Chapter 2

As soon as I opened the door, the murmuring I had heard from in the door stopped instantly. The teacher, having been speaking, turned and looked to me, an irritated expression on her face, as if expecting a tardy student. But, upon seeing it was me, her expression immediately changed to a smile. The teacher seemed to be a nice looking woman. Very much what you’d expect when you thought of a teacher. She had short brown hair, brown eyes and looked relatively young. Maybe in her mid 20’s?

The rest of the class began muttering to themselves in Japanese as i stepped in. The teacher then turned to the students and began speaking very fast in Japanese. All of which, I gathered exactly zero of what she said. The students continued to murmur as I stepped forward before finally speaking.

Now, I knew an introduction would have to happen, so I had prepared myself. Just like I remembered the few words to say to the principal, I remembered a few words to say in Japanese. Well, barely. I opened my mouth and, in my best Japanese (which was pretty terrible) stated that my name was Charlie Miller, I was a second year, and I was from America. Honestly I had no idea WHAT I was saying, it was all just sounds that I repeated.

As I was finishing, I heard a voice from within the classroom. And, to my surprise, it was English. A distinctly female voice bust out with “Hey! America! Yo!” I turned my head to origin of the voice and, honestly I was quite shocked with what I saw. A Japanese student was leaning, one arm over the back of her chair, the other pointing a finger gun at me. Her bottom half had the normal socks and skirt, but she wasn’t wearing the standard uniform top. Instead, she was wearing a blue jacket, a white t-shirt, and heart shaped sunglasses. She sported a neck length head of blue hair and a big grin on her face.

Seeing she got my attention, she gave me gave me another finger gun. Despite being nervous a few moments ago, currently, I was doing my best not to laugh at the display. What in the world was that girl doing? Before I could ponder that, the teacher said something in Japanese and the students gave me a polite clap. She gestured for me to take a seat.

I glanced around to see if I could find an open one. I didn’t have to look long though as miss heart glasses immediately raised her arms, waving them, pointing at the free seat next to her. Even though there were a few extra seats, i decided it was probably the best idea to just accept her invitation and take a seat next to her. As soon as I did, she grinned ear to ear beneath her sunglasses and patted me on the back with more oomph than I expected. I glanced over to her only to get another double set of finger guns. I did my best not to cringe.

The class went about as well as could be expected. I didn’t understand two words the teacher was saying and the only reason I was able to follow along and do anything was because it was math. Thank god math is universal. Anytime she would put up a problem and mumble something away in Japanese, I could follow the numbers. The rest of the classes I was so lost it wasn’t even funny. I groaned as I flipped through the textbook, realizing I had no hope of remotely reading this and my picture translator was going to be doing a lot heavy lifting later.

I think perhaps the teacher took pity on the foreigner and his first day as I wasn’t called on once all day. Of course, that was small pittance compared to the fact that other than math, I had zero idea of what was going on. As if some kind of mercy was finally hitting me, The bell rang for lunchtime. I was about to get up and go to the cafeteria when I stopped and remembered that most Japanese schools didn’t HAVE cafeterias. Essentially they would just eat in the classrooms. Thank goodness I remembered to buy some rice balls late last night and throw them in my bags this morning. I mean it was not a full lunch, but it was better than nothing.

I let out a sigh and reached into my bag, removing the two squished rice balls from the depths of the bottom. As I was about to unwrap them, I felt an arm around my neck. “Yo! My dude!” I heard in a very thick japanese accent. I lowered my eyelids to half and prevented myself from sighing, but I immediately knew who it was. Heart glasses girl.

Over my shoulder I could feel her look down at my meager lunch and mumble something in Japanese. She then turned her head to me and said something else in Japanese. Not having any idea what she said, I merely nodded and said “H-hai”. Well, this was obviously the answer she preferred as she got up, grabbed a chair and sat down next to me. Ah. She wanted to have lunch with me.

While all the other students were busy taking out their bento boxes and chatting with friends, there was me, with my sad little two squished rice balls. I glanced over to the girl and saw her pull out, not a bento, but what looked like a giant sub sandwich. I found myself blinking in surprise. I didn’t even know they HAD submarine sandwiches here. I mean, i suppose you could make one, and I don’t know why the idea of a Japanese student eating a giant sub sandwich threw me off so much, but i’m not gonna lie, it did.

The girl then looked from the sandwich to my sad duo of squished rice balls. Then she looked back to her sandwich and suddenly, like a wrestler, ripped the sandwich in half like a phone book. I let out a small ‘eh?’ as she did this. A moment later, she reached over, took one of my dilapidated rice balls and handed me half of her sandwich.

I was about to argue this or make a comment, but it didn’t even feel like I had a say in this matter. It just kind of...happened. So, I just smiled and thanked her in English. She returned the smile eagerly and then pointed to herself. “I...Mizuki Fujisaki.” She then gave an aggressively excited thumbs up “Mizuki okay!”

“Oh! Um.. Hi Mizuki. I’m Charlie.” Hearing me use her first name caused her wide to widen even more, to an almost impossible size. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, I assume if her eyes could be smiling, they would be too.

Mizuki unwrapped the rice ball she took from me and began eating it. With her mouth full, she began to speak in Japanese at an increased speed. Out of her entire speech, the only words I recognized were “Charlie” and “America”. She ended her statement with a question inflection, so I assumed she asked me something.

“Ah um..” I paused, wondering what on Earth she could possibly have been asking me. “Um.” I took a shot in the dark and just stated where I was from. “N...new York?” Well, as soon as I said this, the girl’s sunglasses fell to the bridge of her nose as she stared at me in shock. For the first time, I could see that behind the glasses, she had piercing green eyes, but were immediately covered back up as she stood up “Ehhh!? New York?!” She pulled in close to me, our noses nearly touching, before standing back up and putting her hands together as if in prayer, sparkles appearing around her face as she started to go into some sort of monologue in Japanese. Of which I assume she was saying something about New York.

I laughed nervously, a sweat drop appearing on my face. It was really the only thing I could think to do in that situation. This girl was....odd? But she seemed harmless enough. Still though, first ‘sorry’ girl, and now Mizuki, I hoped that this would be the extent of the weirdness I found in this school. I said that to myself as i munched on the surprisingly good half sandwich she gave me. But, in my heart, I knew that wouldn’t be the case at all and I had a feeling, the day was only going to get weirder.