Chapter 4: Mizuki

Chapter 3

When all the classes had talked to the people around them. I left my friends and immediately excused myself to the restroom, where they agreed at the same time.

The reason was not to pee or anything, but to see if the characters in the other class were real, especially. In my opinion, since the book had a lot of backstory and plot to tell, these two characters had been introduced the earliest, but also somehow neglected by the author and not paid proper attention to, anyway Hirose walked towards HS3-C, the hallway was quite spacious and quiet, and more importantly, it was also easy for me to get caught doing something unnecessary, after all, I have no reason why I'm following them.

I started to slowly narrow my vision near the edge of the hallway where Hirose and Kitagawa was slowly walking to the Hs3-C classroom, I can see that it was a pretty awkward walk, while both had a maintaining silence, moreover, I know Hirose Sora character, he was a straightforward guy, and yet at the same time a man who knows and keep his limit, the guy will only talk when it was necessary or when it was important. What's happening right now is also in the book, where the two of them are walking down the hall in silence, and an inner dialogue from Kitagawa, if I remember correctly, the book was about her being alone with Hirose, and how do she try to break that silence to have an interaction to pass time.

Well, I better get to HS3-C before they do. If the description fits the two heroines in the other class, I'm pretty sure my eyes can easily find them.

Besides, it will take them a while, Kitagawa was walking as slowly as she could.

I tried to sneak through the empty hallway, and without attracting their attention, I jumped through the window where no one saw me most of the time, patted my clothes, and immediately sneaked a shortcut near the other building, If my memory information was good, the HS3-C was near the edge of the building, an opposite side of HS3-B, a vertical opposite in both buildings.

That may be worth a quick look, and I had my own reason for visiting HS3-C. Most of my former classmates were here, though I was never really close to them, but it was far better than being here for no reason to arouse suspicion.

And as I said, the author really neglected the scenario of the siblings, even the scene with them was quite a mystery. The author never elaborated why the sisters fell in love with Hirose, the only reason was that they were both 'A maiden in distress', two people connected with a terrible fate, and Hirose became their light and reliance, but...That was also the main reason why they fall so hard at the end of the story.

During Hirose's first meeting, I think he was 16 years old when he moved to Tokyo, the rental apartment he lived in also had a rather mysterious neighbor, a sibling who had the same name but a different last name at the same time, later Hirose started to become curious about the sibling who lived in the same apartment with him, at first the sibling was hesitant about the guy, but it changes due to certain scene, If I remember correctly, this scene was about two strangers trying to get the sibling out of the apartment by claiming to be their parents, but Sora had an eye for the lies of the two strangers and immediately caught wind of the scam, it turned out that they almost caught the sibling, and luckily Sora had saved them and left the case to the police.

Sora became a close neighbor and friend of the sibling, with the story later explaining that the reason they were living in the apartment was because they were alone and the last name they carried came from their different father, but thee information about their mother, no one knows what happened to her.

In the story, it was never explained what happened to the mother, but she just left one day, leaving her children in the apartment complex.

The good thing about this story is that both of the siblings' fathers were willing to support the siblings, and even to the point of wanting their daughter to come home with them, with their own separate family, but the sisters never wanted to separate and decided to stay in the apartment complex, and so they live their whole lives in this tiny room, only to be opened up by Sora, giving them a new confidence to step out in life.

But even though the story was explained in such detail, there were so many loopholes in the events, and there was so much more fog in it.

And that was also the main reason I was here to uncover it. If Sora sticks his nose into the sisters' story, and does so with an open eye, and the outcome of the story still remains obscure after it, I will try a different approach and do it quietly.

Did I do this well I ask myself laughing, why am I doing this? Ah... that's right. This ... Sympathy.

That person once said to me when we were in the library.

"If you can ever see the fate of others, are you willing to change it?"

"I sometimes wish I could change the ending of some of the books I read, but I can't." I was frustrated that day.

That was the voice I heard in my memory.

And this person also said.

"Books are meant to be read because they have an ending, we can't change it, it will lose its charm, some had a tragic genre, but if we change that, it no longer belongs to that group, and if we change so much that we change the ending, the book will lose its identity and the reason we know it in the first place."

"But what if books came to life, or if we saw someone living a life like a tragic book?" I asked the person, to which a smile came.

"Maybe books aren't real, but if they exist in reality, you are no longer a reader, but a character who can act and do something."

"No longer a reader, but a character?" I muttered these words to myself at that moment.

"Yes, Haru-kun, you are living your life in it now, I hope I can also live in the books I read, that is a wish of mine," that person added. "If I could help, maybe I would, I love them, and maybe it's not bad to change their ending if I was as well part of the story."

The sunlight was peeking in the window at that moment, and the white curtains just moved freely. I wish I could understand this person's words better.

"Excuse me?" I suddenly ceased thinking as I caught sight of the person who had called me, she was hiding behind a tree.

The girl had jet black hair that reached her waist and a beautiful appearance, and I felt that she carried some kind of unique radiance. What struck me, though, was that her eyes were amber, the only thing I looked at for a while.

'Nice to see someone with eyes like that again.'

I just smiled, whereupon she tilted her head and asked.

"Are you here to observe too?" The girl asked while watching beside from a nearby tree not quite far from the HS3-C class.

"U-uh, what are you doing next to that tree?" I gently wiped my gaze from her eyes and asked.

"Observing." Pretty straightforward answer, right?

"Are you here for the same reason, too?" She asked, to which I just agreed and nodded.

"Inoue Mizuki, nice to meet you. She introduced herself, and I looked at her student ID.

"Class HS3-A?" I asked, to which she also nodded, what was a student like her doing in a tree not far from the HS3-C building.

"I'm from class B," I pulled out my ID as well, to which she glanced at it, her amber eyes focusing on my name for a moment and nodded.

"Ito Haru? Nice name."

"Thanks."

"Why are you watching anyway?" I was quite curious, after all, such a girl was doing here in C class.

"Have you ever heard of the name Hirose Sora?" she asked, to which I was quite surprised.

I had never heard of anyone named Inoue Mizuki, though her name had quite a catch, or there were no other girls who looked like Mizuki in the novel, and based on her appearance alone, I doubt she would be left out from the novel, and though she was in Class A, there was no other identity about her in the novel or in my life that such a girl like her was in this school.

" Are you a transfer student, perhaps?" I asked, to which she nodded, rather surprised.

"How do you know?" Her amber eyes glowed with curiosity and I answered her.

"There are quite a few transfers this year, and I'm pretty sure you're one of them." I merely answered her.

"If you're asking about Hirose Sora, he was also a transfer student this year, just like you." I replied to her, to which she just smiled.

"Are you attracted to him, perhaps?" I asked this question that came out of my mouth unconsciously. Hirose having a harem and a girl asking a question about him brought me to this very conclusion.

"NO!" She answered rather harshly, catching her breath a little.

"Then why are you asking about him?" I asked

There are still things that don't connect, like how she wasn't even mentioned in the first chapter, but seems more like an outcast, a character like me who doesn't exist in the novel, but at the same time exists and fits in.

"Something bothers me about that name," she spoke, and I too was confused.

"And the name of those girls, it sounded familiar." She also said, to which I was shocked.

Wait, she knew the name?

"Maybe, do you know the book called The Book That Binds Our String?" I asked her, to which a quiet astonishment immediately formed in her amber eyes, to which she said.

"The fate of two lovers, where the other writes the story?" She said,

I realize, she doesn't know the book either, but why does she seem to know the characters?

While I'm trying to sort myself out and come up with an answer, she adds.

"But something tells me Hirose Sora is involved with this book, but the story isn't about him at all, or even the author of the book." She said, showing a bright smile.

"Thank you for bringing something like that to my mind." Then she sauntered back from the tree and disappeared from my sight, walking into her class and leaning back once more, saying, "I'll tell you later why I can't remember if we've actually known each other."

"That was pretty weird, no, that definitely weird at all!" I thought to myself, this girl is strange, no, everything we've talked about is strange.

"Hey!" I called out to her, but she just walked away, I can't be calling her, the C class will notice me, speaking of which.

It was time for Sora to talk to the Kanemoto Michi and Sazama Sachi siblings, and there I can see what these two characters look like, a bit curious in my eyes for a character, but what I observed is that I never know how the interaction between them happens here, all I knew in the book was that Sora visited the sisters and checked them with Kitagawa, and he found that the sister was doing well.

But there is one character that neither the sister nor Sora fully knew, and that was Kitagawa Kotone.

I wanted to know and observe her reaction and that of the others so that I could assess the situation before acting. I know the Kitagawa arc hasn't been revealed yet, but the sisters arc was pretty much finished in that place, but there was still quite a mystery, I know Kitagawa and the sisters have a past connection based on the book that may not be revealed until after the Kitagawa arc, but I will look ahead and know more before the arc has even started, that way the sisters fate may change, and that may lead to them avoiding the bad ending.

In front of my eyes, a girl with shiny brown hair tied in a ponytail and with amethyst eyes greeted Sora, while a girl with short dark brown hair and light blue eyes stood there looking at her, especially at Kitagawa, there was only confusion in her eyes, and Sora asked the girl with the ponytail who was Michi and the short black browned haired girl who was Sachi about their experiences in school.

That was it, Kitagawa seemed to have his eye on Michi, but at the same time Sachi had his eye on Kitagawa, while the latter, Sora, was taking care of the sisters, and at the same time his gaze was calm and didn't let Kitagawa be out of place, I know this guy was also keeping the tension handled properly between the girls and he was doing pretty well.

I should be able to handle this response very well, I can plan ahead but.... something still bothers me.

"Inoue Mizuki."

Who is this girl? There's something strange about her, and yet she was someone who had something like a mist in her.

This girl never appeared in the story, or even someone who used a pseudonym.

"But something tells me that this girl..." What is it? Aside from her eyes, which had a resemblance, her entire demeanor was like someone....

No...

It was like someone with a character that was not fully formed, like a incomplete character.

And at that guess, my hair stood up.