Tokyo at 7:32 a.m. It is a place where coffee does not know coffee, students run as if their lives depend on it, and trains arrive with the same punctuality with which I ignore class messages.
My name is Reiji Nakamura, and I'm not special. Or so I thought.
"I told you that car 3 is faster!" A boy shouted with a wrinkled uniform as he ran in front of me. I ignored him. Apparently, running for your dignity early is a national sport.
I, on the other hand, walk with the calm of who knows that, if it is late, they will not notice. Being invisible has its advantages. Especially in the Hoshizora Institute, where everyone seems to live within their own anime series.
That day, the sun shone with a suspicious intensity, as if I knew that something strange was going to happen.
And it passed.
Upon entering the living room, I ran into a scene worthy of applause: our Japanese language teacher, Mr. Tachibana, held a sheet while murmured:—Chase of seats ... thanks to the "random" system ... that I clearly wrote last night in wet napkins.
The laughs did not wait. I looked at him with that silent respect that one reserves for those who have already surrendered in life. "Nakamura, you have to sit next to Minazuki-san," he announced with a smile that shouted "this is going to be fun ... for me."
My eyebrow lifted by instinct. Minazuki? Did the girl who once asked the biology professor if the sunflowers had emotions? The one that walked with a notebook decorated with flame and kittens stickers? Fantastic.
I sat next to him without saying a word. She didn't say anything at the beginning either. He only jacked intensely in his notebook, as if the life of an entire country depended on it.
"Don't look," he said suddenly, without looking away from his notebook. -Sorry? "My ideas evaporate if someone observes me." It is a hereditary curse.
I turned to see his notebook for pure impulse. In the upper part:"Chapter 1: The boy who fell in love without wanting the wrong girl"And just below, with somewhat clumsy lyrics:"He sat next to her without knowing that this would be the beginning of the disaster."
I felt a chill. I was writing. Literally.
-What is this? I asked without being able to avoid it. She looked at me as if I were the weird. "Have you never written a story that began to be written alone?"
I don't. I barely manage to write tasks without existential attacks.
Before I could say something else, the notebook closed suddenly. And on the lid, with red marker, there was only one rule written in capital letters:"Forbidden to fall in love outside the script."
...
It was at that time, in the midst of a boring literature class, that I knew two things:One, Minazuki Aika was not like others. And two, I was probably about to lose the little mental peace that I had left. "Then ..." I started saying, trying to sound casual, "is this like a ... school project?"
Aika looked at me with an expression that looked like a mixture of "you are an idiot" and "I am considering whether to tell you the truth or invoke a giant frog to distract you."
"It's my story," he said seriously. But it is not fiction. "Isn't fiction ...?""What I write ... it happens." Although sometimes he advances to me. He frowned. Like today. I had no planned to sit with you. The story jumped a chapter.
Did the story skip a chapter?
I breathed deep. I had three options:
1. laugh in his face (cruel).
2. Lift and change seat (coward).
3. Follow the game, at least out of curiosity (definitely me).
"And in that story ... what happens to me?"She blinked. "I still don't decide." But I know something strange happens to you. You have a character face with hidden trauma.
Wow. Straight to the heart.
The class continued as if nothing. While the teacher recited passages from a boring text about the old feudal Japan, Aika kept writing. Every so often, his gaze deviated towards me, as if he were studying me to draw me in words.
I tried not to feel observed. I failed.
-Can I ask you a question? -whisper. "You already did.""Do you have a favorite song for rainy days?""What kind of question is that?"
She smiled.
"Unexpected questions reveal more than obvious."
I did not answer. I thought about saying "I don't know", but in my head began to sound that old song I listened to as a child ... when it rained and my younger sister was hard by my side with fear of thunder. But I wasn't going to release all that as well as. We barely knew each other. Technically. "I like instruments." I replied, without giving details.
She pointed something fast in her notebook and nodded as if she just resolved a riddle.
At the end of the class, just when the bell rang and everyone got up as if they were fleeing an explosion, Aika kept her notebook carefully.
"We see us in chapter two," he said, turning around and leaving as if that were the most normal in the world.
I was left alone in the living room.
And in that silent silence, when the noise moves away and the sun enters through the windows as if someone had risen the brightness to heaven, I found a folded leaf under my desk.
I unfolded.
"Today the change begins. Don't fall in love yet."Signed: "The narrator."
Narrator?
There was no one more writing this story ... or yes?
Hello, I'm the narrator. Yes, that narrator. He who supposedly should not appear until volume three, when everything became dramatic and mysterious. But as the characters in this story are already beginning to do strange things from day one ... I was forced to intervene. And besides, who can resist a story where a girl is literally writing her own romance and an average boy is about to enter the dimension "What is happening here and why do I feel butterflies in the stomach"?
In the end. Let's take up.
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