Tales from New Kakari: Remy (pt. 1)

c/w: language, gun violence, light gore, blood

Remy’s eyes follow a single droplet of water, its beautiful and tragic journey from the rusty ceiling tiles to the dilapidated floor. As it falls, he imagines the droplet stealing a half-second glance at the room around him. The rows and rows of desks, all in different stages of disrepair, each occupied by students Remy’s age—students who are most definitely only there to obtain a free lunch. It would see the various uniform strips of glowing, green machinery trace the walls of the room, occasionally spewing out “air decontaminants” that only smell like plastic and might as well just be contaminating the room more.

As the droplet descends to the ground, it will probably start trying to make sense of what it saw. It might wonder why the windows to the left are covered in steel plates, or why there is a revolver sitting in the corner of the classroom, next to Mr. Larson, the instructor peering at the students through narrow, cybernetic eyes. Then, it hits the floor, splitting into a million other droplets that desperately try to escape, yet are still pulled back together into a disgusting puddle on the ground.

Had the droplet survived, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire directly outside the classroom would have answered its questions—the barred windows and armed teacher are there in order to protect the students, as Garnet High is located in a very populous and dangerous area of New Kakari. But Remy doesn’t feel particularly comforted. What’s one revolver going to do against a syndicate with bulletproof vests and assault rifles? He imagines that if a syndicate wanted to invade the school they would have done it already, and done it quite easily. The revolver is just there for Mr. Larson’s peace of mind. After the gunfire ceases, he counts nineteen new dents on the leftmost steel plate. Counting dents has become one of Remy’s bored time-wasters.

The other classmates aren’t particularly fazed by the gunfire either. It’s become such a daily occurrence that it would be strange not to hear gunfire outside every few minutes. The syndicates are always fighting; Remy just hopes they’ll resolve their conflicts soon.

“Mr. Larson,” the girl seated to the right of Remy raises her hand. Remy gives her a sidelong glance. It’s Marlowe, the class representative. He doesn’t know her too well, but knows at this point that she’s exactly the type of person who would be class representative: Type A, outspoken, and has a sense of justice. Her golden blonde hair, a rare, bright color in this day and age, seems to directly clash with the uniform gloominess of the classroom. To be honest, Remy envies her confidence. He wishes he had that kind of drive.

“Yes, Marlowe?” The teacher replies.

“This puddle is really bothering me. Can we get a bucket or something?”

The girl in front of her, Lucy, turns around in her seat, looking at Marlowe with annoyance. Unlike Marlowe, Remy actually knows her pretty well, as the two of them are next-door neighbors.

“C’mon Mar. It’s just a puddle. There’s like a million of them in this freaking school.”

Marlowe ignores her. When Lucy realizes she’s not going to get an answer, she instead turns to Remy, her striking brown eyes peering at him through big, round lenses.

“Don’t you agree, Remy? Honestly, I’m starting to get used to the puddles.”

“You shouldn’t. It gets mixed with all the leaking chemicals on the ground,” Remy replies. Lucy rolls her eyes at the pragmatic response.

“Mr. Larson?” Marlowe asks again.

The teacher sighs and points to the door. “Go down the hallway to the left to the storage cabinet. No funny business.”

Lucy laughs so loud a few other students in the classroom look up from their HoloScreens, startled.

“C’mon, teach. This is Mar. She’s going to go straight there and back with not a single mistake.”

As Marlowe walks by, she hits Lucy upside the head and thanks Mr. Larson on her way out. The rain had ended a while ago, so when she returns with a bucket, the leak is gone. She looks mildly annoyed that her trip to obtain the bucket was pointless, but returns to her seat with no complaint. She gets right back to completing her assignment on her HoloScreen.

Remy glances back at his own Holoscreen, feeling a little ashamed that he hasn’t even touched the assignment. Looking at it, he wonders, not for the first time, why the school decided to invest in advanced homework technology that can display 3D images instead of cleaning up the dreadful campus.

He glances down at his wrist-display implant: 11:59.

He sighs. Just as the bucket that arrived too late, he took too long to get started on his assignment, and now he’ll have to do it when he gets home.

A minute later, sirens around the school start blaring, signaling the start of lunch. Everyone starts getting out of their seats, but Marlowe, so engrossed in the assignment, doesn’t move. Remy stuffs the device into his mesh backpack, slips it over his shoulder and moves next to Marlowe’s desk. She looks to be struggling on one of the last few algebraic problems on the assignment. It looks fairly easy to Remy; so easy, in fact, that he does it in his head.

“18,” he says after leaning closer and squinting at the problem.

She glances up at him, annoyed. “What’s the point of an assignment if someone else does it for me?”

Remy raises his hands in surrender. “I thought classmates should help each other out.”

“On that note,” Lucy interrupts, leaning over Marlowes desk. “Mar, can you send the assignment to me after you’re done so I can copy it at home?”

Remy expects Marlowe to roll her eyes, scoffing at the suggestion, but instead she smiles at her friend. It’s the first time Remy has seen her smile.

“Sure. I’ll finish during lunch and send it through our personal link.”

“So now it’s okay for classmates to help each other out?” Remy wonders, amused at the hypocrisy.

Marlowe grins, as if he just fell into her trap. “Friends help each other out, not classmates. Not sure if you would know too much about that.”

Remy is dumbfounded at the unexpected jab.

Lucy cackles, slapping him on the shoulder. “Ooh, she clocked your tea!”

She ushers Marlowe out of the classroom, grabbing her arm and chatting away. He watches them walk away, a strange mix of irritation and admiration in his chest. He then smiles, accepting his defeat.

. . .

The cafeteria at Garnet High can barely be called a cafeteria. Remy would consider it more a “gathering of troubled kids with a side plot of food being passed out in the corner.” There is always, without fail, students fighting for one reason or another. Someone gave you a mean look? Fight over it. Spilled water on one of your implants? Fight over it. Bumped into you and your lunch splattered all over the floor? Remy concedes that even he might consider fighting over that. Lunch is serious business.

It doesn’t help that the cafeteria itself isn’t exactly a fine dining venue. Constantly changing advertisements hang from the ceiling, and the glowing green “decontaminating” machinery cover the walls just like in his classroom.

The floor can barely be called a floor; it’s more like a landfill for everyone’s trash, despite there being designated garbage disposal areas. He can’t imagine what it’s like to be assigned cleaning duty in the cafeteria. At least some of the tables are relatively clean.

He stops at the table he usually sits at. His friends (who, contrary to Marlowe’s comment, do exist) are already there, already chatting away.

“. . . but they would just shoot you down!” Jackson says, his normally-pale face already slightly red with laughter. Ever since they were kids, Remy would always make fun of Jackson for his tomato tendencies, but he lets it slide today because the conversation is interesting. He’s talking with Leo, their dark-skinned friend who is always arguing with them one way or another. Remy wonders if Leo just likes conflict.

Leo replies, “Look, the syndicates are scary and all that, but they wouldn’t shoot me. I’m a high schooler.”

“Seriously? That’s your strategy to take down a syndicate? Being a high schooler? What, you’re gonna wear your uniform and stuff one of those teacher rifles in your pocket?” Jackson says.

“Revolvers, not rifles,” Remy says, sitting down next to Leo and across from Jackson, who smiles, noticing his friend. Of all the people in the school, Remy would consider Jackson his oldest and closest friend. It only makes sense—they’ve known each other long before they came to Garnet High.

“Hey, Remy. What would be your strategy to defeat a syndicate?” Jackson asks.

Remy feigns thinking, scratching an imaginary beard. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll just never interact with them and hope someone else takes them down.”

“Boring!” Leo shouts. In the same breath, he snatches a protein-paste fake-chicken strip from Remy’s tray.

“Remy, this is why if the two of us got in a fight, I would totally win,” Jackson says. Remy rolls his eyes. He’s aware of his own thinness and Jackson’s muscle. While Jackson likes working out and getting physically stronger, Remy finds such activities fruitless and frustrating.

“And that’s why you call yourself a gym rat unironically.”

“Oh yeah? Well that’s why— . . .” Jackson slowly trails off, his gaze looking past Remy, who turns around to see what he’s looking at. It’s Marlowe, alone and holding her HoloScreen in one hand, standing behind Remy expectantly.

“What do you need?” Remy asks.

“That problem. You said the answer was ‘18,’ but no matter what I did, I kept getting it wrong,” she says, pointing at the question on her screen. When he hears this, Remy has to hold back a smile. He’s pleased that she’s asking him for help, but doesn’t want to show it.

He looks at it closer and nods. “You were trying to solve it with elimination, which is sometimes harder. Just use substitution to plug the second equation into the first and it’ll be easier.”

“Okay, thanks.”

He considers jokingly bringing up the whole ‘classmates’ conversation to poke fun at her, but before he can, she briskly walks away without so much as a wave. So much for that idea.

Remy turns back to the table, but he feels a strange tension that wasn’t there before. Leo looks very serious.

“What is it?” Remy asks. Leo points at Jackson, who is way redder than earlier. He looks nervous and is strangely quiet.

“What’s got you into tomato form today, dude?” Leo asks. Jackson shakes his head.

Remy agrees, “Yeah. Nothing even happened. My classmate just came over and . . .”

“Oh,” Remy and Leo say at the same time, in completely realization.

Jackson slams his hands onto the table. “Stop! I know what you’re thinking! It’s not true! I swear it’s not.”

Leo nods with dramatic calmness. “No need to lie, Jackson—it’s obvious.”

Jackson groans, burying his head into his arms, crossed on the table in front of him. Remy shakes Jackson’s shoulders playfully.

“C’mon, dude. You know you can trust us. Why were you all red, man?”

Jackson peeks up from the crevice in his elbow and asks Remy quietly. “What’s her name?”

“Lucy.”

“Bullshit. I know Lucy. Stop lying to me.”

“Marlowe. She’s in my class. Sits to my right.”

Jackson smiles dreamily. “Marlowe. That’s a pretty name.”

Leo shakes Jackson’s other shoulder, speaking in a singsong voice, “Someone’s in love.”

He shakes both of them off and sits up straight. “Okay, that’s enough of that. She’s totally out of my league. How do I even approach her?”

Leo points at Remy. “What if Remy helps? She’s in his class.”

Remy shakes his head and says, “We’re barely close. Today was about the first time I talked to her in a week.”

Leo and Jackson sigh. For some reason, Leo looks even more devastated than Jackson. Remy wonders if he actually cares or he’s just excited at something interesting finally happening in their friend group. Remy can’t help but also be a little intrigued. It wouldn’t hurt to help his friend out, right?

Remy decides to give a suggestion: “I can’t help on my own, I do know who I can ask.”

. . .

Remy stands on a cracked concrete platform, looking out at the street ahead. As the whole Garnet High School is one interconnected building, there’s only one entrance—the one he’s standing at right now. The street is muted, but not bland. There’s screens and posters covering the grimy walls, but shops are sitting unattended. Convenience stores are mostly empty. In this district, like many other syndicate-infested districts in New Kakari, it is simply unsafe to be out and about.

He hears the distant sounds of gunfire as he spots a few pedestrians, but they’re moving about in hushed movements and their heads down. Most everyone stays inside nowadays, and when it rains, the streets are just empty. Even the syndicates, so tough and violent, stay inside when it rains.

“Remy? Why are you still here?” a girl asks from behind him. He recognizes it as Lucy. She’s alone. Her normally wavy black hair is straight, probably from being doused in water.

“I was just thinking.”

“Really.”

The two of them start heading towards their residential complex. The sky as they’re walking back is still filled with gloomy gray clouds, and there’s still some water dripping from the edges of canopies and roofs.

Lucy adds. “So you were standing there, thinking for half an hour after school ended, right in front of the school, on the same day that I had to help Mr. Larson with the drainage issues in the classroom?”

“Okay, fine. I was waiting for you. I can’t wait for my friend anymore?”

“Don’t you mean classmate?”

Remy groans. “Seriously? You too?”

“I’m just joking! Mar is too funny, I had to bring it up.”

Remy decides to take his chance.

“Speaking of Marlowe. What kind of stuff does she like?”

Lucy looks at him strangely. “. . . why?”

“I don’t know too much about her, so I was wondering.”

The conversation dies for a moment as Lucy doesn’t respond. Remy doesn’t notice until a moment later that she’s staring at him intently. Her eyes are searching his face, trying to find something in his expression.

Lucy always seemed to have that quality of seeing through him rather than at him, and she has always been able to get secrets out of him. He doesn’t like that part about her at all.

He tries to keep an overly defensive tone out of his voice. “What? I’m just wondering.”

“Alright then . . .” Lucy says thoughtfully. “She likes the claw machines in arcades.”

“Claw machines? That’s random. And arcades have been shutting down just like the rest of the stores in this area.”

“Yeah, well before all the stuff happened with the syndicates we used to go all the time.”

“What else?” Remy asks.

Lucy stops and points at the wall to their left. On it there’s a poster:

REMEMBER WHEN THESE STREETS WERE OURS?
WE DO.
The Kakari Restoration Front.
Reclaiming our future, one block at a time.

Beneath it, there’s smaller words and details that lead to some netpage that Remy can’t be bothered to read. If he was truly interested, he could search it up on his wrist-display.

“Mar loves this crap. These activist posters. I’m ninety percent sure they are just a scam to get students to work in factories.”

Remy replies, “So she’s . . . an activist?”

Lucy shrugs as they continue forward. “I guess? I mean, she hasn’t really done any . . . activisting.”

“There’s no way that’s a word.”

“Right. Anyway, I think she really cares about it but wants to focus on her studies right now.”

“I see.”

Finally, they spot the sprawling residential complex in front of them. There’s rows and rows of doors and windows lined up on a huge building, with tons of neon lights, ornaments, and decorations—efforts by the residents to “spice up” the vibe of their living space, but Remy always felt it was a little extra.

He decides to ask his last question. “What kind of music does she listen to?”

Lucy replies, “She likes older songs, like rap and stuff.”

“Wow, like from the early 2000s? I guess that makes sense, in a way. Anything else?”

“She likes gardening.”

“Alright, thanks.”

He’s about to head off to his own residency when Lucy stops him by grabbing his backpack from behind.

“Hold your horses. Why are you suddenly so interested in Mar?”

Remy shakes her off. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You know I’m gonna figure it out eventually, so you might as well tell me now.”

As he walks off, he still feels Lucy’s soul-penetrating gaze cut right through him.

. . .

A few days later, armed with knowledge about 2000s rap from 3 days worth of research on various netpages, Jackson seems to be ready to execute the next stage of the plan. The three boys are huddled together outside Remy’s classroom, discussing their next move.

“We have to get them alone somehow,” Leo says with a devilish smirk. He kicks a few wires off to the side as he says this. The part of the school they are in seems to be full of those electrical wires. Remy has noticed that the different “vibes” in the different sections of Garnet High may not just be for decoration, but because the original building served a different purpose and the school just never bothered to remodel it.

Jackson quickly shuts down Leo’s suggestion. “No way! We haven’t even talked yet. I want to, like, get to know her first, you know?”

Remy suggests, “Let’s not rush it. How about we just go with the original plan?”

Jackson nods. “Sounds good to me.”

Leo adds, “Me, too.”

“Me, three.”

Remy pauses. Wait. Who’s that?

Standing behind Jackson and Leo with a sneaky grin is Lucy. How she even managed to join their conversation unnoticed is a mystery to Remy, but he quickly avoids acting suspicious, especially because next to her is Marlowe herself. Thankfully, it seems like neither of them heard the contents of their conversation.

“Hey, Lucy. Why are you out here?” Remy asks, trying to maintain as much nonchalance in his voice as possible. Lucy leans against the wall knowingly. Remy finds it funny that she’s looking so confident while above her is a sign that reads something about electrical hazards.

“I could ask you the same. Why are you out here?”

“I’m just chatting with my friends.”

“Really. Is it about anything related to what we talked about yesterday?”

Remy shrugs. “Maybe?”

Then, it occurs to him. Remy glances at Leo, who glances at him at the same time. They share a mutual understanding of what to do next. Remy elbows Jackson. He doesn’t seem to notice, too entranced by a certain person standing in front of him. Remy elbows him again.

“Oh!” Jackson blurts out, then clears his throat, directing his voice towards the two girls. “Right, um, have you two ever been to an arcade?”

Lucy’s eyes narrow suspiciously, but Marlowe’s light up.

Marlowe sounds pretty excited when she replies, “An arcade? I haven’t been to one in so long ever since all the stuff with the syndicates.”

Jackson continues, his voice a little too fast. “Me and Leo and Remy, uh we were planning on checking out this recently abandoned one out today. You guys should come along.”

Leo adds very convincingly, “We’re super cool.”

“I’d love to,” Marlowe says, but then points to Lucy. “But if she’s not going, I’m not going.”

Lucy herself glances at Jackson, then at Marlowe, then at Remy, and then seems to have a realization. Then, she smiles. Remy senses a satisfaction in that smile, and from that point on, he is almost completely sure that their entire plan has been unveiled. She seems to consider for a moment saying “no,” but thankfully, she says:

“I’m free today. When should we meet up?”

Remy breathes an inward sigh of relief.

“16:30, outside Tarado Station?” Leo puts out. No one objects.

In the silence that follows, Jackson looks like he’s about to say something, but the siren signalling the start of class blares before he can get a word out, and the group quickly disperses to their respective classes.