The First Day

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CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST DAY

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The classroom was on the third floor and the window faced the athletic field.

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I was assigned a seat in the back row by the window because it was the only empty desk. The teacher introduced me as Arai Makoto and did not pronounce my name correctly. I did not correct her. I had stopped correcting people a long time ago.

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The class looked at me for four seconds and then went back to what they were doing.

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I sat down and looked out the window.

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The athletic field was empty. The cherry trees along the fence had lost their blossoms and were green and ordinary. A maintenance worker was pushing a cart across the field. He stopped, adjusted something, and kept going.

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I did not know anyone. No one knew me. This was not a problem. It was the opposite of a problem. It was the thing I had wanted for a long time.

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The first person who spoke to me was a girl.

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She sat in the seat across the aisle and she turned around during homeroom and introduced herself as Hana. She was small and cheerful and she smiled in a way that seemed to require effort. She asked where I was from, what I liked, why I had transferred, whether I had any siblings. She asked six questions in three minutes.

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I answered them all.

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She did not seem to notice that my answers were short.

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"You're quiet," she said.

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"I'm new."

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"That's not the same thing."

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She was right. It was not the same thing. But she smiled and turned back to her desk and started writing something in her notebook, and I looked out the window again and forgot about her for the rest of the morning.

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The second person who spoke to me was a boy.

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Lunch was thirty minutes and I ate it on the roof because the roof was empty and the roof had a view of the neighbourhood. The door opened and a boy came out with a lunch tray and sat down on the ground next to me without asking permission.

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"I heard you're new," he said.

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"I am."

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"I'm Ren."

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He was taller than me and he had the kind of face that was always on the edge of a joke. He made three jokes in the first minute. Two of them were not funny. The third one was, and I laughed, and he looked surprised.

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"You laughed," he said.

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"Is that unusual?"

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"Most new people don't laugh at my jokes for the first week."

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"Why."

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"They don't know me yet."

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He said it as if it explained everything, and maybe it did. We ate our lunch in silence for a few minutes and then he asked where I was from and I told him and he asked if I liked it and I said I did not have an opinion and he looked at me for a long time.

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"You're honest," he said.

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"I'm tired."

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"That's the same thing."

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He finished his lunch and left before I could answer.

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The third person who spoke to me was a girl.

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She found me after class and introduced herself as Yuki. She was taller than Hana and she had the kind of posture that said she was used to winning. She asked me my scores. I told her I did not know. She asked me my best subject. I told her I did not have one. She asked me if I was going to join any clubs. I told her I had not thought about it.

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She looked at me like I had disappointed her in a way that required immediate correction.

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"You should join something," she said. "Standing around is a waste."

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I did not tell her that I had been standing around for sixteen years and had not found it particularly wasteful.

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She said she was in the debate club and that the debate club was looking for new members and that I should come to the meeting on Wednesday. She said this not as an invitation but as a fact she had decided.

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I did not say yes. I did not say no.

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She seemed to take that as a yes.

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The fourth person who spoke to me was a girl.

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I saw her in the library after school. She was sitting at a table by the window with a book and she did not look up when I walked past. She had long sleeves on. It was May and the sleeves were long.

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She noticed me noticing her.

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She looked up, met my eyes for half a second, and then looked back down at her book. It was not a hostile look. It was the look of someone who had already decided not to engage.

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I walked past her and did not stop.

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But I noticed her.

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I noticed the sleeves and the way she held the book and the way she sat with her back to the wall. I noticed that she was the only person in the library who was actually reading.

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I did not know her name. I would learn it later.

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Mei.

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The fifth person who spoke to me was a girl.

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She was standing at the gate when I left school.

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She was small and she had pink hair and pink eyes and she was wearing a uniform that fit her exactly and she was looking at me like she had been waiting for me specifically.

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"You're the new student," she said.

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"I am."

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"Arai Makoto."

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"Yes."

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"I'm Charlotte."

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She did not offer her hand. She did not smile. She just stood there and looked at me with an expression that I could not read and that I did not try to read.

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"Why do you know my name," I asked.

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"Because I pay attention."

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She turned and walked away.

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I stood at the gate for a long time. The bell had stopped ringing. The students had gone home. The street was quiet.

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I did not know what had just happened.

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But I remembered it. 186Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCPowNFarz8

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