Chapter 2:

Chapter 2

Under Izu-Sama's Watch


The Second Chapter

I awoke to the murky smell of my house. My room is on the small end of personal living spaces. Works for what it's for, but could always be larger. I was used to the cramped space, to the point that it was comfortable. I did away with the mess of last night, moving garbage to the trash bin, and placing some papers atop my desk. The pencils that lay there had been well worn down. After sharpening them to a fine point, I added them to my school bag. I also threw in my journal once I'd written down the day's date on the next page. Then I went to the washroom to quickly prepare myself for the day ahead.

My bedroom is on the second floor, and as I would go down the stairs they’d creak beneath my feet. The living area was stuffy, with a large number of items all over the place. I didn't bother with any of it as I go into the kitchen. The place was not in a very good state as the remnants of multiple meals sit around unclean. I would have to take care of it another time, it's decided to be not worth the effort at that moment.

My eyes glazed past a note left on the refrigerator. An apology left by an absent parent I don't bother caring about. I opened the fridge to take out a cold can of coffee. The tab cracks open and I drink, letting the dark bitter taste spread through my mouth. At this same time, I had imagined Izu enjoying a breakfast of her own. A traditional Japanese breakfast would suit her best. It's also likely she would be putting together her own bento box for lunch on a morning like that had been. My dreary eyes considered the contents of such a box. I hadn't gotten much sleep, being at work on my personal matters until about two in the morning the previous night. It was the thoughts of my Izu at such a moment that would let me keep going.

Having finished my coffee, I went out the door and to the corner near Izu's house. The outside air cleared my head, the sounds around me feeling softer. A sense of calm loosened the tightness my chest had been feeling since the moment by the door of Izu's class the day before, listening in. It was seven thirty when her parents left the house. I inched closer to see through the dining room window, as carefully as I could make it. If I hadn't used as much discretion as possible, someone in the neighborhood would have found me.

Izu was cleaning up from breakfast, although I couldn't make out exactly what it had been at the time. She was still in pajamas, an elegant-looking set, and went upstairs from that room when she was done. I waited until she came back down, having changed into her uniform. Then she herself left. Her route to school was simple, with no detours. A short walk past more normal houses just like hers. An elementary school, some shopping areas, more houses, then finally our own school.

When we both arrived, I kept more distance between us. My presence needed to become even more of a shadow, to keep all attention on her. As she walked in those doors, a few voices and bodies swarmed around her entrance almost instantly. Each person wants to be the first one to give their beloved Izu-sama a 'good morning'. She dealt with that with a smile. A simple smile that didn't particularly show her to be happy at this taking place. It must be that she would thrive much better without all this nonsense, but she was also okay with it. These were the thoughts I would read into such a situation, perhaps making her out to be more like myself than I should have, thinking back to that time. Izu opened her indoor shoe cubby to find a couple of love notes, which the people around her noticed and remarked about. Exhausting to have to deal with such a thing most days of the school week, but it was to be expected for someone of her caliber.

I left Izu soon after to go to my own classroom. It wasn't of interest to me for the time being to stay around every second. My classmates started trickling in, and I kept quiet, writing the morning's events in my journal. Not in plain words. Instead, I wrote as if I were Izu. Then it could be like I was writing a story of a normal high-school girl. This was part of what I spent my night working on. The writing, as well as drawing. I would draw Izu over and over to satisfy myself and finish off by relieving my urges before drifting off to sleep. It wasn't the first long school night of me doing so. The dreaming continued until I was pulled out of it by homeroom starting. To my dismay, the class representative noted that today was my turn to clean the classroom at the end of the day. While I was plenty frustrated by this, it would need to stay hidden so as to not cause trouble.

I was in year one class three, and the class rep was a girl with her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Her name was Yukari, and she didn't like me very much. One of the only people around here that noticed my withdrawn manner. I had to force myself to follow the crowd a bit more in order to deal with this fact. It would be part of keeping all of what I was getting myself into at the time moving along. That necessity was something that helped me to keep going. Yukari did the class openers for our homeroom teacher before sitting back down. The long hours of that day’s classes started and continued on until lunch. It had taken quite some effort on my part to do away with my tiredness and stay awake during our lessons.

Once the morning classes had ended, I went towards the cafeteria with the rest of my class before splitting off to find Izu. To me, it wasn't worth spending time joining the busy packs of other students racing to find food. I would leave my stomach to fend for itself, not worrying about any inopportune grumbling. It didn't take much for that part of me to be satisfied, sickly as I was, it left me not being a large eater. The coffee this morning would work for me until the night fell.

On this particular day, Izu moved from the classroom to eat alone. She would do this occasionally, turning down classmates who wanted to add her to their group. It was either that she would be a part of the large arrangement of desks in the classroom, the same group in the cafeteria, or alone like this. Izu had brought her own bento box and started to eat that. She had also brought a book with her. I noticed a small black notebook that she had written in a couple of times during these lunches. I kept quiet until she started to talk to herself. Her soft voice stayed low, as if it was just for me at that very moment, under the trees and clouds in the solitude she didn't know she did not have.

"Ria... what have they done to you..." My ears instantly perked up at that mention. I knew Izu had been planning to do something about that girl. The way she looked at her eyes, the blonde hair stretched out across the floor after those vile girls threw her onto it. A flurry of rage and ecstasy took the place of Izu's gaze.

"A flower like you must not be tainted, my poor Ria... I'm not sure what to do yet, but I'll do something. They call me Izu-sama for a reason I suppose..." A smile I had come to expect from her returned to her face. I hadn't decided what it was. A concerned and loving expression, that hinted at the anger Izu felt towards those girls. Something about this face told me that if Izu could destroy everyone around her other than Ria, she would. I couldn't understand what it was about that girl that brought her this face. A space of time when there was no longer only Izu, and Izu-sama took her place. How I was then, I wouldn’t have known that this transformation wouldn't be only my own to see for very much longer.

The time was coming that I would need to understand Ria. That would be a pivotal step towards becoming closer to Izu. With that in mind, my plans for after school had been settled. I left Izu's side to take the rest of the lunch break back to my desk, to give myself time to think. Izu and Ria had met before, given that she knew her name. There was a reason for Izu not telling her class friends more about Ria yesterday. Keeping attention away from the girl when she was known to be bullied must have been Izu’s working strategy, I thought. I considered what would happen if Izu approached Ria in the public eye. My mind found that it would certainly not be ideal for that to happen, to me, it felt similar to if I would have also approached Izu herself around her many watchful peers. If Izu was going to such measures to protect this girl, then Ria had to have been someone special. The feelings such a concept brought to my head led me to feel a fluster of ice cold contempt.

Izu's feelings for the girl didn't make sense to me yet, but it was clear that she felt close to her now. Ria was a flower to her, at the behest of being tainted by those other girls. Izu's words only minutes ago made that clear. I wanted to know then when this began, and I thought that a good place to look was that black notebook she carried. So that would be another place to look, which I would go after in due time. At that moment, I was much too afraid to go after such a private item of Izu’s.

After having all that time to think so many things over about the two girls, I quickly ate some packaged food I had brought with me before class started. My afternoon of classes that day left me to continue discussing with myself where I would go from there, as I doodled more pictures of Izu in my notebook, discreetly.

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