Disclaimer: RK, and all characters thereof, belong to their perspective owners. This is not for profit.
Special thanks to Kamorgana for beta-reading.
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Chapter 1: First Day
I am Misao Makamachi, an almost eighteen-year-old woman, and do I have a man to snare or do I have a man to snare?
My obsession could trace its beginning to the end of last summer. School had just started after another boring and hot and humid "vacation" that I vegetated through, so what else was new? I got up half an hour late that morning, skipped what promised to be a really yummy breakfast, and raced to Jefferson High in my spanking new, shiny red, convertible - my sweet sixteen present from Jiya, and what a sweet piece it was too. Just the color I wanted. I had my eyes on that car six months before I even got my driver's permit. And I would have had it on my birthday too if I hadn't failed my driving test that day. And the five subsequent ones. It was unfair how difficult the driving tests were in Virginia, why couldn't the state government understand that teenagers needed wheels too? So, anyways, I finally got my license over the summer, after I broke into tears for failing my seventh road test, all because I had ran a stop sign. But the examiner was such a compassionate person, he let me pass - what a wonderful man, God bless his soul!
So anyways, I pulled into the school parking lot, first day of the new school year, and nearly slammed into a black BMW, which was almost unavoidable since it was parked too close to the spot I wanted. But my fast reflexes saved me! All that karate practice had finally paid off. And after three attempts at maneuvering into that tiny space between the BMW and the white line, I gave up and decided to take up two parking spaces instead. I was probably the last person to get to school anyways, so who was going to miss the extra space?
And did I mention that I was late? There was no time to waste. So, I grabbed my backpack from the passenger seat and sprinted all the way to campus - it was more like a marathon, considering how far I had to park. And I got onto the campus exactly when the bell rang.
Which meant I had totally missed my math class.
Well, I didn't really "miss it" miss it. Except for brainiacs like Tokio, who needed higher math anyways?
Nonetheless, I did not look forward to being stuck in detention for not showing up at my first period class. And if I didn't hurry before the bell rang again, I'd get another detention for being tardy for my second period class, and that would mean I would be stuck in detention for two afternoons in a row. My social life would have ended before it ever began. So in the interest of social life preservation, I dashed through the front gates of the school with a speed that would have broken Olympic records. I waved an airy "good morning" to the guards as I screeched by - those people had seen me late so many times in the previous semesters, we were on first name basis, and they no longer bothered to check my student ID. And with those few precious seconds I managed to save, I made it to my second class just when the bell shrieked overhead. I quickly slid into a seat behind my best friend, Tokio, and tried to look innocuous.
"You are late for school." Tokio whispered to me without turning around.
And I didn't bother denying it. For some reason, she always knew when I was late, even though we had different first period classes. "It's not my fault. If I live on campus -"
"You'd still be late."
Which was true, but I was not about to admit it. For those of us that didn't board at the school, our favorite excuse for tardiness was "traffic". And as everyone knew, an excuse didn't need to be true to work, it merely had to sound good.
"So did I miss anything?" I whispered back in an attempt to change the subject.
"Yes, you missed your first period class."
"Aack!" I grumbled. "I'm trying to change the subject here," which Tokio undoubtedly noticed. Nothing ever seemed to get past her, and if I didn't know better, I would swear that her parents worked for the CIA. "Did I miss any good gossip?" I clarified, sounding a little more excited than I wanted to. I had meant to play cool - in a doomed attempt to change my image - but swapping rumors gave me such a thrill, and it was the only highlight to my dreary days.
"I heard that Yumi got another nose job over the summer." Tokio said quietly.
And I gasped. My gaze automatically drifted to the subject of our gossip, but the snob queen just sat there, looking no different than before - gorgeous and sculptured, certainly - but no different. "Her new nose job looks the same as her old one."
Tokio shrugged. "Maybe it was a reconstructive surgery, after her pyromaniac of a boyfriend burned her nose off."
I had to struggle hard not to laugh out loud. Tokio always had such clever quips about Yumi, I wondered if she came up with them on the spot or if she had them all written down beforehand. The rivalry between them was intense, and it had existed for as long as I could remember, all through middle school, and knowing those two, it had probably started in kindergarten. But what I couldn't figure out was why. Except for French and lunch, those two had no classes and no activities in common. Tokio showed no interest in becoming a cheerleader or an actress, and Yumi had never ran for the student council or tried to be the valedictorian, so what did those two have to compete over?
Nonetheless, they competed: in clothing, in shoes, in cars, in beauty, in popularity. In everything.
But for my part, I didn't care much about Yumi, or her plastic surgeries - she had had so many of them, it was no longer news worthy. So I fished for other juicy tidbits instead. "Anything else? Anything else?"
"Well ..." Tokio said, and I eagerly clung to her every word. There were no good rumors in this school that Tokio didn't know. She was my best informant. "We have two new students in our class this year, and one of the them is said to have a juvenile record."
Which, to me, was no shocker, several other students in the school did too, for various misdemeanors - and you would be surprised how many different kinds of misdemeanors there was out there. And from the looks of it, the school had expanded its collection of delinquents, alcoholics, and potheads. Oh joy. "So what did they get busted for?"
"Murder."
Murder?!
Was the school trying to get all of us killed? I thought that this place was supposed to be high security! When did it start harboring felons?!
"What the ...?" I yelped out in surprise, and then belatedly realized that we were in middle of class.
I quickly swallowed rest of my sentence, but the teacher had already turned her Medusa like gaze towards me, and I could feel myself being turned into stone.
Oh no.
I knew I had to say something semi-intelligent or risk getting another detention for my outburst. So I quickly racked my brain. But since I had not paid any attention to anything from the moment I walked in, I had to struggle hard to recall from my schedule, what class I was supposed to be attending.
"French." Tokio hid the tip-off beneath a cough while looking busy with her note taking.
I quickly recovered my wits. "Pouvez-vous répéter la dernière phrase, je vous prie?" I said to the teacher in my best French, while putting on a huge innocent looking smile to throw off any suspicion.
And that seemed to have satisfied Ms. Medusa, she repeated her previous sentence like I had requested, and the class grinded on. But I wasn't interested. All I wanted to know was more details on the murderers, and I wanted to know them now! But instead, I had to stare at the clock on the classroom wall and wait. I really couldn't risk talking in class again. The "Little Miss Perfect" would kill me if I marred her perfect record by getting her caught and stuck in detention. Well, Tokio wouldn't really kill me, but she might stop talking to me, which would be a billion times worse!
Besides, I didn't want to get another detention either.
So I waited.
Then waited some more.
And waited ...
Waited ...
And after ten minutes of brain numbing boredom, the bell finally rang. I immediately pounced on Tokio, which also seemed to be the intention of several of the boys in class, but I had the advantage of proximity. "Come on, tell me who they are and who they murdered."
"There is no 'they'." Tokio said. "It's two unrelated people, and the rumors are so wild in this case, I wouldn't count on their reliability."
But any rumor that Tokio cared to share usually had a grain of truth in it, and I couldn't let such a juicy piece of information slip by me. However, before I could question her further, one of the boys slithered up to us. "Can I walk you to your next class?" He asked Tokio with that big puppy eyed look.
And Tokio turned to the dork and smiled one of her devastatingly perfect smiles. "Why don't you help me with my books and I'll see you in Bio in a few minutes?" She batted her long dark eyelashes at him and I could almost see him melt.
How did Tokio always manage to have that kind of effect on men? Her parents must have had trained her from birth. Looking like "Miss America" was probably a prerequisite for being the daughter of the former governor of Virginia and the current Secretary of Interior. I was jealous! I had wanted to have her poise ever since we were children. Why couldn't I be born the daughter of a politician? No, instead I had to be the daughter of a bunch of ...
Oops, I'm not at liberty to discuss my family's line of work ... no, I mean ... my family are all potato farmers from Idaho.
Moving on ...
"I'll see you at lunch then?" Tokio asked as she got up to leave for her next class.
"Ok, save me a seat." I said. And right before Tokio waltzed out of the classroom doors, under the escort of her knights in shinning armor, I remembered my previous line of questioning. "What are their names?"
Tokio turned to me, with her green eyes full of confusion, "Whose names?"
What did she mean whose names? Hadn't she been paying any attention to our previous conversation? "Our two new classmates." I hinted.
"Oh, Aoshi Shinomori and Haijime Saitoh." Tokio tossed the names over her shoulder right before she disappeared amongst the crowd.
Which left me alone, in the now deserted room, deeply in thought about: politics, family connections, crime and punishment, conspiracy theories, and other possible reasons for the school's tolerance of murderers.
And before I knew it, the bell rang overhead again, signaling the start of the next class.
Oh no! I was going to be late again!
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Chapter 2: Life on the Run