Meiru: Did You Think That Was A Joke?

“What is it?”

A bit startled, Meiru turns her head to the source of the voice. It was Sam’s, the barista. He has just put down two glasses of iced coffee in front of Meiru and Dia, the two of them were sitting at the countertop which was an extension from the service area.

Meiru stares at Sam “What?”

“I’m just curious. You stared at them with an inexplicable expression in your face,”

“The junior high school students who are sitting there?”

There are a group of junior high school girls in one of the tables at the seating area. Drinking teas and eating cakes while chatting among themselves loudly. Meiru looks at them again for a couple of seconds. She turns back her head and smiles a little. She was considering telling Sam about her thought. She is still unsure because she just got close to the barista after she started to come to the café recommended by Dia.

Meiru drinks her iced cappuccino and clears her throat. “Once, I told Dia that I was being bullied when I was in junior high. And that left a big scar in my heart.” Meiru smiles cynically as she feels bitter of what she is about to say, “and the worst of it, I didn’t even realize that I was being bullied. I realized it after I got into university. Seems odd, right?”.

Sam and Dia are waiting for Meiru to talk again as they are not sure about what to say. They know that to reveal about your darkest time is taking a lot of courage.

“I will tell you from the start. I spent my teenage years as a junior and senior high school student in a boarding school. Throughout those years, I lived in dormitories with approximately twenty teenage girls in each room”.

“Twenty? That was quite a lot”, says Sam.

“We slept on bunk beds”, Meiru raises her eyebrows and smiles. “Sometimes I would take the upper bed, sometimes I would take the lower bed. Every year we would switch the room so we would always have some new roommates. Each room would always consist of students from different class and year, with the exception of the first-year junior high school students. The first year of junior high school students who just entered the boarding school would not get mix with another year except for a couple of the third year senior high school students in each room. That third-year of senior high was given responsibilities to supervise the room”.

“I’m slow in adapting to a new environment. It was hard to get used to dormitories life at first. But, my roommates in the first year was kind, we helped out each other. And slowly, we got the hang of living in dormitories. Well… Being in one room with other people, sometimes there would be some disputes with each other. After all, we are a different person. But lived with twenty teenage girls in one room sure was fun.” Meiru smiles, but a few moments later, her expression change.

“But one also vulnerable to get bullied. Especially if you’re slow at adapt.” She is still smiling, but it changed into a sad smile. “At that time, I was the second year in junior high. I just moved into a new room and I got new roommates. The students in that room were a mix of few second years junior high, a couple of first-year senior high, and a couple of third-year senior high as room supervisor. I knew almost all of the students in my year, but I didn’t really know how they were in the dormitories because we were in a different room before. And also there are some that I just knew after we became a roommate. I was being bullied verbally by my roommates a whole year. We were in the same year, but she was someone I just knew after we became roommates.”

Meiru stops her story when a flash of the incident appears. She takes a few deep breaths as she feels her chest got tight from the memories. She had decided to accept her past and move on from it. She wants to become stronger and be a better person.

“What is it?” asks Dia.

“I was trying to remember is there anyone who was also my roommate in the first year. I can’t remember anyone. Strange,” says Meiru to cover what went through her mind.

“Maybe…” Dia starts to say something, “maybe, you don’t want to remember it…”

Meiru smiles at Dia’s words. “Maybe. I think that was because I was trying so hard to forget about those times. She always said that what she did was a joke when she saw me got angry. Once, I was trying to take a nap when she started. I got so angry and I jumped off the bed. And when I was walking out of the room with a frustrating feeling, she asked me why did I angry because she was only joking. Only once, just that one time, she said she was only joking. I remember that I felt she said that with a sinister voice. She continued to do it, even though I was never laughed at what she called a ‘joke’. I would say that was a bad joke.” Meiru pauses, “Talking about a bad joke, I just remember something. A drama I watch some times ago, titled ‘I Hear Your Voice’. Dia, do you know that drama?”

“Yes. The drama was about attorney story, right?”

“Relax,” says Meiru when she sees Sam, he was raised both of his eyebrows. “I won’t blab some drama synopsis. I know that you don’t like it. I never did that to my friends, even if they love Korean drama. I would just give them some resume. Well… the reason I mentioned that drama is because I just want to tell you a scene that connected to my story.”

“Alright. Go on,” says Sam.

“Like Dia said, the drama was about attorney story. There was this case about a girl who got charged with attempted murder, pushed her classmate from a window in the third-floor classroom. In the end, that case was proved as an accident, but at first when the girl was pointed as a suspect and being investigated in the prosecutor office. The prosecutor asked her if she was bullying her classmate who fell from the window because there are a lot of testimonies from other students. She answered that she didn’t bully her friend, that she was just joking around, that even the other classmates joined her. But then the prosecutor asked, whether her friend was laughing too. The joke was made to get the involved person laughing if her friend didn’t laugh, then what she did was terrorizing her friend. I think that words can also be applied to my case. She said that she was just joking, but that didn’t amuse me. Instead, that was made me felt being terrorized.”

Meiru takes a deep breath and says, “Because of that ‘nap incident’, I developed a nasty self defence-mechanism. I became overly sensitive when I was just wake up, and I would attack anyone if I felt attacked by them. I always feel sorry to my parents. I hurt them so much because of that. But now I’m glad that those ‘nasty self defence-mechanism’ is gradually wearing off. Now I can think more clearly, I rarely get over-sensitive and whip my words around when I just wake up. That was because I don’t want to keep hurting my parents and people around me whenever I woke up.”

『明瑠』

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