Bolt from the Blue
Summary: About twenty years later, Amu has a surprise waiting for her…Intended to be a oneshot, but I'm expanding it!
Hi readers,
I hope you enjoy.
~Solace and Serenity
The Tsukiyomis had moved away after Ikuto never came back, perhaps because Japan held too many memories of him. Amu had felt great confusion pooling in her heart. Why did she remember those wretched memories from so many years ago? She tried to stop. Still…still, she remembered Ikuto's voice as clearly as if he was right there, speaking to her. "I promise I'll come back, and I promise I will make you fall in love with me." The words hung in the air as she recalled how she had reacted: blushing bright red and denying it, instead saying: "And I will find my true self by that time, I promise I will!". But Amu did not want to remember. She tried to shake the ever-pooling memories off like mere flies, even though they were much, much more, and she…she knew it.
Then Amu heard a voice. Ikuto's voice, a rough clarion call to the inner part of Amu, and evoking her most locked up memories. She shivered and looked for her friend in a dark and shadowed forest of endless oaks and elms, calling out desperately to Ikuto.
"Where are you, Ikuto, where are you?" Her own pleading voice made her shiver as she remembered saying these words before: when Ikuto had not come back to Japan even after ten years – on the eve of his twenty-seventh birthday.
Oh! How she yearned to join him! Amu buried her red, tear-stained face into the itchy trunk of an oak, tasting salt, and wishing for Ikuto…
"Principal Hinamori! You dozed off…" a woman with spectacles and mousy brown hair stared at her unblinkingly.
"Thank you, Marie." Amu was slightly embarrassed she had fallen asleep right in the middle of a meeting in front of her fellow teachers, but it was hardly her fault. Amu straightened her coat and listened to her co-worker, the school nurse, drone on and on about…what was it?
How did you manage to get yourself stuck in another of her lucrative and long speeches? She thought mundanely. Oh well. You can blame yourself, I suppose.
"If we installed automated hand sanitizer dispersers in every classroom, the percentage of diseases transmitted at Brookhurst Elementary School would decrease by five percent, a…dramatic amount…affecting many children at the school…especially those with weakened immune systems," the school nurse was saying, her eyes on a light brown clipboard. "According to the CDC and EPA, about…thirty-two percent…"
Amu straightened up and placed a stack of papers on Emma (the nurse)'s rosewood desk. She then silently left the conference room. She would explain later, but not now. For now, she would watch the newly hired sixth-grade teacher, a rookie, teach.
She quietly walked to room F5. Several kids going in and out of the bathrooms called hello, and Amu waved in return. But other than that, he had ample time to think about the dream.
Amu took a deep breath and asked herself quietly, "Are you hallucinating or blind to the truth?" She thought for a moment, and then decided she was probably hallucinating. But why…
Amu was so engrossed in her thoughts that when she reached the red-tiled building, she barely realized that she'd skipped F5.
Finally Amu's hands reached for the brass doorknob. As she turned the doorknob, a layer of dust fell on her hands. I forgot how old Brookhurst Elementary School is, she thought irately.
In her annoyance to the layer of dust on the doorknob, Amu had not shut the door quietly. The 6th graders of F5 peered at her; their faces alight with undiminished curiosity.
The new teacher was taller than Amu, with pale skin and dark sapphire hair. His eyes were a vivid cobalt blue. Something about his appearance made Amu queasy.
Something's not right here, Amu thought to herself. Still, she settled herself down to sit in an armchair at the back of the room, where she could see everything clearly.
The teacher stared strangely at Amu for a moment and then returned to his teaching. "So, as I was saying, pi times r squared equals…"
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Thanks, Solace and Serenity