Intermission:
Stranger Danger
THERE WERE MANY CONVERSATIONS HAPPENING during lunch break at Tsuwabuki. Among the girls of class 1-F especially. The topics began with harmless things. TV shows, homework, and the like. But it wasn’t long before the elephant in the room had to be addressed.
A classmate of theirs had been suspended.
One particularly fox-eyed girl leered at the empty desk. “How do you get suspended already? Like, seriously, I’m curious.”
“I hear it’s about a guy,” said another girl. “A teacher, actually, which is insane.”
“Seriously? But they’re so old!”
The girls cackled.
A group of boys heckled them from afar. “It’s ’cause you lot scared her off!”
“Women, man. No one’s nastier.”
Another round of cackling.
“Big talk for a bunch of simps,” one of the girls shot back.
But then someone asked a question. “But who is Shiratama-san really?”
And that quieted everybody. For a few seconds, it was as if time had stopped. The asker was a girl with long dark braided hair.
The girls looked at each other. “You know, that’s true. I don’t think we’ve ever, like, talked actually.”
“The boys always monopolize her.”
“Yeah, they’d probably know better, right?”
Shiratama Riko. An enigmatic girl who’d shown up, made herself queen, then disappeared just as quickly. It was no wonder rumors were quick to supplant reality when none of her classmates knew the first thing about her.
One of the girls glanced around. “Wait, who was that girl just then? She was cute.”
“I thought you knew her, Kei-chan.”
“Nuh-uh, not me. Maybe she’s Shiratama-san’s friend?”
The stranger was suddenly nowhere to be seen. The fox-eyed girl, frankly, wondered if they’d seen a ghost. “Does Shiratama-san even have any girl friends?”
The girl let her hair loose as she paced quickly down the hallway. She was the type of girl who made most people double-take, but she glided skillfully through the crowds of students without drawing attention.
She flicked her long locks aside as she exited the school building and continued walking. “This one might be a little too much for Oniisama to handle.”