IJI the Lone Wolf

IJI THE LONE WOLF

The sun was hot that summer day and the humidity made the air thick enough to drown you. School had just started back up and I was a 2nd year student at the local high school. It’s horrible being locked inside a building when the weather outside is still calling you to partake in summer activities. I was never one that comfortable around people and if living in a city wasn’t bad enough having to attend a school with 2000 other teens was pure torture. Things weren’t always like this though there was a time when I was younger, in the elementary, when I had a friend, Rinji. Ha-ha I’ll never forget the promise I made her that summer years ago I promised that we would get married. How foolish, she had moved years ago and I was left to face the world of adolescence alone. Here I am though I have a job and I’m an okay student in school I mean outside of the fights. I’m always relieved when school lets out then I can go be alone. Mostly I climb a tree to read a book or to sketch but that day I decided to go for a walk, Just a short walk in the small forest behind the houses. I picked up a rock from the ground and began to converse with it, expounding to it all the injustices of the human life. Oh, I almost forgot my name is Iji, anyway having satisfied my vent upon this rock I tossed it aside. The sound of glass shattering reached my ears shortly after the rock left my hand. I had to climb through the brush and scrub to reach the source of the sound, The rock I had been complaining to had broken through a window of one of the houses bordering the woods. In the second I had a choice apologize for my mistake or run. I’m not quite sure why I chose the first one maybe it was the shred of honor that formed in me in rebelling against the cutthroat manner of humanity, more likely it was just I didn’t want to get caught.

A middle aged woman answered the door she smiled and invited me in fussing over how a broken window was no problem. She acted so strange like she knew me but I could not place this woman. Finally she took me to see the room whose window I had broken. It was a room that could have belonged to any teen girl that attended my school. The girl who it belonged to sat upright in her bed, and smiled, I stammered out some apology for breaking the window trying not to think how strange it was for her to be still in bed and in her pajamas at this hour. She smiled and replied, “It’s quite alright Iji”. I was shocked how this girl knew my name I had never seen her before. She laughed and her smile grew, “Have you forgotten the face of the girl you promised all those years ago to marry?”

“Rinji”, Hope grew inside me had my friend from all those years ago returned?

“Iji”, She held out her arms and tears formed in her eyes. I hesitated but then leapt into her embrace, after all these years of being alone I had a friend again.

“I’ll make you two lunch and let you get caught up,” her mom said leaving the room.

I felt so stupid I should have known it was Rinji when I walked in the room but why was she in bed, I asked her this.

“shortly after we moved I was hit from behind by a car,” she began, “after I recovered I could no longer control my body from my chest down,” She smiled “At first I was sad and angry but I remembered you always saying that as long as you smiled nothing bad could happen, So I began smiling even though my mom had to care for me, even though my father left us, even though I had no friends I smiled, and then when we moved back I thought maybe we could meet again and now here you are.”

I hung my head in shame she had gone through all this and yet she could smile and I, I had a good life yet I complained constantly about it.

“Iji” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Can we be friends like before?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure” she asked “even though I cannot go anywhere, and will pull you away from your friends at school?”

“I don’t have any friends at school.”

“Not one, not even a girlfriend.”

I shook my head.

“The girls at your school must not be very smart, to turn down someone as handsome as you.”

I shrugged, “what about you did you have guys breaking down your door to be yours?”

“No, no one wants to marry someone with so much baggage, who is such a burden who can’t” she stopped and the smile left her face, “who can’t bear children.”

There was a long pause; I didn’t know what to say or how to react so I sat there in the silence.

“I kept him you know” she said breaking the silence.

“Who?”

She reached over and grabbed a plush wolf doll, “surely you didn’t forget Binsu?”

I had to be honest the small doll I had save every penny to buy for her all those years ago for her 6th birthday It was pathetic really a child’s toy and very cheaply made. Yet she had kept it all these years later and it sat there with her. I held it and recalled that summer when we had played in her yard.

“Now we’re going to play pretend” she had said, “I’m going to be the princess and you’re the prince,” she had handed me a water gun in order to best the dragon and save her from our tree fort. Her black pigtails bounced as she ran towards the fort and sat inside weeping and calling for help. The dragon would never put up much of a fight and I would save her and we would have a glorious feast of pocky and soda from our stash that we kept hidden from our parents.

I remember our “marriage” and her kissing me on the cheek. I remember her bossy nature when we played house and lorded me around to do dishes and care for our baby Binsu.

Rinji’s mother bringing us lunch broke my reminiscing’s and I enjoyed the sandwiches as Rinji asked me about school and we shared our interests.