Nice to Hit You

Sato Fujio wanted to make an impression on his first day of school. Not a great one but definitely not a bad one. He believed that something in the in-between should be manageable. He wanted to make a normal impression.

"I guess racoons are normal. In the forest or something but still." He poked the black circles under his eyes with a sigh. Appearing like a disguised tanuki yokai would definitely win him some points with new friends and teachers. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to do anything more about it other than freshen up his face and hope that the rest of his appearance would be impeccable enough to take wandering eyes off of his.

He tightened his tie one more time and checked his uniform for any folded piece or loose thread. He had broken in his shoes, feeling uncomfortably excited for the unfamiliar sensation of wearing a pair that is so new and stiff that it needs to mold into the shape of your own foot. They were a size smaller. They were the prettiest shoes he had ever seen in his life.

He resisted the urge to toy with his hair in an attempt to check for any unruly black curls. At this point, with the amount of wax he had put on it in order to impose a better shape into his rebellious locks, he would only make things worse if he messed with it any further. If only he had slept a wink, he could master a better expression than the dead eyes of a fish. 

But the problem was, you can take the boy out of the countryside but you can't take the countryside out of the boy. No matter how much he wished to make a brand new start and pretend like his childhood didn't even happen, there were so many jarring things in a big city that he wasn't accustomed to nor did he know how to react to them. For the past few days since he had arrived at the dorm and settled in, he hadn't been able to sleep through the car horns and the late night loiterers that sounded as if they were shouting right underneath his window. He already knew what would help but he refused to try it, maybe he should have given in for the night right before his first day in a new school but he had hoped the exhaustion would finally defeat his body. He was wrong.

He walked to school absentmindedly chewing on one of their farm's carrots. He must haved looked ridiculous or like an actual yokai who knew nothing about human mannerisms but his mom had sent the veggies and he would never waste food. The familiar crunch and taste gave him a peace of mind that he did not care to ponder on. 

He knew that his tan complexion from a summer spent working the farm in the sun and his accent would brand him countryside folk before he spoke more than two words to anyone but he wanted to take no risks with anything else. He had been continuously walking fro and to the school for the past few days, memorizing the route so that he wouldn't look like a lost headless chicken running around on his first day. He didn't see many students walk with him even though the buses were brimming with them. The distance hadn't looked that bad for him and he liked to stretch his legs in the morning. If only everything wasn't so loud.

"Hi there, mister!" "And who may you be?" "Looking quite perky so early in the morning, aren't we?" "Look, I only have this carrot on me. Are you big on veggies?" "Let. me. walk. through." "Dammit, I can't resist the urge to pet!"

There were so many strays. All of them worse for wear and in need of some love and care. He couldn't take every single one of them with him in the dorm but he also couldn't pass them by without greeting them. They were on the sidelines just like him, invisible to all these busy people and this loud city. But he was used to animals, they were so simple and open and fluffy! He had taken these impromptu meetings into account when he planned for how much time it would take him to get to school.

And there it was. It was kinda rusty and its previous blue colour had faded into something unrecognizable but it felt like the start of something great. The gate of the school.

Nobody knew him here. He could be anybody. Anything besides a nobody. So here goes. He puffed up his chest, took a deep breath in and marched on this new beginning. Everything was going to plan, first days tend to affect the rest of the school year so he had thought of every interaction he was going to have and the manner of it all. It shouldn't be too hard to find a friend or two and try building up a good image with the teachers-

His cheek exploded with pain so abrupt and profound that he saw white. His teeth rattled and the bang of the impact resounded inside his skull like a ping pong ball. He had been struck by lighting! No, by a bullet train! By god's wrath for daring to think he could ever have a normal peaceful life?

A metallic clang on the ground drew his attention to a dented soda can that had the shape of his cheek. He must have been going mad by the pain because next he heard-

"Hey! Can you give me back my soda can? I kinda need it!" He blurrily looked up feeling something hot trickle over his lower lip. Had he bitten his cheek?

He couldn't see her clearly. The morning sun was blinding behind her but she was holding a menacing black and gold baseball bat and swinging it around as she ran to him as if coming to finish the job. 

"What the fuck?!" He was too sleep deprived for this shit.

"What is going on here? Did the two of you get into a fight the moment school started?" 

Huh? Is this teacher for real?

"Principal's office, now!"

"Hey, are you gonna eat that?" She pointed at the pretty much eaten through carrot that had fallen from his lips. Before he could try to reply, she had picked it up, dusted it off and shoved it into her mouth.

That was not how he expected his first day to go. He had never been sent to detention. Not in his first day. Not ever. But it was a new kind of torture to be punished for something you had no control over! If he ever got detention and he survived his mom's wrath, he would have liked for it to have been for something he had done and not for something that had been done to him. What was he even supposed to do when a soda can came hurtling towards him out of nowhere? 

The whole day had gone by in a blur. He was supposed to be making friends, getting a bearing of the school, the lessons and the professors. He wanted to be normal but he must have come by as an airheaded weirdo. Because the word detention was circling his head non-stop, driving every other thought away. He was getting introduced to his new classmates but his eyes were empty and his mouth gaping. His lips were moving from time to time as if in a belated protest for the unfairness of it all, he was a victim in all of this!, but no words came out. People would try to address him or look his way but he was sleep deprived and brooding so nobody would dare actually talk to him or approach him. 

Maybe he would be able to salvage this tomorrow when he would have had a clearer head. It was kinda normal to have a weird first day right? Right. But still, the bitterness of the unfairness of it all was stuck in the back of his throat. His emotions were slowly but surely boiling in his stomach so when the time for his detention actually arrived, he was barely restraining his nerves. His fists were clenched and his whole body was vibrating. But he wasn't going to make a scene. He didn't want to get stuck in another detention for such a stupid and immature reason. He would just get through this one and never look back to this dark moment. 

All of his resolve fled him, however, when he opened the door to the detention classroom and found a very unpleasant surprise. Her smile was beaming, her waving was very friendly and open, were it any other occasion she might have become his first friend. But she was looking so carefree and happy about this whole situation that threw his whole plan out the window, he couldn't help but feel even angrier. 

"Fancy meeting you here!" It must have been a joke, a cruel one. There was no way she was that naive or thoughtless. Something inside him snapped. He would look back to this day and realize, this was the real moment when everything started going downhill. There was no coming back from what happened next.

"YOU ARE THE WHOLE REASON WHY I'M HERE!" In retrospect, maybe he should have reacted better. He could have still been scathing but quiet and if she lost her nerve, the professors would see that she was the real troublemaker and he was just an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. But he got another detention for this outburst and it wouldn't be the first or the last time he got into trouble because of her. He didn't even know her name yet but she was his enemy.