A/N: This is the same story of the same title published in AO3 under the Anonymous collections. I am just moving it here as well under my new pen name. Also, I tried to upload this story here on , but because I had most of the drafts saved under Ao3's actual drafting web page, the coding kinda got messed up in between the copy-pasting. So here it is, hopefully, in a better format! I apologize for how weird or inconvenient that may have been.
I will upload the remaining 8 chapters sometime later tonight. Please give this a like/follow if you enjoyed reading! As always, comments are appreciated.
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Makoto stepped off the train mildly bewildered and thoroughly unimpressed. Clutching a worn Buchimaru-kun pencil case close to her heart, she looked around in the dusty haze that swept the sleepy village of Kuromachi. It happened to be a rather warm stuffy Saturday in April, and though the station was almost bare, the ghostly emptiness did nothing but make room for hotter, stifling wind.
She swallowed the ball of air caught in her throat and proceeded further onto the platform. Looking around, she spotted what seemed like vintage posters glaring from the brick-lined walls. What she could imagine to have been bright and bold colors was muted under a layer of dust. One bill teased the release of "Talon III: The Final Battle" and promised a summertime release, but the rather 80s-looking design and moth-eaten corners of the paper made her think many summers may have passed since.
Makoto had a sense that she was floating through some sort of ghost town. Kuromachi appeared by all means abandoned, without even one station worker huddled behind the grime-covered window of the nearby kiosk. The last sound she heard was the distant roar of the train engine, receding further into blurry cascade of mountains leagues away. That everything was bare left her feeling drowsy, almost dreamlike. Unfamiliar emptiness would have that effect on any unassuming traveler.
The journey from Tokyo was a good 4 hours - long enough to render Kuromachi entirely remote for any urban dweller. But four hours was faster than the expected travel time of 4 hours and 15 minutes, now that she remembered it. Her eyes darted from the desolate surroundings to her wristwatch: 13:45. She was 15 minutes early.
Sae, her older sister, was meant to pick her up at 14:00 - the exact time of her train's arrival. But Kuromachi Station was the sort of stop trains would breeze through. Lined with nothing more than farming hamlets hundreds of kilometers apart, and with no adjacent metropolitan area to wake the town from its own lull, it was the sort of place that even train conductors could forget even existed. With nothing else to keep them busy, the trains hurried on, and so Makoto Nijima a little too early for anyone to welcome her to her new home.
"Excuse me!"
A voice snapped Makoto back to the real world. The jolt shook her and loosened her grip on her pencil case. Buchimaru-kun soon plopped with a rather loud thud onto the concrete pavement.
"Oh! I'm sorry," she squeaked, without really even looking. She instinctively reached down for her pencil case while hashing out a flurry of mumbled apologies.
"I'm sorry.. I-... I was just looking around for my sister, and I didn't even notice someone else was here… It's so empty, and I guess I wasn't paying attention-"
Makoto looked up amid her panic and saw a mop of dark frizzy hair resting on a pair of large eyeglasses. The person - in fact, the person's face - seemed altogether dwarfed by such prominent features, and all she could see was her own reflection in those glasses, shining with rather cartoonish lens flare.
A boy, Makoto guessed. He wore checkered pants that bore a familiar navy-blue and plaid color scheme, paired with a signature navy blue blazer.
"Ano-..." Makoto stammered, her hand independently fumbling about for her prized pencil case.
"You…" go to my school, she wanted to say. But the question lost itself just as she sensed his own body shift with the beginning of her observation.
The boy sensed nothing of her own social mishap. He seemed to look intently at her, as if he was puzzling her existence before him altogether. Curiously, she saw him look lower, as if he was paying attention to her skirt.
Makoto felt his gaze and reddened at the notion. She immediately stood up to prevent further scrutiny.
What Makoto didn't realize was that she too donned the rather posh uniform of Shujin Academy - the elite high school tucked away in the pastoral town of Kuromachi. Her skirt also bore the navy-blue and plaid color scheme. Though her blazer was still in her suitcase, she wore the white turtleneck that fit snugly, especially in the heat, due to its authentic cotton fabric. They were two strangers that went to the same school. And so the stranger sustained their shared yet perplexed silence, both of them mulling over how and why two students of Shuji were at the train station on a Saturday afternoon.
"Excuse me," he croaked out.
That he uttered a word at all made Makoto jump. His aloof and readily quiet demeanor made speaking altogether appear uncharacteristic for him. And in her surprise, she failed to respond. Makoto was hard-pressed as to her next course of action.
The stranger was unbothered by her stoicism and proceeded to kneel before her. He quickly grabbed the lost Buchimaru-kun pencil case as it straggled just an inch before Makoto's searching hand. "You dropped this." He held it out to her with neither a smile nor a frown to accompany the gesture.
Makoto didn't know what to do at first. It seemed rather odd, after all, to be in such a derelict station having the most mundane of interaction and misunderstanding to befall any single individual.
Weird, her mind blurted out in the safe space of her thoughts. This boy is weird.
An eternity seemed to have passed, and finally Makoto recollected herself. She took the pencil case back with a nod of gratitude, finally relieving the boy of having to keep his arm in an outstretched position. They both rose promptly.
"I'm sorry again," she said with surer footing. "I'm usually more careful. I think I'm just tired from the long train ride."
The boy nodded, as if in tacit approval.
Man of a few words, she thought. "Ano, your uniform…"
"New to Shujin?"
The question caught her just as she fiddled with a loose strand of her hair. It was a habit of fussing when there was nothing to fuss over, and it helped smooth otherwise awkward interactions.
"Yes, I am... actually," she said with a hint of surprise.
For his part, the boy seemed unfazed by the information he asked for. He merely nodded as if that meant something to Makoto. Moments passed without a word before a gentle nudge from a wayward breeze broke the silence. The boy shrugged as if their conversation was as good as over.
Behind the annoying lens flare of his glasses, Makoto couldn't really make out any emotion from his eyes, much less a coherent facial expression. He moved and spoke with a terseness that was somewhat off-putting, as if any more or any less would have been a waste of his breath.
"Ja," he mumbled. The boy let fall a wave before putting his hands into his pockets. And with that he sauntered past Makoto. The click of his school shoes echoed through the empty platform.
"Weird," she murmured, her gaze following him as he crossed the platform and proceeded down the stairs that led to a subterranean access way.
Makoto glanced at her recently retrieved Buchimaru-kun. A faint coating of dust layered its already worn-down face. She sighed, thinking about the rather eventful five minutes that had just elapsed since getting off the train.
So this is Kuromachi.
Her eyes went from the pencil case to the stained-glass dome above her. The station was a half-open platform that looked more like an expansive gazebo. In better weather, this open-air concept would have been a blessing, but the sun was hot, and the wind didn't do anyone any favors.
Makoto sighed, wondering at the unusual warmth that such a small mountain town was experiencing. Without further thought, she looked to her own direction, where there were stairs before her. She was sure Sae would get to the arrivals parking much earlier than expected, and it would be quite a strain on their newfound living arrangement if Makoto made her older sister wait. She then proceeded down the small set of stairs, which ushered her to the concrete slab of the "Pick-up/Drop-off" area.
This was her new home.