Mom always told me to stop getting into trouble. I brushed it off and smiled, told her I was never going to get hurt. Told her I was always up and about, ready to protect myself and her from anything, you know? And I always was. There was never a time that I lost a fight. Mom was always worried when I came home bleeding and filled to the brim with bruises, but she just took care of me and tucked me into bed with a warning and a good night's kiss. Right now, I am pressed against the ground with a shattered right fist, and a likely broken leg. Every single part of my body is aching. This asshole has unsuccessfully tried to mess with me and my girls before, but now she is pushing her filthy foot against my left cheek, and the rocky surface is digging into my skin on the other one. Her coward of a friend is holding my arms behind me, stepping onto my bruises every now and then to remind herself that she's finally on the winning side, despite her inability to act on her own. My girls had vanished. A few minutes ago, I was worried I'd return home with more injuries than usual, and make mom real worried. Right now, I'm thinking that in the end, I'm going to disappoint mom by not returning home at all. I refuse to back down, but deep down, I've accepted the fact I wasn't getting out of here.
And that's when she showed up. She stood there, right across the three of us and stared down at us as if she's on top of the world. The more I discovered about her, the more mysterious she turned out to be, but right now her very presence had blown me away. But, before I had any time to process why she would even be here at all, I only remember catching a glimpse of her dashing our way the one moment, and watching my perpetrators drop unconscious the next. I tried to look up at her, but only managed to see her icy blue eyes gazing upon me. Right after that, I had gone to sleep.
Perhaps I should begin my bizarre story from where it actually begins, two weeks ago; well, after I introduce myself.
My name is Hong Meiling, I am 17 years old, and I'm Chinese but living in Kyoto, Japan with my mother, where I also go to school. I'm in the second year of high school despite my age, because I had to repeat the first year due to my bad grades; mom wasn't happy. Despite me being Chinese, I've lived in Japan with my mother since a very young age, and practically it's all I'm familiar with. But no one cares about all of that at school. A lot of my classmates over the years teased me about being Chinese; some of them even nicknamed me China. It annoyed me at first, which caused me to get into lots of trouble ever since elementary school. Mom wasn't happy about that, either. As I grew up, I learned to control my anger better, and became a very relaxed person. I am buddies with almost all my classmates now, but I still get picked on by some others; I don't care though, and that makes mom much happier. I'm still a leader of a girl gang though, and my girls and I get into trouble often, but I never allow anything to go wrong in the school premises. Wouldn't want someone innocent to get hurt, or disappoint my teachers, you know?
I have to say though, I love life here. Even with its ups and downs, my life seems worth it for all it has to offer, from Kyoto's gorgeous scenery to my mother's homemade yakisoba bread, which tastes delicious! Even the fights I get into are enjoyable to me, and not to brag, but I am a pretty skilled fighter, so I never lose any of them anymore.
Routine is routine, and I never expect anything extraordinary to happen in this quiet neighborhood. But to my great surprise, something did. Something that would seem small to anyone else, but it rocked my convenient little world.
There was a new transfer student. We rarely get any of those, but when we do it's just a new addition to our class who just blends in with the rest in less than a month. I was asleep as usual, but my classmates woke me up so I can see the new student. I can't say I cared much, but I guess I'd like to greet them when they introduce themselves.
And that's when the new student entered the classroom, and I have to say surprised is a ridiculously underwhelming term to describe how I felt upon seeing this girl. She was tall, but shorter than me. She had fair skin as white as moonlight, and she had medium length light grey hair with two little braids hanging in front of her along with her bangs. "Just like mine" I thought. Her eyes were stunning; they were a perfect mixture of light blue and grey, and if you stared right into them and she stared back, you would feel cold, as if you touched ice. Because that's what I did, and her expressionless gaze almost hypnotized me. I couldn't get my eyes off her, I mean, what a rare sight she was! Right then and there, I thought the most unique thing about her was just her icy appearance, but the more I learned about her, the more intrigued I became. I didn't know that on my first day of meeting her, though.
"This is our new transfer student, Izayoi Sakuya." The teacher announced. "Sakuya, please introduce yourself." I wanted nothing more in the world than for her to open her mouth and speak. "My name is Sakuya Izayoi." Her voice was delicate and feminine. She seems like the exact opposite of me in every aspect so far. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance." And after that, she went silent. Was that seriously all? But really, she spoke two sentences and I'm already impressed.
"Oh, uh… alright, Sakuya. Thank you for introducing yourself. There's an empty seat right here on the second row." And then our homeroom teacher pointed at the empty seat on my left. This took me a bit to process, but then I realized the silver-haired transfer student would actually sit next to me. "Don't act weird" I told myself repeatedly. Sakuya sat down and immediately turned her stare on me. That's when I understood I had been staring the whole time. I quickly looked away and my face turned red. "I acted weird." I thought. "I'm really embarrassing." I thought again.
During recess, all of my classmates surrounded the new girl's desk and immediately began trying to get to know her. I just sat there and observed. She didn't speak much, but she was kind with everyone and everybody was dazzled by how charismatic she was. I just stared and stared, because there was something about her I didn't get. Plus, I'm not really sure if I could speak to her without stuttering.
"Yo, Meiling!" A familiar voice brought me back to the real world. "Why aren't you coming outside?" Cirno barged in with Dai and Rumia followed soon after. These three are my best friends, and together we're our very own girl gang.
Cirno is a first year with an attitude and a love for ice cream and everything icy. She constantly gets in trouble with the teachers for modifying her school uniform so much, and for carrying around her baseball bat even in class. However, after the founding of our school's first baseball club, she found the best excuse to have her bat around and joined in. Nine is her signature number and nickname, but nobody knows exactly why.
Dai is Cirno's childhood friend who's a year older, but she's not in my classroom. Her name is actually Daiyousei, but we find it pretty odd so everyone calls her Dai. She's a little timid and always worries when we get in trouble, but she never fails to watch out for the gang. She always carried bandages with her. She has a pink yo-yo that Cirno gave to her when they were kids.
Rumia though… She's a first year and a transfer student who came from somewhere in Europe. She's somewhat sickly, but has an appetite and is sometimes really scary. Carries chains with her at all times, but the teachers are almost too intimidated to intervene or ask. She has bad vision in her left eye due to an accident, so sometimes she puts a medical eye patch over it.
Together we are the closest of friends, and we get into all sorts of trouble after school, which is what makes me come home late and full of bruises.
"Sorry, I was asleep and didn't feel like it." I told them as they sat around my desk. "Heard you got a new transfer student; is this the one?" Cirno pointed at Sakuya. "That's a new face alright." She said as she unwrapped a popsicle package, this time watermelon flavored. Rumia was eating curry bread, the crumbs falling all over my desk. Cirno throws the popsicle packaging on the ground, with Dai awkwardly picking it up like she usually does. "You didn't have to do that." Said Cirno. "Please be more careful with littering! Both of you!" Dai looked at both Cirno and Rumia, but she looked more worried than intimidating. It's impossible for Dai to be intimidating, except for some rare cases.
"You keep spacing off. What's up with you?" Cirno looked at me and inquired while adjusting her skirt. "I'm good, no need to worry." Or well, I did say that but my mind was elsewhere. What's a girl like her doing in this town? I mean, she has to be from a good, rich family, for sure. So why is she here? We don't have anything fancy here. She's really pretty, though…
"Yeah, uh, okay…" Cirno shrugged. "I don't have baseball practice today, so let's meet right after school, okay?" She said with a confident look. "Let's get okonomiyaki for lunch!" Rumia blurted out happily. "But I brought rice balls…" Dai frowned and Rumia quickly suggested eating those as well.
"Well anyway. See you around, Mei." And the three girls went on their way.
The entire day slipped by before I even noticed it was time to go home. Though I wasn't going home today, or well not right away. I met Cirno and the others at the gate and we ran down the streets, since we didn't stay to help clean up as we should. Hey, it's not our fault! If you make a lazy person do something they don't want to, they won't do a good job, so this wouldn't benefit anyone anyway, even though Dai insisted that we stayed…
Just like a lot of other gangs, we have a rival gang that none of us likes at all. There's only two members in it, but they're both obnoxious and rude. No one actually likes them, but many students in their school (and ours too) are actively scared of them; not us, though. Not only do we outnumber them, but we're also much stronger on our own, and we don't damage property on purpose like they do. I mean, what are their mothers saying about that?
We ended up getting ramen, so we were hanging out behind our favorite ramen shop, in a quiet yet shady backstreet. All you could hear is us slurping our soup. Then suddenly, Dai spoke up. "Girls?" She said and turned her anxious gaze to the right. We looked the same way, and just as I suspected, it was them, our favorite rival gang. I immediately looked at Cirno, because I know she's one to be easily aggravated. And I know she really doesn't like these two.
Their names are Mystia and Wriggle. Mystia is a bully with dyed pink hair and many, many ear piercings. She's given her school a bad name all on her own, and everyone knows her as a real trouble maker. She has a really hypnotizing singing voice though; what a gift for someone this bad. Wriggle on the other hand, is sort of her underling… She's very timid and peculiar, and has a terrifying insect collection that no one ever wants to see, despite her constant efforts to show other people. I don't like to think about how her room looks like.
"What the hell do you want here? I can't even enjoy my god damn lunch, apparently." Cirno complained and glared at the infamous twosome.
"I love teasing nerds that think they can make a decent gang, because I find it amusing." Mystia spoke like a true children's cartoon villain. I found it sort of funny, so I laughed a little.
"Don't laugh at Mystia!" Wriggle cried, but was intimidated when I looked at her and hid behind her friend. Mystia sighed.
"Hey. We're not looking for any fights at the moment, so don't go around trying to pick a fight when we're having lunch." I requested.
"Well, what if I'm in the mood to kick your asses, then?" Mystia took a few steps towards me and looked at me straight into my eyes, thinking she could intimidate me. Dai got really worried because she doesn't want us to get into trouble, especially close to other people's homes where they can see and hear us. Mystia didn't care. I'm about 20 cm taller than her, though, so I found her trying to intimidate me pretty funny. I laughed again, and she got visibly agitated.
"I lost my appetite now. Thanks a LOT." Cirno pouted as she held her half-full ramen bowl with both her hands. "And I'm not in the mood for your rambling, so bye-bye!" And with that, she emptied her ramen bowl on Mystia's infuriated face. "RUN!" Cirno yelled as she grabbed Dai and Rumia's hands and escaped the scene, with me following behind, giggling and panting. From the back, all you could hear was Mystia's angry screams, and Wriggle nervously trying to calm her down as she stopped her from chasing after us.
Laughing loud and running fast, Rumia kept trying to eat her ramen with a single hand, resulting in soup drops raining on my face running from behind, despite being pretty far behind from the three. The thing is, I couldn't really see where I was going, or who I was in danger of running into, and then—
I fall head first onto the ground, dragging down the unfortunate human being I fell on while carelessly running in the middle of the street. I try to get up, ready to apologize a billion times. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-" and then I froze. Of all the people in this tiny town, it seems that the one I just almost killed was none other but the silver-haired transfer student that I found so mesmerizing this morning. I looked at her in the eyes while I was on top of her, and she stared at me with a look full of frustration. "Please, get off me." She said softly. I panicked. I panicked a LOT.
"I AM SO VERY SORRY," I got up immediately and begged her to forgive me. "I REALLY DIDN'T WATCH WHERE I'M GOING AND THAT'S NOT YOUR FAULT I'M SO SORRY I TRULY APOLOGIZE I DON'T-" And she cut me off right there. "Please. It's no big deal. I get it." My face was bright red and I was full of shame. I noticed she had grocery bags with her that I tackled on the ground along with her. "Oh god, I- Sorry like really-" I picked them up right away and gave them to her carefully. "Listen, I really am sorry, I hope I can make this up to you somehow- Izayoi right?" I was panting, and my face was full of sweat and ramen soup, so I probably looked like a real mess. She sure doesn't speak a lot, though. "Listen. I said it's fine. Please go home now." She gave me a cold look and turned around. "Be careful, because not everyone is as forgiving as me." And then she left. I was kind of stunned. I've never been told to fuck off with such charisma.
"Dude, what the hell?" Cirno came back, along with Dai and Rumia who were equally concerned. "Was that the new transfer student with the silver hair?" "Yeah…" I muttered. "She doesn't seem very friendly." Said Rumia, and frowned a little. "She seems stuck-up, that's what she does." Cirno didn't seem to like her at all. "Don't talk about someone you don't know like that. She's no Mystia, either way…" Dai was always like that, so I didn't expect her to say anything else. Nevertheless, I didn't feel very well.
That night, while I was lying in bed, gazing at the blank ceiling, and thinking, I couldn't really think about anything other than Izayoi. It frustrated me to no end that she most likely thought of me as a clumsy good-for-nothing delinquent. Someone as pretty and well-mannered as herself would never want to be around a brute like me, and that's perfectly understandable. But it made me pretty anxious. I was so worried; I couldn't sleep that night. That day was very eventful, but there was more to come in the next two weeks.
And this was just day one of my fateful encounter with the silver-haired nymph.