I shuffled through the hall of my cram school, only there out of habit, my feet only moving because they had done it so many times in the past. This place, where my friends and I had worked so hard and made a refuge for ourselves, I had needed to see it again, I guessed.

I was a person who should never have existed. I'd always known, on some level, but had never been forced to face what it meant. Last night, the truth of it had hit me, and now I found myself here for reasons I couldn't fully comprehend. I felt like there was nothing I could comprehend. I moved on habit alone.

I slid open the door to the western-style room we had made our own over the last couple of years. "Shisturei shimasu," pardon the intrusion, I announced to the dark room.

"Is that Kaori-chan?" I heard the room reply in native Japanese, using my friend Maki-chan's voice.

"Hai. Why are you studying in the dark?" I entered the room but didn't turn on the light.

I'd never been to America, so I didn't know what an actual American study room was like, but this chamber had allegedly been modeled after them. Immediately on entering, I was in a dead end of bookshelves, with only one way to turn, tall wooden stacks with study guides and fiction all thrown together at random. There was another shelf behind it, separating the room into the shape of an E, without any large open areas, just small tables sitting in the wide aisles.

"It was Akane-san's idea. I think everyone is burnt out from studying too much, and they have all become very stupid," Maki replied.

It put a little smile on my face to hear about something so normal, and that smile was worth the whole trip. I sat down at my usual seat across from Maki at the head of the middle leg of the E and looked around. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the twilight-level gloom, I realized there were a lot of people in here.

It was a Saturday, and only a week before high school entrance exams. Tensions were high, and everyone was putting in their best efforts so they could get into a good school for next year. Our teachers were grilling us relentlessly, and after class, each of us met up here at cram school to get a few more hours of lessons in, and then typically went home to study a bit more before sleeping. It was brutal, but we were all serious about trying to do the best we could in life.

Just thinking about it made my heart hurt.

In the gloom, I started picking out people. Maki-chan, right in front of me, smiling and bubbly as ever. Behind her, Arimoto, a sharp boy who had dreams of being a police detective, and Reeve, whose foreign parents and blonde hair made him stand out instantly. I got up and peeked down the last aisle before I got settled in, and saw Akane, who had taken all of the board games off of one shelf and was building a wall with them for some reason.

"Akane-san, what are you doing?" I asked. She turned and shushed at me, a huge grin on her face as usual when she was up to something. Which was frequent.

"Toshie fell asleep," she said, using first names and dropping the honorifics as she had a bad tendency to do.

"So why are you building a wall of board games?"

"She's going to wake up and be surrounded! It'll be hilarious."

I sighed. Akane's antics were constant, but her grades were good enough so she was beyond reproach, and she never intended to harm anyone.

"Is this why you wanted to study with the lights out? So that Kasuga-sempai would fall asleep? You know she needs to study even harder than the rest of us…" It wasn't really a mean thing to say. Around here, grades on every test were listed and ranked publically so each of us could see everyone else's standings and we all knew how well or badly we were doing constantly.

"She was up all last night. Let her sleep some," Maki's voice came over the wall. I shrugged and rejoined her, feeling like Kasuga and Akane were such a lost cause, but having to...getting to smile at them anyway.

In truth, while Akane liked to play around alot, she tested exceptionally well, to the frustration of her teachers, and though Kasuga didn't do that well, she ultimately just wanted to run her family's restaurant, so what high school she got into didn't matter that much. We would all be okay.

Except me.

I pushed that line out of my heart before it could break it any more, and sat down to study.

As though she had decided to make this day my hell, Maki leaned over and whispered conspiratorially at me. "Did you visit your mother yesterday?"

She was just asking a question, small friendly smile on her lips, stylus in her hand, no idea that something...no, that everything was wrong. How could she? I was here like nothing was wrong, here to study, to prepare for my exams, to get...get into...a good school…

"Kaori-chan? What's wrong?" she asked, staring puzzled at my face. She looked like she'd just realized she was sinking in quicksand, focused on me, but looking around for help from anyone.

The painful thought returned and it felt like it filled me up. I shouldn't exist. My entire life was a mistake. All of my friends, my happiness, my goals, they were at someone else's expense.

Unbidden memories started to play behind my eyes like a slideshow, faster than I could push them out of my thoughts now. I gripped at my head but they were relentless.

My father's indifferent back, a business suit floating away from me. It was the only side of him I felt like I ever saw. Mom in the hospital, alone with me and books. My father never came to visit.

Me as a child, practicing my smiles in the mirror and shouting 'welcome home, Dad!' until my voice was gone and my face hurt. His empty seat at the table, no matter how hard I tried.

Mom holding me tight, telling me it was okay. I had done nothing wrong. My father didn't really hate me. Someday, I would have a little brother, and then my father would be happy and we'd all be a family together.

Standing outside the room in my school uniform, one hand on the door, and hearing Grandpa yelling at Mom, telling her to leave my father, telling her 'let the business fail, we don't need his money, we just want our daughter back.'

And then, a few months ago, Mom happier than I'd ever seen her, telling me she was finally pregnant again, I would be an older sister and would have to help take care of my younger brother. I yelled at her, pleaded, begged. I called her doctor and he yelled at her, while she apologized over the phone over and over, but wouldn't give up the child.

The night I woke up, realizing that she was going to die because of this. To fix her mistake, to fix me. That she would die because I wasn't the boy my father wanted. Because I should have never been.

And then yesterday.

"Kaori-chan?" Maki repeated delicately. I realized it wasn't the first time she'd said that. I looked up at her.

"Gomen," I half-apologized. I didn't know where to go from there. "Mom...my mom...died yesterday, actually."

Yesterday, I'd visited and found the room empty. The doctors told me details I didn't want to hear. There had been so much blood. They could have saved her, but she wouldn't let them. She bled and fought and died screaming for her son.

Maki went white and gasped. I heard a thunk from where Arimoto and Reeve were eavesdropping on us, and what sounded like a wall of board games falling over with a crashing cacophony of thousands of pieces skittering across the ground for far longer than seemed possible. All at once, around me people were standing and bowing and offering their condolences, and I just felt painfully uncomfortable.

I'd never liked being the focus of attention, and realizing what an un-person I was, somehow that just made it a million times worse. As I tried to placate my friends, the fact that every eye in the room was on me made my heart catch in my throat and I stumbled on my words. I felt something like panic welling up in the emptiness inside me. It had never been this bad before, why was I going to pieces now?

I knew the answer, I just didn't want to face it. I shouldn't even exist, much less grab people's attention, much less have their sympathy. I just wanted to melt into the floor.

That was a lie, I thought. I just wanted to never have been born, so Mom could still be alive.

"Let's...let's just...just study," Maki said, finally, seeing something in my eyes. Saving me.

Like she'd flipped a switch inside herself, Maki went around the room, shooing everyone off of me, cracking the whip as only she knew how. Whenever things...usually Akane...got out of hand, Maki was always there to restore order and make sure we all got our studying done. Once everyone was focused on their work again, or at least pretending to be, she rejoined me, moving so quietly you'd think I was going to break just by her footsteps.

The joke was on her, I was already broken the moment I was born.

"Do you want the light on?" she asked before sitting down. I shook my head. Reading our holos in the dark was probably bad for our eyes, but I didn't want to be able to see all the stolen glances of my friends if I didn't have to.

I shouldn't have said anything at all. I should have just disappeared to these people. They would have wondered where I'd gone, maybe even missed me, and then forgotten the girl who never should have been. I sat on a crest of self-pity above a pit of despair.

Maki let out a long fake sigh and pushed me in. "I wish my grades were as good as yours," she said, confessionally. "I bet you'll get into any school you want."

She was trying to make me feel better. I knew that. But it was so unfair. Everything in my life I hated refused to change, but everything I loved was being taken from me. I couldn't take it anymore. I carefully folded the cover over my tablet, stowed my things back in my pack, and then collapsed in on myself and cried like a little girl, burning with shame as everyone in the room heard me, but unable to move from the spot. I wept fat, greedy, self-indulgent tears and wailed until the echoes off the wooden bookcases made it sound like the room was screaming.

"It's okay, Kaori-chan," Maki said, moving to my side of the table and rubbing slow circles on my back. "It's okay. You'll always have us."

"No, I won't!" I wailed at her. Mom leaving was painful, more painful than I could believe, but it wasn't why I cried now. "My father wants to transfer me to a boarding school in America so he'll never have to see me again!"

The hand on my back had stopped for a second but only for a second.

"But you're still here studying? So if you do well enough on the entrance exams, he'll let you stay?"

"I don't know why I'm here," I said, wiping tears off the communal table with my sleeve. "I'm not even taking the exam. I'm leaving on Monday."

"That...that soon?" Maki said, and I heard her voice catching as well. "We...we can figure something out before then."

"It's two days, Maki-chan."

"Run away from home. Come live with me," she said, her eyes serious. I shook my head. I couldn't do that. It felt like I couldn't do anything.

"Tell him you're taking the exam anyway," Reeve said. "And when he sees how well you did, he'll be proud of you and let you stay."

"I don't tell him anything, okay!" I yelled, and then felt my chest draw tight instantly. "I don't...he's not the kind of father you just talk to."

The others didn't know my personal situation, except through scattered hints. If anyone had put them together, it was Maki, but if she knew, she wouldn't tell the others. She was a great friend. I didn't know how I was so lucky to have her. Maybe her being taken from me like this was just the universe's way of course-correcting back to what I deserved.

"Let's just study," I muttered, ignoring the tears in my eyes and took out my tablet again, my eyes in a haze even before I folded back the cover of the holo.

An hour passed with no noise except the sound of Akane and Kasuga shuffling around board game pieces and trying to get them back into the right box, occasionally whispering to each other 'what game is this from?'." Eventually I heard different whispers behind me, Reeve and Arimoto, and heard my name mentioned, barely at the limits of my hearing.

I felt a pained stab as I thought of them talking about me, literally behind my back. I didn't know what would be worse, if they were gossiping or sympathizing. Of course I didn't want to just be a spectacle for them, but somehow having them wasting their pity on me seemed even more painful.

I tried to tune it out, and before long, Maki stood up violently and swept over to them, hissing at them in a rough Kansai accent that only came out when she was exceptionally upset about something. Somehow she got drawn into their conversation and I found myself alone at my table for most of the next hour while the three of them spoke in voices too low to make out.

At some point, I saw Arimoto on his mobile, and a moment later, Akane's rang with a new message alert. She never remembered to turn off the sound when we were studying, but what grated on me more was how transparently stupid they must have all thought I was. All five of them, talking and messaging each other now, while I sat here pretending to study on my own.

Was this what my life was going to be from now on, I had to wonder. The feeling of everyone in the room focusing on me indirectly felt like a hot ball of lead inside me, but being ignored was even worse. When I moved to America, was this what I could expect? Half the class ignoring the transfer student with her shitty English (one of my strongest subjects actually, but I wasn't deluded enough to think that would carry over in a native-speaking country), half the class fixated on me as the new oddity? I hated all of it, and found myself, for the tenth time that day, wishing I was never born.

Maki intruded on my self-pity by sitting opposite me again. "You're leaving Monday, right?" she asked.

"Hai," I confirmed, slumping on the table.

"Then, how about tomorrow we have a going away party?" she asked, beaming a little, the smile not really reaching her eyes. "So you'll always have that to remember us by, at least."

I wasn't sure I wanted that much attention, and started to refuse, but before the words could come out, I felt like I couldn't say them. These were my best friends, hard-won, through mountains of effort and study together, and some of us went back years. Even if it made me uncomfortable, even if all I thought I could do right now was pretend to study, I had to say goodbye, for all of our sakes.

I realized, I wanted to say a proper goodbye to these people. I would need the memories of their smiles when I was far away and alone. Even if I didn't want it, even if my idea of a good evening was one where I got a lot of studying done...I needed this, I realized.

She outlined a broad plan. Nothing too extravagant, but it sounded pleasant, and nothing like we'd all gotten together to do before. Food, a little night life, some karaoke, the kinds of thing we were all missing out on by staring at books and holos until we burned our eyes out.

We talked about it, and nailed down specifics of where to go, and the longer we talked, the more excited I became. Even for a girl like me, one who didn't deserve to exist, I couldn't resist this, the opportunity to go and be with the friends I loved, just being happy together.

It was the week before our exams, and nobody really had a lot of spending money, but they were all willing to make those sacrifices for me. It really moved me in a way I didn't know I could be. I felt a little less empty inside. I knew in my mind it was just a small thing, but when everything seemed to be taken away from me all at once, it felt so huge.

Gradually it grew late enough that the only light in the room was the yellow-white squares of the holos glowing in blackness, and one by one, we filtered out to our own homes and lives. People stopped by to say goodbye to me on their way out, giving me an affectionate smile or even patting my head in Akane's case, like I was a schoolgirl, and while it was all very uncomfortable, it was also bittersweet.

It was late when I got home, and the servant welcomed me and inquired if I wanted to eat or bathe now, and I chose the latter. I spent a long time soaking and reading, fiction, not studying, one of the many books I'd read and re-read a hundred times with Mom, and now found myself doing out of habit whenever I wasn't doing anything else. And so I was incredibly late for dinner. It had to be reheated again, and I told my growling stomach to wait patiently.

I felt like everything that could go wrong in the world was, but I was also excited for tomorrow, and somehow both of these conflicting thoughts, both of which should have kept me up long into the night crashed into each other and neutralized one another, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I climbed under the covers of my futon.

Sunday was our one day off in the week, and most of us spent it studying anyway. I might usually catch up on some reading, and recently had been visiting Mom whenever I could, but today I had other plans. Real plans. I spent a lot longer picking out clothes than usual, dipping into the mostly-unused section outside of my school uniform or something to study in. I threw a couple of Mom's old books and a study guide which I felt naked without in a bag and headed out to buy a couple of things before we met that afternoon.

I was stopped at the door by a servant, who directed me into a black car on the street. My father had sent it for some reason, and my heart jumped unexpectedly at the crazy conclusion that maybe I would see him one last time before I left, in a sentimental way. Maybe even as a daughter.

It was impossible to hope for, stupid even, but the hope I had for that day was infectious. But as the car pulled away and headed east, instead of north, where my father lived and worked, I began to feel unease.

"Excuse me, where is this car going?" I asked the driver.

"To the airport, miss," the driver replied.

I fell back into my seat and tried to put together any way that this could possibly lead to any conclusion but the obvious. My heart, which was already only barely managing to beat felt like it was tearing itself to pieces, and I fed it invented theory after theory as to why this was fine, how it would all be okay. Father had said tomorrow.

"Why are we going to the airport?" I finally gathered the denial to ask.

"There is a jet to take Miss to America, I believe."

"That was tomorrow!" I found myself shouting. It was impossible. "Today was supposed to be mine! Today is my last day here, my last day with my friends, and my school! Why are we going today?"

"Regrettably, I cannot say, miss. I am just a driver."

"Turn the car around! Let me out!" I pulled at the handle and the door flew open for a moment, slamming almost immediately in the wind from the highway speeds.

Before I could do it again, the driver locked the door with a frown. I tore at the door handle, slamming myself against the interior. "Regrettably I cannot do that either, miss. These are your father's orders. Please conduct yourself properly."

I felt white-hot indignant rage flare inside me. I wanted to scream at him 'fuck my father!', he had never cared what I felt, why would I follow his orders and conduct myself properly now? I wanted to kick out the windows with the short heeled pumps I'd picked out to hang out with my friends in. I wanted to snap, break on the outside as badly as I felt broken on the inside.

He'd killed my mother. He'd taken away my sanctuary, my friends. He'd turned my entire existence into a mistake. And now, with a simple change of plans or slip of the tongue or lie, he'd taken away the last thing I had left.

I wanted to snap and destroy everything I could put my hands on, but I did none of those things. That wasn't the person I was. I wasn't an angry or violent or loud person, though I spent the next years of my life remembering that moment and wishing I were, wishing I'd done anything in my power to hold onto everything I had slipping through my fingers. Hold onto that one night where I could pretend to be normal, if nothing else.

But I didn't. I wasn't. I was just a person who was never supposed to exist.

So instead of sad, or angry, I felt empty as the plane took me high into the sky and I watched everything I knew shrinking and vanishing away from me. At this distance, it looked like all of Japan was just toys, a plaything for a child who didn't know anything about the real world, eventually consumed by the infinite blue of the sea.

By habit, I opened my bag and reached in. The last thing Mom had told me in the hospital, the last time I'd seen her were words she'd often said. Be good, study hard. I felt a numb stab as I pulled out one of Mom's books, and quickly putting it away, flipped open my study guide instead.

I closed the book a minute later and cried.