Ten Centimetre-Gap

The ceremony hall looked like an island surrounded by a colourful waves of young people. All the young girls were dressed up in beautiful Japanese kimonos with long sleeves hanging down to their feet, and huge obi ribbons on their backs. Their cheeks looked rosy and flushed against the white fluffy scarves. They were the special ones of this occasion, while the boys in modern suits faded into the colourful background. The noisy colours were moving around, taking photos, catching up with old friends from school days. 

Keiko wearing a salmon coloured kimono with gorgeous golden embroidery, joined the colourful crowd of girls. She was walking around with her friends, her delicate Japanese sandals flapping just like the other girls.     

“Hey!”

Keiko heard a male voice behind her. She looked back, and saw a short young man in a neat black suit.  

“Hi!” Keiko smiled, “how have you been?”

 They were only eight or nine when they were sitting next to each other at primary school, that was more than ten years ago. Now, twenty years of age, they were facing each other at the city hall to celebrate their traditional coming of age.

Keiko had hated the boy sitting next to her in the class. Because he was dirty! Having a running nose all the time, he would often stick out his tongue to lick his nose, or wiped it with his sleeves.

“Don’t you dare touch my stuff with those yucky hands!”

Keiko warned, then measured five centimetres to keep distance between her and his desk. It was rather a mean thing to do, but she knew that there were a lot of disgusting things inside his desk.

Her teacher sometimes checked everyone’s desk. While everyone was watching, the contents of each desk was revealed one after another. The teacher admired Keiko’s desk, pleased that it was clean and tidy. On the other hand, his desk was always a big mess, along with something that looked very similar to bread, only it was mouldy and unappetising. Keiko felt slightly sick when she saw a chunk of grey bread with hairy skins and green spots.

One day after school, Keiko was complaining to her friend about how dirty he was. The teacher took that moment to reappear in the classroom,

“Perhaps, you would like to clean his desk then, since you are good at keeping your own desk tidy.”

‘Oh, my goodness!’ Keiko thought, but she had no choice but to say yes. The teacher and her friend wished her luck, then left her to the task assigned. Looking at his desk, Keiko realised she would have to touch his desk, the very one she was keeping five centimetre-distance from. She felt herself turn green at the thought.

She reluctantly pulled everything out of his desk. There were colour pencils everywhere, some tissue balls which he had probably used to wipe his nose and dozens of test sheets with miserable marks.

Keiko picked up a tissue ball with two fingers wishing desperately for gloves, and dropped it in the rubbish bin, then repeated the process until all the tissue balls were gone. Collecting all the pencils, she put them in a bumpy tin that he used as a pencil case and organised the other stationary nicely in the desk. Finally, she started putting the tests in order.

Among those squashed papers, there was a nicely folded piece of paper which seemed to have been cut out from a notebook. Keiko opened it, and the first thing she saw was her name.

Dear Miss. Keiko Nakano.

It was a letter to Keiko. Miss!? She went on reading, but she could not believe what she was reading.

I love you, and there was his signature in the end.

‘This is a love letter!’ Keiko was stunned to silence over her discovery. He was the person whom she hated most!

Keiko dropped the letter in the rubbish bin, then hesitatingly picked it up again to make sure it really was a letter to her. Yes, it says Keiko Nakano, written as if it had been a calligraphy task. It was definitely a letter to Keiko from him.

Finishing her task, she left the classroom. The love letter safely shoved in the rubbish bin.

On the following day, the gap between the two desks had increased to ten centimetres, until he showed up, and adjusted the gap back to five centimetres, the normal distance that he had been told to keep. 

“I was asked to clean up your desk yesterday, and I did! Have you noticed?”

He did not even check his desk, he only said,

“Oh, thanks.”

“I threw away all the rubbish in your desk, too.”

“Thank you,” he said almost indifferently.

“I found something else in your desk, by the way,” Keiko said in affectedly, and noticed the change in his face.

“What did you find?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now, ‘coz I threw it away.”

He did not say a word. His eyes were wide open, so was his mouth. The look on his face was that of total shock.

Keiko could not tell anyone about the love letter until she went to high school when he was no longer around. She would have told her friends about the love letter, if it was from any other boy.

Now, he was standing before her, still shorter than her. He did not have a running nose any more. His brown curly, birds nest like hair was gone, replaced by bleach blond locks it that had been softly brushed. He was dressed nicely, and he was even wearing Marine Blue, a popular after-shave among young males.

Suddenly, a girl in a dazzling red kimono appeared, her sparkling purse dangling from her hand,

“Hold my bag for a sec’…,” she looked at Keiko, “Oh! Hi, sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

Keiko just smiled at her. She smiled back a little, but she went off quickly leaving her bag in his hands. She was a tiny girl, shorter than him.

“So, is she your girl friend?”

“Ya.” 

Keiko smiled, and waited for him to continue.

“…….”

However, he remained silent. Keiko, looked around and said,

“Well, I have to go now. Good to see you anyway”

She did not have to go anywhere. Her friends were right behind her, talking with some other girls. But she did not know what else to say.

“Good to see you, too…., see ya,” he said, and took off.

“Bye.”

He disappeared into the crowd, going after his lady friend. Keiko turned back to her friend.

 “Who was that?”

Being Keiko’s best friend, she, of course, knew about the love letter. However, Keiko said,

“No one,” and she pulled her friend’s arm, “let’s go.”

The colourful crowd drifted towards the ceremony hall, to listen to the dull lecture about what it was to be an adult.