Pass the Bong, Rin

"I feel like it's been forever since we talked."

Rin's oddly blunt statement catches my attention.  I turn my head away from the art room door and look back at her.

"Yeah, just been really busy with the Student Council work and all," I respond.  I didn't want to mention how I'd simply decided to disregard Rin as an acquaintance for a couple of months now.

I only happened by the art room just now, while wandering listlessly around the campus after school hours, seeing the door open ajar.  I figured it couldn't hurt to have someone to talk to.  Shizune's still busy trying to arrange the Student Council elections, and Misha, since her depressing revelation on the rooftop, has been equally distant, even after the attempts of Shizune and I to get through to her.

In all honesty, I was surprised to see Rin here.  Emi told me Rin had been staying at the city, trying to compose enough artwork for a gallery.  Apparently, she's returned to take in the sights of the school again.

"You're still into all of that council work?" Rin asks as her eyebrows raise, "impressive."

"Well, Misha's been skipping out on school and the Council, so Shizune and I have been busier than ever."

"Huh?  Misha's skipping class?"  Rin blinks, a curious expression close to concern on her face.  "That's not like her.  I think."

"Well no, it's not," I respond, resting my chin on my hand.  "I'm not sure how to get through to her."

"Hmm..." Rin hums, closing her eyes.  After about 5 seconds, she opens them again.  "I have something that might help."

My head raises, eyes set on her.  It seems odd that Rin would suddenly try to help.  "Huh?  What do you mean, you have something?"

A smooth, mischievous smile crosses Rin's face.  "It's a secret."  At that moment, she hops off the table, and starts towards the door.

I get up, looking at her.  "Wait, right now?"

Rin shrugs.  "Why not.  I was hoping to get some painting done here, anyway."  I'm not sure what that has to do with the situation.  I wave it off as common Rin-ish banter.

"Go find Misha and meet me in my dorm.  Room 1-3," Rin states while still turned away from me, pushing through the doorway to the hall.

I decide to begin searching near the dorm area, figuring that Misha's unlikely to be in the school halls.  I end up inadvertently following Rin.  We both spot her, sitting on the ground against the corner of the dorm building, her head buried partially behind her raised knees.

I give her a wave.  "Hey there, Misha."

Misha raises her head slightly, looking at Rin and I.  She puts a smile on her face, but it's clearly not genuine.  "Oh~  Hi Hisao.  And you too, Tezuka~!  What brings you two here~?"  Her voice becomes more high-pitched and closer to her normal giddiness as she addresses Rin.  It seems like she's trying to keep up appearances.

I respond with a calm voice, "we were just wondering if you wanted to hang out with us for a while.

Misha frowns a bit, clearly still preferring to avoid me.

"It's no big deal Misha, Rin just wanted to catch up with you.  This was her idea, right Rin?"

Rin simply shrugs.  "Sure."

Misha smiles again, letting her guard down, again, at the mention of Rin.  Misha probably doesn't feel that Rin, of all people, would be here to lecture her.  "Well... okay~.  What did you have in mind, Rin~?"

"My room.  Come on,"  Rin answers, heading to the door of the female dorm hall.

"Huh...?"  Misha looks confused now but follows Rin.  I follow behind them both.

We make our way into the hall and in front of door 1-3.  Rin raises the door handle and pushes open the door with her knee, walking right in and turning around.

"Emi should still be running.  I think.  We should have plenty of time," Rin remarks.  "I think."

As I hold the door open for Misha and close it behind us, I grow more confused about Rin's intentions.  What the hell did she have planned?  I could only hope to think of something lewd, based on Rin's remark about Emi, but that seems highly unrealistic and the stuff of a more promiscuous man's fantasy.

Rin jumps onto the bed, motioning around it with her feet for us to sit down.  Misha slowly takes her seat on a yellow beanbag at the front of the bed, I sit myself down to the side of the bed.

"Okay," Rin turns and shifts her feet around at the side of the bed, pulling out a rather large knapsack.  She flips the latch and opens it.  I'm not prepared to see what she pulls out.

It's a large, glass, bulb-shaped object, almost like a bottle but with oddly intricate mechanisms near the base.  I suspect Rin's devious plan might have something to do with alcohol, but the object looks more like some sort of medical device than something used to drink with.

Misha makes a hushed gasp as she sees it.  "Wow, pretty~!"

With the device carefully propped against her side, Rin digs her foot deep into the knapsack and pulls out a smaller object.  It appears to be a small sandwich bag filled with some sort of... seasoning?  Also contained is a few cigar-like sticks.

Wait.  I recognize that.  I recall seeing it before, mostly on the occasional news program.  The 'enigma of the west', they called it.

I immediately get up and fully turn towards the pair of girls, looking specifically at Rin.  "What the hell, Rin!?  Marijuana!?  Do you have any idea how illegal that is?"

Rin looks at Misha, then at a random spot on the wall, then back to me.  "It's not a big deal."

I put my hand to my face, rubbing it in various spots out of frustration.  "Where did you even get it from?"

"Nomiya, art teacher, gave it to me," Rin says while absentmindedly poking into the bag with her big toe.  "He said it might help me to paint better."

Ugh, what the hell are those crazy people trying to put Rin through?  This just seems like all sorts of wrong.

"It worked, too.  I smoke it and I can...it's like, I can think colors.  And then they splash out from my mind onto the paper.  That's how it feels anyway.  Look at the easel, I already got one done."

I glance around for a second and spot a small easel near the corner of the room.  Some sort of class picture.  I quickly turn back to Rin.  "Whatever, Rin.  Do what you want, but this was a bad idea.  I'm sorry for dragging you into here, Misha."

I look over at Misha.  She's just staring towards the wall, hugging her legs against herself.

Without turning to us, she speaks up.  "Hmm..~  It would be okay, I think.  Just once.  I wanna think colors for a while, too~."

Great, now Misha's roped in.  Rin caught her in a moment of weakness.

Alright Hisao, just walk away.  Walk away and let them be, right now, I think to myself.  Still, I remain silent for another moment and continue to consider the situation.  Rin doesn't seem much different, though I don't know what would qualify as 'different' for her.  She has been smiling a lot today, I noticed.  Maybe it really could help Misha, as well.  I certainly had no better plans on how to deal with her situation, and personally, I've been feeling under a lot of pressure lately, as well.

Just once, right?

I let out a sigh and sit back down.  "All right, fine.  Who knows, it could be fun."

"It is," Rin remarks, and shifts her foot into the bag, dextrously picking up a chunk of the stuff between her big and second toe.  She carefully drops it into a mechanism fastened onto the base, and pushes it in a little with her big toe.

I'm wondering about some sort of lighter at the moment that Rin pushes down on a button to the side of the bowl, a small flame sprouting right above it.

Rin puts her mouth to the neck of the object, and a bubbling sound comes from the base as smoke begins to fill the base and rise through the neck at a steady pace.

Rin leans back a slight bit more, adjusting her foot, and the bubbling sound ceases, with the smoke rising up and clearing out of the object, flooding down Rin's throat and into her lungs.

A very interesting contraption, all things considered.

"Misha," Rin utters, a bit of smoke coming out of her mouth, poking the device with her toe.

"Oh," Misha answers as she turns around in the beanbag chair and reaches over, "My turn, hmm~?"  Misha carefully takes the object from Rin, settling back down and staring at it for a few seconds.  "Umm.. how do you work it~?"

Rin blows out the rest of the smoke in her lungs with a barely audible huff, and responds simply, "light, inhale, pass.  Easy.  Also, it's called a bong."

"Hmm~, Bong~... it's a cute name~."  Misha manages to figure out the process for the most part.  The main difference is when she pulls the bong away from her mouth after a few seconds of inhaling, she instantly begins to cough and sputter, with an intermittent squeak of her own voice.  It's the cutest cough I've ever heard.

"Happens to everyone," Rin says, and looks over to me, "you next, Hisao."

Misha passes the bong to me, I take it in my hands just as carefully as she did.  It's rather large, and heavy, likely weighed down by the water.  Smoke is still issuing out of the top in a thin stream.

Light.  Okay.  Inhale.  Fine.  It's streaming in.  The taste is reminiscent of the smell of potpourri, it's not bad.  It's harsh though.  Don't cough.  Stop inhaling.  Don't cough.  Don't cough.

No good, I barely pull the bong away in time to start a serious hacking fit, akin to the worst of colds I've caught.

As the smoke clears, I regain my composure and pass the bong back to Rin, placing it on the bed as she embraces it with her legs.  As she's hitting the bong, the weed hits me.  A warm feeling pours into my head, not just in physical terms, but mental as well.  Euphoria.  My mind just seems to be channel surfing.  The feeling can't be explained.

I look over to Misha, wondering how she feels.  She's looking up at the ceiling.

"Misha," Rin calls out to her again.  Misha turns and takes the bong from her.  She takes a hit, shorter this time.  She manages to suppress her coughing this time.

"Hold it in for a while," Rin remarks.

Misha passes the bong to me.  Before I take my second hit, I decide to ask, "so, how are you feeling, Misha?"

Misha doesn't respond for a few seconds.  After exhaling the smoke, she looks over to me.  "Hmm... I feel, good~!  Great, even~!  This is wild~!"

----------------------------------------------------

"Bowl's dead.  So yeah, the other day it was raining and I saw this rainbow,"  Rin continues on, breathing out her hit while removing the stem from the bong with her toes, bringing it to her mouth and blowing out the excess.  Some of it hits me in the face.  I don't really care.

Rin and Misha have been talking for a while about boys, clovers, colors, how trippy Misha's old hair was and how much Rin wishes she could twirl Misha's hair with her toes right now.  Various things.  I put a word in edgewise every now and then but I'm mostly fixated on the texture of the wood on this nightstand.

Rin replaces the stem, "okay, one more," she says as she reaches into the bag once again.  "So, the rainbow was all big and long, almost like a circle.  There was a bigger circle around it, too.  It looked like some unknown planet on a collision course with earth.  Made me think a lot.  Like if everything just ended."  Rin finishes her description with that, and proceeds to take a hit.

"Hey..~!  Don't say that!  You're making me freeeeak~ out~."

"Good," Rin replies, "that's how I feel too."

This wood texture.  It's like a pattern in a pattern.  Almost like some sort of crazy painting.  Is that a fly?  It's just buzzing around in odd circles.  Why don't flys fly in straight lines?

I glance over at Misha to see her passing the bong back to Rin.

"Hey, pass it here, it's my turn," I say to them.

"Hmm?~  Oh!  Sowy Hii-shan~!" Misha says, trying to talk and hold her breath at the same time.

"That's the second time you skipped me, Misha."

Misha exhales.  "I just... forgot...~  I'm sorry, Hii-chan~.  I am~!  Forgive me~?"

"Don't worry about it, Misha, it's fine.  Of course I forgive you."

"Here, take this," Rin says to me, pulling one of the cigars out of the bag and tossing it to me.

I pick it up.  Looks like a cigar, but that's definitely weed inside of it.  I take the bong from Misha and awkwardly use the lighter to light one end, inhaling through the other.  It burns slowly.  I pass the bong back to Rin and focus on the stream of smoke creeping out of the cigar.

At that moment, the door swings open.  We all flinch.

"Hi Rin!  I heard you came ba-" Emi's voice can be recognized as she comes into view through the doorway.  The enthusiastic smile she's wearing quickly flattens, then turns into a gruesome mix of shock, anger, and horror.

"Looks like she found us..." Rin mutters quietly, not looking towards Emi.

Emi stomps in as well as she can, and slams the door behind her.  "RIN!  What the hell is all of this!!?"

Rin tries to form an answer.  "I was... we were just..."

"Ew ew EW EW," Emi yelps out, swishing the air around her with her arms as if trying to clear the lingering smoke away from her.  "Rin!  Hisao and Misha, too!  Don't you know you could get in trouble for this!?  What the hell are you thinking!?"

"It's for my paintings," Rin explains, avoiding Emi's sharp gaze, "and that's going really well now.  And then Hisao came and said Misha was sad and it didn't make sense so I tried to make sense of it by making her happy, and, uh..."

"To make Misha feel happy?  What kind of sense is that!?" Emi responds, looking over to Misha now.  "What could possibly be soooo bad that you need to resort to doing... THIS!?"

At this point, my heart is getting pretty worked up.  I can feel the beating in my head.

Misha's looking at the wall.  Her eyes seem unfocused.  And then, she begins to tell Emi about her love for Shizune.  I don't know whether it's influenced by Misha's current state of mind, but she lets out all of the details, telling a story similar to the one she told me on the rooftop.  Thankfully, without the last lines of the end.  She's not crying, either.  The story even manages to slowly calm my heart.

"I just...~  I had to think about things a lot.  And I think... yeah~!  I think I got it now.  So..~  This ended up helping me.  I think~.  I'll need to think about it," Misha says to the wall, in more or less her usual tone, wrapping up the story.  "Just... don't tell any of the other girls about this, okay Emi~?"

"Oh..." Emi mutters, looking a little distraught, "you... you conniving druggies!  What am I supposed to say to that!?"

Emi pauses for a few moments, looking over the three of us.  She then lets out a heavy sigh, and turns toward the door, opening it.  "I want everything disposed of when you're done, Rin!  And lock the damn door."  And with that, she walks through the door, firmly closing it behind her.

A collective sigh of relief comes from the three of us.  I'm especially overjoyed to have that pressure off of my heart.

"So," Rin pipes, grabbing the bag with her toes and giving it a couple of shakes, "let's go, dispose of this, in the forest."

"Let's go to the store first~!" Misha remarks, "I'd kill~kill~kill~ for a snack right now~!"

"Oh boy..." I sigh, simply taking another hit from the cigar before finding a means to put it out.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That night, Rin gets right to painting.  She spends hours in front of the easel and manages to finish a piece before sunrise.  It's as abstract as her paintings ever are, with a high variance of colors.  Two figures can be seen at the right side, stretching to try to reach a similar-looking figure on the left side.  Near the center, another figure sits, observing, blankly staring towards the empty space at the center.

Misha lays in her bed at night, thinking about a lot of things.  About the Student Council, about Rin, about Hisao, and about Shizune.  She decides, just one more time, that maybe she can improve her mood, keep this good feeling going, for the sake of her friends.  As she sleeps, she dreams of her, Hisao, and Shizune at the Shanghai, having another good time over parfaits and coffee.

Hisao gets to bang Shizune in the Student Council room the next day.

EVERYTHING TURNS OUT PRETTY COOL.