The sun shone brightly in the azure sky, the swings in the schoolyard rocking gently back and forth to the rhythm of the cool spring breeze. Inside the school classroom itself, Nozomu Itoshiki sat opposite Cheerilee, glaring down at the ground as he sighed despondently.
“So…why did you want to see me, Mr. Itoshiki?” Cheerilee asked.
“W-well…I was hoping you could counsel me, to be honest…” he admitted sheepishly.
“Um…well, I’m not really a counsellor…” she began, before noticing the look of worry on Nozomu’s face at this comment and continuing “b-but I’ll still listen to what you have to say!”
Nozomu nodded and glumly began, “I…am a pony with no reason to live.”
Cheerilee tilted her head to one side in confusion, “Why do you say that?”
“Because both my mind and heart are impure,” he replied solemnly, “my twisted mind ruins everything.” He paused for a moment, before continuing “For example, this morning I was walking through the Ponyville market, and overheard a mare talking about the upcoming ‘Applebuck Season’.”
“You mean the one over at Sweet Apple Acres? Well, what’s so wrong about that?” Cheerilee inquired.
“Because a few moments earlier, I had heard a pony using the word ‘buck’ as an expletive, and upon hearing ‘Applebuck Season’ shortly after, the two phrases combined in my head to create a horrifying phrase!” he exclaimed, burying his head in his forehooves in frustration.
“Ah, because in your mind, Applebuck Season became…” she paused; “Yes, I can see how that would be depressing,” she concluded morosely.
Nozomu threw his head back and cried, “I’M IN DESPAIR! This society that corrupts innocent words by using them as placeholders for language that is much more vulgar has left me in despair!” before dropping his face back into his hooves.
After a short pause, he trotted over to the window and glared out at the schoolyard. “Now the previously innocuous phrase ‘Applebuck Season’ has been corrupted in my mind forevermore, which could potentially lead to many uncomfortable situations later on in my life; thus, the only possible solution to this dilemma would be…to end my own life,” he concluded thusly.
“Um…y-you don’t need to go that far…” Cheerilee stammered nervously, before quickly changing the subject and adding “A-anyway, let’s talk about something else…apparently, one of the students in your class has become a recluse after a recent incident; what you would call a ‘hikikomori’ in your language.”
Nozomu turned towards Cheerilee, a confused look on his face. “A hikikomori? You mean a shut-in?” he asked.
“That’s right. Several of her friends have attempted to get her to leave her room, but none of their attempts so far have succeeded. Considering that she’s one of the students in your evening classes, I thought that you could head over there and check up on her, to make sure that she’s okay.”
Turning back to the window, Nozomu muttered “I already have my own share of problems right now. I don’t have enough time to deal with a student’s issues at the moment…”
As he glanced back at Cheerilee, he saw her giving him a stare that would have rivalled – possibly even outclassed – Fluttershy’s own, and he quickly recoiled, stammering “U-um…w-well, I suppose that it couldn’t hurt to check up on her, right?” before hastily galloping out of the classroom.
Once he was out of the room, Cheerilee smiled sweetly and commented “I’m glad we could work things out.”
It wasn’t long before Nozomu Itoshiki was standing before Carousel Boutique, admiring the overall elegance of the building’s design.
Sighing, Nozomu began to mutter “Miss Cheerilee’s gaze is unsettling…” before being interrupted by a nearby voice. Turning to its source, he saw an excited pink mass eagerly bounding towards him, an excited grin glued to her face.
“Hey, Pink Supervisor! What’s up? Besides the sky, I mean?” Pinkie asked with her usual exuberance.
“Pinkie Pie? What are you doing here?” Nozomu responded quizzically.
“Oh, I just thought that I’d bring Rarity some sweet snacks to try and coax her out of her room!” Pinkie replied, pulling a cupcake out of hammerspace for a moment to show Nozomu before returning it to said void. After a short pause, she added “So, why are you here?”
“Actually, I’m here visiting her on orders from Miss Cheerilee,” Nozomu admitted.
“Cool! Mind if I tag along?” Pinkie asked.
“But…weren’t you going to see her anyway?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be more fun if we see her together!” Pinkie added, grinning.
After a moment of hesitation, Nozomu shrugged and replied “I suppose so…”, before they both entered the boutique together.
As they neared Rarity’s room, Nozomu overheard a duo of voices arguing loudly.
“Come on, Sis! Please come out! You can’t stay in there forever!” a younger voiced whined.
“I can, and I will! I’m never leaving this room again! I can never show my face in Ponyville – nay, Equestria – ever again!” the other voice shrieked.
“Come on, Rarity. Just because one little outfit went wrong…” the younger voice pleaded.
“‘One little outfit’?! That ‘one little outfit’, as you so call it, was supposed to be a gift for Sapphire Shores, a magnificent ensemble that would have enhanced her concert and immortalised my name in the history of Equestrian fashion forevermore! But when she wore that outfit onstage…the crowd booed her! They booed her because of my outfit! How could I show my face in Equestria after that?” Rarity retorted.
“But Rarity-” the younger voice began.
“Leave me alone! I want to be left alone!” Rarity wailed.
As they turned the corner, Nozomu spotted a young filly walking away from Rarity’s room; her head hung low in sorrow. As they approached, she lifted her head up slowly, and Nozomu could see tears forming in her eyes.
“No luck, Sweetie Belle?” Pinkie asked worriedly.
“No luck. I’m starting to wonder if she’ll ever come out of her room again…” Sweetie replied, looking back towards Rarity’s door and sniffling.
“Don’t worry, Sweetie Belle…I’m sure she’ll be back to her old self soon! Just you wait and see!” Pinkie reassured her, pulling the cupcake back out of hammerspace and giving it to Sweetie Belle. The young filly smiled in return, taking the cupcake and balancing it on her back.
“Thanks, Pinkie,” she replied, before turning to Nozomu with a confused look on her face. “Hey, who’s this?”
“Oh, this is Nozomu Itoshiki, or as I like to call him, Pink Supervisor!” Pinkie explained cheerfully.
“Pink Supervisor? Why’d you call him that?”
“Because he was hanging from Pink Gabriel, the cherry blossom tree!”
“Hanging…?”
“From a noose. He was trying to make himself taller.” Pinkie stated bluntly.
“For the last time, I was trying to commit suicide, not make myself taller!” Nozomu objected angrily.
“Ah, Pink Supervisor! You’re such a kidder!” Pinkie giggled, playfully punching him in the foreleg and earning herself a scowl from Nozomu in the process. Turning back to Sweetie Belle, she finished “Anyway, he teaches an evening class that Rarity and I attend, so we though that maybe he could convince your sister to leave her room.”
“Okay…” Sweetie Belle responded, not sure what to make of all this; “Well, I’ll be downstairs if you guys need me, so…see you guys later!” she added, before quickly trotting out of sight.
As he watched her leave, Nozomu commented, “I take it that she’s Rarity’s younger sister, then?”
“Yep! That’s Sweetie Belle; along with her friends Applebloom and Scootaloo, she’s part of the Cutie Mark Crusaders! I’ll have to introduce you to them sometime!” Pinkie replied cheerfully, before turning back to Rarity’s room with a thoughtful – yet determined – expression on her face. “Now, how are we going to get Rarity to leave her room?”
The pink party pony stood there, her hoof raised up to her chin, pondering the possible resolution to the perplexing, problematic predicament she currently faced, all the while gazing intently at the door with a level of intensity rarely seen in her eyes. The effect was rather spoilt when Nozomu simply trotted up to the door and knocked on it with his hoof. “Rarity? It’s me, Nozomu Itoshiki. Would I be able to have a few words with you?”
“Mr. Itoshiki?” Rarity answered curiously. After a moment of silence, she continued, “I apologise, Mr. Itoshiki, but I am not accepting visitors at the moment and would rather be left alone. Good day.”
Nozomu shrugged and trotted back over to Pinkie. “Well, that didn’t work. Let’s go.”
“Are you kidding? We’ve just got to try harder!” Pinkie objected; grabbing Nozomu and dragging him back over to the door of Rarity’s room.
“Rarity, Pink Supervisor came all this way to see you! Isn’t it a little rude to ignore him like that?” Pinkie yelled, banging on the door with her hoof.
“Pinkie? You’re there too?” Rarity responded.
“That’s right! We’re your friends, Rarity! You can at least talk to us!” Pinkie pleaded.
“Please, Pinkie…I would rather be left on my own right now…” Rarity murmured sorrowfully.
Sighing, Pinkie turned to Nozomu and asked “Now what do we do?”
“I would suggest that you offer her the cupcake you brought for her, but if I recall correctly you gave that to her sister,” Nozomu replied.
“Oh, that? Nonononono, that wasn’t the cupcake I brought for Rarity, it was a spare,” she pulled another cupcake out of hammerspace; “this is the cupcake I brought for Rarity!” she said with a grin.
After staring at the confectionary with a puzzled look for a few seconds, Nozomu shook his head and suggested “Then why don’t you offer it to her? It might coax her out of her room, like you said.”
“Oh, yeah! Good thinking!” she squealed excitedly before calling out, “Hey, Rarity! I brought you a cupcake! Want to try it? It’s good!” However, her offer was met with dull silence.
She rubbed her chin with her hoof thoughtfully for a moment, before quickly turning to Nozomu with a manic expression and shoving the cupcake into his hooves. “I’ve got an idea! You climb on to the roof and lower yourself down to her window with some rope! Then you can climb in and give her the cupcake!”
Nozomu simply stared at her, mouth agape, before flatly responding with “What.”
“Come on! It’s the only way we’ll be able to deliver that cupcake to her! Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle and I will try to convince her to leave her room!” she begged.
“But we’ve just been trying that for the last few minutes, and it didn’t work at all!” he protested.
“Trust me on this! I know what I’m doing!” she called out as she galloped downstairs.
Nozomu looked down at the cupcake in his hoof and shook his head, stating “Well, I suppose a plan’s a plan…”
It wasn’t long before Nozomu was on the roof, carefully lowering himself down towards the window, the rope wrapped around his waist to prevent him from slipping off.
“Why do I have to do this…?” he grumbled in annoyance, shaking his head.
Suddenly, his hoof broke through the guttering as he stepped onto it, causing him to tumble backwards from the roof down the side of the building. Worse still, his body slipped right through the loosely-wrapped rope, causing it to tighten around his neck as he plummeted.
Inside her dimly-lit room, Rarity lifted her head up from her bed and looked over at the closed curtains nervously, her mane bedraggled and unkempt from a combination of both stress and lack of maintenance. “What was that noise just now?”
She apprehensively began to make her way over to the window, before being interrupted by a knock from the door. She paused for a moment, before trotting back towards the door.
“Rarity, it’s me, Pinkie!” Pinkie began.
“And me too!” Sweetie chimed in.
“Please come out and talk to us! We’re really worried about you, and we just want to make sure you’re okay!” Pinkie pleaded.
“Come on, sis! What you’re doing is really selfish!” Sweetie added.
After an awkward silence, Rarity confusedly responded “…I’m being…selfish?”
“That’s right! Everypony’s worried sick about you because you stay locked in your room all the time and keep turning everyone away, even though all we want to do is talk to you and help you out!” Sweetie yelled.
“Yeah! I mean, I know that what happened with Sapphire Shores’ outfit must have been rough on you, but you’re never going to be able to deal with it unless you come out and have a real conversation with us!” Pinkie added.
“Please, Rarity…just come out and talk to us…” Sweetie begged.
Another awkward silence followed, before Rarity sighed and admitted, “Alright…I suppose I have been rather selfish by making you all worry. I’ll come out and talk to you for a few minutes. But first let me open these windows; it is getting rather musty in here.”
As she trotted over to the window she heard her sister and friend cheer outside, along with the sound of a high-hoof. Smiling, she tilted her horn towards the windows, enveloping the curtains in a faint glow before flinging them open with her magic.
Upon which she was greeted with the sight of Nozomu Itoshiki’s still corpse, strung up by the neck with a noose and dangling gently in the breeze. Her mouth fell agape in horror, but before she had a chance to react the corpse’s head lifted up and screamed at her “WHAT IF I HAD DIED?!”
Rarity then smashed through the bedroom door and galloped out of her room, shrieking in terror all the while. As she galloped away, a look of worry emerged on the faces of both Pinkie Pie and Sweetie Belle.
“Well, at least she’s out of her room…” Pinkie weakly commented, while Sweetie Belle dropped down onto her haunches.
“Oh, horseapples…” she murmured in frustration.
The sun descended over the horizon as the day neared it's end, basking the schoolhouse in a warm and calming glow. However, the peaceful atmosphere was soon shattered by the frantic clopping of hooves against dirt, as a trio of ponies galloped hurriedly along the gravel path leading up to the schoolhouse.
“Are you sure she'll be here, Pinkie?” Nozomu asked frustratedly.
“Yeah! I mean, we've been looking all over Ponyville for three hours now, and we still haven't found her!” Sweetie added.
“I'm not sure! But we've checked all of the other places she regularly visits, and this is the last spot I could think of!” she explained.
The soon stopped outside the schoolhouse; as they trotted up to the front door, Nozomu began to reach into his kimono.
“Well, in any case, even if she is here – which I doubt she will be, considering that the place should have been locked up tight all day – I'm still not sure if we'll be able to say anything that'll convince her to head back to Carousel Boutique,” he remarked.
“Sure we will!” Pinkie replied, “Once she sees that you're safe and sound and alive and well, she'll realise that there's nothing to get worried about and she'll come back home with us!”
Pulling the door key out of his kimono, Nozomu began to comment “I'm not so sure if-” before being interrupted by the door of the schoolhouse swinging open suddenly. Cheerilee stood in the doorway, giving a surprised look at Nozomu before quickly switching it to one of annoyance and condemnation.
“Mr. Itoshiki...how lovely to see you. I've just been having a little chat with Rarity, and she seems to have been mentioning something about...a suicide attempt outside her window?” she said in an icy tone.
Nozomu quickly shot a worried look towards Pinkie and Sweetie, before turning back to Cheerilee. “I-I can explain! Pinkie Pie suggested the cupcake, and climbing the roof, and I slipped, and-” he faltered nervously, before Cheerilee interrupted him.
“Regardless of what happened, after a brief conversation with Rarity, I have managed to reassure her that what happened was simply a misunderstanding, and that you were not trying to commit suicide because she refused to come out of her room as you led her to believe,” she explained, pausing to observe the look of guilt on Nozomu's face before adding “However, thanks to your little display she is still somewhat emotionally shaken, and – barring the occasional visit to the schoolhouse for your weekly lessons – she will therefore need to remain in her home at Carousel Boutique in order to recuperate from this event.”
“Come now, Cheerilee. I don't think we need to go that far,” Rarity commented.
As Cheerilee stepped out of the doorway to let her through, Rarity trotted onto the front porch of the schoolhouse, smiling calmly despite her frazzled look, “Indeed, while I was a little shaken from this at first, once I remembered Mr. Itoshiki's previous attempts at such an activity-
“Previous attempts?” Cheerilee murmured questioningly.
“-I soon realised that this was little more than an attention-grabbing act from Mr. Itoshiki, as it always is, and realised there was little to worry about.” she added, looking towards Nozomu as he glanced away sheepishly.
“In any case, it is getting rather late, and there are some things that I must attend to. Come, Sweetie Belle. We're going home.” Rarity concluded, trotting down the gravel path with her younger sister following closely behind. After a few moments of silence, Rarity called back “Mr. Itoshiki!”
Nozomu's ears pricked up at the sound of his name and he turned towards her direction. “Um...yes?”
Rarity glanced back to face him with a sweet smile on her face, giving a moment's pause before angrily hissing “I've got my eye on you...”; then, she continued on her way without another word.
There was an awkward silence between the three remaining ponies that lasted for a few minutes, before Cheerliee coughed nervously and remarked “Well, I suppose I'd better be getting home too; I have some papers to grade, so...”
“Yeah, I promised the Cakes I'd help them prepare some muffins for tomorrow, so I'd probably better get going...” Pinkie added.
As the two of them trotted off, Nozomu simply sat on his haunches dumbfounded, attempting to mentally process what had just transpired. Eventually, he simply sighed and shook his head, locking up the schoolhouse before proceeding to make his way home.