Pursuit

CHAPTER 2

Pursuit

“Hiroto! Hiroto!”

I jerk awake at the sound of my teacher, Mr Ito, yelling my name. Startled, I blink my eyes open groggily, looking up at him.

“Honestly Hiroto, stay awake! Unless you’d rather teach this class?”

Mr Ito stands in front of me, looming over my desk like a skyscraper. He stands at a staggering six foot three inches, with neat black hair and piercing blue eyes. He looks down at me crossly.

“N-no sir.” I stammer.

“Then pay better attention.”

Mr Ito spins around and walks back over to the front of the class to continue teaching. My eyes stung as Mr Ito moves, allowing light to flood into my eyes. I rest my chin in my palm. I can already feel my eyelids dropping closed once again, but I force them to stay open.

Pay better attention, huh?

Easier said than done.

It’s hard enough to get a good nights sleep with update pain, but after what happened to that woman…

I couldn’t sleep.

My mind spent the whole night racing, replaying the events of the day over, and over, and over again.

Well, at least the pounding headache had mostly faded now, so I’ll probably be able to at least get some sleep tonight.

As the lesson continues, I look around the classroom, trying desperately to drone out the sound of Mr Ito’s voice. As much as he knows his stuff, he’s not a particularly invigorating teacher. If I listen to him for too long, especially since I didn’t sleep last night, I’ll probably fall back asleep. And then he’ll be staring me down again.

Plus, I’ll happily take anything to distract me from the memory of that woman.

As I look around, I focus in on Ryu: he’s sitting up perfectly straight. I guess I was still curious as to why he went out of his way to talk to me yesterday.

And that’s when I notice something.

I notice a scar peeking up from behind Ryu’s collar. The scar looks relatively fresh. Was it new?

Had Ryu been in a fight?

No, that’s impossible.

Ryu isn’t the type to get into a fight.

Who would he even fight?

I mean, everyone loves him.

My eyes narrow as I focus in on his collar.

It’s definitely a scar, there’s no doubt about it.

After the lesson, students disperse out through the door and into the corridor. As Ryu leaves, I notice that he’s unusually focussed. After leaving a lesson, Ryu can normally be found laughing and joking with classmates, but today… something was off about him. Even when a group of students tried to talk to him, he quickly ended the conversation and headed off down the corridor. A hologram advertisement for the school’s summer fair flickers as Ryu walks through it.

“What’s gotten into him?” I mutter to myself.

I must be going crazy from the sleep deprivation. Why do I care so much about what this guy is up to?

It’s not like we’re friends.

We just talked once.

As he walked further down the corridor, he threads his fingers through his hair. In the split second that his hair lifts, I notice a second sizable scar, this one on the side of his head.

“A second scar?” I mutter under my breath.

One scar—now that’s just a coincidence. An accident possibly. But two, and one on his head—that’s not normal.

As I watch him turn the corner, I stare to where he was moments ago.

And then, as if by themselves, my legs begin to chase after him.

My heart pounded against my ribcage. My palms felt clammy.

I’m not running, but hastily walking with urgency.

I don’t know why I am. Ryu’s scars are none of my business. Regardless, I begin to tail him.

What am I doing?

Why am I even following him?

Following him like some wannabe detective?

Really?

If I had to guess, I’ve been spooked.

So, this is what it’s like to be paranoid.

The woman from yesterday? Ryu’s scars? His strange behaviour? They were all most likely coincidences. Completely unrelated incidents with no correlation between them.

But what if they weren’t?

Ryu seems to pick up his pace. He looks as if he’s on a mission; not even the bustling corridors or occasional classmate calling his name can slow him down.

I pick up my pace to keep him in my sight but keep a sensible distance to avoid arousing suspicion. The chatter of students blends together as I rush through the corridors.

I must look like such a creep right now. I mean, I’m tailing the school’s golden boy.

Ryu seems to expertly manoeuvre through the crowds of students.

I seem to prefer pushing and stumbling my way through.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” An angry student yells as I push past him.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry guys!”

I seem to be apologizing to everyone I pass.

Meanwhile, Ryu’s presence seems to demand respect, the crowd moving out of the way for him.

After a while, the crowds seem to thin out, everyone heading to their classrooms.

Finally, now I can follow him properly.

Although this means I don’t have to push through everyone, it makes it much harder to follow him without raising suspicion.

Eventually, after powerwalking across the whole campus, he stops in front of the door to a storage room. He looks back over his shoulder to check that no one is looking. Panicking, I open the door to an empty classroom and head inside, pretending that I have something to do in there.

Once inside the classroom, I crouch down and occasionally peak up to look through the window.

Once satisfied that no one’s looking, Ryu pulls out a rusty old key from his pocket and slips it into the keyhole for the door to the storage unit. The keyhole was extremely dusty, as everyone has used the wrist chip scanner for decades. He twists and pulls out the key before opening the door and quickly slipping inside.

“The hell?” I stare at the door at confusion.

That specific room held all the school’s security, cleaning, and all other manner of robots while they were in standby. The only people with a reason to be in there was the school’s technicians.

What’s he doing in there?

And why does he have a key?

Whatever he’s doing, he clearly didn’t want anyone knowing about it.

“What are you doing?” I fall back as I’m startled by a female voice behind me. As I fall flat on my back, I look up to see Sakura stood above me, her arms crossed in front of her as she looks down at me.

“Umm… That’s a great question.”

To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing: but I’ve seen too much to let go of… whatever this is. Ryu was up to something, and I’m going to find out.

“Well? That’s not an answer, Hiroto.” Sakura looks down at me expectantly.

Oh God, she’s not just gonna let me walk away from this, is she?

And I can’t just admit that I was tailing the school’s most popular hunk of muscle.

“I…”

I’m gonna need to find a way to change the subject.

“I could ask you the same question.”

“What?”

“What are you doing in this empty classroom?”

Sakura stares down at me for a few long, agonising moments.

“Get up.” She eventually retorts.

Oh right.

I’m on the floor.

I stumble to my feet. Sakura watches me bitterly.

“So, what are you doing in this room?”

“Shut up.” She shuts me down quickly. “Alright creep, let us cut a deal. I won’t tell anyone that you’re stalking Ryu, and you don’t tell anyone that you saw me in this room. Deal?”

“What, no, I’m not—”

Oh. I guess I kind of was.

“Alright, deal.”

We shake hands before she stomps to the door of the room. She stalls in the doorway to look back at me for a moment. She lets out a huff before walking out and slamming the door.

I guess I stumbled upon two mysteries today: and I intend to get to the bottom of them.

As I reflect on my interaction with Sakura, I see Ryu leaving the room out of the corner of my eye. After he’s out of sight, I rush to the door. As I try to open it, I discover that he’s locked the door. Since they only auto-lock when using a wrist chip to open, I was hoping he’d forget to relock the door.

Looks he didn’t forget.

“Damn it.” I mumble to myself.

I guess my investigation today has been cut short.