Juice Box Bop

Days aren’t supposed to be this long.

The wait for lunch was a war of attrition between one’s attention span and their stomach. If one gave out in the tug of war, both plunged into the pit below. It was like Octopus Game, except somehow crueler.

And on that day, as it was almost every day, Kiro’s attention span was the first to give.

That girl. I wonder what she’s doing right now.

Professor Lovecleft’s voice drifted in one ear and out the other, of no more presence than skywriting. Kiro glanced at the window to his left, trying to get peeks of the late morning in between the obstructive, idle flopping of Bat-Girl’s huge, fuzzy ears.

He sighed. Bat Girl’s ears twisted in his direction, and he looked away before she caught him staring.

Small, pink lips. Vibrant blue eyes. Flushed cheeks on a canvas of pale, peach skin.

Kiro felt the languid haze around him stir.

“Kiro?” asked a voice, like a ripple across a pond.

The sound of his name.

What’s her name?

“Kiro,” the voice came again.

This time, the words came less like a pebble through the pond and more like a rock through a glass window.

Kiro’s head snapped up. As per tradition, Lovecleft’s crimson eyes awaited him on the other end of the turbid veil.

“Mr. Lane. Would you mind telling me what the journey westwards was meant to symbolize?”

Breathe.

Sprawling across both sections of the inky, green board at the end of the room was another one of Lovecleft’s “masterpieces”. A band of five figures, rendered lovingly in stick form, stood at the beginning of a long, winding trail marked by many mountains and wrought with raging rivers.

Kiro took another deep, focused breath.

Five figures- the main one appears to be a monk. Small, pink lips. There’s- a horse coming out of the river? Vibrant blue eyes. Uh, there’s like-umm, a demon on the mountain? Flushed cheeks on a canvas-

Lovecleft frowned. “Kiro?”

“Pretty girls.”

The room was silent. Lovecleft’s spectacles almost slid off his face. What started as a single oh evolved into a wave of parroted OOOH’s throughout the room.

Lovecleft pushed his spectacles up with one of his mouth tentacles. With two sharp clacks of chalk against the blackboard, he regained the attention of at least half the eyes in the room.

“Ahem- while a significant portion of you may indeed equate the two, the journey westwards is meant to symbolize the path to enlightenment. Not, ‘pretty girls.’”

An aftershock of laughter wracked the classroom. Kiro buried his tomato-red face in the collar of his sweater.

Just kill me now.

---

The second the bell rang, Kiro leapt out of his seat. Clutching the Monsterpedia to his chest with one hand and holding onto the strap of his backpack with the other, he dashed towards the door.

“Kiro!” Lovecleft called from his desk. “Remember! Tomorrow afternoon-!”

“I know!”

Veering into the hall to his left, Kiro had to dodge an ouroborically-cartwheeling Wyrm to keep pace. By the third hall, students seemed to materialize out of thin air, all perfectly placed in his way. Kiro narrowly pinballed through a pack of posing Flamingo Influencers. And yet, he kept pace.

Maybe it was the two miles he ran yesterday, but he felt like a greased bolt of lightning. Or maybe it’s because-

She’s waiting.

The trip was little more than a breathless blur by the time he reached the elevators in the atrium. Gulping down air by the mouthful, Kiro broke one of the cardinal rules at V.I.A.S. High as he stepped aboard-

Never look down.

V.I.A.S.’s atrium ran in a ring around the center building of the school, neatly wrapping the gymnasium as it went. Secured around the sides by thick netting like a soccer goal, half a dozen glass-walled elevators ferried students from the atrium’s second floor promenade to the cafeteria on the seventh. Stepping onto the ride for the first time, one would see the busy world beneath them shrink into a diorama in mere moments. Then, turning to look up the tapering vertical tunnel, they would realize the ride had only just begun.

To anyone but the most weathered juniors and seniors, the ride was as dizzying as it was awe-inspiring. But it was especially dizzying to an out-of-breath Kiro, who found himself pressed to a glass wall between two living walls of fur and scales. The only thing stopping him from reuniting with his breakfast was the tingling rush spreading throughout his chest.

The doors opened. Kiro stumbled out, finding himself at the forefront of a wave of students filing into the cafeteria. Despite the sea of empty tables as far as the eye could see, Kiro was struck with indecision.

How exactly was he supposed to find her? If he even so much as glimpsed her hair, it’d be a cinch.

No. She’d definitely be somewhere out of the way.

Realizing he was now firmly in the middle of the crowd, Kiro thought it’d be better to move with the flow. The swarm of students fell into rhythm, rotating clockwise around the massive gap in the middle of the cafeteria.

Think. Think. Think. Where would a mysterious, very-not-cat-eared girl go?

Kiro imagined the layout of the cafeteria in his head. He hadn’t gone here more than a handful of times, but all his lunchtime-wandering had trained him to be good at keeping track of places. If the gymnasium was the roundabout in the middle, then each circular wing of the cafeteria was set around it in four adjoining sections.

That’s it!

Dodging underneath a series of four trays carried by an Eastern Dragon Guy, Kiro veered out from the roundabout. His memory was faint, but he once walked by and saw that the north-westernmost of the four kitchens was shut down for a violation—a rat in the soup, if he recalled correctly. It would have the least number of students around.

Crossing the stretch of hall separating the north and south-eastern fields, Kiro was excited to find that his hunch was correct. Strolling past mostly empty tables, his eyes went into overdrive. And then, in the furthest corner of the room, he spotted a locked stairwell that jutted out into the cafeteria. The outcropping formed a cornerspace with the facade of the similarly-locked north-east entrance.

There.

He slowed down as he approached the cornerspace. Step by step, his best guess was about to be tested.

But what if she isn’t there?

His steps slowed to a crawl.

Don’t kid yourself. You’re just terrified that she actually might be.

Kiro stopped in place, one foot in the air.

Of course you’re terrified.

Gingerly, he lowered his foot. And then he slipped.

With a terrified yelp, Kiro stumbled forward. After managing to catch himself on a nearby table, he looked to his left.

Two blue eyes stared back at him, unblinking.

Small, pink lips. Vibrant blue eyes. Pale, peach skin.

Every detail of hers was exactly as he remembered it, but something about her still didn’t feel real. Like a neon cut-out on a pastel background, the girl looked like she was pasted onto a scene she didn’t belong in. And yet, one thing was for certain—she was the first person he’d seen since his foggiest memories.

She was leaning against the windowsill, looking as if his arrival had snapped her out of a trance. For some reason, he expected her to laugh. Instead, she stared at him with a kind of wonder, a gaze that he shared with her.

Realizing he had been laying on the ground all this time, Kiro clambered to his feet with a nervous laugh.

The girl took off her pointed, blue headphones. “You’re… here?”

As Kiro averted his gaze, he noticed that her headphones were held together at the top by a single piece of gray tape.

He rubbed the back of his head. “I just figured you’d be where everyone else wasn’t.”

The girl’s pupils shrank as she regained composure, her expression leveling out.

“Ai,” she said. “My name is Ai Suzuyoku. Just in case you plan on running off again.”

“Sorry,” Kiro replied. “I should’ve been more specific about where we were gonna meet up. Like, way more specific.”

Ai noticed him staring at her headphones. She took them off, inspecting them at eye level.

“Don’t worry about these. They’ve been through worse.”

When she spoke, her voice sounded different from how he remembered it. Unlike their surprise meeting the day before, both her tone and clothing were crisper. More vibrant.

“I’m Kiro, by the way.” He straightened himself out. “Kiro- uh, Lane, I guess. But you can call me Kiro. D-did I say that already?”

Ai exhaled, in what sounded like the singular, delicate preamble to a giggle.

“Rough day?” she asked, grabbing a juice box off a nearby windowsill and taking a sip.

Kiro slung his backpack off onto the nearest table with a thud. “You don’t know the half of it. Ever get the feeling that time goes slower the more you’re looking forward to something?”

Realizing what he just admitted to, Kiro clenched his jaw. But Ai didn’t seem phased. Or at least, she didn’t show it.

She took another sip. “They say one’s perception of time moves slower when they don’t feel mentally stimulated.”

“I see,” Kiro said, as his morning-brain scrambled to see her point.

If I’m gonna be a dork, might as well be myself.

“If falling asleep in class was a sport, I’d be a pro,” he added.

Kiro could feel his heart skip a beat as she gave another one of her sigh-laughs.

“At that point in your ‘career’, why even bother going to school at all?”

“I guess. But it’s sorta nice having somewhere to go, even if it’s a little boring. It makes things feel like there’s a purpose.”

“Being given a purpose is nice.” Ai took a sip. “But I prefer making my own.”

“Oh. You mean, like hobbies and stuff?”

“Well, yeah, for one.” She wore an amused expression on her face. “But I also meant spending time however I want to.”

“So, feeding cats and getting into trouble?”

“And listening to music.” Another sigh-laugh. “The things that make life fun.”

Kiro’s face lit up. “Like an activity?”

“Yep.” Ai paused, her eyes meeting his. “Just the two of us.”

Afraid his cheeks would give away too much, Kiro forced himself to look away. As his eyes scanned the floor, the iridescent glimmer of the Monsterpedia caught his eye.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I know something we can do.” He whipped out his brick of a phone. “And there’s just enough time for it too.”

Kiro laid the Monsterpedia down on the nearby table, and opened it to a blank page. Then, he turned on his heel and held up his phone. He focused for a second, the tip of his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.

“Got it,” Kiro said, and turned back to Ai. Zooming in on part of the screen, he showed her the photo he took.

An Albino Rhino Dude and a Moth Cheerleader, caught mid-laugh during their lunch of two.

“What do you see here?”

Ai stared at the photograph, her front teeth buried in her bottom lip. “Umm. Two monsters?”

Kiro shook his head. “Look again. And try to think like a photographer. What does this feel like?”

Ai closed her eyes for a moment, and Kiro could see the gears turning as her pupils darted beneath their lids.

“Like-” she wondered aloud, opening her eyes. “One of those nature documentaries?”

A wide, goofy smile slapped itself across Kiro’s face. “Exactly.”

Ai set down the juicebox and put a finger to her lip. “So this activity…”

Kiro nodded. “Think of it like a safari. We can observe the other students from afar after school. And then-” he paused, turning to the Monsterpedia.

In half a minute flat, a chibi Rhino and Moth materialized on the page right before her eyes. Kiro turned to her, beaming. “We can put them down in the field guide like so~”

Ai’s gaze was fixed on the warmth radiating from his glowing expression. “From afar, huh?”

Kiro nodded enthusiastically. “Like real researchers.”

The boy put on his most earnest, goofy mug. And by the chortling twitch of her lips in response, it appeared to have worked.

Her eyes drifted to the ceiling. “I suppose there’s merit in this observational experiment.”

“It’s settled!” Kiro snapped the Monsterpedia shut and tucked it under his arm with a grin. “There’s research afoot!”