Getting Wind Of

Ichiro stared down at the stack of papers on his desk.

His head rested on one of his propped up hands as he looked over it. Though his eyes were listless on the fairly thin stack, he chewed his lip nervously instead of reaching for them.

As the sun was setting, he began to leave Izumi’s family cookout. He had barely interacted with the rest of the family, just calmly sitting out and watching as the family enjoyed each other’s company. She relentlessly tried to coax him over to join them, even tugging on his arm while she tried to back her wheelchair up at the same time. Though she had no traction that way, Ichiro would barely classify that as a tug.

But on his way out, still receiving stink eyes from her parents, Izumi showed him out to the street. Parking herself right before the sidewalk and restlessly played with her fingers at her knees, her head low as she struggled to get words out.

“Thanks for coming today.” She anxiously hemmed at her words, “It does mean a lot. I am glad you got to meet my parents.”

Rubbing the back of his head, Ichiro did his best to agree, “It certainly was a pleasure. They seem like great parents.”

Silence fell over them as a cooling summer evening breeze swept around them. This sudden chill made Ichiro shiver slightly. He turned slightly, waving goodbye as he began his walk back home.

But he quickly came to a halt. Turning around, he saw Izumi tugging at the back of his shirt with one hand. The other was folded and covering her lips as she tried to speak through it, though her eyes were looking away.

“Don’t go just yet.” She slowly shifted her sight onto him, “I-I have something for you.”

And that something happened to be a stack of papers held together with a binder clip. There was nothing on the cover, just a plain white sheet, but underneath were several pages of handwritten words.

It didn't take Ichiro long to realize that it was a story she had written. She wanted him to read it. His heart beat fast as he carried it close to his body, taking it home with him. He was most afraid of wrinkling the pages as he carefully handled it.

But now it was fairly late in the night, and only the study light on his desk illuminated the papers before him. He had been staring at it for what must have been an hour now.

Grumbling as he rubbed the back of his head, he finally picked up the stack of papers and flipped over the first one to start reading. His eyes skimmed over the delicately written letters across the page. It was clear that this manuscript had all of her passion and determination. Ichiro felt like he was in over his head as he saw just how technical and professional it looked in his hands.

But he began reading:

“Long ago in a fantastical kingdom far away…”

It became quickly apparent this was a story written for a younger audience than him, but he did find it hard to turn away by the time he turned to the second page.

The story was fairly simple. It was about a magical kingdom in some far away world. The world was at peace until some evil entity stole the princess away. A magical knight was sent on the quest to rescue the princess. His journey was long and hard, but he pushed on until he found her hidden deep in an ancient cave surrounded in ice.

Using his magical broadsword, he freed her from her imprisonment. But then the forces of evil descended upon them. Having been trapped for so long, the princess couldn't run, so the knight had to carry her away.

Once they were safe, she realized that he had been injured protecting her and his white armor stained with mud. She felt bad that she couldn't do more for her protector, but he continued to take on all the troubles they faced alone on their journey back to the kingdom.

Along the way they came across many exciting things, like a wonderful tavern run by a talking cat, standing high on a tower as a storm swirled beneath them and even when she was able to move on her own, she danced in a field of fireflies while a traveling minstrel played a hearty tune for them.

They had met several odd characters along the way. A mystic sorcerer who gave them healing potions, a goofy fool who made light of how serious the knight had been the entire time, and a lady of the night that the princess had great concerns over just seeing her.

Suddenly, as they were nearing the edge of the kingdom, the princess, and the lady of the night became separate from the night and the fool. Standing high on the ledge of the cliff, the lady of the night betrayed the princess and pushed her off the edge.

Excitedly wanting to read what happened next, Ichiro flipped the page and found his bare desk staring back at him. Confusion erupted on his face as he checked the pages again, making sure he hadn't missed some pages somewhere. All were accounted for, and he had read them all. This is exactly where the story ended for now, a literal cliffhanger.

Frantically, he messaged Izumi, wanting to know where the rest were. It took her a while to respond to say that there was no more, yet at least. She just gave it to him since he had been asking what she had been writing.

She did ask him why he thought, though, which he hadn't really thought of before she asked. Several seconds passed before he finally started to try to line words up with his feelings. But while his fingers tried to type out those words, Izumi sent him another message.

“Never mind, actually just sleep on it. We will talk about it later, OK?”

Staring at those words over and over again, he sighed in defeat as he deleted all the words he typed before turning off the desk light to go to bed. Laying there, he stared at the ceiling, the images of the story still dancing in his head.

No matter how hard he tried, he kept thinking about the story, about its characters and its events, just like Izumi wanted him to think about it. But unlike what she wanted, he wasn’t sleeping on it. He kept tossing and turning in bed, never finding a comfortable place to relax and rest his mind.

One thing kept popping into the back of his mind: he struggled to sleep. In the story, the princess was described as being tall, blonde, blue-eyed, definitely European in heritage. But then why whenever Ichiro played the scenes in his head did he see Izumi in the princess’s place?

***

Yawning hard, Ichiro tried his best to stay awake as he walked through his school's hallways. Entering the classroom, he went straight to Izumi’s desk. Pulling out the stack of papers from his backpack, he dropped it on her desk with a thud, surprising her.

She looked up at him with a confused look as he let out another long yawn. Her eyes darted worryingly around the classroom, noticing that the other students were also alarmed by the slam of the papers on the desk and were looking over what was happening.

“So, I think that your story-” Ichiro started by rubbing his eyes.

“Oh. Yes. Thank you for letting me borrow your notes.” She chuckled nervously as she quickly picked up the stack and shoved it into the back of her wheelchair. Anxiously, she turned her body back right and turned her eyes forward, pretending as if he wasn’t there as her body went rigid.

This strange reaction to his returning her manuscript to her snapped him out of his sleep-deprived stupor. He blinked a few times trying to understand what was going on. Sweat began to bead on Izumi’s forehead as her eyes kept darting from the front of the classroom back to him. The movement in between made her look like she was directing him somewhere with just her eyes.

But before he could get a single word out in questioning her, the bell above rung just as Mr. Sato entered the classroom, calling all the students to their seats for class to begin.

He kept looking over his shoulder with his brows furrowed in utter confusion as he took his seat. Silently, he asked himself what her problem was, but that was quickly thrust out of his mind when Hina leaned forward to whisper to him.

“Hey, you OK?” She softly whispered in his ears, causing him to apprehensively turn to face her over his shoulder. “Not getting enough sleep again?”

“Uh, yeah,” he tried to hide his nerves as he tried to not look her in the eye. “Not enough sleep, all there is, this time.”

He quickly ducked his head forward with his eyes wide in a worried look at his desk. Holding his head in his hands, his new wonder was as to why the woman of the night looked just like Hina now?