School Surprise

(Shin's PoV)

—

*Ring Ring*

The alarm rang.

'Mmmh... Take the alarm off, Akane, please...' I mumbled, half-asleep. 

'...' The alarm just kept ringing.

'Akane?' No reply.

And only then, after a few minutes of ringing, I noticed that my arm wasn't dead. That was wrong.

Every morning, I wake up with some part of my body asleep under Akane's weight. I'd started treating the pins and needles like an alarm clock.

This morning my arm was free, and the left side of the bed was flat and cool, and the blanket on her side had been pulled up over the pillow. Neatly.

I sat up too fast. The room swung once before settling.

Gray light around the curtains, the bedroom door open about a hand's width, exactly how she'd left it for Hoshiko.

"Akane?" Nothing.

My stomach tightened in a way I knew too well.

I got out of bed and walked into the hallway, and saw that even the couch was empty.

The blanket had been folded over the armrest, and the pillow was squared against it.

Hoshiko's bag was gone.

For about five seconds, I stood barefoot in a living room that had been full of noise only a few hours earlier, and I was thirteen again.

Then I saw the kitchen table.

There was a tray with rice, miso, scrambled eggs, a toast, and a teacup beside the kettle. And a sheet of paper propped against the cup.

'Ahh, ghost boy. I left early for those beautiful photos. See you at school. I made you breakfast. I looove you!'

In the corner she'd drawn a little skull with a heart beside it.

'Thank God...' The breath that left me was long enough to make my head light.

Then I sat down, covered my face with one hand, and laughed at myself once. 'How could I even think that she could leave me...? That's so stupid of me...' But my hand trembled a little.

Then the second line caught up with me.

Those beautiful photos.

The laugh stopped, and I started turning the ring on my finger without even realizing it.

I'd told her no, but in the end I had agreed to Hoshiko's plan.

'I just hope no one is going to catch her...' I sighed before pouring hot water over the tea and letting it steep while I read the note again.

It sounded cheerful, like a girl who'd slept well, woken up early, and already decided exactly how the morning was going to go. And somehow the stupid skull made it difficult to become angry.

Then, I picked up my phone and saw the time. 7:28. A.M.

Without even realizing it, I immediately opened my chat with Akane and sent her a message.

Shin: "Good morning, love. Where are you? What did you do?"

She answered in under a minute.

Akane: "Good morning, sleepyhead! I'm at school, so hurry up, or you'll miss the show. Love you sooo muuuuuch! Just remember to lock the door when you leave."

I read it twice, and then I quickly stood up to prepare. I got dressed in maybe ninety seconds, and I ate breakfast standing at the counter. The eggs had gone lukewarm and were still better than anything I would've made myself. Then I drank the tea in two mouth-burning gulps.

When I was ready to leave, I saw a spare key on a hook near the door. Small. Silver.

Without thinking twice, I took it, locked the apartment behind me, and put the key in my pocket.

Outside, the morning was thin and cold. The sun was up but weak, and my breath showed in front of me.

'I have a bad feeling for today...' I sighed, scratching the back of my head.

And then, I started walking, fast. I literally crossed the first two streets at almost a jog and reached the main road with the school already in view.

The first groups of students were starting to appear, and that's exactly when I noticed the voices.

Not loud. Worse.

That low, quick kind of talking that moves through a crowd before anyone knows what they're supposed to do with what they've just seen.

Two girls ahead of me had their heads together, one holding up her phone.

A boy in a track jacket told his friend, "No, I'm serious. Go look."

A third-year hurried past me in the opposite direction, stopped, turned around, and hurried back toward the school.

Apparently curiosity beats everything before eight in the morning.

I didn't bother listening. I knew where they were going. And I knew why.

'I wonder where Akane is right now...'  I thought, my eyes scanning everywhere, but there was no sight of her.

I got through the gates at 7:52 and saw the central corridor was packed.

Students stood three and four deep around the big cork board where exam schedules and club notices usually hung. More kept arriving, craning their necks over shoulders or climbing onto the bottom step for a better view.

Nobody was shouting. It would've been easier if they were.

Instead there was just the sound of a hundred people trying to whisper at once.

I moved along the corridor wall and slipped into a gap between two tall boys, and that's when I saw it.

Two photographs were pinned in the middle of the board. Those photos.

Four thumbtacks each, one tilted slightly against the other.

Two people stood outside a love hotel.

Their faces had been softened enough that you had to look twice, but you didn't have to look three times to understand who they were.

Across the top of the first photo, in thick black pen, was handwriting I'd have recognized from across the hallway.

'Look at me! I'm the heroine of this new story I'm writing! A cheater!'

My stomach dropped. She'd actually done it. She'd actually written on the photo.

But then... I saw Izumi.

She was standing near the front of the crowd, maybe two meters from the board.

She wasn't moving. Her eyes were fixed on the pictures, and her lips were slightly parted like she'd started to speak and forgotten the rest.

Both hands were wrapped around her sketchbook, her knuckles white. She was shaking.

Masaru stood beside her, scratching the back of his head.

He looked from the board to the crowd, then to the floor, and then back to the crowd.

He had the expression of someone who had walked into the wrong classroom and was trying to leave without anyone noticing.

"Wait, is that actually Izumi Yamashiro?" a girl near me said.

"It's her. It's definitely her," a boy with a lanyard answered. "I saw her yesterday on that exact street. By the old noodle place." 

"Didn't she have a boyfriend?"

"Yeah. The loud one. Sakurai."

"Oh, my god... this is so fucked up... poor Sakurai..."

Izumi turned toward them, and she opened her mouth. For half a second, I could see the denial forming.

'No.' She wanted to say, but she didn't say anything in the end. Maybe she realized that any answer would make things worse, because it would've led to a more difficult question.

She closed her mouth again, and her chin trembled.

And for one moment, I felt something I hadn't expected.

The same discomfort you get from watching someone trapped in front of a crowd with nowhere to go.

I knew the feeling way too well. I'd stood in a courtyard once on Valentine's Day.

I pushed it away because the boy who'd cried on the sidewalk over her was my friend.

I stepped forward.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Why is everyone standing here?"

Izumi and Masaru both turned. She recognized me immediately.

"S-someone put up photos of two strangers," she said. Her voice was thin, too high. "I don't know why everyone's staring, it's just—"

"Oh, be quiet, Yamashiro." A boy from the second row. He didn't even sound angry. Mostly tired. "That's you. And that's Fujiwara standing right next to you. Everybody already knew you two were going out. But pretending to date someone else is pure evil!"

A murmur moved through the crowd.

"That's not—" Izumi started. "You can't just—"

But then, the crowd opened, like someone important was coming, like the principal.

Shoulders turned, and people stepped aside without being asked.

Someone whispered, "Oh no."

Someone else said, "It's him."

A gap formed straight through the corridor, and at its end stood none other than Daiki, with his school bag hanging from one shoulder.

He looked terrible. His uniform was creased and his hair stuck up on one side.

Dark smudges sat under his eyes, the kind you get from spending the night staring at a ceiling instead of sleeping. Even his skin looked gray.

For a moment, he just stood there blinking, like he'd entered a room and forgotten why.

Izumi ran to him almost immediately. "D-Daiki!" She almost threw herself at him. "Good morning! Hehe..." She grabbed his sleeve with both hands, then hooked herself around his arm. "You look tired. Did you not sleep? Can you accompany me to my class? I felt really lonely yesterday. I missed you so much! Come on, let's just spend the morning together! I bought breakfast—"

Her laugh was too bright, and it kept getting faster.

"What a slut...!" Someone whispered behind me. "She just wants to—"

The lie was obvious to everyone. She'd even angled her whole body so he'd turn away from the board, both hands pulling at his arm.

Behind her, Masaru moved.

He took one step back, and then another, slipping between two second-years and disappearing as nothing had happened.

Daiki let Izumi talk.

"Daiki-kun, pretty please! C-can we go away from here~?" She asked, clinging more onto him.

But what happened after that left everyone speechless.

He reached up and removed her hands from his arm, lifting her fingers off one by one. Carefully. Almost gently.

Then he let go and, without looking at her, walked past her, straight toward the board.

Izumi stayed where she was, both hands still half-raised in front of her, and shifted her gaze to the floor before lowering her arms.

Nobody said anything.

Daiki stopped in front of the photographs, close enough to read the caption.

For a long time, he just looked.

I couldn't see his face, but only his shoulders and the back of his neck.

Izumi had gone white. Not pale. White. Like someone had drained everything out of her at once.

She was even trembling.

Then Daiki looked down at the floor, and then back at the pictures. Slowly this time.

"So that's how it is," he said, his voice quiet and completely flat. It still carried through the whole corridor. "I should've expected it." He turned around.

I'd seen Daiki angry before, but I've never seen him like that in my whole life.

He looked at Izumi, and there was nothing wild in his face. That was what made it worse. His eyes had gone completely still.

Izumi then took a step back, one hand rising to her chest.

"D-Daiki-kun?" Her voice cracked. "What are you saying? That isn't me! It's just some—"

He kept looking at her. His eyes were red, and I'm sure that it wasn't because of anger.

Despite his silence, everyone could see that he wasn't the same.

Then, Izumi stopped talking. Her mouth closed, pulling her sketchbook against her chest with both arms.

She just stood there. Small. Shaking. Alone in the middle of a circle of people who had unconsciously stepped away from her. "I'm so—"

Then Sora's sharp voice cut across the corridor. "Everyone, please step back." She came through the crowd with four members of the student council behind her, folders pressed against her chest.

Her expression was calm, straight, and controlled.

She didn't even raise her voice. The students closest to her moved automatically.

"Classes begin in eight minutes," she said. "Please make your way to your rooms. Thank you. We'll take care of this."

She then went straight to the board, her eyes moving over the photographs and then to the writing.

Her jaw tightened. Only for a second.

"Take these down," she told the two council members nearest her. "Carefully. Put them in an envelope and bring it to my office. Don't let anyone take photos."

They moved immediately. One thumbtack at a time. The pictures came down and disappeared into a plain brown envelope.

Without them, the bulletin board suddenly looked stupidly normal. The crowd had nothing left to stare at.

After that, people started drifting away, slowly, but still talking and glancing over their shoulders.

Izumi stayed where she was, staring at the empty space where the photos had been.

Daiki was already walking away, down the opposite corridor, past the stairs, his bag hanging from one shoulder.

He kept his head down without looking back, not even once.

The few students still in his path moved out of the way before he reached them.

I then crossed the floor to Sora, and she turned toward me.

For a second, neither of us said anything.

Her eyes were steady.

I knew she wanted to ask me something, but I wasn't ready to answer it.

I put my hand on her shoulder, just for a second.

"I'm going to Daiki," I said quietly.

She nodded once.

And then, I moved.