Chapter 6 Red Bricks

“Hey, does this fit me?” Walking forward and turning, Minato asked.

The hem of the skirt swayed, and beneath it, snow white legs flashed. The girl put on the uniform blouse, but some non-standard details made her look like an outfit of a duplicated fighting game character.

“Yep,” I answered. The coming October brought a coolness with it.

The fallen leaves covered the roadside.

“You’re so indifferent. Does it really fit me?”

“I already said, yes.”

“Is it cute?”

“Mhm.”

I nodded.

“Eh, I don’t understand at all. Come on, say ‘Rica’s pretty’! Come on, please.”

“Better not ask.”

“Ah, are you really embarrassed? It’s ok, there’s nothing shameful in it. Come on, get together. ‘Rica, I love you!’ Come on please.”

“Hey, don’t complicate the task.”

“Oh come on. When you were confessing, you were confident.”

“I feel ashamed when I remember it… End this.”

Minato laughed joyfully. It was seven in the morning.

“Let’s hold hands?”

Minato held my left hand with her right.

I felt a warmth and a weird embarrassment.

“Maybe with locked arms?”

“This is enough…”

And we walked along the narrow path.

“E-e-eh, Idzono-kun and Minato-san?” The teacher, a middle aged woman, asked us. She behaved herself around us, dressed in a brand new uniform, as if she was forced to touch a hideous tumor.

Expected.

Due to the massive amount of deaths, they weren’t able to form a new class, and someone had to fix it.

So no one met the students, transferred from other schools, with radiant smiles.

“I’ll explain everything to you later, could you go into the class and take your seats for now?”

We were given a printout of the seating arrangements in the class: eight rows of six desks. Our names were highlighted with a ballpoint pen in the very back of the class. By a strange coincidence, these were the same places as in our last school.

We bowed and left the uncomfortable teacher’s room. Climbing the stairs, we walked down the hallway of the third floor. We looked for the room labeled “2-2” and walked towards it.

The front and back door turned out to be locked, and from inside came cheering shouts. As if several voices shouted the same thing again and again.

When we opened the back door, silence reigned in the classroom.

Around the middle of the room, students in the same uniform as us were crowded. And in the very centre stood a few students. The hands of a fat guy, and a skinny, just skin and bones, girl were tied behind their backs and seated opposite each other, so that there were only ten centimetres left between their faces. They were forced to do this.

Clapping hands were heard in my head.

Clap, clap, clap. Like flashes of flames.

Got it. So, again?

Standing in the doorway, we unconsciously broke into smiles.

The End.