#nonweeb story

I’m not really sure this counts as a weeb story, but it seems like the kind of thing ya’ll might like. Also submitting anon, because I don’t really want her to find me again.

Key:

Me: Rowan

My sister: Mika

My present girlfriend: Ami

Weeb (is it a weeb?): Poubelle

Strap yourselves in, mayonnaises and mustards, ‘cause this is going to be a long-ass story. 

So, my mom is a good flutist. Like, really good. Like, so good she owned a solid gold flute once upon a time, and played in an extremely renowned orchestra in the Bay Area. But then she had children, and she decided she needed a better job. So she sold the gold flute and went off to go get a degree.

She has since acquired said degree, and has lately been taking up fluting again, with a sterling silver flute gifted to her from her old tutor. My little sister, Mika, wants to become a flutist as well, so Mom has been helping her along with her practice. Mika is extremely good now, and uses the silver flute, but still owns the nickel flute she started off with.

All of this is important for reasons I will explain later on.

The story started when Fallout 4 came out. Being a fan of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I bought it and was extremely pleased with it in general. Unfortunately, other people were too.

Enter Poubelle. Poubelle did not shun society; as a matter of fact, she was part of a very wide group of friends who were into video games, superhero movies, Doctor Who, that circle of fandom. I was (and still am) very much of a lone wolf, so when I had to run with a group, they were the ones I turned to. Generally, all of them were good, friendly people that liked me and were not assholes. Except Poubelle.

Poubelle bathed every other day, generally kept her voice at an inside level, and didn’t go around forcing her ships on every third person. She was different than most weeaboos/horrible awful fangirls I’d known, so I think that was why I didn’t notice her at first.

Somewhere during one lunch, it comes out somewhere that I like Fallout 4. Surprise surprise, she does too. So by the peculiar dynamics of high school law, we are now friends.

Poubelle and I hit it off immediately. She seemed like a friendly enough person, especially to my lonely self. But thinking back on it now, I suppose there were a lot of warning signs. For one thing, this girl was extremely judgmental. She was eager to bash things that I liked, but if I tried the same with her, she called me rude and jealous.

She was also one of those people that made lots of “jokes.” She would say things that were sometimes morally questionable, and when called out on it, she would screech that it was just a joke and that I shouldn’t take it seriously. It got to the point where it was difficult to tell what was supposed to be funny and what wasn’t. And she always compared things to Fallout 4, even when the subject didn’t relate to Fallout at all, or even video games.

I met my current girlfriend, Ami, about a few months after I’d met Poubelle. By this point, Poubelle had become a deeply toxic person, but I was turning a blind eye to it because (I thought) she was a friend.

Where Poubelle was like a stinky, shallow brown lake with a sheen of oil on top, Ami was like a quiet, clean river. She was honestly the nicest person I’d ever met, and was clever and optimistic to boot. She was so different than Poubelle, that I started spending more and more time with her. I still hung out with Poubelle, but I suspect that she was jealous of Ami, who was getting more of my attention.

This is where the part about the flutes comes into play. I had told both Poubelle and Ami about my mother and sister, because they are one of those things I was proud about. Poubelle was over at my house one night, and I had both of the flutes on my bed and was cleaning them. I still remember the conversation we had.

P: Wait, that’s the silver one?

R: Yep. The other’s nickel.

P: Do they sound the same?

R: I can’t tell any difference, but I’m just an uncultured pleb, heh. I would think the silver one plays better, though. 

P: Cool. How much was it?

R: I dunno. Couple thousand, maybe? It was a gift, so I don’t really know.

Fast forward a week. Both flutes had disappeared a couple days earlier, which left the three of us females and my dad to frantically search for them. I was playing Minecraft on my laptop in the kitchen when the doorbell rang, but Mika was the one who opened the door. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I’ll try to put the best approximation of what everyone said.

R: Mika, can you get that?

M: Of course I can, you lazy bum. 

<Door opens, followed by several seconds of silence>

M: What the fuck?

R: What?

I go to the door, and there’s Poubelle, standing there with a shitty trying-to-be-sorry look, while holding the flattened remains of one of our flutes.

P: I found this on the road, I’m so sorry.

M: Why the hell was it on the road!?

R: Maybe you dropped it or something, like on the way from practice.

P: Yes, this is the silver one, so that might have happened.

Poubelle’s comment catches me off guard, because I know the flute she’s holding is nickel from having cleaned it so many times. I tell her that it’s actually the nickel flute she’s holding, and she continues to insist it’s the silver one. Eventually, she starts getting frustrated and shoves the smashed flute in my face, then stomps off the porch.

I confront her at school the next day, where she angrily claims to know nothing. At this point, I have an incredibly bad feeling that Poubelle knows where the actual silver flute is.

Over the course of the week, Mika, Ami, and I start making plans. My mom, of course, is very interested in where her prized flute went, so when I tell her that Poubelle might have it, she immediately goes into full rage mode. She goes to the police, and seeing both that they have nothing better to do, and that there’s a two-thousand-dollar flute with immense sentimental value on the line, a search warrant is obtained fairly quickly.

Four days later, the search is conducted, and lo and fucking behold, the silver flute is found in Poubelle’s bedroom.

My sister and I had largely been left out of the legal proceedings, and since this ordeal took place just before school ended, I have no idea what Poubelle’s reaction was to getting caught. However, I did hear that she got charged with grand larceny (the flute was $2000) and is now spending time in a juvenile detention center, as she had committed several larcenous crimes before that. 

Hoo boy. And to think this all started with Fallout.