Chapter Sixteen: Study Sessions
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Kuromura Aki
It was quite unnerving- irritating too- to have someone constantly watching you for as long as you were in his or her peripheral view and having twenty-three questions thrown at you the moment you leave your seat. Even if it was just standing up to get to the dustbin.
And the only way to stop receiving repeated questions was to just answer the first, as much as I hated having to.
"Look," I spun around to face Torikawa. "In the morning, I wake up, wash up, get breakfast from the cafeteria and eat it in class after I get here an hour before first period. I either sleep in class or go up to the roof clearing to do my homework during lunch. After school, I buy dinner from the cafeteria and go back to my dorm to eat, do more homework, sleep, and the cycle continues. Happy now?"
The brunet looked at me with his large black eyes while gaping like a fish out of water, uncertain, whether to reply or not.
"And good day to you, too," I sniped when no sound came from his mouth. "I will now retire to my dorm and you can run along with Nakamine for your study sessions."
"Aww... Aki-sempai, won't it be boring to study all by yourself?" Nakamine peered up at me with her deep auburn eyes. Damn, not the puppy eyes! What had Torikawa been teaching her? I could already feel a headache starting to bloom behind the knot of flesh between my eyes.
"I have a Mount Everest of proper work waiting for me to complete. And as certain as the existence of my toes, I will finish them faster in the absence of someone named Torikawa Sekai."
"Hey!" The aforementioned voiced out his indignation.
"But, Aki-sempai, isn't it lonely all by yourself?"
I knew Nakamine meant it in the context of studying, but I could almost hear Torikawa's voice from last year echoing that question on my solitude.
Attempting to hide my split-second contemplation, I pushed up my thick spectacles, for once reassured of its presence against my nose; the dark circles underlying the skin below my sleep-deprived bloodshot eyes were sure to warrant incessant interrogation.
"I have always been fine on my own. Don't let me be that extra wheel during your studying session." With that, I turned to leave the two, predictably pouting at my retreating figure.
The teachers must be having a ball over the new grading system. With the amount of workload that they were happily showering upon us everyday, I might not even get a chance to start on my art-elective project unless I was intending to sleep only two hours everyday from now until the end of this semester.
Yet, that was precisely my nocturnal pattern these nights ever since Haru appeared in front of me two weekends ago. I could only credit it to too many strange dreams in the night that fluttered away beyond my reach the moment my mind began surfacing towards consciousness. The only proof of those dreams ever happening was the ominous sense of unsettledness and guilt, that followed when I woke, layered heavily with intense sadness of which origins I could not place.
And that feeling will plague me like a memory at the back of my mind, urging me to remember but to no success each time. Although, there was that singular result of a glorious headache thumping at the side of my skull, keeping me awake for the rest of the night until it was time for school.
My walking personification of "a hell of a bad mood" when I reached the classroom then would shame the snappiest of all menopausal females and degrade the Tasmanian devil to the level of an adorable hamster.
I stood away from my desk and stretched forcibly to realign all my bones with satisfying cracks and pops. A look at the calendar reminded me of the impending deadline for my art assignment.
An unnecessary visual stationery stock check told me what I had already known: the trip to the art supply store two streets away was unavoidable.
Mumbling to myself in wordless irritation, I grabbed my wallet and the design plans from the desk before hurling myself back into the outside world.
Single sheets of acrylic might be light but in the amount that I bought, I was glad that the shop was only a short walking distance away from school. It did not help that among my purchases was a wooden board half an inch thick, a full metre's width and as long as I was tall.
An endless grumble continued in my mind after I exited from the shop half an hour later when suddenly, my senses threw up the red lights and blaring horns.
Something was wrong.
I listened to my instincts and took quick sidelong glances around me without turning my head, the thick glasses hiding my rapid eye movements behind their reflection of the sharp late afternoon sun.
Sure enough, there it was. Or rather, he was; an inconspicuous man standing beside my school's front gate, seemingly engrossed by our long horizontal canvas poster.
And as clichéd as it could be, the person was wearing solid black, impenetrable sunglasses.
Good grief. Why was it always sunglasses? Why black? Why was it always black? Suddenly my life had just turned itself into one cheesy mafia movie, I thought as my legs brought me across the road and towards the school gate, walking metres closer and closer to the man.
Who was he working for? My cousin's family? But Haru did said "our side as well"...
In the midst of my musings, my instincts slammed up again. The man was turning around. I could almost sense his sunglasses-hidden eyes swiveling rapidly, no longer feigning interest in the poster.
Reflexively, I hoisted up the large wooden board in a desperate effort to hide my face while disguising it as an attempt to shift its weight against my shoulder.
One step after another, one foot then the other... I kept my breaths steady and walked on as if the other man's presence held no importance to me while I stalked past the gates, acting as relaxed and uncaring as I could with all the weight in my hands bogging me down.
This was ridiculous. I should not have to worry so much about either side spying on me. Just for the sake of not getting caught, I had to spray my hair black every morning and revert to those blasted spectacles that gave me such colossal headaches.
Not to mention giving up my earrings at the risk of having the holes close up and needing new piercing. Who knew how long they were planning to check on me like some zoo animal under quarantine scrutiny?
Besides, my glasses were large enough to cover half my face. By the time they took out any secretly pre-taken photograph with photoshoped black hair and dark eyes (courtesy of an order from Mommy dearest) to confirm my identity, I would have already noticed and scrammed.
But, if there was one thing I believed in, it was self-preservation. And that was only possible from paranoiac cautiousness and being at least three steps ahead.
And I was satisfyingly many steps ahead of that spy, who still stood at the gates and had dismissed me as another normal student. I continued to stroll in, past the main building, and prepared to cut through the science garden.
Girlish giggles and smooth while distinctly male laughter reached my ears as the woody scent of plants and the fresh smell of lightly dampened soil slowly filled my nostrils.
I should have known, I thought while rolling my eyes at no one in particular. Our school's science garden was popular in the early mornings and late hours before curfew for its influx of student couples.
Must they be so exhibitionistic about their intimacy to the point of having a rendezvous even before dark, when anyone who cared to look would be able to see them?
Giving a light shake of head at their stupidly carefree childishness, I widened my strides as much as I could with the weight I carried, in hopes of getting back to my room faster.
Spies and black shades and echoing laughter swam in my slowly headache-overtaken brain while the reassuring scent of artificial nature turned pungent at the roof of my mouth.
"... Aki..."
The cheery female voice slowed me down so fast I nearly snubbed the tip of my left shoe in the gaps between the stone-slab path.
Saved from a clumsy fall by an instinctive grace, I turned my head awkwardly among my items to find the person who spoke of me. Or of another person who I shared the name with.
I could have smacked my forehead then if my hands were not so occupied, and that if I was familiar with such plebian acts.
The bright giggle from before should have been so easy to recognise.
At a corner further down the row of low bushes, were Nakamine and Torikawa, both faced away from me. A good thing too, because the last thing I needed right now was to be pounced by them in my current state if they should notice me.
I watched as Torikawa lifted his hands to squeeze Nakamine's cheeks in response to something she said that I did not manage to catch. Nakamine stretched her arms in a feeble attempt to tickle the now laughing brunet.
So, she found out about that secret of his too. I held back a smile-smirk that threatened to surface, having not made an appearance for a while, over the memory of a cold but calm winter night blanketing a small bridge arching over the Kuromura pond.
Wait a minute, this was not the time to be amused by their antics!
Glancing over at the now vocally expressive tangle of limbs and mirth, I felt a strange trickle of irritation slither up my skin. And those two had the nerve to call this a "study session"!
I felt an unexpected gratitude then, at the whole 'being spied on' business. At least it had me cooped up in my room whenever possible to avoid giving them any bit of satisfaction of spotting me. The isolation had indirectly kept me away from these glorified time-wasting, unproductive and inefficient study sessions.
Exasperation, fuelled by the increasingly painful throbbing behind my eyes, slowly morphed into fuming anger at my two classmates; Nakamine now drawn into Torikawa's arms for a tight embrace as they laughed, clutching at each other, homework forgotten in a mess over the stone table before them.
Torikawa Sekai, you would pay for it big time if the only reason for being retained next year was your unsatisfactory grade for homework completion.
Tightening the hold on my art assignment supplies, I tried to bear with the headache the best I could while getting away from the science garden to the safe silence of my dormitory room as fast as the weight in my arms allowed.
Torikawa Sekai
I took a deep breath after the strenuous laughing fit Erika got me into. She was now putting all efforts to still her own giggles that came when she saw how helpless I was to stop laughing two minutes ago.
A few seconds of companionable silence followed, accompanied by the steady trickling of a nearby pond, before I let out a huge sigh.
Erika chuckled.
"What?"
The girl shook her head with a light smile before answering, "If you're so worried about Aki-sempai, then go and send her a text message or give her a call."
"I was not worrying about her!" I denied loudly. Apparently, Erika was still harbouring some deep-rooted suspicion about Kuromura and me. "It's... the homework."
"Yes, yes. The homework," she said as if to pacify me.
"Why, you-" I reached over and poked the knuckles of my forefingers into her cheeks, distorting her small face and puffing out her lips.
Erika's auburn eyes flashed a menacing red before stretching out her arms to tickle me.
She would have to do better than that to get anywhere near what Kuromura had achieved last winter. I laughed at the distant memory and ceased my torture on Erika's face, but holding her wrists together to prevent any damage that she might do to me.
"You know," Erika started, breathing heavily, "I am usually very right about these things. Tried and proven, so to speak."
I drew her into a tight hug, swiftly rubbing the knuckles of my right hand into the mess of her dirty-blonde hair covered head while surrendering to laughter yet again.
"You're not giving up that idea of yours any time soon, are you?"
"Nope!" Erika gasped breathlessly as she tried to wriggle out of my grip. "And I will make sure you send her at least one message by today!"
After much poking and prodding on her part, I flipped open my mobile phone to text a message to Kuromura, asking about how she was dealing with homework, for a lack of better things to say.
"I'm warning you, she won't bother to reply," I said, pointing the electronic device at a very satisfied Erika.
She shrugged, with a grin on her face, before picking up a pen from the stone table. "Let's continue on our homework now, shall we?"
...To be continued