Ruka ignored those objections and kept going. “Madame Mei, ya worried over purchasing ze Lip Creature precisely cuz you remember your previous failure, ja?”
“Well, yeah... Seriously, though, what?”
“Next, Señorita Hina, you didn’t desire Lady Mei to be sad, so ya attempted ta make her give up with the harshest of words, si?”
“Right...I-I think. You’re kinda hard to understand...”
As the pair of them grimaced, Ruka gave an overblown nod. “As I figure it, folks who learn from mistakes ain’t no fools. And I gotta say, worryin’ about buds don’t sound so dumb. I’d reckon neither of ya’s dumb, but what say ya?”
Hinaru and Meiri looked at each other, then awkwardly averted their eyes.
“I know you were worried, Hina, but that way of putting things...”
“Yeah, I shoulda watched my phrasing, maybe...”
“But you were right, and I know you were concerned and all... So, well, no need to apologize...”
Both of them started mumbling and squirming.
What. So adorable! Ruka thought. The hostile mood in the air was drifting away, and she was feeling pretty good from having avoided a lot of trouble. She shot her two friends a satisfied smile. “No shame, you two. I mean, I didn’t even get embarrassed when I almost followed an old guy into a hotel because he said he’d give me some money.”
“Um, you should be embarrassed,” Hinaru and Meiri said at the same time.
“Excuse me?” Ruka snapped.
“Whoa, Ruka’s pissed off— Ah, my phone!” Meiri yelped.
“My baby!” Hinaru reached for her phone and missed.
With both of their phones in hand, Ruka smudged her fingerprints all over the screens. Then, as the school bell rang, she handed the phones back to her friends. “That’ll do it for today,” she said. “Hina, head on back.”
“N-No fair...” With her shoulders slumped, Hinaru took her phone and went back to her seat.
From the seat behind Hinaru’s, Meiri glared at Ruka while wiping her phone down with a handkerchief. Everyone else had taken their seats too. Their homeroom teacher, Toumi Tani, would be there to start the day soon. As Ruka started to get excited, the door at the front of the classroom opened.
“Huh...?”
It was impossible to tell who had said that. Maybe it was one of the noisy boys or serious girls. It could’ve been a loner guy or even that one sleepy girl. Heck, it could’ve been Ruka herself. Anyone could’ve been so surprised that they’d said something out loud. After all, it wasn’t their teacher at the door. It was a beautiful girl with silver hair and silver eyes.
That gorgeous hair would’ve been tough to replicate with any amount of bleach. Her irises might’ve been color contacts, though. She seemed like a foreigner, and her face was almost too pretty. Oh, and she had a ton of piercings, with her main earring shaped like a cross. There was even a faint scar over her smooth cheek. To top it all off, she wore glossy black tights and leather gloves.
To Ruka, this beauty could have stepped right out of an anime. “A-An anime character...” she mumbled.
Since she was wearing the girls’ uniform, the newcomer was a Hie High student. But Ruka had definitely never seen a flashy girl like her at school before. She had caught her classmates off guard too, because everyone started whispering.
“Who’s that...?”
“What’s with her hair color? Is she into visual kei or something?”
“So pretty... A little scary too.”
Yeah, nobody knows this girl, Ruka confirmed. Someone poked her shoulder, and she turned around to look.
Meiri brought her face in close. “Thoughts on that girl, Ruka?”
“She’s got a pretty face.”
“For sure.”
The silver-haired beauty glanced at the seating chart on the teacher’s podium, then briskly strode through the center of the classroom in a way that seemed to overwhelm everyone she passed. She stopped all the way in the back at a desk where nobody had sat ever since they all became second-year students.
She’s sitting there...? Ruka wondered.
There was a strange sense of solidarity among the students watching her movements.
“Good morning, everyone! It’s time for homeroom!” Toumi Tani, the slightly chubby history teacher (and mother of two children) who was in charge of class 2-2, stepped into the classroom with a gentle smile and looked at her students. Then she spotted the new student, and her composure steadily disappeared. “Hm? Hmm...?” was all she could say. Tani looked back and forth between the seating chart and attendance record on her podium, then between those and the strange new girl. “U-Um... Are you...Shijunana-san?”
As soon as Tani managed to say that mysterious name, the aforementioned beauty quietly stood up. “Yes, I am Shijunana. It is a pleasure to meet you, Tani-sensei. Good morning.”
“Ah, yes. Pleased to meet you too...” Tani seemed to lose the last of her composure from Shijunana’s clear, dignified-sounding voice. Despite being the homeroom teacher, she looked like a lost little kid as she tried to find someone in the room who could help her, only to realize she needed to confront the problem herself.
And so, she turned back toward the new student. “W-Weren’t you supposed to return to school tomorrow...?”
“I decided to attend starting today, as I wished to begin my studies as soon as possible. I contacted the school about this matter. Were you not informed, Tani-sensei?”
“N-No, I didn’t hear anything... Sorry...” Tani replied, her words trailing off at the end.
Ruka felt like the new girl was picking on the teacher, and she was not happy about that. Who’d pick on a softie like Tani-chan? This pretty girl is a jerk.
“W-Well then, everyone, Shijunana-san will be joining our class starting today. So, um... Shijunana-san, could you introduce yourself?”
“Understood.” With that, the girl named Shijunana walked past all the other students again and stood beside Tani. She wrote her name on the blackboard, then straightened her posture and looked out over the classroom.
Her classmates stopped whispering when they saw that piercing gaze feeling each of them out.