Remedial Classes and Advanced Warnings

When the door abruptly slid open, the teacher–a perfectly normal-looking young woman–turned her head to look at Kaori in surprise.

“Ah, right. I almost forgot,” she mumbled. The teacher turned her attention to the rest of the students. “Class, we have a new transfer student joining us today.”

Kaori walked over to the teacher’s podium. Her smile faded fast. She was suddenly so nervous that she could only look at her own feet.

“I’m Doumeki–your teacher. Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class, Tachibana-san?”

Kaori flinched. She looked up, finally taking in her new classmates sitting at rows of long desks.

Humans…elves…and…an animal of some kind?! Sitting in the back corner of the class was a large brown, furry beast in a P.E. uniform, fidgeting at their desk.

“Um…uh…” Kaori stammered. She was so caught off guard by her furry classmate that she completely forgot what to say. “My name is Kaori Tachibana…I’m fifteen…”

Her classmates–the ones who were awake anyway–stared at Kaori blankly as she fumbled through her self-introduction. She could feel her face turning red.

“My hobbies are wr–”

“AKABOSHI!” shouted Doumeki-sensei as she chucked a chalkboard eraser clear across the room. It hit the back wall with a THWAP, just narrowly avoiding the intended target’s head. “You’re late again!”

“Nuh uh! I was here the whole time!” yelled the boy who’d ducked away from the flying eraser.

Had he been there? Kaori didn’t remember seeing him when she entered the room, considering there weren’t many students in the class to begin with. But there wasn’t anything about him that stood out to her, except maybe his height.

“Do you really think you can get anything past me?! I saw you teleport in!” the teacher scolded. Out of the corner of Kaori’s eye, it briefly looked like Doumeki-sensei had eyes all over her body. But when she snapped her head to look, the teacher had just the two on her face.

Doumeki-sensei tucked her long, black hair behind her ear and smiled at Kaori. “Please continue.”

“...Um…I hope we can all become f-friends,” Kaori mumbled, directing her gaze to the floor.

“Well, take the empty seat next to Akaboshi-kun over there,” the teacher said, gesturing to the boy on the receiving end of the eraser.

Kaori gave Doumeki-sensei a slight bow before scurrying over to her new seat at the back of the room. Taking a seat next to the boy who may or may not have always been sitting there, she put out her hand to him.

“N-nice to meet you…Akaboshi-kun, was it?” Kaori said, trying to force a smile.

He looked at her hand for a moment before turning his head away. “Tch.”

Lowering her hand, Kaori sighed in frustration over this difficult boy. She had a feeling it was going to be a long semester.

***

“Akaboshi, I want you to be Tachibana’s buddy while she gets accustomed to the school,” Doumeki-sensei ordered as she started drawing circles on the chalkboard.

“Huh?! Why me?!” Haruto yelled, jumping out of his seat. Everyone in the class was looking at him now. If there was one thing Haruto Akaboshi hated more than anything, it was being forced to do something.

“Because you were a transfer student here once as well,” she said as she continued to fill out the circles. “Also, this is your punishment for your chronic tardiness.”

Haruto wondered just who exactly was being punished here as he looked at the timid girl next to him. When she met his gaze, he quickly turned his head and scooted his chair away from her as he sat down again.

Kaori pulled out a notebook and pencil case from her bag. Looking back and forth from the chalkboard to her bag, she furrowed her brow. Finally, she pulled out a math textbook. Kaori opened the book to some pages on geometry, looked at the board once more, and scratched her head.

Haruto silently slid his textbook on magic circles and sigils over to Kaori. She looked at the book wide-eyed and mouth agape. A smile almost cracked on Haruto’s face.

He pulled out his other textbooks on magical subjects and placed them in a stack between himself and Kaori. She could use his textbooks for today. It didn’t really matter to him either way.

Haruto rested his chin on his hand and closed his eyes.

Whenever the bell rang to signal the end of a class period, Haruto snapped awake long enough to push the appropriate textbook for the next subject over to Kaori’s side. And each time, after he was sure Doumeki-sensei wasn’t paying attention to him, he’d fall back asleep.

When the bell for lunch rang, signaling the end of morning classes, Haruto stood up and stretched. He was just about to head out of the classroom when he felt a tug on the back of his blazer. It was that damn new girl.

“What is it?” he sighed.

“Um…are we supposed to have lunch together?” she asked, staring at the floor.

“Don’ wanna,” he replied, yanking his blazer out of her hand. Haruto started to walk away, then stopped and looked at the new girl. “There’s a cafeteria on the first floor and a school store.”

He didn’t have to show her. Just telling her should be enough. He had other places to be anyway, so he scurried off while the new girl tried and failed to chase him.

***

Kaori looked at her phone to check the time. If this school were anything like a normal school, then lunch would probably be over soon. She hadn’t even had the chance to eat yet because she’d gotten hopelessly lost in the hallways after visiting the school store.

Finding the school cafeteria was easy–most of the students were heading there–but finding her way back to the classroom proved more difficult for Kaori. If that jerk, Akaboshi, had actually done what a “buddy” is supposed to, she wouldn’t have ended up in this situation or have to eat lunch alone.

He was certainly a strange one. He lent her his textbooks–even going so far as to make sure the correct book was in front of Kaori for each class–but slept through all of the morning classes. It was no wonder he was in the remedial class.

Magic Circles & Sigils…The Fundamentals of Mana…Inter-Realm History…and a class on magical ethics. Kaori was hopelessly lost throughout all of these. If it weren’t for those textbooks, she wouldn’t have even had any idea of what the classes were.

Still, those classes were all lectures. Kaori had no idea what her afternoon classes would look like. Her mind flooded with scenarios of how she’d embarrass herself in any sort of class where she’d have to demonstrate her complete lack of skills. She’d have to get a proper class schedule from the teacher at the end of the day so she could prepare better going forward.

Kaori turned one corner, and then another. This damn school!

Every hallway looked exactly the same! It didn’t help that her classroom in particular was sectioned off as if to quarantine the entire remedial class from the rest of the school.

Her stomach growled. Maybe she could just scarf down her red bean bun now instead of waiting to get back to the classroom.

No, no… Kaori shook her head. That wouldn’t do. Eating alone was bad enough, but if someone were to stumble upon her eating alone in an empty hallway, she might die of embarrassment. Total outcast behavior.

But she also hadn’t really eaten anything since she left Kobe. Kaori eyed the red bean bun in her hand. Her mouth watered just thinking about sinking her teeth into it.

With only fifteen minutes left to spare, Kaori finally sat down in a stairwell and ate in solitude. Recalling how just the week before, she’d been enjoying lunch with her friends, each bite of her bun seemed to stick in her throat. She drank desperately from her juice box, trying to keep tears from welling up in her eyes.

Even though those girls at her old school had treated her with incredible cruelty in the end, she still missed their jokes, their smiles, their laughter at a time like this.

Kaori heard footsteps and voices echoing in the stairwell and tensed up. She rubbed hard at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. Never mind how embarrassing it felt to eat alone–the last thing she wanted was for someone to catch her crying.

The voices and footsteps grew closer, ascending the stairs. Kaori clamped her eyes shut.

“Oh! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon!” a familiar, friendly voice echoed.

Kaori’s eyes snapped open to see the senpai from the morning standing on the landing below her. He waved off the classmates he was walking with, telling them he’d meet them in class before climbing the steps enough to get eye-level with Kaori.

“Are you okay? You aren’t being bullied already, are you?” he asked with his brows furrowed in concern.

Is that how this looks to other people?

“N-no! O-of course not!” Kaori jumped up, flustered. Her half-eaten red bean bun, which had been in her lap, tumbled down the stairs and fell on the landing with a splat. They both stared at it. “I…didn’t want the rest of that anyway…”

Kaori quietly trudged down the stairs to clean it up.

“So why were you sitting here alone anyway?”

Kaori froze as she scooped the crumbs into her hand. He stepped down next to her and crouched down, helping her clean up the mess.

“I…I got lost trying to find my way back to the classroom,” she mumbled as she stood up, cupping the crumbs. Kaori started to walk down the stairs in search of a trash can. She didn’t look back, but she could hear him following her.

“Oh, really? That’s all?” he said, laughing. Kaori felt a surge of embarrassment. “Well, that’s a relief. You had me worried there.”

She turned her head to meet his gaze. His smile was gentle and kind. His amber eyes, which crinkled as he smiled, radiated warmth. Kaori felt her face flush and immediately turned it away from him.

“You were…worried?”

“Yeah,” he said, descending past her on the stairs. “There are certain students in this school who like to cause trouble for others, so I hope you don’t run into them.”

Bullies? Kaori wondered what kind of bullies a school like this might have. Or maybe it was her own class that was the problem. She furrowed her brows, thinking hard about it.

At the bottom of the stairs, they dumped the remnants of the red bean bun into a trash can and dusted the crumbs off their hands. Students were starting to flood the stairwell, heading back to their classroom.

“Senpai, who are these students I should look out for?” Kaori lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are they…in the remedial class?”

The smile faded from his face. He quickly looked away and off into the distance. Kaori’s eyes followed his as if trying to find the answer in his line of sight.

“Fern Greenwood.”

Her head snapped back at the sound of the unfamiliar, foreign-sounding name.

“Pardon?”

He looked down at Kaori with a serious expression. “The person you should absolutely avoid is a second-year named Fern Greenwood.”