The Story of the Girl Who Was Actually a Firefly [pt. 1]

[Astolfo]

The Story of the Girl Who Was Actually a Firefly• 「本当は蛍だった女の子の物語」 /// 진짜로 개똥벌레였던 소녀의 이야기 •Part 1

People always had such distraught faces. Pity, shock, sympathy. They always looked so sad, and that made the girl feel sad as well. It was as if only kind of face she had brought to others were those of unhappiness. Laying in bed, Kaori gazed at the plaster ceiling above her, painted in a fading tint of green. There were scattered stickers of smiling caricatures that must have been almost as old as her by now. Raising her arm into the air, she stretched out her fingers, watching them move in almost a wonder.

Choking suddenly, her breathing immediately ground to a halt as she let out harsh, hacking coughs. Gasping in pain, her vision blackened, and her hands snatched at her bedside desk. Grasping at her bedside desk frantically, she knocked over pens and stacks of papers. Her fingers tightening around a familiar, metallic object, she jerked it towards herself, almost stabbing it into her own mouth. Pressing down on the plunger, she was about to take a deep breath when she heard footsteps clattering madly outside her door, before bursting through and almost running into the glass wall between them.

The one who had just made this sprint was none other than her best friend, Takeo Nakamura, who had been around as long as she had remembered. He had apparently just busted out of school to get here the moment it had ended, judging by the fact he still had his backpack on and it hadn’t even been 15 minutes since school got dismissed. She couldn’t help but giggle when she saw how out of breath and wheezy he was, remembering how she herself had been just the same moments before. After taking a few moments to catch his breath, the boy looked up at her, his face immediately turning into a frown when he saw the inhaler again.

“Are you alright?” he questioned, his voice slightly muffled by the clear panel separating them. The girl nodded. Her earlier stress had seemed like it had just begun to dissolve into thin air after being able to see her closest friend again. Days were long, with only men and women cloaked entirely in cold white who had used to accompany her behind the glass wall to try and talk to her. Not anymore though. They used to, but the girl had noticed the fear in their eyes. After they had noticed her staring at their eyes, they had stopped trying to talk to her. They never once met her curious stare again on the few occasions they still came back.

Besides for the coughing and the fits of pain that struck her every so often, the girl had used to be bored for the majority of the day. All the kids her age would’ve been busily working away at school. Being told she shouldn’t speak or use her voice anymore than she had to, she had decided to make the most of her free time by taking it upon herself to learn how to read and write. She began to use the glass board itself as her tool, with the markers and old textbooks donated from the school her friend went to as her guides.

Getting up from her bed, the girl grasped the railings along the wall as she slowly trod over to the thin clear wall separating the two of them. Placing her right hand against the cold glass, her friend immediately placed his in line to hers, on the other side. Seeing his fingers outstretch hers by several centimeters, she couldn’t help but giggle at the size difference. She was small in comparison to him. Despite the lack of actual contact, this felt closer and warmer than the adults that had been actually behind the wall had ever been.

Searching through her pockets for the worn-out old marker she had been given several weeks ago, she wrote,

“You didn’t have to rush here so fast, don’t you have your baseball cl-”

But before she could even finish, he shook his head silently, turning to rummage through his backpack for a few moments before pulling out a brand new set of dry-erase markers. Grinning widely, he started writing on the glass board as well, before he realized that she couldn’t read it since it would look backwards and flipped to her. Grumbling slightly, he used his sleeve to wipe out the words, before carefully trying to write it so she would be able to read it.

“This is diʇʇiculɈ, how do you do thiƨ?”

He stood back to appreciate his work, until he took a closer look and sighed in an exaggerated motion. Remembering her earlier question though, he went back to work at trying to get used to writing in a mirrored style.

“Don’t worry about my ɔlub, you’re more imqortant!”

The girl could feel her face turning warm suddenly, and she clapped her hands to her cheeks, yelping when she had ended up hitting herself a little harder than intended. She hadn’t expected such a straightforward response like that, and to hear it from him meant a lot. Getting up and pacing around the room as fast as her weak body could carry her to try and cool her head, her friend stared curiously. They both turned when a rumbling sound could be heard. Within seconds, what appeared to be the baseball team had almost exploded through the door, just barely managing to avoid all tumbling into a pile at the last second. A tall and limber boy in full uniform glared at her friend, shouting at him.

“WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re doing Nakamura, ditching practice like this?!?! You know we have our game today in like 2 h-” Pausing and looking around, the boy who seemed to be the captain quieted down, giving an apologetic glance to . Maybe he realized it wasn’t a good idea to yell in a hospital. Grabbing her friend by the scruff, the girl watched Takeo get dragged out and gave him a half-serious cross look. She sighed. If it was such a big day for him, he shouldn’t have wasted his time to come check on her. She was fine, everything was going as usual - well, as usual as things ever went for her anyways. The only thing they were really able to do was just chat and draw together. Surely a baseball game would matter more to him, given he was their star batter.

Limping back over to her bed, she lay on her side, staring out the window that was opposite of the glass wall. Sunlight was streaming in unfiltered. She wasn’t allowed to open them, and they had been locked shut just in case with a staff key, but the view was happy nonetheless. The girl noticed two birds perched on the windowsill, chirping and tweeting. Rolling over on her back, the girl stretched out her arms, imagining she was a bird just like them. “What would it be like, to be as free as those birds are...?”

With the sun’s rays warming her room and the hum of life buzzing outside, she fell into the land of slumber quickly, and with that, came dreams of the outside and what things would be like if she had been born just a normal girl…

[Astolfo]

Bump~

Reviews please!

Reps will be given for actually thoughtful reviews (no one-liners/etc).

[Enguin Enguin Enguin Enguin]

Given how little there is there's not a lot to say. The use of "bedside desk" in consecutive sentences there in the second paragraph was quite clunky and kind of broke me from the immersion of it. As in this: "Gasping in pain, her vision blackened, and her hands snatched at her bedside desk. Grasping at her bedside desk frantically...". As far as the structure goes that's my only issue with it. Actually now I think of it referring to Kaori as "the girl" in the first sentence and then by name in the second is similarly just... not smooth. Especially given the name Kaori is only mentioned in the opening paragraph and from there on it's "the girl". You did the same thing with Takeo and "the boy", honestly it just doesn't make sense to be referring to them in this way having established names.

 

It's clearly setting up for whatever is to follow but there's no information given about anyone bar that the girl has super-asthma and is in quarantine because of it or something, which makes it fairly hard to comment further. I'd definitely read the second part if only to get some kind of idea what is actually happening since this only establishes the bare minimum of details and no quantitative explanation, not even really any hinting that I picked up on but I may be missing the point with this so I'll leave it.

 

Would also like to mention that this thread breaks the forum for me, as in it puts the whole thing slightly off-center and I can only scroll with arrow keys as the side where I'd grab with the mouse does not appear. If you know or it also happens to you, any ideas why that is? This comment is a ramble and I apologise for that, I just wrote things as they occurred to me while I read.

 

*Edit having now read the rest of the thing*

 

So she's seemingly literally quarantined and sealed off from human contact in a hospital yet allowed visitors freely and doesn't look to be secured in any way given the entire baseball team was apparently able to pile in with no obstruction or objection. That seems a bit of an odd set-up, so I presume she doesn't actually have anything that's contagious but contact with her is dangerous all the same for whatever reason. Definitely adds intrigue.

 

I've got no idea where this is going to go considering the set-up and the title. Have a few ideas but they're thoroughly half-baked and not worth contemplating here at the moment. Actually just thought, is her glass panel sound-proofed or what? Baseball guy comes in shouting and she can hear him from what I understand even when he goes back to talking at a normal pitch. I get that she can't speak but clearly with the glass panel writing thing she speaks English so why would Takeo not just be talking through the glass rather than struggling to mirror write?

 

That encounter confuses me the more I think about it, if she's had the marker for weeks as it says and then you'd presume been mirror writing to people for weeks, and Takeo apparently is visiting her every day, why would he be remarking on how difficult it is having been at it for a good while at that stage. Unless he usually did just speak through the not sound proof glass which makes me wonder why he's not doing that now. Also why would the hospital workers not look at her yet this chap and that entire baseball team gave no thought to her?

 

Many questions.

[Astolfo]

Oh, oops.
I tried to make the scrollbar from the story disappear for just aesthetic purposes but it made it disappear from the page altogether.
Just in case you didn't know, there's more to the story than just immediately on that first "section".
I made it compatible with Chrome as that's what I use, Firefox might have some issues.

Personally, I just scroll down with the cursor on the text part and it scrolls through the rest of the story.
Sorry about that, was a result of HTML shenanigans.
And yeah, thanks for the thing about the bedside desk.

As for names, I didn't have any in the first place for this first section, but then I thought it would've been better to add them, hence the sort of awkwardness.
I meant to keep it intentionally vague, as a sort of third-person viewer-in like feeling to the story, and eventually you'd learn more as the story progresses.

EDIT: So yeah guys, please try using Chrome or such if it's weird/glitchy.

And the first part itself does go further than the word "closest" at the end of the immediately visible first section, so if you can't see the rest, try scrolling down with your cursor on that textbox.

 

EDIT 2: Just decided to make the scroll bar reappear instead, everything should be fine now.

[Enguin Enguin Enguin Enguin]

Oh so there's a load more which previously didn't appear for me, going to read that now then. Can probably just disregard my first comment then seen as it only covered the first 450 words or so as that was all I could see. There was no real need to post this at all could have just edited it into the first I immediately realise but it's too late now. Will update my first post after I go through it anyway. Also I'm on Chrome.

[Astolfo]

*Edit having now read the rest of the thing*

 

So she's seemingly literally quarantined and sealed off from human contact in a hospital yet allowed visitors freely and doesn't look to be secured in any way given the entire baseball team was apparently able to pile in with no obstruction or objection. That seems a bit of an odd set-up, so I presume she doesn't actually have anything that's contagious but contact with her is dangerous all the same for whatever reason. Definitely adds intrigue.

 

I've got no idea where this is going to go considering the set-up and the title. Have a few ideas but they're thoroughly half-baked and not worth contemplating here at the moment. Actually just thought, is her glass panel sound-proofed or what? Baseball guy comes in shouting and she can hear him from what I understand even when he goes back to talking at a normal pitch. I get that she can't speak but clearly with the glass panel writing thing she speaks English so why would Takeo not just be talking through the glass rather than struggling to mirror write?

 

That encounter confuses me the more I think about it, if she's had the marker for weeks as it says and then you'd presume been mirror writing to people for weeks, and Takeo apparently is visiting her every day, why would he be remarking on how difficult it is having been at it for a good while at that stage. Unless he usually did just speak through the not sound proof glass which makes me wonder why he's not doing that now. Also why would the hospital workers not look at her yet this chap and that entire baseball team gave no thought to her?

 

Many questions.

 

I haven't really decided yet, but it's either that it's contagious and she's sealed off so it can't be spread, or that her body is sensitive and it's to prevent outside germs/etc going in. The baseball team/her friend were all on the other side of the glass panel, which is there so visitors/Kaori can see each other.

 

I have plans as for why the title was that, but they're secret as of right now. ;3; And it's not soundproofed, it'd just be slightly muffled as a result of there being the glass. And she can't talk because of reasons relating to why she's in her current place at the moment (well, she can, but it was recommended for her not to). Takeo is her friend and respects that, and doesn't want to rub in the fact that he can talk, and wanted to try doing the same thing as she does this time arouand, as a sign of kindness/friendship/something like that, so it's like him deciding to try it out pretty much for the first time. And this takes place all in Japan, so it'd all be in Japanese, it's all just sort of "translated", hence the backwards letters/etc being just a representation of awkwardly/backwards drawn hiragana/katakana/kanji.

 

Kaori would usually mirror-write if Takeo or someone else she wanted to talk to visited, but he would usually just talk, but it was his decision to try and do the same thing, out of empathy for her not being able to talk normally. So it's not like he's done it for a while, it was a recent decision.

 

The hospital staff didn't want to get closer to Kaori given her condition (which will be detailed later) and how she always seemed to be watching them (creepy/unnerving/etc). Meant to sort of show the ones in charge of taking care of her specifically are sort of cold, detached, judgmental, etc. Takeo is a usual visitor, but the baseball club hasn't been around too often, and yelled at him because of the original reason they came to get him in the first place, but then realized it was a hospital. So they know barely anything about Kaori except just assuming she's sick with something, hence being inside the hospital.