Volume 4 | Chapter 11: November (Up) – Part 5
I really wanted to stay shut inside my room for the whole day.
However, I can’t do that. If someone notices I was acting strange, they might come into my room because they are worried.
“Shiori~? It’s morning~? You’re not going to eat breakfast?”
“I’ll eat, just give me a second~”
Calmly, calmly, calmly. I whispered in my heart repeatedly as I answered my mother.
I took a needle last night and made an inner pocket in my school uniform.
There should be no problem with wearing the pendant under my school uniform. People might notice the chain around my neck, but the most important thing is that no one touches the end of my pendant. As such, I sewed a small pocket on the reverse side of my school uniform where the stone at the end of the pendant can be placed in. With this, even if something tugged the chain, the stone wouldn’t be pulled out easily.
Truthfully, I wanted to place the whole pendant inside a pocket. Oh that’s right, I should be able to wear a slim waist pouch under my clothes. I should stop by a shopping mall on my way home today and buy one. It might stick out a bit, but who cares at this point. If I don’t store away the stone safely where no one can touch it, I’ll be runned over by anxiety.
“What’s wrong, Shiori? You’re pale,” Mother asked me when we met at the living room.
“……Really? It’s probably just your imagination. I might have not gotten enough sleep,” I somehow managed to reply even though my mind wasn’t working in the right state.
“Studying is important but don’t go overboard, okay? If you don’t understand math, why don’t you call Kazuto-kun over again?”
“……K-Kazu-nii’s busy.”
That’s all I said to her before I washed down breakfast I couldn’t taste and headed out.
I’m afraid — I’m afraid of leaving my house. I’m also afraid of riding the train.
Every time I passed by someone, I found myself on the edge, cautious of whether or not my stone will escape from the layers of my clothes. My throat burnt deep inside. I felt thirsty, so thirsty, and suffocated.
The road to the academy was astonishingly far. I felt like I was walking on a road of thorns before I made it to my classroom.
I was afraid of all the other students and prayed that no one would come close.
“Good morning, Shiori-chan! You came late today. Did something happen?” Yumi-chan called out to me when I entered the classroom.
I usually come to school much earlier. Today, I was barely in time for the bell.
“N-Nothing happened. I just overslept a bit.” ……Never mind oversleeping. I didn’t sleep a wink.
“Really? But the dark circles under your eyes…” Yumi-chan noted as she stepped closer to me.
I flinched, trembling with fear.
“……Shiori-chan?”
“I-It’s nothing, really……” I shook my head repeatedly.
Yumi-chan is fine. After all, she’s a girl, so nothing will happen even if she touches my stone. Well, in the first place, she shouldn’t know anything about the stones either. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
“Morning, Niimi-san……?”
But I ended up blatantly freezing when I heard Iinchou’s greeting that came next.
“M-M-Morning……” I took a few steps away. Just far enough that he can’t come close to me immediately. I also desperately spoke to myself in my heart. It’s fine, Iinchou wouldn’t try to hurt me.
Swallow down and make a calm expression, Niimi Shiori.
“A-Ahaha… I might be a little unsteadily because I didn’t get enough sleep. I couldn’t sleep well yesterday. C-Come to think of it, Ma… Ah, no, I mean, Aikawa-san is…” I looked around the classroom and realized that Maria-jou still hasn’t arrived. At the very least, I wanted to return her strap right away to her.
“Are you really okay?” Iinchou asked, stepping forward to me.
I panicked and quickly backed away. I saw the worried expression on his face, so I nodded repeatedly.
I have to say, I’m glad that my seat is at the very back. I won’t have to worry about the people behind me with this. I have never thought that having someone walking behind me can be this terrifying.
All I have to do is create distance between me and Tsuchiya-shounen during class time. That being said, he doesn’t care about me at all. He would usually sleep in class and only seriously take notes once in a while. I can relax.
I spent the class time like this before the four members of Neo Candle came to me during break time. It seems they also noticed that I was acting strange. But, sorry, I can’t think straight right now. I’m not sure if I answered back to them properly or not.
“Hey, what’s wrong with Niimi today? She’s really alert…… or I guess, afraid?”
“I think something happened but……”
“Actually, isn’t a time like this a chance? Itou, go and talk to her.”
“No, I think she’ll really hate me if I go now. ……Also, doesn’t she only act this way around guys?”
“……I feel like she’s also afraid of Sasaki too though.”
I could hear them whisper amongst themselves a few distances away.
H-Hey, I can hear you, Neo Candle. But, no. I can’t bring myself to speak to them calmly. I want to go to the holy grounds where Suzuki-obaachan sensei is — also known as the infirmary — and shut myself in.
“Shiori-chan!” Yumi-chan called out to me during lunch time.
She placed her heavy lunch box on my desk while I slowly looked up to see her face.
“Talk to me. What happened? If you find it hard to say in the classroom, we can go somewhere else. What do you think?”
I’m very happy that Yumi-chan is worried about me.
At that moment, sharp pain spread through my chest. My stone… is hot.
“A… Ah……” I curled up like I was going to tear at my chest.
Yumi-chan panicked. “Shiori-chan!!” She carried her lunch box in one hand and grabbed my arm with her other hand. “We’re going to the infirmary, okay!?”
I got up unsteadily on my feet.
However, someone stopped us when we were about to leave the classroom. When I looked up, I realized it was Designer-kun.
He stood there, stopping Yumi-chan from pushing him aside, and said this to us. “I have a bit of an idea about Shiori-chan’s condition. Wanna talk at the rooftops?”
“An idea……? Kamura-kun, did you do something to her?” Yumi-chan asked.
“No way. I like girls, and it’s cause I like them that I won’t do anything to make them scared like this,” Designer-kun said as he waved the bread he brought at the school canteen in the air. The said bread was cream puff bread, which they only sell 30 per day.
Yumi-chan was lured by the bread and agreed to Designer-kun’s proposal. The three of us headed to the rooftops together.
Designer-kun took out the key, which he went out of his way to borrow earlier, and opened the door. I think he might have seen how I was doing in the morning and was worried. After all, he was way too prepared.
There was no one at the rooftops. I couldn’t help but feel a great relief to this fact.
Designer-kun spread out his lunch a few steps away from us while Yumi-chan looked at me once more.
“Now, talk to me, Shiori-chan. If it’s hard to say with a boy around, I’ll chase Kamura-kun away,” she said.
“You’re so mean~ Even after you grabbed my cream puff bread… Well, that’s fine with me though. More importantly, can I ask Shiori-chan a question first?” Designer-kun stared at me as he asked, “Shiori-chan, did someone take your stone?”
Designer-kun’s words cut right into the core, making me look up. I don’t know what assumption he made after seeing my pale face, but he continued.
“Or is it still with you?”
I nodded.
“Then you’ll be fine. You need to carry your [heart] strongly. You see, that’s something that won’t affect you even if it ends up in someone else’s hand if you’re properly conscious of it. Just how many girls do you think I gave mine to? Do you know why I only think ‘she’s cute~’ or ‘I like her~’ and nothing else despite that?”
Designer-kun paused here before smiling like he always did.
“You can’t be afraid of liking someone. Falling in love with someone is a natural thing.”
He was smiling carelessly yet he was very dependable right now.
Come to think of it, he was the only capture target who perfectly came to terms with his stone. Kazu-nii, Katsuragi-kun, Mizusaki-senpai, Kaneshiro-senpai… Every one of them had been defending their stones and wouldn’t give them to a girl willingly.
“Kamura-kun, what are you talking about?” Yumi-chan interrupted with a puzzled expression. “Conscious? Heart?” She tilted her head, questioningly.
Designer-kun nodded strongly before answering, “You see, Shiori-chan is afraid of being in love.”
Yumi-chan’s jaw dropped when she heard this. Eventually, her expression changed to one seething with anger. “Eh? What? Even though I was super, super worried that she had been acting strange since this morning!?”
Yumi-chan stood up as she trembled all over. She soon put her hands on her hips as she stared down on me. It didn’t take long for her to grab my shoulders and started shaking me.
“Shiori-chan!? What’s going on!? Are you saying you fell in love with someone at first sight and didn’t know what to do with your first experience of having your heart skip!?”
Eh? N-No……
The moment Yumi-chan starts her delusions, they don’t stop.
“You were so scared of everyone! I thought you met a horrible pervert on your way home yesterday! Shiori-chan’s showing signs of love!? Ah, how could this be! Why didn’t I go home with her yesterday!? Who!? Whooo!? Whoooo is it!?”
Hieeeee!!!
Yumi-chan continued to shake me back and forth. It’s by the time I felt sick that she let go of me. It seems she was hungry, so she decided to start eating.
Umm, I feel dizzy enough that I don’t have an appetite anymore. What should I do now?
“Well, if it’s like that, then I guess you can’t help it for a while. First love is confusing, yup,” Yumi-chan said like she understood everything. She smoothly ate her lunch and had the cream puff bread as dessert. When she was all finished, she nodded with satisfaction.
On the other hand, I was completely dumbfounded that I didn’t have the composure to think about lunch.
“F-First love……?” I parroted back without thinking.
Yumi-chan waved her finger left and right. “Shiori-chan, you’re not counting some faint feelings you had during kindergarten or elementary school as your first love, right? Let me tell you this, feelings like I get along with neighbour Maa-kun, so I liked him, don’t count as love, okay?”
Eh? Wait, what? Also, who the heck is Maa-kun.
“Also admiring your older relative doesn’t count as a first love either. It has to be sweet and bitter like your heart throbs loudly when you see him, or you get embarrassed when he stares at you that you find yourself looking down. A good way of telling if you are in love is if you listen to a love song and empathize with the lyrics. Yup.”
Errr, I can’t think of any of that happening to me.
Yumi-chan gradually approached me and touched the tip of my nose with her finger. “Ufufufu~” She laughed.
Umm, your smile is scaring me. Also, Yumi-chan seems kind of different from usual.
“Y-Yumi-chan? You’re misunderstanding……” I said nervously. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like she’s listening to me at all.
“It is a little bit disappointing,” Designer-kun said as he tilted his head in the middle of this mess. “I really did want to see a Shiori-chan in love with me. She’ll get angry at me, yet blush and be shy at the same time.” He sounded quite earnest.
Incidentally, his lunch was a sandwich. He usually steals bites here and there from other people’s lunches, so he most likely brought this sandwich from the school canteen today.
“But you know, Shiori-chan. You have to be careful. What you should pay attention to isn’t some random crowd of people around you. You need to be careful about men who are interested in you,” Designer-kun warned me with a serious expression. He didn’t look like he was joking at all.
“Eh?” Err… I don’t think there’s been a time when a guy has been interested in me.
“No matter how much they might like you… No, it’s because they do like you that they might get tempted. Shiori-chan doesn’t belong to anyone, yet there’s a chance she might become some other guy’s — the moment they think this, they might panic and stop matching with your pace. Even if they might have to force their way a bit, the moment they gain your stone, everything will be alright for them. ……You can’t guarantee that no one will think like this, right?”
Shivers went down my back. The stone at my chest grew cold. Ah, I see. I am uneasy and worried right now.
“……Thank you, Kamura-kun.”
He smiled brightly in response.
In any case, the only people who know about the stones are the capture targets. Never mind Designer-kun’s warning, no one would try to snatch my stone as long as some accident doesn’t happen.
However, the problem here is Father Michel.
Yesterday was too shocking that my mind stopped working, but I need to think carefully about what that man said. I don’t know how it happened, still it’s with no doubt that Father Michel’s the one who materialized my stone.
I feel like that sweet scent, to the point of making me nauseated, has some secret. I should try to analyse everything when I return home.
Okay, I feel calm again. When I think about it, all the capture targets accepted the existence of their stone in some way. What am I going to do if I’m the only one panicking about it?
My appetite came back, so I started to eat my lunch too.
We walked back to the classroom together after we ate lunch. Once we got to the floor of our classroom B, a familiar person called out to me.
—It’s Kazu-nii. Judging by how he’s attentive of his surroundings, he is currently in his teacher mode.
“Niimi. Do you have time after school?” He asked me.
“Yes, I do, but for what reason…?”
“Could you come to the guidance counselling room after?”
Eh? I widened my eyes in surprise for a second.
I do know about this guidance counselling room. It’s the room that’s used mainly for students and teachers to discuss one-on-one about future career paths and so on. The room is located in the centre building. I hear that it’s mostly used by the third years of the academy. Very rarely would a first year student need to visit that room.
“Is there something I need to assist with?” I questioned, thinking maybe I needed to distribute or collect documents.
“Something like that,” Kazu-nii replied with a slightly troubled expression.
Now then, it’s finally after school.
The moment the bell rang, Yumi-chan came by my desk with her bag in hand. I think she wants to continue the conversation we had at lunch. I’m pretty sure she wants to dig out all the details about my so-called first love. I don’t have one. Seriously.
“Sensei summoned me, so go home without me~” I told her before heading to the guidance counselling room.
I assumed that Iinchou was summoned too, yet only Kazu-nii was there waiting for me. He gestured me to the chair to sit and was mindful of me as he locked the door.
The guidance counselling room wasn’t all that large. It was probably less than half the size of our normal classroom, which makes sense since this room is mostly used for one-on-one discussion. There were bookshelves lined up after another with materials on career paths. In the room was also a somewhat large desk with four chairs around it.
I sat down on the chair while Kazu-nii took a seat across from me.
He opened his mouth and asked, “You don’t look as pale now. ……Do you feel better now?”
I realized those were his words as Kazu-nii and not as my teacher. I blinked my eyes a number of times.
……I see. I was acting strange, so he got worried and called me out.
“You can just ask this back at home,” I said with a low voice, pouting.
Kazu-nii frowned a bit in response. I could see his expressions quite well with how we are sitting across from each other like this.
“……You said, ‘don’t come in,’ didn’t you? Yesterday.”
Come to think of it, I did. It looks like it really bothered him as he looked gloomy.
“What’s wrong? What happened? Did it have anything to do with how you messaged me, saying you’ll come home late?” Kazu-nii asked, worryingly.
“Sensei, are you sure you should be using that tone of voice at school?” I protested a bit before sighing. “I didn’t meet Maria-jou there. It started with me wanting to ask her things, so I invited her to a cafe after school. In the middle of our talk, her grandmother’s condition worsened. She got a call, so we cut our discussion short. Maria-jou dropped something then, so I went to deliver it to her……”
I took out my cell phone and opened my messages. There I found messages from an unknown email address, asking me to come to the church.
“……That’s not like you. You got lured by this and went alone?”
“For some reason, I was convinced that Maria-jou messaged me,” I explained. “First, I asked Kyouko-jou to tell Maria-jou I had something of her’s and then these messages came. I was sure that they were from Maria-jou…”
“You messaged Matsuri?”
“Cause, I don’t know Maria-jou’s email address.”
Kazu-nii gave me a doubtful expression, but he didn’t comment any further. Before I told him about what happened at the church, I asked him first. “Kazu-nii, do you know where Maria-jou lives? I want to deliver what she dropped, if you don’t mind. I could ask Kyouko-jou but…”
“No, don’t ask Matsuri. If you want to go, it’s best if you go alone, Shiori. ……But…” Kazu-nii hesitated. “……I can’t follow you all the way to her home. Let me wait in the area nearby to be safe.”
I grimaced. He’s being way too protective. That being said, I can also understand Kazu-nii’s feelings about not knowing what could happen and wanting to be alert.
“Don’t show your face no matter what, okay? A capture target showing up in front of his student’s house shows like a requirement to trigger an event.”
Kazu-nii was taken aback. “…A event, huh. You’re right.”
Don’t tell me he forgot. Just who have I been doing my best until now for? I fixed my eyes hard on Kazu-nii and he coughed somewhat awkwardly.
“And… What happened at the church?” He asked next.
I was about to answer his question when I realized that a sweet scent was drifting in the air. It was really thick and went up my nose, making me feel like throwing up. Warning bells started to ring inside my head. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand and observed my surroundings.
—I have smelled this scent before. Where did it come from?
That was when someone knocked on the door.
“Hibiya-sensei, are you here? It’s Fujimiya……” It was the voice of the English teacher, Fujimiya-sensei.
The door was locked, so it’s safe but I still gulped.
Kazu-nii got up hurryingly, making the sound of his chair ring in the room. “Y-Yeah, I’m here. What’s wrong? I have received permission to use this room, but do you need it now?”
“Yes…… I do need to use it, but if you still need it longer, I will come back later,” Fujimiya-sensei replied.
“I’m sorry. Our discussion is taking longer than I predicted……” Kazu-nii said.
“No, it’s alright. Please excuse me.”
Soon I heard the sound of her heels echoing down the hallway before disappearing.
I wonder if Fujimiya-sensei heard our conversation from outside the door. We spoke with small voices, so I don’t think she heard but…
“……!” Kazu-nii covered his mouth and put his elbows on top of the desk. I think he might have swallowed down some of the scent just now.
I wonder if he’s alright. The moment I got up, my chair fell onto the ground with a thud. I gazed at Kazu-nii’s face with the desk between us. What I saw made me stiffened.
The colour of his eyes were blank like they were in a daze, with unfocused pupils. Why are Kazu-nii’s eyes like this?
“Ka…..” Water. Is there water around? A stun gun is fine too. Anyways, those eyes are dangerous.
I panicked and grabbed my bag in a hurry. The bottle I had in my bag was, unfortunately, not water and is actually black tea. However, at this point in time, who cares. He should return back to normal once I splash water on him. At least it should!
“Kazu-nii, I’m sorry but…!” I said quickly before I placed my hand on the lid——
A man’s hand grabbed my wrist. A cold shiver went down my spine.
The stone on my pendant quickly turned cold, making a sharp pain stab at my chest.
“……Shiori…” He murmured my name with sensuality that made me tremble with fear. I tried to wave his hand aside. However, he didn’t even move an inch.
I screamed out soundlessly yet he spoke to me with a calm gentle voice. “Don’t panic. ……I won’t do anything to you.”
“……Eh?”
Before I realized it, the colour of his eyes went back to normal. It was quick enough that all of this might have even been an illusion. I glared at him with suspicion.
Kazu-nii smiled tiredly back. “I was only affected a bit. ……If I’m the type who’ll lose my rationality with that small amount, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself until now.”
What’s he talking about? I frowned some more, making him look troubled.
“But I have to say… Even Fujimiya-sensei is affected. That scent has spread quite a lot within the academy…”
“Kazu-nii, do you know what that is?” I questioned.
“I don’t, but I can make some guesses… If you smell that too long, you lose your sanity. That being said, it’s not like anything particular happens. Have you noticed there’s more and more students in a daze during class time? They would have unfocused eyes and a vacant expression on their face. If you call out to them, they’ll respond, so it’s not like they’re no longer studying. They also go to their clubs properly…… I’ve observed them and it seems there’s times when they zone out.”
What the heck. Kazu-nii noticed way more than me. Wait, no, I mean I won’t know the faces of my classmates during class time.
“Kazu-nii, you made the same expression earlier,” I told him.
“Well, yeah. If Shibuya didn’t return me back to normal during the first time I got affected by it, it would have been dangerous,” Kazu-nii said before he looked down at me. “What happened at the church?”
“That scent was drifting from the church. And then…”
I voiced out the same words that Father Michel said.
—This is your [heart], Niimi Shiori-san.
As I explained from the beginning to Kazu-nii, I took out that certain thing from inside my school uniform. It was an orange-coloured stone pendant.
All the capture targets were born with a stone. Katsuragi-kun’s stone didn’t have a chain on his stone while Kazu-nii and Designer-kun purposely altered theirs long after they were born.
Yet my stone came with its own chain from the beginning. I don’t know what difference there is, however, there’s no doubt this was one of those [stones].
“A stone!?” Kazu-nii looked like someone hit him with a hammer.
“H-Hey, stop…” I stopped Kazu-nii from getting closer to take a better look and frantically shook my head. I gripped the stone in my hand to show my rejection. Finally, Kazu-nii stopped moving like he came back to his senses.
Also, trying to peer down into a girl’s chest is a crime, okay!?
“……Ah…” Kazu-nii’s cheeks dyed red before he covered his mouth with his hand and looked the other way.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked with cold eyes.
Kazu-nii stiffened before he replied in a panic, “W-Wait, let me explain myself. I wasn’t thinking about anything strange!” He held up his hands like he was typing to say he’s innocent. He continued to rattle on non-stop, “Think about it carefully. Have I ever given you my stone? Never, right? I know more than anyone just how anxious it feels to give the stone to another person. It’s like giving someone the power over my life and death, am I right!? I definitely won’t touch it, so don’t worry. I didn’t think about it. I was only thinking that you were looking at me afraid with teary eyes and it’s actually a bit cu— No, it’s really nothing!!”
I feel like he said something that would make me even more anxious. Well, he declared he won’t touch my stone, so let’s leave it at that.
I opened up my hand and showed the stone on my palm to Kazu-nii. He stared fixedly, observing it before he took out his own stone.
“The colour is different, but it’s the same… Who exactly is Father Michel…” Kazu-nii mumbled.
I don’t know the answer either. I returned the stone inside my clothes and shook my head. “Anyways, I’m going home. We can’t make any plans unless we calm down a bit first. Yumi-chan’s misunderstanding the situation too…… I need to at least resolve that.”
“Misunderstand?”
“……She thinks I fell in love with someone because I was scared all morning,” I mumbled out reluctantly. It’s embarrassing to admit this out loud. Damn it, my ears feel hot too. It also feels like my stone is throbbing and making a weird sound too.
Love! Not a score of zero in tennis or dove or glove, but love! Really, it’s a word that doesn’t have anything with me. Yup… I feel like I’m missing out on something as a female high school student… Also, Yumi-chan denied my first love during lunch time, didn’t she? If she’s right, I might still be a kid who hasn’t even had their first love yet. Well, I’m not in a panic or a rush, so it doesn’t really matter. I’ll wait patiently.
Kazu-nii didn’t respond. I thought he’d comment with astonishment or something, so I glanced at him, feeling something was strange. He was looking way elsewhere while covering his mouth with his hand.
“H-Huh……?” Why was he reacting like that? I was surprised.
Kazu-nii stared at me; his eyes silently blaming me for something.
TL note: Yumi: Shiori-chan’s first loveeeee!!!! I need to know!!!!