There were few things that Shino detested, but the bus was one of them. It was always overcrowded on the way to school, and the horrible suspension meant that everyone was always bumping into everybody else. The smell was the usual odor of public transportation: harsh cleaning fluids and the human kind of stench. Every sound—mechanical or human—was grating. At least one person within arm's reach was either sniffling, sneezing, coughing, or—on one memorable occasion—vomiting. The bus was not a place he ever wanted to be, and this early in the morning it was especially deplorable.
But Pops had to go to work earlier than usual today, and couldn't drop him off on the way. Shino carefully chose a seat near the front, next to a drained-looking businesswoman dozing against the window. Two more stops and the bus was past capacity, with people jammed into the aisle. A group of upperclassmen from his school, Konoha Academy, were talking at an obnoxious volume, occasionally shoving each other. 'How can anyone think of anything but sleep this early in the morning?'
Thankfully, he didn't live that far from the school, else he might have said something he would later regret. Being only a sophomore, even a practically unknown one, was often considered reason enough for harassment. Red and black uniforms weren't anything like a majority on the bus (if your family could afford the tuition, public transportation wasn't something you were all-too familiar with), but it still took some time for the rest to sift around enough so they could drain out like ichor.
At least it was over with. Now began the rest of the day. The day was cold, so Shino was wearing the uniform suit-jacket, thus deeming the red collared shirt unneeded. Instead, the fifteen-year-old had on a band tee that was mostly red, with a grey flannel that had once been long-sleeved, now reduced to three-quarters. The belt holding up his uniform black pants had, in a similar way, once been white. It was now black and white with flashes of iridescent color, drawings of bugs flying, being dissected, even major bits of anatomy were included, separate from the rest of the insect's body, usually mid-motion. Shino's black converse with dark green laces were even more black than they should be, the white pieces marred by more bugs, doodles, and his favorite equations written out carefully in his slanted hand. The wristband on his left arm was checked red-and-white, and the grey pinstriped headband had 'conformist' in small print near the lower edge. The jangling dog-tags were the loudest things about him.
Shino liked his clothes.
"Move, bug-boy." Some guy shoved past him, eyes glued to a skirt.
"Cretin," Shino commented calmly to himself, "primordial ooze."
"Insulting the air again?" It was the mass of energy, and by the sounds of it, he had forgotten to take his pills. "What is primordial ooze? Is it like that tar stuff that they found in California with the dinosaurs? Cuz 'pri' is like 'prior', and 'mordial' sounds like 'mortal', and prior to mortals there were the dinosaurs!"
"No," Shino answered shortly.
"Too bad." Naruto was already moving off, having spotted his clump of friends. This particular blonde was the very essence of the human pinball, mindlessly moving around, getting everywhere, spun, and rejected until he falls into his niche. (Sometimes with the celebration from the rest of the world, though with less bells and whistles.) The idiot was probably the only student who knew everyone, even the janitors.
His daily quota (or tolerance, depending on which side of the bed he got up on) for peer interaction almost reached, Shino headed straight to his first class of the day, Anatomy and Physiology. He sat in the second row, in the column closest to the door. In the ten minutes he had before class, the future entomologist looked over his homework and read the next chapter, vaguely noticing as people wandered in.
Everyone jumped when their teacher slammed the door. "Believe me, brats, it hurts me more than it hurts you." The hung-over no-longer-natural blonde growled, glaring at them. "Hill! Opposite the origin of a skeletal muscle is its..?"
"Insertion?" The boy looked like he was going to flinch if someone so much as coughed in his direction.
"Correct!" Hill jumped, though it was understandable with the kind of mood Miss Chiles was in."Possum!" One of the various students she had awarded a nickname. "The kneecap?"
"Patella?"
"Correct!"" She smiled viciously. "Which connects to?"
"Tibia, fibula, and femur."
"Nara!" The brown-haired boy startled into wakefulness with a grunt. "All the bones in the wrist, now!"
"Trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform."
"Aburame! Jawbone?"
"Mandible," he answered lowly, but audibly.
"Paananen!" She moved on with the determination of a bulldog, searching for a wrong answer. Thankfully, Miss Chiles ran out of steam before she could find it, as was the case most Mondays. Her students learned out of self-defense. "Take out your homework to check."
Things settled in after that, as their teacher steadily got over her hangover as much as she ever did. Shino got a perfect score on the assignment, passed it forward, and scribbled in his notebook when the rest of the class was told to read and take notes. Like the rest of the things he could draw on, the pages were inundated with diagrams and depictions of insects, or parts of them. Everything was in fine felt-tipped black. There were more than a couple guitar tabs drawn in, notes strung together in something like song. If there was one thing Shino enjoyed as much as learning or insects, it was guitar. Listening to it, playing it, even just holding one put him in a better mood.
"Aburame!" Miss Chiles snapped. "Where does HGH originate from?" She was past her obligatory Monday barrage, instead just checking his knowledge of the chapter.
"Pituitary gland." He answered calmly, and then easily re-submerged his mind into notes, chords, and rhythms. Shino had almost finished a long string of tricky music, trying to play it in his mind, how they would sound and how it would feel. He could never quite manage it.
"Brats!" Their blonde teacher barked. "Do all three of the chapter review parts, and then we'll have a quiz tomorrow."
Nearly everyone groaned a little, but got on with it. Too much complaining first thing on a Monday morning has been known to cause scores of detentions. Miss Chiles might never get the teacher of the year award, but there would be no 'teamwork' in getting their work done in her class.
The brown-haired guitarist carefully switched the notebook for his textbook and a binder full of loose-leaf paper. After answering the questions from memory, Shino went back and confirmed the facts and spelling. He made a few minor corrections, checked the time, and wedged his felt-tip pen behind his ear and between the headband and the arm of his sunglasses, leaving his hands free to stack his books. Shino didn't so much as twitch when the bell rang before he was done, waiting out the rush.
Second hour wasn't all that far away, forensic science with Mr. Gama, who insisted everyone call him King Jiraiya or forfeit participation points. Shino avoided this by not speaking to or about the man, studiously avoiding notice with all the practice of a willful outcast. This week was to be directed towards the science of fingerprints.
"Alright." The white-haired man clapped his hands once to gather his thoughts and startle his students. "There are four different categories used to define fingerprints: loop, whorl, arch, and tented arch. Of these, there are many subcategories." He started up one of his innumerable slideshows, projecting large black and white prints. "There are two kinds of loop, ulnar and radial. The ulna and the radius are the two bones in your forearm, with the radius on the thumb's side and the ulna on the other. A radial loop originates and goes back to the thumb like this—"
"Hey!" The great ball of energy exploded. "Hey, old man, if people found—"
"Four, Naruto."
The blonde scowled at the reduction of points (they got five per day) but continued his complaint in a loud voice. "How d'ya know if it's going raidal or ulnal if you just found it?"
"First off, brat, it's radial, secondly, it's ulnar, and, thirdly, you don't. Continuing on…" Mr. Gama lectured the class on the types and the details (bifurcation, dot, island, ridge ending, trifurcation, deltas and cores, etc.).
Shino listened throughout the whole of it, even if he knew a lot of it already. He completed the packet of worksheets before the hour was up and went back to scribbling in his notebook. Naruto was well-secured in his group, thus no one should bother him.
Back in middle school, Shino had gone through a short phase wherein he used violence to dissuade dumbasses and flat-out bullies. In true Shino manner, he had first researched the best fist—muscles tight with your wrist behind it in the correct way—considered the consequences, and showed no remorse for his actions. It came to add up to three black eyes, four split lips, and a broken nose before they stopped bothering him. His dad grounded him from guitar for a week for the last one, but agreed with his reasons, even if he didn't absolutely understand. As mentioned before, Shibi had always been eloquent and slightly more social than him. As the man had once explained, he'd been a peripheral member to a group, not a loner like his son. Preventative measures needed to be taken against school-age victimization.
To this day, most of Shino's peers remember him for his solid left hook. Well, that and his apparent obsession with insects.
"Pssst." Apparently, Naruto hadn't been as secure as he thought. "Why doesn't number thirty-seven make any sense?"
Ah. After shuffling through his papers for a moment, Shino came to the problem and what Naruto's problem with it was. "Reread the last three sentences in the paragraph concerning whorls."
"Thanks Shino." The blonde hared back to his friends, sharing the information.
The headband-hosting teenager made as if to go back to writing but a fresh read of the notes made him come to a conclusion: Nothing more could be done with it until he had his guitar in his hands.
After a moment of further consideration, Shino closed his notebook and pushed up the right sleeve of his suit jacket. Behind his sunglasses, the insect enthusiast closed his eyelids, twisted his gaze, tilted his head slightly, and snapped them open. The first thing he recognized was a person unfortunately named Melvin Grant.
In black felt-tip pen, he began a Giant moth on the inside of his wrist. The bell rang before he was done with it, but he waited out the rush once more before heading out the door. Since Shino had second lunch, he headed straight towards pre-calc, dropped off his stuff, and then went back to his nearby locker for the necessary materials, leaving the unneeded books there.
This hour always went very quickly, everyday. No one would ever accuse Mrs. Yuhi of being anything but thorough in her lectures. Shino worked all the way up to the end of class on the assigned problems, and when the bell rang, resigned himself to homework.
Lunch had always been a problem all by itself when he was younger. There were no assigned seats, or any places separate from everyone else. Shino had eaten while walking, while doing homework in a classroom, or at the corner of an almost-empty table, if nothing else could be managed. Sometimes, he avoided the whole problem and just didn't eat. Now in high school, there was a whole central area to choose from. The green house was usually taken by some group or other, while the courtyard was too cold this time of year. The third floor balcony, while small and isolated, was usually usurped by the pushier students, the top-of-the-class club who felt intelligently superior. If he wanted, he could be a part of that exclusive group, but Shino much preferred anonymity and solitude.
This only left the lobby by the front office, with its two-person tables next to the windows looking out at the street. By choosing one at the end and spreading his math homework across the table, the fifteen-year-old subtly encouraged people's habit of leaving him alone. Between bites of pizza, Shino continued his work.
With the daily obstacle of lunch done, there was now the tasking class called English 10. It wasn't the literature or the grammar that made it so, but the writing. No matter what Shino started writing (a problem-solution essay, an opinion piece, even a political sonnet) it invariably tried to turn itself into something else. His sentences, while perfectly fine to his own ears, Mr. Sarutobi said were convoluted and wordy, excessively descriptive, and/or radically off-topic.
Today was determined to be especially trying, as they were refining their rough drafts through peer review. In his misfortune, Shino was subjected to Naruto for the third time that day. He was, regrettably, capable of talking with taciturn classmates as if they were conversing back.
"Heya, Shino." He tried to flatten out his handwritten sheet of paper. "Sorry about my handwriting, I know it sucks." The blonde had scratched out his essay in pencil, and now the graphite was smeared, folded over, slightly torn, and water-marked. The assignment had only been given yesterday.
Shino silently handed him three pages of crisp, college-ruled paper, filled with his slanted, felt-tipped handwriting front and back.
`The blonde groaned expressively at the length, already chewing on his red pen. "Why ya gotta write so much? I guess it's kinda equal for the kind of state mine's—"
"Uzumaki!" Mr. Sarutobi yelled. "Shut up." He was one of the more favored teachers since he often told stories of his past as the rebellious younger son of Principal Sarutobi. He was also married to Mrs. Yuhi.
"Why?"
"Just keep your trap zipped or I'll kick you out of the tournament." By that, he meant his hacky-sack tournament, of which there seemed to be no elimination. It was another reason students liked him.
"Hmph." But Naruto said this with his mouth closed, so Shino considered it a shining miracle from heaven.
They spent the rest of the hour in silence, marking up each other's work. Then schoolwork was called to a halt, the 'ring' assembled, and Shino finished his great moth, fleshing out the extraneous details from boredom.
This done, there came about the most awaited hour of the day, the class named modern music. It was a freely structured favorite of people who played base guitars, drum sets, keyboards, lead guitars, singers, and a good smattering of things like violins, saxophones, and other instruments taken out of their traditional roles. Mostly, they tended to assemble into mish-mash bands and just have a time of it.
Shino, as you may have come to expect, did not. He practiced with his guitar in his corner, with his amp, only himself for company. He was the only one to play solos for his required performances; moving, twisting, soaring strings of notes other people called song and talent. The future entomologist just liked to play difficult things. When they could not be found, he made them.
Mr. Hatake made his rounds, giving critiques and advice as he went. First he would always swing through the six small practice rooms, then the two large ones, finally coming to the main room where the unfortunate strained to hear themselves. Shino was among their number, but hearing wasn't quite so mandatory with a guitar in his hands. Usually, he brought his to and from school, except yesterday he knew he would need to use the detested public transportation. There was a gauzy-looking design of grey spider webs on a darker grey background. His dad got it for him for his twelfth birthday, saying he outgrew the old acoustic.
Shino didn't even notice the principal and a police officer enter until the gong was struck. It had just the right resonance to cut through the banging, shrieking, thrumming, and sometimes musical sounds of the band room.
"Shino?" Mr. Hatake called. "Just put down your guitar, I'll take care of it."
There was a nervous, sad worry to the group of authoritarians that made him walk quickly. "Yes?"
"There was an accident at your dad's lab," the teacher said. "He's in the hospital."