Check carefully if none of the pages 1 through 10 are missing. Good luck.", the English text stated. I wondered why they translated the Greek-derived term "olimpiada" literally, rather than as "Olympics", but it didn't have quite the same meaning in English. Didn't the Soviets first start applying the term to school competitions? Whatever.

I filled the two slots out and got to work.

First came the closed grammar questions, where I had to select the answer that made a sentence make sense. Word transformations. Historical and cultural tasks, ugh. Then the gap-filling exercise. Frustrating, but beatable. Eventually, I reached the paper - the task was to sum up the pros and cons of bicycle lanes in cities, OR to write a proposal to a city council for something or other.

"However...", "therefore...", "...existent lanes are inexpertly designed at best, and their bumpy construction discriminates against road bicycles with no suspension, the pavement used is an objectively inferior surface in comparison to asphalt, or even macadam..."

I'll admit it, as a non-driver of cars at the time I was biased, but Polish bicycle lanes are horrible. They're built on several false assumptions - that a bicycle has zero width, or at least never overtakes others, that it can stop in place, and that it can execute 90-degree turns in place. Essentially, they are red pedestrian lanes that pedestrians are forbidden to use (but they still use them and nobody does anything about it) and cyclists are forced to use (but they don't if they can get away with it, read: there are no patrol cars in sight). Signed: frustrated member of the second group. Of course, I wrote that into the paper.

"... waste of public money."

Tick. Tock. I had fifteen minutes left, so I decided to review my answers to the limited-answer questions, correcting a few on the answer sheet, remembering what the capital of Idaho was, for example.

"Please put away your pens, we will collect your tests, you may leave the hall", the exam staff announced.

A veritable horde of students filed out, me among them. I saw my teacher waving at me from one of the tables at the glass wall of the great hall.

"How'd it go, Anon?"

"Same as last year, pretty good."

Soon enough Lilly came out of her hall. We called her over to our table. As soon as she sat down, the teacher asked her the same she did me.

"Well, it turned out better than expected."

"What about the culture questions?", the teacher grilled.

"I actually did the British part very well."

She smiled and opened her eyes for a moment. I guessed it was her equivalent of blinking in surprise, or something she did when feeling strong emotions.

"Though the American part..."

"Same here. I knew the capital of Idaho, but seriously?"

"What was it, Anon?"

"Boise."

She toned down her smile at that. Ouch.

"I thought it was Des Moines."

"I'm not blaming you, both sound French."

The teacher got a call on her cellphone and excused herself.

"...mhm-hmm. I understand, I will be there as soon as possible."

"Look, I need to get back to the school, so goodbye, Lilly. Administrative things."

"Goodbye!" from both of us.

"Anon, aren't you tagging along until...", the teacher reminded herself, thankfully voicing her concern in Polish.

"No, change of plans. I know the timetables."

I lied about the timetables.

The teacher said her goodbye and scurried off to the cloakroom. Lilly had gotten on her own phone while I was talking to the teacher, talking in Japanese. To her sister?

*Anon, you colossal faggot! Now's the time!*

*B-but...*

*You're not buying her an African sex slave, for fuck's sake! You're asking her out!*

*Are you seriously quoting that thread from last week?*

*Oh come on, be decisive and manly like that one anon said. You're not even technically asking her out, you're both alone here already. Besides, you have to prove those fucks from the board wrong, right?*

*Right.*

"...sayonara."

"Was that..."

"Yes, that was my sister. She should come here in some thirty minutes."

Time was short.

"H-Hey?"

"What?"

"W-want to do something while you're waiting?"

"Sure, what?"

*Be spontaneous, you faggot.*

"F-first you'll have to tell me i-if you're more of a tea or coffee person."

I was practically dropping enough Italian pasta at this point for us to have a dinner date too, we just needed some bolognese sauce.

"Well, I prefer tea... wait, where are you going?"

"Just wait where you are!"

I'm pretty sure she must have facepalmed, but she was already far behind me at that point.

"Two teas, please."

I forked over two coins.

"For table number...?"

Oh, it was that kind of cafeteria. I had forgotten over a year. Shit, we technically weren't sitting at one of the numbered tables - those were all taken up by either uni students, or groups like the two of us.

"I'll just wait here for them instead of having you call me."

The vendor raised an eyebrow, but she decided not to bitch. Compared to the hungrier customers, I must have not been a huge burden.

As I looked over the bar-stall construction she was standing behind, I got an idea. It was the fourth of December, and while it wasn't exactly the sixth, it was close enough. I spotted a particularly nice-looking brand of chocolate on display. It was available in two flavors, vanilla and, interestingly enough, chilli. I decided the vanilla was a safer bet.

"Anything else?"

"Yes, that chocolate, please. The vanilla one."

"10 złotys."

Ouch. The idea seemed good, however.

I took the tray with our teacups in one hand and the chocolate in the other, wishing I hadn't left my backpack with Lilly.

"You're back?"

"Well, yes. Here's your tea."

I maneuvered her teacup closer to her. She was surprisingly quick to find it with a sweep of her hand and took a sip.

"So how did you do on it, overall?"

*Gee, Anon, maybe you should try talking about the weather too.*

"Well, you've heard it. Better than I thought I would. You?"

"I actually did pretty well."

"Why did you worry about it so much, then?"

"Well, you know, those questions. The non-language ones. And besides, it's a bit of a cultural thing."

"Cultural thing?"

Bullshit mode activated.

"Well, you see, the ancient Slavs, before they converted to Christianity, believed in spirits that would harm happy people, so a whole ritual was built up around pretending to be unhappy. Children would initially be given names meaning "unloved" or "unwanted", so those spirits wouldn't hunt them down in their early childhood. It kind of carried over into modern times as grumbling and pessimism."

Well, it wasn't bullshit, but I doubt it was that influential. It made sense, though.

A giggle.

"Ara ara. It explains some of the attitudes here. It is not really that different from some of the beliefs back home."

"Like what, Shintoism?"

"Mhm-hmm. It also has a lot of minor gods of misfortune, and wishes, even for particular doorways in a temple."

"Interesting."

A silence followed, with both of us sipping our tea before it got cold. Wait, shit, I had forgotten to ask for sugar because I had assumed she wouldn't want it.

"You don't sweeten your tea, right?"

"No, I prefer to taste the tea and not the sugar. Why are you asking?"

*Anon, you know what to do.*

"No reason. Anyway, n-nice skirt. It fits your blazer."

"Thank you. It was actually part of the uniform at my old school."

"Your old..."

"It was called Yamaku Academy, near Sendai. It was a school for the disabled."

Wait, what? She honestly didn't seem to require a special school, she got around just fine here.

"Oh. Really? I sometimes forget you're blind."

Oh shit, I didn't really say that. I didn't...

"Thank you. My parents insisted on a private school, and it was the best in the area. Besides, it wasn't like it sounds. It was as normal as it gets, it just had some... additions."

She took it as a compliment? I guessed she had her way of dealing with this stuff. Anyway, private school? It explained a lot.

"I kind of miss it, you know. Not so much the school, but my friends."

She seemed down about it.

"...Your classmates don't visit you much, do they?"

*Seriously, Anon? Is this how you want to bring this up? The award for the worst consolation of 2015 is waiting.*

She frowned.

"No. The class rep sends me e-mails, but that is just because I'm on the list. I don't even understand them, though I should start learning to. The text-to-speech butchers them, too."

Should learn Polish? She wasn't planning to stay, was she? I thought it would be better to talk about that later, though.

"Why are you asking?"

"It's that... it's almost the sixth, and we kind of have a tradition here. Classmates give each other candy for Santa Day."

"Santa Day? You mean Christmas?"

"Saint Nicholas' feast day. You know, the original Santa, except he was Greek and not Lappish, and he didn't star in commercials, but otherwise the same guy. Anyway, I figured that in any case you wouldn't get to take part because it falls on a Sunday this year, and it's your last year here, so..."

I passed her the chocolate.

"Thanks, what is it?"

Did she use "thanks"? Well, she had said her English was rusty, that must have been why she tended to use full forms. I was probably just overanalyzing.

"Vanilla chocolate. I have no idea if you'll like it."

"I actually, well, thank you. It's my favorite kind."

It was one of those rare occasions when she both smiled and opened her eyes. The result was... cuter than expected.

"Oi, youngsters. Enjoying yourselves, I see?"

"Hey, Akira."

*Oh god, what do I do?*

I looked behind me and saw a young woman - maybe in her twenties - about a head shorter than me, with most of her hair hanging down in a short - bob, was it called? - and a pair of spiky bangs hanging down to the sides. Wait, were her eyes red? They had to be contacts. Or she was an albino, though her skin was a normal color. Or a vampire.

She also wore a pin-stripe suit. Yep, definitely Akira.

The problem was: how does one greet the older sister of his prospective girlfriend, from a culture placing great weight on honorifics? I was new to this stuff.

"Uh, good afternoon, miss Satou..."

"Whoa, kid! Don't call me that, I'm not that old yet. 'Akira' is fine."

Oops.

"Well, good afternoon, miss Akira."

"That's not what I meant." Akira looked absolutely terrifying with those red eyes of hers.

Lilly was barely holding back a giggle.

"...good afternoon, Akira?"

"That's better."

She turned her head to Lilly.

"I take it he's the famous Anon?"

"...yes, that's him.", confirmed Lilly before breaking into hysterics. Well, it was just a long giggle, but it sounded much worse at the time.

"Look. Look at what you did, Anon. If you hurt my sister like that again..."

"...no, I'm fine, sis."

"...however else you hurt her, there will be... consequences."

I almost looked out the giant window for incoming lightning before remembering that Akira was not a Discworld vampire, whatever her appearance. Probably.

"Understood."

Wait, "famous" Anon?

"Bah. You're no fun."

Looking wasn't necessary. After more than three seconds without thunder, I was sure that any bolts invoked by her dramatic choice of words would strike at least a kilometer away.

She turned her head once again.

"I told you you'd find an old-fashioned sort of boy."

Wait, wait, wait. Was I not being told something?

"I-it's not like that, mi- I mean Akira." Damn it, she was an adult. I was having difficulty with sticking to a first-name basis.

"Stop teasing him, please."

Smart, beautiful, and she defended me from her vampiric sibling? I wanted to kiss her, though maybe not in public. Definitely not in front of said sibling.

"Fiine, sis."

"Anyway, we'll have to be going soon. Boss will eat me if I turn up late again."

"Goodbye, Anon. You have some way of returning, right?"

"Yeah, I'll take the bus to Katowice and work from ther-"

"What a coincidence! We were going there too! Don't tell me you're going to wait around in that cold!" Akira now had an Evil Grin (TM).

"Akira could just drop you off at the bus terminal. That's where you'll go from, right?"

"Well, the train station..."

"Great! Get up, you both!"

I wanted to carry the empty teacups back as per the cafeteria's rules (plastered on the wall in large print), but Akira seemed to be in one hell of a hurry, rushing towards the stairs and the exit.

"Akira, the cloakroom."

"The what?"

"The cloakroom. We still need to use it."

Lilly seemed to be the reasonable one of the two.

"Shall you?"

She passed me her numbered token for her clothing. Whatever she wore was hung on hook number 134, I noticed.

I walked up to the woman in charge of the cloakroom. She gave me both sets of clothes - an ordinary jacket I had, a brown fur-lined coat for Lilly - and grunted as a goodbye.

I threw on my clothes and passed Lilly hers.

"So can we go now?" Akira lacked any of the patience her sister had.

"Yes."

"Nice car." I said to defuse the tension once we were out in the parking lot.

"Thanks. It's a Lancer Evo. Cost me a fortune to bring it over."

I got into the rear seat of the black car - a right-hand drive one, as I noticed, with the Japanese plates to boot - and strapped in, unaware of what was going to happen.

VROOM.

Akira's driving was the third worst I've experienced in my life, right after the woman who forgot that I had the right of way on a busy street - and almost killed me - and the semi driver who tried to overtake me too fast, and almost killed me. I was at least sure I wouldn't die, if Lilly managed to survive it daily. Otherwise it would rank at the top of the list.

In any case, however, I was far too terrified to utter such obvious sentences as "miss Satou, the yellow triangle with a red outline means YIELD", "Akira, that red sign has STOP written on it in English" or "you're supposed to overtake cyclists, not almost kill them". Oh, and maybe "I don't want to have to translate what the policemen say to you, stop hugging the speed limit".

At least it was only noon or so, so there wasn't much for me to - hypothetically - lose, just breakfast. And however bad Akira's driving was, you had to credit her with the fact that I didn't, though I came close. That, and she was fast.

She seemed to genuinely enjoy it, from what I could see of her eyes in the overhead mirror. Maybe she had a sadistic streak. Or a masochistic one. Or both at once.

Suddenly the car halted on a sidewalk.

"This the place? The GPS tells me this is the closest we can get."

I recognized the street. The railway station was situated in a pedestrian-only zone, minus a few bicycle lanes, so it was indeed the closest possible drop-off for me. I got out of the car and kept the door open to say goodbye.

"Yes, thank you, miss Sa- I mean Akira."

"Again with the 'Miss Satou'? What is wrong with today's youth? Don't worry, I'm just screwing with you."

If that was her idea of screwing around...

"Akira, can I come out for a while?"

Wait, what?

"Fine, but be quick about it."

I shut my door and waited to see what Lilly was trying to do.

"Anon."

"W-What?"

"Anon, I wanted to thank you. For... caring?"

She came a bit closer, palmed me around when she found me, and kissed me on the cheek.

*What the fuck.*

I went full beetroot on the spot.

"Anyway, see you next week, Anon. Shall you be off now?"

"Yeah, goodbye, Lilly. Say goodbye to Akira for me, she can't hear me here, right?"

A muffled "as if" rang out from behind the window.

"Sorry, miss Satou, bye anyway."

I heard a muffled "Bye, Anon!".

Lilly got back in the car, and after a while they sped off to parts unknown.

"What."

Hadn't I forgotten to do something?

I headed towards the station. The great temples of the capitalist gods McDonald's and Subway greeted me as a potential acolyte, but the ride with Akira had drastically reduced my reverence for them, nevermind my hunger. I looked at the departure table and saw I had twenty minutes.

I used one of the ticket vending machines - this was the only station where you could buy tickets, at least on my line. Otherwise you'd have to buy from the conductor. I got up to the platform and waited.

What the fuck? Had the last twenty minutes really happened?

At least I got a nice surprise. My train back home was one of the few restored ones, with a whole new white-and-blue paint job, a coffee vending machine, and onboard Wi-Fi, as the signs on its window said.

Wait, Wi-Fi. I had my phone.