Chapter Fourteen: Disappearing Acts
For explanations of Japanese terms, check Terminologies at Writings main page.
Torikawa Sekai
"Ohayou!" Erika greeted the class with a regal spread of her arms, sliding the door fully open to grace everyone with the full impact of her happy morning aura.
Despite my lack of interest in education, I was not allowed to appear late for class, thanks to Erika. She was apparently an impossibly cheerful morning person, who publicly won that title from me after massively annoying Kuromura the first time the three of us met up for breakfast at the student cafeteria before the start of lessons each day.
Speaking of which, Kuromura was absent for our breakfast meeting this morning whereas she would normally turn up way earlier than us just to snap at our tardiness. Or it could have been for the mega-watt grins on our faces.
"Aki-sempai didn't return any of my messages that I sent her ever since she got dragged off by her brother last Saturday," Erika had mentioned while munching on her croissant during breakfast. That sounded strange, even for Kuromura, who had started developing a soft spot for our newest addition. Although, she would rather die a thousand gruesome deaths, suffocated in a crowd of childishly cute and pink stuffed toys than to admit her sentiments.
Taking Erika's schoolbag to her table so that she could be free to go around annihilating everyone with the flashy smile she always used in conjunction with her sing-song "Good morning!", I noticed someone sitting behind her seat. Kuromura's seat.
I turned fully to face her, thinking that the cold-hearted Kuromura Aki had forsaken our breakfast meeting (it did happen before, no surprise there), only to realise that it was not her.
She was staring out the window on her right in the same way Kuromura did, with her left palm supporting her face while the rest of the arm acted as a barrier between herself and the rest of the class; or the rest of the world, by the looks of how she always carried herself. The picture of resemblance before my eyes was uncanny, but Kuromura had red hair; this girl had black. And Kuromura never wore glasses.
"Uh..." I started. Must get this girl out of Kuromura's seat before she could incur the redhead's morning wrath!
The girl turned her head at an angle, chin still resting upon her hand, to face me. Her large round spectacles blinded me momentarily as sunlight reflected off the lenses, hiding her eyes behind their silver glaze. Silky black hair was tied up in a low ponytail while countless pins held up the strands that were too short and were left out.
Wait- That band around her hair looked familiar! Erika had given Kuromura the exact same one just the week before, but... how could this girl have the same band when Erika had handmade the one Kuromura received?
"Really, do you have to space out each time I change my hair colour?"
Huh?
"Oh! Aki-sempai!" Erika bounced up to her at that moment. "Trying out a new style?"
I spun around to gape at Erika; how did she know that was Kuromura right away?
"How did you...?" I sputtered.
Erika wagged her forefinger at me, "Onii-san, this is one of the things in the world that doesn't need to be explained!" Flashing a grin, she turned back to wave her hands in front of Kuromura's face, "Aki-sempai, ohayou!"
There was a split second pause before she returned the greeting, then facing the window again.
"Hey, Kuromura, what's with dyeing your hair black? Has it got to do with your brother coming last weekend?" Squatting down, I rested my elbows on her desk and attempted to look past her spectacles.
"There are certain... unforeseen issues that I need to be prepared for."
Erika and I shared a brief glance at that.
"You're talking about the new subject grading system, right?" Erika squeezed in between the window and Kuromura's seat.
Kuromura rolled her eyes, fixing her gaze straight ahead. "No."
Of course Erika would think that it was everything else but Kuromura's family, seeing that the now bespectacled girl was against speaking about that issue with anyone. And I doubt that what I knew was the whole story.
"But Aki-sempai, you can't not be worried about the change in the system!"
True, Kuromura and I would have much to be vexed about ever since the school got rid of the old system where any student would be promoted to the next standard as long as he or she passed the final examination. The newly implemented system would take in certain percentages of various scores from normal tests, quizzes, class attendance and whether homework was completed.
It would be difficult for the both of us, who only bothered to cram for final examinations at the last minute. Literally.
Kuromura let out a sharp breath, "That will come on its own time. Get back to your seats, sensei just came in."
Instances like that reminded me of how difficult it was to read Kuromura. She was just too skilful at directing people away from her problems, or from herself, for that matter. And we would feel too awkward to press on for more. Well, not for me but the glare from our teacher demanded that I get back to my seat, whether I liked it or not, successfully depriving me from getting some answers.
When it was lunch break, Kuromura had disappeared off before either Erika or I could get hold of her and did not return until the bell chimed, her accuracy shockingly dead-on.
And at the moment when our last period ended, she left before I could even start to pack the things strewn all over my desk.
"Aki-sempai sure is in a hurry to leave," Erika mused, sitting on Kuromura's desk while she watched me tidy my papers.
I huffed, throwing my finally packed schoolbag over my shoulder, "And why she was in such a rush, I have a feeling we will never find out. Come on," I steered Erika out of the classroom. "Let's get something to eat before you help me with homework."
Giving one last backward glance at Kuromura's clean and painfully empty seat, I gently pushed Erika out of the door and followed after her.
That was the first day that we started seeing Kuromura with dyed-black hair and owlish spectacles. 'Day One', I had unconsciously named it.
Day Two.
Kuromura was gone even before the teacher for our last period finished packing her stationery.
I raised an eyebrow. Erika shrugged.
Day Three.
The lack of answers was quickly becoming suspicious. As were the disappearing acts during lunch break and after school had ended for the past two days.
"Kuromura! Wanna go do our homework together? Erika's-"
"Gotta go. Bye."
"-Helping with mine..."
Erika came up behind me, arms crossed in front of her chest, with mirth clear in her auburn eyes. "You know, onii-san, there's something oddly comical about this."
"Whatever," I pouted at the spot where Kuromura was standing just seconds ago.
Day Four.
Kuromura seemed content this noon to just lay her head on her desk, cushioned by her arms, than to evaporate off to no-one-knew-where.
I copied her position, but only lying on my left arm to keep my view of the resting girl unblocked.
"I didn't know you had to wear specs."
Kuromura was not asleep. Somehow I could tell, even though her body hardly moved in the last five minutes, her breathing steady and slow. It was strange, as if I was trespassing into her comfort zone; this innate instinct about Kuromura's state of consciousness.
She turned her head slightly to my voice, eyes still closed, "Both my eyes are over nine hundred degrees. Contact lenses stop the headaches I get from the glasses."
I reached over to pick up the spectacles that she had placed on the corner of her table and began fiddling with it.
"Whoa!" The lenses were thicker than anyone else's that I had ever seen. "That is deep! How come you're reverting back to specs?"
Kuromura shifted her face back into the folds of her arms, mumbling something into them that sounded like "Circumstances".
"Onii-san!" Erika shouted happily as she came through the door. "Ah! Aki-sempai is still here!"
A grunt came from Kuromura's general direction, presumably a reply to Erika.
"The cafeteria had obentos for lunch today!" Erika gushed, depositing the packages Kuromura's desk and not caring that most of the space was already taken up by the resting girl. "But I didn't know Aki-sempai's staying for lunch today so I only bought onii-san's and my share..."
"It's okay," came through the mass of fallen artificially black locks.
Erika slipped the tip of her right forefinger between her lips, most probably biting on the nail; a bad habit of hers I noticed days before. "You can share with me, Aki-sempai. I'm not feeling very hungry today."
"Not very gluttonous, you mean," I teased while returning Kuromura's spectacles back on top of her desk. Erika stuck her tongue out at me. The girl's appetite was a force to be reckoned with.
"No, thanks. I just need some shut-eye."
Was it me, or had Kuromura sounded just a bit raspy, the way one would be when you did not have the energy to bother about pushing words out of your mouth?
"I don't think so, Aki-chan. You are going to eat," I said, taking out the extra onigiri that I had asked Erika to get for me. The grudge with food is deep, but for now, I could share. "You'd better take it before I irritate the hell out of you and made you wish that you had gone elsewhere for lunch like you did the last few days."
Kuromura lifted her head just a little, her eyes covered by dark fringe, to gaze pass it calculatingly at the rice ball that I was holding in front of her. She sighed loudly, putting on her spectacles and finally taking the food from my hand.
"Good girl," I grinned as I dug into my lunch with fervour.
"I'm only letting it pass this once because Nakamine doesn't deserve to witness bloodshed during lunch," Kuromura threatened, icily monotonous.
Erika shared my grin while she literally inhaled her lunch. "I'm quite used to that, actually."
Day Five.
Kuromura must have taken some illusionist training because she pulled a Houdini stunt the day before when the last bell rang and vanished promptly after.
"Kuromura! The fast food restaurant down the street just came up with a new set in their menu the day before yesterday! Wanna join Erika and-"
"Have to go. Some other day. Maybe."
"-Me...?" Clearly today was not an exception.
"Onii-san, stop getting worried over Aki-sempai. She'll tell us whatever it is on her own time." Erika picked up her bag and hooked her arm through mine. "Let's go, we have quite a bit of homework to complete today so we can relax through the weekend."
I gave a non-committal grunt and left the class.
"Argh!" Erika growled, savagely pushing away the books spread over her part of the stone table that we had taken up in the science garden an hour ago to do our homework.
"What is it?" I managed to say while balancing a pen between my nose and upper lip. My face was contorted in a scrunched up pout as I tried to peer down at my feat without disturbing the pen.
"I want to know what's bothering Aki-sempai!" She snarled at the sky. I chuckled, gingerly leaning against the back of the cool stone bench. So much for "She'll tell us on her own time".
Erika frowned and smacked my head with a small bundle of rolled papers. Ah! The pen lost its balance and fell. Darn...
"Why are you laughing? Wait, you should know Aki-sempai better than I do!" A smirk rose slowly on her face. "Maybe you know what's going on!"
"Believe me," I sighed, rubbing the spot where she hit me, "I only know this much more than you when it comes to Kuromura." I held up my left hand with the thumb and forefinger tightly pinched together to demonstrate the non-existent space between them. A lie, perhaps, but I had no right to reveal things that Kuromura felt uncomfortable bringing up.
The small blonde sat up straight, "No way! You knew her two whole semesters earlier than I did!"
Twirling the pen now in my right hand, I shrugged. "Kuromura had always been this closed off. Hardly talks about herself. I'll bet that if I hadn't pestered her like I did, till this point, she wouldn't have even spoken to half a soul in school who's not a staff."
"I thought that this sort of people only appeared in mangas," Erika mused with her elbows on the table and both her fists under her chin. She continued at my raised eyebrow, "Then, there will be this guy whom she reluctantly makes friends with because of his persistence. At the climax of the story, he will unravel everything about the girl through a twist of fate and finally, they realise how important the other is to them- POOF!"
I blinked, slightly taken aback by Erika's theatrics.
"They will fall in love and we get a happy ending!" She grinned impishly, her dark red eyes gleaming in the evening light.
Laughing loudly, I ruffled her hair. "My dear girl, I'm afraid you've read too many comics for your own good!"
Just then, a sudden sound of someone's throat being cleared put an abrupt end to our revelry. Erika and I turned swiftly to the noise.
Standing before us was the boy with short jet-black hair and equally dark eyes whom we had met after Erika's previous volleyball match; Kuromura Aki's younger brother.
...To be continued