The First Morning: Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

-two pieces.

"See..." said Risa after breaking most of her bones.

"Okay, that was impressive," said Kasumi, "But that was obviously done on purpose."

"This is my friend, Kasumi," Risa said, putting her hands on Kasumi's shoulders after magically healing her bones somehow. "We tend to argue a bit, but I know she loves me. She's always so happy that I set up the demon kills for her."

"Demon kills?" The teacher asked.

"I mean, it's from a game that we play."

"What game?"

"Well, it's... Um."

"Is it Demon Killers III?" A girl with big ol' glasses said from the back of the room.

"Yeah, exactly. That game."

"I play that game too."

"That's good to know," she said before switching over to Yuri, "This is Yuri. She isn't that talkative, but she is very reliable and friendly. Say hi, Yuri."

Yuri just lifted her hand.

"By the way, this morning I ate-"

"A Big Wac, I saw you," the teacher interrupted, "I think other people want to introduce themselves. Yuri, looks like you are next. Would you like to introduce yourself to the class?"

Yuri stood up and looked around the classroom before staring straight forward.

"Yuri."

Everyone clapped. It was an amazing performance. Such bravery. Such grace. No one had seen anything like it before. The roaring of the crowd reached outside of the school.

After everyone calmed down after a few minutes, it was Kasumi's turn.

Scared of the expectations that everyone had after Yuri's introduction, she went with a basic introduction.

"Hello, my name is Kasumi, and I like doing things??? Um, I'll be in your care."

"You know," the teacher said, "You haven't told us your last name. I'll like to know it."

"Yes, it's [REDACTED]."

"Sorry?"

"[REDACTED]"

"Sorry, I don't think I heard that name before."

"Really? It's like [EXPLUNGED] or [MISSING]."

"Can you write it on the board so that the class could see?" She held up a marker.

Kasumi wrote some kind of Japanese characters on the board, but no one could read them because they immediately became blurry.

"There it is. It has the [REDACTED] from [REDACTED], and the [REDACTED] from [REDACTED]."

"How would you spell it in English?"

"!-#-@-*-#-$-!-@"

"I see..."

She lied. She didn't see.

This has never happened to her before. One of the regular struggles of a teacher is memorizing all of her students' names, but she never foresaw a day where she couldn't know a student's name. It was simply unheard of.

She slumped defeated at her desk, wondering where it all went wrong. Was she destined for a life of regret and shame? Or could she somehow recover and live a fulfilling life? Maybe she should move to India or someplace in Europe. Somewhere to escape her fruitless existence as a teacher. Maybe she should become a student instead and go back to college. Maybe she wasn't alone in being unable to learn a student's name. Maybe her problems aren't that uncommon. But it probably didn't matter if her problems were universal or not. The point of life is to overcome your problems. As a great man once said, to change the world, you must first change yourself. She wasn't sure if she could legally utter his name. Names couldn't possibly be copyrighted, right? Especially if they weren't stage names or anything. Oh no. She was running into problems with names again. How could she ever face the world again?

"Kasumi [REDACTED], right?" she uttered.

"No, it's Kasumi [REDACTED]."

A pause.

"Is just Kasumi fine?"

"It always was."

"Okay."

The introductions continued. There was a bunch of unimportant characters in the main characters' class, but there's the glasses girl, who said:

"Hello, I'm Megumi Izumi. I like playing video games and reading books. Nice to meet all of you!"

She sat in the back corner of the class, next to the window as if she was the real main protagonist.

Talking about cliches, Yuri ate lunch in a restroom stall. It wasn't because she was a loner or was bullied or anything. It was because everyone wanted an autograph or picture of the woman. Her introduction touched the hearts of so many people that they had to call an army of cardiologists to check that all of the students were okay. Never in history that this many teenagers had heart problems, except probably for a school for people with heart problems, which is a weird premise for a school, to say the least.

Anyway, no one could find Yuri because she was in the stalls eating her lunch. It was good curry rice, but it tasted weird in the bathroom. Fun fact: smell affects taste. The two senses are connected. Therefore, the chlorine smell of the recently washed restroom affected the taste of Yuri's food.

Yuri wondered if she liked the taste of the food. She didn't dislike it, but she didn't particularly like it either. To be fair, she didn't know how it tasted outside of the restroom. So, she didn't have a point of reference.

She also wondered if she went too far with her hiding spot. Sure, it seems to get the work done, but sitting in a bathroom stall eating lunch seemed depressing. Maybe it would be better to sit in the back of the school or in the gym equipment room. But she didn't feel like it. She was fine here.

How would her friends feel if they found her here? She imagined it to be unlikely, but Kasumi could knock on that door right now. They would probably be worried sick. Here was Yuri, their friend, acting as she was rejected from the world. The only place that was safe anymore was a lonely cramped restroom stall. They would probably then drag her out of the restroom and force her to give them names so that they could teach her tormentors a lesson. However, there weren't any names to name. She did this out of her free will. Maybe, now that she thought about it, she should've gone to the back of the school or somewhere else. Sure, she didn't care where she ate, but she didn't like to send the wrong message to anyone. It was a pain to explain anything complicated.

Either way, it didn't matter too much anymore. She was finished with her lunch. She packed it up and opened the stall door. While walking to the door, she passed a guy who was peeing so hard it sounded like he was frying chicken.