My Childhood Friend And Subtitles

According to my childhood friend, “Sitting around waiting for something fun to happen is fine and all, but going out and making it happen yourself is a whole lot more fun.” …or so it goes.

She wore the face of someone all but announcing (My usual rowdiness? That’s just me taking the initiative to add a splash of color to life, you see.), though in truth most of it was nothing but her plain, unvarnished self. This childhood friend of mine, one Sakura Ayuri… well, as for what she’d gotten up to this time…

“Let’s come up with subtitles for everyday life! Hup!”

— Clap, clap, clap.

“Huh, what? Is this the intro to a video?”

It was after school, early evening, the hour when the sun had lately taken to setting earlier and earlier. We were walking home together, and the instant our conversation lulled, Ayu clapped her hands and launched into that. Sure, she wanted a fresh topic, but couldn’t she have come up with something a little better?

“Do you even know what a subtitle is, Gin?”
“It’s that thing, right? The one they read out during the next-episode preview on shows like Sa*ae-san.”
“Yes yes, that’s the one, Gin.”
“…What’s with this manzai-routine energy?”

Or a radio show, maybe. Either way, Ayu clearly meant to ignore my bewilderment and plow on. Neither of us had a shift today, so I figured I might as well play along for the length of one dull walk home.

“Basically it’s the part that sums a story up in a few words — in this case, I just take something that happened recently and boil it down to a single line, right? Leave it to me.”
“Oh, you’ve already got one? Then let’s hear it!”

“Ayuri Becomes a Gyaru.

“Ayuri, Autumn Glutton.

“Ayuri Becomes a Maid.

“…And those are the three for today.”

“That’s a total rip-off! And they’re all about me!”
“The only person around me who seems likely to turn into that kind of funny story is you, Ayu…”
“There’s gotta be a few more, right?! Like Hotaru, or Hina, riiight?!”
“Be sure to tune in again next week, okay? Rock, paper, scissors, go! Ufufufu~”
“Don’t just sign off on your own!”

What a noisy childhood friend. I’d gone and played along with her dumb little bit, which by my count earned me praise, not complaints. And besides, hadn’t she just casually said something a bit rude about the senior and Hina?

“You’ve got it wrong, Ginko. The kind of subtitle I want isn’t that comedy-route stuff, you see…”
“Your everyday life is nothing but comedy, though.”
“That’s not true… probably.”
“That’s the part where you’re supposed to deny it with confidence.”

Still, once I fenced it in with the “everyday” stuff that had happened to Ayu lately, it really did start to feel like there was nothing to it but comedy. It wasn’t that Ayu was a round-the-clock, 365-days-a-year idiot-comedy act from top to bottom. But the times she gave off a serious air usually had something to do with her reincarnator side; in other words, only when the “extraordinary” part of her came into play. And if that was the case, wasn’t most of Ayu’s life tilted toward comedy after all? Even I, the only person who knew that extraordinary side, rarely brushed up against her serious air.

“I mean, come on — I’m basically trying to spend everyday life having fun with everybody, y’know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that’s exactly why, every so often, I’ve gotta play the fool and clown around myself, see…”
“Really? So all your usual carrying-on is an act?”

No matter how I looked at it, this was just her plain self showing through… if anything, even this very topic had swung pretty far into idiot territory… or rather…

“Also, doesn’t saying it yourself kind of spoil the whole thing?”
“Hmph~! It’s the truth, so what can you do — I am a false comedian brimming over with the spirit of service…!”
“I see. So from now on, whenever you pull something, I’ll look at you with pity in my eyes, like you’re some cringey girl running it all by careful calculation.”
“Sorry, that was just me being me.”

To kill an amateur’s gag, you don’t need a blade; a cold stare does the job just fine.

…Wait, what were we even talking about?

“No, that’s not it, Gin! Forget about me — the main topic is subtitles! Sub-titles!”
“It was so unimportant I forgot.”
“So mean!”

Even so, would even an anime otaku talk about this sort of thing these days…? No, would they? The only people around me who might get it were this girl or Sumire, so honestly, I couldn’t tell.

“…So, what was it — you don’t want comedy-route subtitles, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’d like something stylish, or cool.”
“…Is this ‘subtitle’ business even something that elaborate to begin with?”
“Depends on the work, I guess. Like you said earlier, plenty of them name their episodes off a set pattern — even Dora*mon keeps a consistent feel across the TV series and the movies, right?”
“…Well, now that you mention it.”

Thinking back on it, sure enough. Then again, it wasn’t as if I went out of my way to watch anime or anything; maybe if I reread the manga I’d already been through, they’d turn out surprisingly elaborate too, for all I knew.

“You’re really knowledgeable about that stuff, huh, Ayu?”
“Well, that’s what happens when you watch a lot of things. For my favorite works I pay attention to that side too, and suck up every last drop of the nutrition that goes by the name of information!”
“Gross way to put it… so what kinds are there?”

If she was fixated enough to say all that, she had to be quite the expert… though the second the question left my mouth, I felt like I’d poked at the worst side of an otaku, and regretted it a little.

“Hmm… off the top of my head… there’s the kind where every episode is unified as exactly two kanji.”
“Kanji.”
“And the kind where each episode works in exactly one letter of the alphabet…”
“Alphabet.”
“There’s the kind that keeps things simple and snappy by weaving an English word into every subtitle.”
“English words.”
“…Well, something like that, I guess. What do you think, Gin?”
“Hmm…”

Two kanji was… surely a touch too hardboiled? The alphabet and English-word ones seemed like the kind that live or die on taste, and… wait…

“This… is this maybe your beloved tokusatsu again?”
“Gulp.”
“Then those are all built around serious plots with battle scenes and the like — no way that fits your happy-go-lucky comedy life.”
“W-well, that was just an example of ones I thought were stylish… it’s not like I’m gonna wholesale rip one off this time…”
“Hmm… but either way, you can’t even use them for reference. Turn your life into an anime and it’d still be a sloppy slice-of-life, so slapping something that stylish or elaborate on it would only fall flat.”
“Gnghh… I can’t deny ‘happy-go-lucky’ or ‘sloppy’… a perfectly fair critique…”

Besides, even if she’d wanted them for reference, Ayu didn’t have that kind of taste… not that I was claiming I did.

“Th-then let’s toss out the whole set-pattern, consistency angle and just keep it simple!”
“Meaning?”
“So, from something I watched recently that made me go ‘ooh!’…”
“Tokusatsu again?”
“…So anyway?”

This girl straight-up ignored me.

“First off, that episode has a subtitle like ‘Welcome to Such-and-Such!’”
“Mm-hm, mm-hm.”
“And before watching, I figured, ‘I wonder if the heroes get a warm welcome at this place called Such-and-Such?’ — but it turned out to be hardly any kind of welcome at all.”
“Huh.”
“Well, a whole lot happened from there, and the episode wrapped up neat and tidy, all’s-well-that-ends-well… but that’s when it hit me: ‘Wait, the one who really got welcomed was the alien they were hiding, wasn’t it?’”
“Oh, so it’s one with aliens in it.”
“…Anyway, something like that — basically, what I’m saying is it’s great when the impression flips completely between before you watch and after… it hurtsh—”

This girl ignored me again. They say even the Buddha’s patience runs out after three strikes, but I’m no Buddha, so I stop forgiving at two. And so I gave this hateful little cheek a pinch… soft.

“From the sound of it, that was quite the dramatic story.”
“Yeah.”
“Your everyday life doesn’t have that dramatic, ‘sudden twist!’ kind of element, though. It’s a pretty ordinary life, isn’t it?”
“…It doesn’t have to be about me — it could be your story, y’know, Gin?”
“…Me?”

From my angle, huh… True, I’d been looking at it from Ayu’s side this whole time. But maybe I was the one who could actually dig a subtitle out of everyday life, watching a noisy reincarnator like her from right up close.

“Did anything even happen today?”
“Hmm… English, math, Japanese history… ah! Today at lunch, Gin swiped the karaage out of my bento and then foisted her cherry tomatoes off on me!”
“…Well, chalk that up as payment for all the grief you usually give me — anything else…?”
“Ehh… beyond that, there was a little talk about next month’s culture festival, maybe?”
“That one ended at nothing more than ‘we’ll settle it by a vote next period, so think it over,’ though.”

Put that way, it was surprisingly little to show for it, considering a weirdo like her had been glued to my side as my childhood friend all this time.

As we walked on, we reached the stretch where my house was nearly in sight. This chatter of ours, which did neither harm nor good, was drawing to a close too.

“Aww, guess a subtitle really is impossible for a girl as ordinary as me, past-life memories aside, huh.”
“You’ve got plenty of not-so-ordinary things going for you besides that, like your singing.”
“If I were in a band or the light music club, maybe, but… eh, if I had to slap a subtitle on my daily life, something like ‘Episode 1’ or ‘Such-and-Such (1)’ would do the trick.”
“Hmm…”

My house came into view just ahead. This was where Ayu and I parted for the day, but since we’d made it this far, I figured I’d send her off with one last line.

“All right, then, let me be the one to hand off a subtitle for Ayu’s day today.”
“Ooh! You’ve got a good one? Tell me, tell me!”

Eyes sparkling with delight, my childhood friend waited on tenterhooks for whatever I’d say next. So I told her:

“Ayuri Wants a Subtitle.”
“It’s just Sa*ae-san all over again in the end!”

Same slice-of-life genre in the end, so this would do just fine.