What To Do When Kids Get Physical

Another quiet day at school. I had a break coming up soon, and I was wondering what I should do for the break. Maybe I could go to the beach. There’s one not too far from here, that the river feeds into. Not enough to take away from the small-town vibe, but close enough to be in proximity.

Out of curiosity, I started looking up travel plans on my phone. It wasn’t that far, I could probably drive and stay there for a weekend. The hotel would be a dent in my pocket, but it’s nothing I couldn’t handle.

Maybe I should bring some other people… maybe Inukai and Takahara. It’d be really sad to go to the beach alone, because then I’d have nobody else to talk to. Maybe Takumu? Then again, I barely know her. I don’t want to come off as too forward or anything.

I’ll settle on the details later, so I just wrote down some basic ideas on my phone. I’d probably need to buy a new swimsuit too, because I left my old one with my parents. Silly me. Regardless, that’s all for the future.

I looked up at my phone and gazed outside. It was recess, some time for some outdoor play. The kids usually got along at around this time, so there usually wasn’t really anything for me to worry about—

“You idiot, don’t you know how rare that flower is? And you just picked it like that before it could properly bloom!”

“Well, maybe you should’ve thought about that—”

“If you’re going to pick it then let me have it! I was the one who found it, you only want it ‘cause it’s rare!”

“Wagh—! Hey!”

I looked at the commotion, which was happening at a tree in the field nearby. There were a crowd of students there, gawking like they’ve never seen anything like this happen before.

Then, I noticed what they were watching. Two girls getting into a shoving match over the aforementioned flower. It looked like someone would need to go out there and solve the commotion. I got out of my chair and looked a little bit closer, and I saw one of the girls who was getting into the fight. The short black hair was familiar… wait… Misa!

I immediately bolted out of the infirmary and began to run towards the crowd. As I came out, I saw Takahara running alongside me.

“What’s going on?” Takahara asked.

“A fight’s broken out. One of them I need to take care of, can you handle the other one?” I told him as we navigated through the crowd of children.

“Got it.”

Just as we pushed through, we saw the scuffle get worse as Misa tried to grab at the other girl who was holding the flower, but the girl pushed her off and shoved her directly into the tree.

“Agh—! Ow!” Misa shouted as she took the harsh landing.

“Misa!”

“Kyomi!”

Both of us shouted the names of our respective students, and I immediately ran towards Misa and picked her up from the ground.

“I-I’m fine…” Misa muttered, but she took some bad hits from the tree bark. Nothing unfixable though.

“She was the one who grabbed me first!” The other girl said, as Takahara kneeled down to scold her. He took her hand and began to walk off, as I carried Misa back to the infirmary. It seemed like we were too late to stop the fight before something bad happened, but it at least couldn’t get worse.

We entered the infirmary, and I put Misa down on a bed.

“Stay on your front. You just have some bruises and cuts on your back,” I said, grabbing some antibacterial ointment and bandages to work with. I began patching her up to the best of my ability. As said, it was bad but it could definitely be worse.

“I-I’m fine. She just needed to learn—”

“I said stay still.”

There were some behaviors that I thought needed addressing. I especially wonder how she got into that fight in the first place. Normally the kids here were super well behaved to the point of boredom.

Not that I wanted the kids to fight. No, I liked the slow and boring life that was in this town. Of course I’d be very concerned.

After a few minutes, I managed to patch up the bad cuts on her back. She should be fine.

“Don’t pick at it, or anything like that,” I warned her. “What exactly happened out there?”

Misa looked up at me with a frown, like I was butting in on something important.

“That flower blooms once per year. I dunno why you’d pick it like that—”

“But won’t it just regrow? I mean, she only picked the stem didn’t she?”

Misa stared at me in confusion as I interrupted her. Did I say something wrong? I don’t think I said something wrong.

“Well… it’ll take a while… and I wanted to look at it…”

“All good things take time. I know you’re disappointed, but starting a fight over it isn’t a good way to do things.”

“But… she—”

“Misa,” I said bluntly. “You can’t go around causing trouble for everyone like that. Even if it makes you feel really bad, there’s always another solution to the problem.”

“Mmm…”

Misa remained silent, so I continued my mini-lecture.

“Before getting physical, think about things. If you act without thinking, then you’re more likely to hurt someone and get in trouble.”

“If they’re being—”

“No.”

I needed to keep interrupting her before those thoughts formed in her head. Firm, and strict. Inukai said that Misa was a bit of a troublemaker, so I wanted to make sure she could be on the right path.

“If you ever feel that way, or feel like someone has wronged you, just come to me. You can even do it during class, I’m always open.”

I tried to give the girl a warm smile. As welcoming as I could. Misa looked at me and jumped off of the infirmary bed, before walking away.

“I’m going outside.”

“Be nice. Okay?” I said, though she didn’t respond. At the very least, I hope that got into her head. This might be more work than I expected, since this girl was definitely going to come back here for more.