Bury Your Head In The Bland

The soft light of the morning seeped its way through the cracks of the blinds. It cast a warm shade of yellow into the room. Keizo stirred slightly as he rolled over, stretching out his arms lazily. Slowly sitting up, he blinked a couple times to clear away the sleep from his eyes before getting out of bed. He walked towards the bathroom with his head hung low in thought.

He lifted his head, staring down his reflection with a scornful expression.

Keizo had a pair of dark brown eyes that were framed by black eyelashes. A sharp jawline jutted out from under tousled, sable black hair. He was slim in every sense of the word, but still somehow had muscles to show. Not many people took him seriously.

His eyes narrowed slightly and his mouth twisted into a focused sneer as he brushed his teeth. He turned away from the mirror, heading over to his closet. The dark fabric of his uniform jacket although worn for quite a long time, still stood out against his white dress shirt with a striped tie draped around the collar and a pair of beige pants. He threw on his uniform blazer and buttoned it up.

He glanced in the mirror again, fixing his tie with practiced ease.

After making sure nothing looked wrong, Keizo opened his door and left his bedroom. He padded down the hallway. His parents were away on an indefinitely long vacation, resulting in a quiet home. All that was left was to grab a few things, lock up the front door and go to school.

Keizo and his family had a house that was a good walk to his high school. It wasn't far either, 15 minutes, 13 on a good day. He'd always made a habit of timing his commute accordingly, mostly because he found a compulsive need to count time, although doing this to avoid walking in the morning rush hour traffic is a much more reasonable explanation he told others.

In school, he was quiet and reserved only associating with the only two friends he's ever had since elementary school. He would never admit it out loud, but being surrounded by people made him feel uneasy. So having those two made school somewhat bearable in a cosmic sort of way, even if he did have to deal with the hordes of students that'd blow by him everyday as he'd make his way to his classes with a decent and unbothered pace.

✧ ✧ ✧

Keizo arrived early, like always. The most direct way to his classroom was through the back of the school. Around this time, the back was dead silent apart from the two oddball students and their cat who made the nearby alcove their home in the morning.

He made his way into the shoe cubby room and slipped on his indoor shoes. His first class was Math, which was second nature to him. He took his seat by the window, pensively gazing outside.

"Keizo." A lilted voice piped up. "Kei...zo~!" A set of taut, outstretched hands frantically waved in front of his face. Keizo looked up to see Mika, a short, greyish-brown haired girl with gentle blue eyes that practically scream "unmoving" to the average person. "Hey, Mika, quit waving your hand about. I'm still kinda half-asleep over here." He mumbled, rubbing at his temples. The girl simply giggled and moved her arm away, letting him move himself over to her direction.

"What's going on today?" Keizo asked, looking at Mika with curiosity.

"Oh, just a few finished calculations here and there."

"Like what?" Keizo asked with a playful hint of distrust.

"Like this!" She dramatically handed him untidy sheets of paper with equally untidy handwriting. Keizo took a quick gander through the haphazardly done equations.

"These are all wrong." Keizo looks up.

"EH!? All wrong!?" Mika perks up with tired eyes.

"Yes, emphasis on the all." He replies.

"No way, lemme see." Mika pouts.

"Here." Keizo points. "And here, and there. Basically everywhere. You skipped 3 crucial steps in all of these equations. How am I supposed to know how you got to this... uh... backwards 4x over this sideways 9(x+3)?" He chuckles.

"This is not a laughing matter!" Mika cries out.

"It is to me. What happened to Miss 'Math-Is-My-Superpower'?" Keizo pokes at her cheek playfully.

"I tried to follow the lesson we went through last night, but those words that pour out of you end up sounding like noise~!" She protests, covering her face.

Mika had never been the best at math or any sort of science or technology. But she loved reading books and learning about new things, it was just retaining said things where she had trouble. Keizo chuckled and shook his head.

"If you really think about it, these equations make perfect sense."

"Riiiight, as if by some sudden volition my brain decided to suddenly switch tracks." Mika deadpans.

"While we're at it, how's your.... literature assignment coming along?" she asks with a smug expression.

"I haven't opened a damn page, ma'am!" Keizo salutes militarily.

Which was true. Reading wasn't exactly something Keizo liked doing. He preferred to sit with an array of books cascading behind him while he works at his table in his room. Unless they were about something he likes or appreciates, only then would he take them off of the shelf and read them.

"Eh?! Really? You've hardly even started it!?" Mika asks with a jocular expression.

"Yeah well, I didn't wanna start on it." Keizo retorts.

Mika laughs. "Eheheh! At this rate you'll be done by the end of the semester!"

"This is not a laughing matter!" Keizo cries out.

"It is to me." Mika says with a playful grin.

The teacher bursts into the room in a hurry, and the first class of the day begins.

✧ ✧ ✧

Keizo slipped off his indoor shoes and put on his regular shoes, turning slightly he almost smacked himself into Mika, who was leaning on the wall right next to him.

"You pop out of the strangest places, you know that?" Keizo says, playing with his tie.

"Well excuse me for wanting to be near the only student who actually pays attention during math. Besides, it wouldn't hurt for a fellow student to acknowledge my presence, right?" She shoots a wink at him. She was a bit kooky sometimes, but Keizo had noticed that about her since they met back during their first year, and eventually became accustomed to her bouts of eccentricism.

"So, smart guy. You gonna tutor me again tonight?" Mika asks, her lips quirking upwards into a sly smile.

"Sure, I like seeing you suffer." Keizo starts pacing dramatically. "Oh! How you fail to draw quartic graphs, messing up the points every time!" He pauses for dramatic effect. "But I'll gladly do so, just to see your head go empty while I drone on about the importance of-"

Mika grabs him by the collar and pulls him close with a mischievous glint in her eye. Her grip tightens around his collar as he flails helplessly in her grasp, trying desperately to wiggle free.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow, let go of me!" He exclaims.

"Follow me." She says darting off.

"That's my line! Wait up!" Keizo dashes after her.

✧ ✧ ✧

There was darkness for what seemed to be hundreds of meters, until there wasn't. A flash of light echoed throughout the blank box of existence which was inside Keizo's mirror. After the flash, the box had light, and from this light, rose Izumi Hannei, clad in nothing at all, embarrassingly.

She had an odd combination of white and black hair with some parts curling upwards by her ears. Her eyes were a crystalline, nightly shade of blue. There were hints of white dust across her cheeks, indicating that she spent quite a lot of time indoors.

"My head..." She says quietly, crouching back down holding her head with both hands. "...it hurts so bad." She continues, her brow wrinkled in pure confusion.

She was completely alone, in a blank box, which was the Mirror World, with no one else inhabiting this side of the mirror except for her. She looked around, there was an irritating, unchanging glow of white all around her.

She closed her eyes and memories of the world she came from flooded back into her mind.

The Imperial Castle of Magnaria where her mother worked as a librarian; the lush and grassy fields where she'd practice spell casting day and night.

She saw the mercenary's guild hubs where she'd see her father meeting with all kinds of people. She pictured her school - The Kuronaga Institute of Magic, and finally, the clearest picture of them all:

Her small home on the hill where her little sister Kozumi would wait for her when she'd come back from school.

They weren't too far from each other though, and if she concentrated enough, Izumi could feel her sister's presence, which she knew would eventually warm her heart. But when Izumi reopened her eyes and looked around once more, she realized that her home was missing and that this box of light was her new home.

Tears started streaming down her tired eyes. They fell in endless streams that trickled down, disappearing off her face into the floor of the Mirror World. Izumi's heart felt heavy. She wanted her old life back. The castle and the village, everything she had ever known was gone now, all because of an unfair trial and a betrayal.

While she tried making heads or tails of where she was fully, she knew for certain that those who banished her placed her somewhere light, yet oddly gloomy. She eventually brought herself to stand up and at least try to make sense of her new contained life.

She continued walking further into the Mirror World. It seemed unending at best for a long while, until eventually, just beyond the horizon, she spied a pane of glass. It seemed close by, but it might've as much as doubled or tripled that distance.

She couldn't know for sure what would be at the end, all she could do was walk ahead and find out.