Andromeda

The morning and remainder of the time in class that followed after the introduction of the new student, Ayumi Nishimura, was carried out normally for everyone, everyone but Yuki. He had become distracted by this new girl that was sitting behind him. Normally, it would have been easy enough for him to let his mind wonder through his fantasies during homeroom, since nothing of importance usually happened. ‘Ayumi Nishimura…why did she smile at me like that?’ However, he was not able to get his mind off of her for as much as he tried and none of it made any sense. There was something that was not sitting right with him and he did not know what to make of it.

It all happened when he saw her walk by him. She smiled at him when he had been suddenly feeling immense stress. It was as though there were twenty pound weights chained to his arms and legs and he was struggling to just hold his position. He sweated heavily making his uniform stick to his skin and strain with his movements. Then she just smiled at him as though she seemed to understand doing it only to relieve him and release the chains around him. He could not make sense of it. ‘Such a strange look, but it was just a normal smile. But why am I feeling this strangely about it. What’s wrong with me?’

Yuki turned around in his chair ninety degrees to look over his shoulder more comfortably at the new girl. She wore the school uniform of Monou High the typical sailor outfit that was worn by most students with certain variations. Being that it was the winter uniform still it had the long sleeves that went firmly around wrists for warmth and thicker material. The sleeves were part of the jacket that went over the white dress blouse underneath. The jacket worked with the two colors scheme white for the base and blue for highlights and contrast. The usual marking for the sailor outfit with a squared cloth hanging from the back of the shoulders was removed with the dress blouse collar coming up around the neck and the collar of the jacket folded down wide in length coming to an open ‘V’ shape that allowed the top few buttons of the blouse to be seen. The jacket finished in dark blue buttons holding it together covering over the waist strap of the skirt, that remained at a more conservative length closer to the knees. The pleated skirt held the matching blue color of the jacket as its base. Yuki’s uniform matched the blue through for jacket and slacks with his white dress shirt underneath. Both uniforms held the school’s seal in the right upper pocket location, if there was a pocket.

Ayumi had her hair tied back with a matching colored ribbon giving Yuki sudden images of a manga he had recently read. It had been the first distraction from Ayumi he had. He still wished to know what was wrong with him, but having been turned around staring at her for the prolonged period he had garnered him more attention that he thought he was going to get. She was staring at him looking a little closer to him than he was planning making him pull back putting his desk edge into his back painfully. “Hello!”

Yuki put his hand on his back wincing a little in the pain striking at him. It took him a moment until he realized that the new girl had spoken to him making him become frantic almost needing to say something. “Uhh…I…” Sadly he could not form enough words immediately.

“Oh dear, are you alright?” she said reaching her hand out to Yuki with a concerned, yet that shy expression from earlier, look on her face. She did not want be causing problems for the other students on her first day already.

Yuki straightened himself up quickly having seen Ayumi trying to help him. “I-I’m fine. See no problem at all,” he said pounding on his back though still obviously feeling the sting forcing him to roughly cover it up. “No, it’s my fault. I was staring at you thinking that you looked like one of the characters from a manga I had just read last night.”

Saki, who had been watching the exchange, slammed her head into her desk suddenly out of reaction from Yuki honest yet stupid answer that was no doubt going to get him into further trouble. ‘Yuki, you got to learn when to be quiet and not say everything that’s running through your mind. Not everyone will understand. In fact no one does, usually…’ She sighed to herself with her head resting sideways on the desk fearing the sort of response that will come from the transfer student.

The other students around that heard Yuki were laughing at him knowing full well what was going to happen next. There were a few comments saying that it was typical of Yuki.

Ayumi pulled her hands back and raising them to her face looking embarrassed. “Oh really? You think so? That’s so sweet,” she said to the utter surprise of the entire class some slipping a little and falling to the floor on their backs.

Saki nearly rammed her head through her desk in surprise with everyone else. She could not believe that she was just going to accept that. It would have sounded almost creepy to any other girl that would have heard it. She was equally confused as rest of the students were about Ayumi. ‘No one’s accepted Yuki so easily…and to not even care about how weird he just sounded. Who is this girl?’

After an awkward start by Yuki and most certainly strange answer from Ayumi the two were laughing lightly for an unknown reason since everyone else had missed what happened next still trying to recover from the shock. Yuki felt a little more comfort with Ayumi now that his mind seemed to have gotten over the issues it was having previously. “Oh, you probably heard from Ms. Kuniyoshi, but my name is Yuki Hayashi.”

“Oh, Hayashi okay…” she said still feeling cautious.

“You can call me Yuki, alright?”

“Yuki?”

“There you go,” Yuki said smiling back at her. He was greeted by a smile from her again, different from before feeling straightforward and honest. They continued to talk for a little while longer, but Yuki kept feeling a strange poking in his back and shoulder that he could not place. He rolling his left shoulder hoping that the feeling would disappear, but it seemed to only come back stronger.

Over his left shoulder there was a glaring stare from Ms. Kuniyoshi holding a stick of chalk in her hand and a vein popping up once more. Though a little further down was Saki staring at the two of them getting along really well with not nearly the intensity of the teacher, but staring all the same and perhaps glaring, she was not certain herself.

Chapter 3 – Unbelievable! The Transfer Student’s Story

“Mr. Hayashi! I’ve had enough of you disrupting my class. You will be quiet now!” Ms. Kuniyoshi said starting to look a little exhausted from the morning already. The other students considered laughing again, but they could see how serious she was now that they did not dare to do anything more to make her angry.

Yuki caught about half of what she said still looking back at Ayumi rather than the yelling teacher. Saki’s expression changed to embarrassment now that Yuki was making even more of a scene for himself. ‘He’s so clueless. Closing out the world to focus on one thing is not always a good thing…’ Though it had came to her surprise seeing a white beam run past her nose sucking in the air behind it pulling it towards its destination. Saki blinked to see if her eyes were play tricks on her when she saw Yuki laying face planted on Ayumi’s desk unconscious and a bump on his head. She looked down at the desk’s table to see a couple broken pieces of chalk rounding around to a rest. ‘Yuki…’

“Oh my! Yuki!” Ayumi said scrambling to Yuki’s side trying to lift him up until she noticed the bump on his head. “Are you alright? Yuki?”

“Miss Nishimura don’t let this delinquent rub off on you. Understood?” she said wanting to get her class under control finally before the time was over.

“But what about Yuki? He could be hurt.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about him,” a student said helping pull Yuki back up and set him into his chair. He pushed his index finger at Yuki’s nose pointing his hanging head forward to pretend that he was paying attention. “I haven’t known Yuki long, but I’ve seen him on the wrong end of plenty of fists and he always manages to come out fine. So you don’t have to worry.”

“But…” He placed a hand on her shoulder looking at her carefully letting her know he was being serious. It calmed her down letting her return to her seat. “I’m sorry, who are you?” asked Ayumi as she saw the student go back to his seat as well.

“Oh, I’m Hiroshi Kuroda, one Yuki’s friends.” Hiroshi ended it there leaving with a polite nod knowing that he was getting stared at by the teacher as well. He could not leave Yuki there being the center of attention even unconscious. Yuki was already in enough trouble and it was not even past thirty minutes of the school day. Hiroshi gave back an amused smile before giving Ms. Kuniyoshi his focus as well.

The morning continued on without Yuki needing to be among of the living; though he did eventually awake up to find that his homeroom class had become the English class and he was twenty minutes late to the class. Apart from the new student it was a normal day so far for him. Eventually the sun decided it would be noon and the students broke for lunch spread across the school grounds or classrooms depending on what their friends decided. For Yuki that meant getting together with Saki, Hiroshi and a couple other of his friends on the roof. However, none of them made it that far with a surprise visit by Ayumi.

They were all standing at the edge of their classroom waiting on Yuki to get his lunch when Ayumi burst through the door looking around franticly for something or someone. Yuki’s friends exchanged glances with each other and Ayumi none of them certain what this about. But they all quickly understood when she spoke. “Yuki! I found you!” She rushed over to him as he had finally pulled out his lunch from his school bag. The fact she was actually interested in Yuki, again, made his friends face drop in awe. The truth hurt; fortunately Yuki was not aware of it.

Yuki turned around finding Ayumi behind him and looked a little downward to meet with her face to face. It took him by surprised as well jumping back a step not certain what she wanted. “Ayumi?! Hey, did you need something? You get lost?”

“Oh no. I-I was actually…wondering if we could have lunch together,” she said looking down a little towards her feet. It was enough to send another round of shocks through his friends listening from the sidelines.

Yuki pulled himself back towards Ayumi recovered and seeing that it was just something normal. He was not sure what he was expecting, but he gave her a nod in agreement. “Sure, we were just going to head up to the roof for lunch. You can join us.” He pointed to his friends who were looking back at him like they suddenly wanted to be left out of the conversation.

Ayumi held her head a little lower looking like she had become disappointed by something. “Oh…I see… I was wanting to eat alone with you…” She was beginning to fidget with her hands shifting around her body at each moment like there was something crawling over her that made her squirm.

This naturally only further plastered his friends into shock as this day was turning out to be anything but normal. None of them knew who this new girl was and why she was so interested in Yuki. But Hiroshi finally spoke across the group to a girl staring on intently with her hands clutched tightly to her chest in pain. “Better act quickly, Yumi. Looks like this new girl is aggressive despite how shy she looks.”

Yumi looked down suddenly at the floor with her face becoming red quickly. She could hardly put two words together only making what seemed more like noises than words. Saki sighed walking over to Yumi and hit Hiroshi in the stomach in passing. “Careful what you say, Hiroshi!”

Hiroshi fell back forced to use the wall for support after taking a punch from Saki. He coughed a couple times trying to recover himself quickly remembering her strength. “Hey, what you do that for Saki! I’m just joking.”

“Yumi?” Saki glared back at Hiroshi making him turn blue in fear for getting hit again. He backed up behind another body to keep some distance between them. Saki could see that Yumi was locked away in a distant world now with her head deeply flush with red. ‘Oh dear, poor girl is so embarrassed that she can’t function. That Hiroshi…’ She put her hands on Yumi’s shoulders hoping to get attention, but finding that it did nothing. “Yumi? Hey, it’s alright. Yuki’s going to be having lunch with us.” Saki looked back to find Yuki as assurance for the claim that she just made in hopes that Yumi would return to normal. However, Yuki’s space that he was occupying was flashing back as being clearly empty along with the new girl, Ayumi. “Where’s Yuki?

Hiroshi looked out from around the person that he was using for protection to see what Saki saw, which was no Yuki. He had no more of an idea than Saki. They all jumped out into the hallway looking for Yuki while Yumi was left alone staring empty into space. “Yuki! Yuki?” None of them could find him after a short search and returned back to the classroom to check on Yumi.

“Hey, what’s Yuki doing with the new girl?” a student said looking out the window. It did not take but a second for the unfortunate student to regret speaking aloud as Yuki’s friends charged the window leaving the poor student pressed against the glass as they looked out. Saki looked around with her eyes franticly until she finally found him walking under a tree with Ayumi.

“When did he leave?” Hiroshi said surprised, though he was not sure if he was more surprised or disappointed that Yuki had found someone sort of normal, ‘sort of’ because she could not possibly be completely normal to have an interest in Yuki, before he did. The window was pushed open with several of them leaning out attempting to hear them. “Can you hear what they’re saying?”

“They’re too far away,” Saki said straining at the window. She was not sure who this girl was, but Yuki was so trusting that he was going to end up following her anywhere.

“So what did you want to talk about, Ayumi?” Yuki said when Ayumi finally stopped at the base of a tree. He thought back for a moment at what she said trying to figure out what this was all about.

‘Alone? I guess, you don’t want to meet my friends?’

‘No…it’s not that. I was hoping to be able to talk to you alone. So I thought lunch would be a good time.’

‘Oh? Sure.’

There was nothing more than that. It was pretty vague for him, but he figured that she would tell him soon enough now. Ayumi turned around to him with a change in her usual expression. She looked far more serious and stood straight up losing any hint of meekness that she had before. “Ayumi?”

“Yuki Hayashi…Ayumi Nishimura is not my real name. And everything the teacher told you about me is a lie.”

Yuki checked her for a joke or something, but she seemed to be very serious about what she was saying. He was not sure what to make of it. This was contrary to what he had seen from her earlier. The girl had changed completely in front of him from a mere few words and stance. “What are you talking about Ayumi? Why would you lie to us?”

“I had to lie. Because the truth is not meant for them, but for you.” She pointed to him as she spoke making Yuki pull back a little.

“Huh? For me? What are you talking about?” Yuki’s head was starting to spin a little confused by what he was hearing and seeing. ‘Truth for me? What is she talking about? What truth? Who is she? This feeling…I’m getting it again.’ He felt the weights returning to him stronger than before. His entire body was beginning to sweat from the unsettling sense pouring through him now. ‘This is what I saw before from her…this was underneath that smile…it was covering it up…’ Yuki clutched his chest receiving a sharp pain. “What truth for me?”

“The truth is that you are not like everyone else here and I don’t mean in the manner of goofing and acting weird that they see from you. This is something deeper inside you. You feel some of it now perhaps, such as this morning with that tree you cut.”

Yuki’s eyes widened thinking back to that moment and the similar feeling that he had. She had been correct that this felt like that. But there was something distinctly different this time. However, he did not cut that tree it was unharmed when he looked. ‘What’s she getting at? I didn’t do anything. But how did she know that I cut that tree in my mind?’ He stared at her seeking an answer from her eyes, but it was like watching a brick wall. He was not getting anything out of her now. “How do you know about the tree?”

“I know, because you cut it down.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did. You used your power that you have had locked inside you trapped by your mind and it is starting to break free from its seal.”

“Seal? Mind? You aren’t making any sense! I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I’ve come for you, Yuki Hayashi. I need you to save my people and I need your power!”

To be continued…