Chapter Text
Beep Beep Beep
A hand reaches for a device emitting noise grabbing it, with a tap of the finger the noise stops. The ginger yawns, rubbing his eyes. He gets up from his comfortable bed, walking over to his windows to draw away the curtains. The sky a blend of dark and grey
He walks over to his phone and checks the weather. A sigh leaves from his mouth, seeing the chance of rain to be high on monday. His body turns around, his legs unenergetically move towards his bedroom door, opening it quietly and going to the bathroom door.
Once done showering, he puts on his school uniform. It was the bane of his existence, yet he had to put it on, to look ‘smart’ and ‘presentable’ to the people around him in school. He heads downstairs to see no one was there yet.
The living room was empty his mother wasn’t there to greet him with lovely pancakes for him to dine in, nor any sighting of his sister or father. Taking this as an opportunity he walks to the kitchen opening the fridge, his eyes peering down onto the delicate, wonderful cheesecake. It was the last one, he takes the cheesecake and decides to have it for breakfast.
Making his way to the dinner table and sitting on one of the chairs. He dines into the cheesecake, the usual banter he would’ve had with his sister was gone replaced with silence. After finishing the delectable cheesecake, he checks the time on his phone realizing he doesn’t have much time left to laze around, he stands up from the chair and goes to the front door. Until he hears a noise coming from the stairs, an ironic voice
“Akito!? Why are you up so early?” Akito just knew from the tone of their voice it was his sister.
“To get to school early, like I always do, I could say the same to you.” He looks back to his sister, The brunette looks at him like she saw a ghost.
She was wearing her school uniform, similar to his but with noticeable changes, such as a brown cardigan under the blue blazer, a blue skirt instead of pants and a red tie which contrasts his blue one.
“But you don’t wake up this early?” she sighs, moving to the fridge opening it. Akito could see her face go from being normal to a state of confusion.
He should definitely get going now.
His hands twist the door’s knob, as it opens cold wind leaks through the gap. Before he could get going, his sister’s voice pipes up once again.
“Akito, where did my cheesecake go? It was here yesterday”
Akito replies “Hmmm, I don’t know? Maybe somebody ate it?” A cheeky grin slowly forms on his face. If he turns around, he’s done for.
“Ugh! I wake up to just see what I was saving up for to be gone!” She retorts with shouting. “What a nice way to start the day.” she mumbles.
“It's not my problem, I’ll see you later.” He makes his way out of the front door, closing it behind him.
The sister baffled by the mysterious disappearance of her beloved cheesecake. Her brain’s cogs start to work, as she realizes who ate her cheesecake.
However, she doesn’t have the time to let the raging kettle in her head to release, school will be starting soon. Looking around for something edible, she finds a fruit basket on the counter, her hand reaches out for a red apple putting it in her bag and then booking it to the front door. She's going to make her brother pay.
-...-
If she could even find him in the first place. Throughout her walk to school, going from empty morning neighbour, taking a short detour to the bustling city of Shibuya then finally nearing the front gates of her school. She couldn’t see any orange haired thief anywhere. Perhaps, he's being late on purpose again.
“Is Enanan pondering about something?” Oh right, she almost forgot the fact she was with someone.
She whips her attention to the pink ponytail haired girl wearing the same uniform as her, her face having a mischievous look.
“Oh, it's nothing Mizuki!” Enanan exclaims, it's not that big of an issue for her friend to know about.
“Cmon, you’ve been staring ahead most of the time, you’re thinking about something!” Mizuki replies with persistence.
“Ugh, fine, fine I’ll tell you!” Enanan sparking with annoyance, while the other girl giggles.
“Have you seen Akito anywhere? I haven’t been able to see that idiot in a while!” Her voice steams with anger.
Mizuki taking this as an opportunity, her face gaining a sly look “Awww! Looks like Ena is looking out for lil’ bro how sweet!”
The brunette gives her a look the ponytail girl loves to see her in. Filled with annoyance and frustration, it's an emotion of Enas she’ll never get tired of. Knowing that Ena may explode at any moment, she decides to stop with the teasing for now.
“Heh, but I haven’t seen lil’ bro either! Maybe he's skipping school, how naughty of him!” She answers her question with a smile, while crossing her arms.
“Of course, I expect him to be hesitant of showing his face...” She pauses mid-sentence while putting her hands on her hips “So annoying.” the last word she emits was out of bitter.
“What did you need to talk to him about something important?” She questions Ena, who was currently moody.
“Quite literally!” Mizuki jumps from Ena’s sudden raise in voice. “Sorry Mizuki, didn’t mean to scare you.” Ena recoils her high voice to a gentle one.
“Ena apologising to me? Oh, I am so blessed today! It's all okay Ena, all is forgiven!” seeing Mizuki’s cheesy smile makes Ena’s heart feel light.
“Okay, I’ll explain why I am feeling so annoyed” she stops as she faces towards Mizuki.
“HE ate my precious cheesecake I was saving up this morning...and...and HE ran away before I could even react!” Ena’s voice was filled with rage and grief
All Ena sees was Mizuki holding in her laugh, which didn’t last for too long as she begins to laugh out loud. Ena wasn’t amused by how Mizuki wasn’t taking her disastrous morning seriously. Mizuki soon calms herself and then promptly gave a cunning smile at Ena.
“Sheesh, all of this over a cheesecake! Such drama!” Mizuki put her hands on her chin “Ena, Ena, Ena! Can’t believe this was such a heartbreaking event for you! Oh, how I pity you so, so, so much!”
“Shush it you!” That's all Ena could say, while turning head away from Mizuki she couldn’t handle the amount of teasing the girl can dish out with such confidence.
In the new direction, her eyes sight connecting to the grey walls she was used to be seeing while drifting off, were replaced with a black gate the path leading to a building that stands tall behind the gates, the biggest within the area they're in.
They were at Kamiyama high school, without the charming sunlight and vibrant blue skies it made the place look depressing. She looks at the grey clouds, they’ve became darker than they were once she started her journey to school. She sighs, doubting the walk home will be pleasant when school ends.
At the sides of the entrance leading into the doors of the building were trees filled with green leaves, that dance in the wind.
Students were spacious, although there was a decent crowd at a certain spot of the building. Ena assumes they were gossiping about rumours. The windows were clean and up to notch, thankfully it's not sunny today or she’d be beamed by the sunlight reflecting from the windows. Ena always thought the school could’ve done with a makeover as the outside was plain.
“Oh, looks like were at the school gates, let's go in Ena!” Mizuki walks in first, while humming a song.
Ena following closely behind Mizuki, she is admired by the girl’s hair it flows in the wind, and the pink reminds her of Sakura trees blooming in the spring. The effort to make it gorgeous every day, Ena needs to ask her how she does it, what advice she could learn to make her hair stand out like hers.
She was almost at the front doors of the school, until she could hear talking coming behind one of the walls. Most words were muffled, but she could hear most of the conversation. They were talking about new additions to the school and how they were pinpointing the cause at Kamishiro Rui. Before she could get more insight, a hand latches onto her arm pulling her away from the conversation.
“Enanan, its naughty to eavesdrop!” Mizuki smiles at Ena.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping!” Ena replies back
“Yes, you were!” Mizuki replies
“No, I wasn't!” Ena replies again
“Yes, you were!” Mizuki replies grinning
“Whatever you say!” Ena gave up.
The back and forth stops, Ena could see droplets of water coming down, it began to rain. They head under the building for cover, as the students start hurrying inside. Including the group of people Ena was listening to. She could feel her heart drop, as they walk by.
“Great! it's raining, getting home will be a pain!” Ena’s day couldn’t get any worse. Akito’s Shenanigans, now this?
“Look on the bright side Ena, at least were not freezing in the cold still!” Mizuki reassures her.
It didn't last long, as Ena opens her mouth facing towards Mizuki “Not until school is over. Then we would have to trudge through puddles. Ugh, why did this day have to be cruel!”
Mizuki sighs, before speaking “Say, you think lil’ bro is inside?”
Ena eyes widen for a second, until she tilts her head “If I didn’t see him during my walk, I doubt he’ll be in here” Then she smiles, one filled with malice “Not like I want him to be inside, hopefully he's outside so he can be drenched by the rain!”
Mizuki giggles “How savage Ena! I will remind myself to never ever steal a cheesecake from you!”
Ena smiles, until she realizes they’ve got places to be “let's go inside already!”
Now thinking about it, where even is he?
-...-
The travel to school was quiet, streetlights unlit, trees rustling, it was just quiet. Only being disrupted by people with the same uniform as him that passed by him with haste as their shoes collide with the hard granite floor of the pathway. The sky was still grey, slowly being engulf by darker shades as time went past, the increase of vehicles zooming throughout the road doesn’t ease the tension that time is running out.
Akito wishes the day could’ve gone by already. Walking to school is always a pain for him, and it's the better part of it. When he enters the place, it's a whole another story no other school could rival to tell. But maybe that's the charm to it?
He shrugs off the thought, it’ll be another pain for him in the morning to think about things. He just needs to get to his destination and hopefully not die out of boredom during his classes.
He whips out his phone from his pockets, pressing a messaging app. He scrolls down the contacts until it lands on one name. Aoyagi Toya.
He opens it and starts typing.
(Akit0) < I think I’ll be late idk yet>
<Anything interesting happened yet or nah?>
<Oh you’re not online lol>
Akito fails to notice that Toya was offline.
Taking a sharp turn on the corner of the streets, his legs come to a halt as he sees what's right Infront of him. He couldn’t make out what it is, but he sees a shade of red and blue rapidly approaching him from a distance. Thinking about it, he hadn’t seen anyone pass by him in a while, nor vehicles
Not knowing what to do, he keeps on walking the high school should be around the next corner.
“Wait...is that even a person? “
On closer inspection, Akito realizes that the figure seems abstract, it's like a child had drawn it. its eyes were pair of scribbles, the hair a bunch of lines scribbled on top of its head. The shade red and blue were their shirt and pants.
They seem to be holding a jump rope? Not only that, but he could hear a jingle play coming ever so closer to his ears as the person approaches. An energetic distorted voice could be heard from the child.
“Let's play!”
“I don’t really want to play with you, I got somewhere to b-” He abruptly went quiet when words popped up in his vision.
The words formed a sentence ‘Time to jump rope! jump! 0/5’
“What? Huh? “
In a daze of utter confusion, he didn’t realize the jump rope coming down in his sight. Resulting the rope to hit his legs.
“Oops! you messed up!” The girl teased him
“Yes, now move out of the wa-” His voice was caught off once again.
“Not until you jump rope five times in a row! Then I’ll let you jump away freely!” static emitted from her voice, making his ears wince.
“Really now? “
“I can walk away from this, what are you going to do?” Akito folds his arms, all he has to do was just walk around her. Even if she tried to stop him from leaving, he could just run away from her!
“What a weird girl, where are her parents anyways? I don’t have time to deal with nonsense like this.”
...?
“Why can’t I move?! “
Trying as hard as he can, his limbs won’t budge at all. He wasn't terrified, instead he gave the girl a confused expression as he raises his eyebrow at her.
All he sees is the girl looking at her jump rope. Theres no other options for him except from playing this game.
“Actually, I’ll be so delighted to play your game!” He puts up a convincing tone, as he smiles at the girl.
“Let’s play!” The girl cheerfully shouts
This time Akito pays attention to the jump rope around him. He jumps when the rope reaches his legs.
“1!”
The rope doesn’t seem to pick up pace after he jumps, but another thing he has on his mind is who or what is making the rope loop around him.
“2!”
He keeps up the pace, not allowing himself to be distracted by anything around him.
“3!”
Just two more and the game will be over.
“4!”
One more.
“5!”
Akito didn’t know he would’ve to do a surprise exercise early in the morning, but if he knew he would do his best to avoid it.
The girl passes by him oblivious to what tedious task Akito had to do, while that music jingle emits from her once again. If he knew where it was coming from, he would destroy it immediately with no hesitation.
“Wow! That’s great! Let’s play again! Sometime soon...” The last thing the girl said as she drifts off, getting smaller from Akito’s view.
“The hell?! “
Each day was a different experience for Akito, normally something bizarre yet reasonable happens that gets his head scratching. Those including Rui’s crazy inventions that he brings to school or Tsukasa being himself.
However, for this once in his life he couldn’t fathom what happened. Was he finally losing it? The words popping up in his vision, poorly sketched figure forcing him to do jump rope with him, that damned music jingle?! Akito felt his mind short circuiting, wires that once connected throughout his brain were loose.
Just to make sure this is real life, he raises his hand to his face and pinches his cheeks. Nothing happened.
But something else did happen, Akito felt a wet cold splash hit his hair, then he realizes that it started raining. He went to put on his coat to shield himself from the rain. Tiny droplets of water hitting the surface of the ground, grew and grew in numbers, as Akito begins to pick up the pace.
“I want to go home already.”