Nishijima Minami took her first steps onto the campus of Nekoma High as if she were entering a war zone: back straight, brown eyes following any movement around the edges of the courtyard, the growing and impossible to ignore feeling of being too exposed and moving too slow. It was all Mina could do to keep herself from breaking into a full on sprint for the school doors. The school was shelter and shelter meant safety.
'Enough.' Mina chided herself, perfectly composed face scrunching into irritation. 'Enough.'
The thought didn't slow her racing heart.
After a summer of near constant fight-or-flight it seemed nigh impossible to leave behind the feeling of impending doom. But no, it hadn't been an entire summer. It had been months packed impossibly into a single day, a few weeks of high stakes cat-and-mouse, and a final battle that Mina had been forced to watch from the sidelines unable to anything but pray.
Her fingers closed around the straps of her school bag, clenching tight.
Summer had continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, throwing everyone back into normality. But normality hadn't returned to them, effects of that impossible summer day lingering. How many nights had she woken to panicked phone calls? How many nights had she been the one making them? Her brother had spent the rest of the holiday treating her like glass; in a way he hadn't in years. Mina still wasn't certain how much of that was deserved.
Two weeks before the start of term Mina had gone out for dinner ingredients and had returned with her ears pierced. She had chosen citrine studs, little yellow squares of gemstones the color of cat's eyes. It had felt right. It had felt like luck. Until her brother had opened his mouth and insisted that she was taking the 'neko' part of Nekoma a bit too seriously and Mina had been forced to threaten to kick him down the apartment building stairs in retaliation. Older and more mature, Daigo had responded by throwing his apple at her and fleeing the room.
It was the reason for the bruise on her temple, carefully hidden behind her bangs and tinted with makeup.
As her thoughts drifted Mina's expression must have darkened as several of the other arriving students moved to give her a wide berth. The brunette sighed, long and deep, through her nose as she forced her shoulders to lower. She repeated the breathing until the tension she had been holding began to lessen, until she felt a bit more human.
In a flash her hands shot upward, connecting to her cheeks with an audible slap. "Alright!"
A rowdy cheer erupted, startling her back into the moment. Across the entryway courtyard a group of boys - second and third year soccer club members, judging from the cleats several of them carried - had their arms raised in approval. Mina felt her face burn, separate from the sting of the slap. She lowered her hands slowly, even as one of the boys flashed her a thumbs up, and began to walk to the door at a much faster pace…
...Only to return to the spot several seconds later to retrieve her dropped school bag.
'Well, that was fun while it lasted,' Mina thought, certain her face was now was red as Nekoma's athletic uniforms. 'But now I have to transfer schools. I hear Fukurodani has cute uniforms.'
She continued to contemplate the logistics of a start-of-term school transfer even as she found her shoe locker and changed to indoor shoes. She considered alternate train routes as she walked down the hallways to her classroom. She even made a mental note to tabulate the potential cost involved as she followed the diagram on the board to her seat.
Mina dropped into her assigned chair and began searching her bag for her pencil case. Finances. The brunette frowned as she dropped the pencil case onto the desktop. With her brother firmly settled into university and his part time salary minimal it would be unreasonable to change schools so soon.
She tsk-ed, feeling as if Daigo had pelted her with another apple as her escape plan fell away. "I suppose the next best option would be to avoid the soccer club indefinitely."
"Soccer club?" A new voice asked and Mina became suddenly aware that a nearby seat the next row over was newly occupied. "I don't think Nekoma has a girl's soccer club."
"Oh that's fine," Mina answered, putting on her best friendly smile as she turned to face her classmate. "I was just...thinking out loud."
The speaker- her classmate, the brunette reminded herself- looked to be her age. His strawberry blonde was cut short, with just enough length to get messy. His brown eyes seemed to sparkle with the unspoken truth of a completely normal summer. Spent at the beach with friends or walking the city streets without the ever looming threat of death.
A summer of convenience store ice cream for at least one meal. Of only running if he felt like it. Of returning home to his own bed with his own pillows in his own home because that was all he'd ever known. Of everything so typical and mundane and over looked, always enjoyed but easily forgotten.
Mina found herself more than a little jealous of this stranger.
"-other plans?"
'Oh no, he's still talking,' the girl realized with a mixed flare of panic and guilt. Her fingers closed around her pencil case, as if she could somehow squeeze what she had missed from it. It was a shame pencil cases didn't work that way. 'What did he say? What do Isay?'
Something of her emotions must have shown on her face because he laughed before offering a placitating smile. "No backup plan, huh? That's okay. You could always try for manager if you're that set on soccer."
"No," she answered, perhaps a little too quickly at the thought of facing her brief embarrassment again. "No, that's alright." Mina released her stranglehold on her pencil case to point at the athletic bag strapped across the back of his chair. "I take it you already decided on a club?"
The bright look returned to his eyes, expression as pure and excited as her camp kids on a good day. "Volleyball."
His unabashed exuberance for something so normal was refreshing. Mina's earlier jealousy of his unknown, idealized summer lessened; a burning fire to a simmering coal tucked away into the deepest, darkest part of her heart. Instead she smiled and this time it came easy. "Sounds fun."
The classroom began filling then, more and more students occupying the surrounding desks. An unspoken rule that class would begin soon. Mina turned back around in her seat to organize her desk top in the last few moments before the teacher arrived.
"Yaku Morisuke."
The girl blinked, turning back around to face her classmate. "Huh?"
"My, uh, my name." His hand lifted to scratch at a cheek, brown eyes watching some point over her shoulder as if he had spoken without meaning to and was regretting it.
"Oh!" Mina brought a hand to her forehead before she could think better of it. The heel of her palm hit the bruise, the small touch sending a spark of pain along the skin. "Of course. Nishijima Minami, but you can call me 'Mina' if you want."
The teacher arrived then, with a clattering of the door along its rails, and things follow along the old familiar routine. Stand, bow, sit. Rollcall. The sound of the teacher's voice, unfamiliar but inoffensive, and the general sounds of a classroom: Students shifting in their seats, the turning of pages, the repeating skritch of pencil on paper. Time ticked on in a steady stream and Mina found it easy to lose herself in the simple activity of note taking.
When the bell for lunch rang it was almost enough to startle the girl out of her seat, reverie shattered.
'Too jumpy,' Mina scolded, clicking her tongue. With careful movements she closed her notebook and returned her pencil and eraser to the pencil case, zipping it shut. The fabric making up the case was patterned with cacti, simple smiling faces drawn on the pots. A gift from Mimi. Several of the cacti sported large pinkish-red flowers and Mina wondered if the younger girl had kept a similar one for herself.
Or perhaps Mimi had given it to her because the reminder of a certain cactus had all been too much too soon.
"Ah," Mina's thoughts halted as she opened her school bag to discover its lack of bento. "Where..?"
"Daigo," she shifted the phone to cradle it to her face with a shoulder, hands carefully arranging her lunch in the bento box. "You're overreacting."
"No I'm not," her brother's voice responded from the other end of the line. "I'm reacting the correct amount, thank you very much."
Mina could easily imagine him tugging at his shirt collar, the old nervous habit returning. She rolled her eyes, lips curving despite the action as she closed the lid on her completed bento. "Maybe she just wants some space? It's not like she has to tell you everything."
Daigo gave an exasperated sigh as she put tomorrow's lunch in the fridge. "I'm just...worried. I want her to rely on me a little more."
"Maybe you should, oh I don't know, tell her that?"
The girl tsk-ed at the memory, zipping the bag closed. The reminder note never got put up. Her bento remained next to the special can of tea meant to accompany it.
Just peachy.
"Lunch time," Yaku gave a quick tap on her desk as he passed. "Best hurry if you want to beat the Bread Wars."
"Oh, wow, no," Mina replied, closing her bag. "I'll take a nap, thanks."
He raised an eyebrow, expression caught somewhere between surprised and confused. "You're not going to eat?"
"I'll stop and get something on the way home," she answered, clearing a space on her desk. "There's a convenience store on the way home."
"But-"
"Shh," Mina crossed her arms across the cool surface of her desk and buried her face into them. "Nap time."
Yaku muttered something as he left, though she didn't try to hear it.
The empty classroom was almost too quiet without the ambient noise of the other students but for once her eyelids didn't care. Sleep came easily to her, after a bit of shifting. Her body still used to finding rest in typically uncomfortable situations. As her breathing slowed Mina hoped she wouldn't dream.
Mina jolted awake, knee knocking against the underside of her desk. The slight pain enough to chase away the last of her drowsiness. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, for her mind to remember where she was. To the side of her desk was the strawberry blonde boy, one hand raised slightly. "What?"
"It's almost time for class," he provided, lowering the hand. "Figured you'd want to be awake for it."
"Right," the brunette lifted a hand to rub her face, then remembered her makeup and thought better of it. "Class. That makes sense."
"Here," Yaku tossed something at the girl, underhanded for ease of capture.
Her fingers closed around plastic with an audible crinkle. Mina blinked, turning the object over to get a proper look at it. "The school has melonpan?"
He shrugged as he past, moving back to his desk. "Maybe I just didn't want to hear your stomach for the rest of the day."
Mina snorted, side-eying the shorter boy. "You're not even that close."
"Shh," Yaku said, repeating her earlier words back at her. "Class time."
"Nerd." If he took true offense to the name it didn't show on his face and Mina was left to assume there were no problems with playful name calling.
Mina hid her snack inside her desk, tearing bites from it when the teacher's back was turned. She didn't feel particularly subtle but no one called her out and this particular sensei had a particular tendency to lecture with his back to the class. A small blessing.
From inside her pencil case she retrieved a pen - navy blue, deep as the night sky in the mountains - and made a note in her planner to return the favor. Various notes in equally various inks sprawled across the page, talking of reminders and appointments. Post-it notes and tabs marked later pages, indicating important things.
Remind Koushiro that sleep is important written in deep purple. Link Joe breathing exercises for anxiety in a sparkly silver-grey. Taichi's first soccer game of the year in a bright orange and underlined twice.
Mina pursed her lips as she remembered she knew nothing about this boy. The task wouldn't be as simple as buying favored snacks for her camp kids. She would just have to wing it and hope for the best.
Her pen hovered over the newly written words, hesitating. It wasn't like dealing with her camp kids at all. The summer had taught them to always repay debts but here, in the real world? Very few people expected pay back for bread. Mina sighed, clicking her pen and flipping her planner shut.
'Whatever,' she decided, even as the doubts and second-guessing continued to swirl in her mind. Her fingers tapped against the desktop, eyes focused on the board in front of her but attention drifting.
By the time class ended any hope of Mina returning to her previous studious behavior was long gone. Her attention had shattered, leaving her fidgety and plagued by the need to move; body screaming that it had been still for too long and that meant danger. She frowned, pressing her lips together in a thin line, teeth biting at the inside of her cheek. 'Maybe I shouldn't have used lunch to nap…'
When the bell rang, dismissing the students, she was nearly openly grateful. The brunette tossed her things back into her school bag with minimal care, eager to walk off her growing feeling of antsiness and dread.
"Told you you'd get hungry," Yaku called, slinging his athletic bag over his shoulder. He grinned, a friendly teasing sort of thing Mina had grown used to finding on other people. Though the expression strained a bit as she stood, eyes following her rise as he seemed to finally notice her height.
Mina arched an eyebrow, tucking her bag under one arm as she moved towards the classroom door.. "Don't you have volleyballs to spike?"
He blinked, seeming to come back to himself. "I'm a libero."
"I don't know what that means."
"Oh, don't worry," Yaku grinned, a glint in his eye. "I can fix that."
"Sounds like a threat," Mina responded, feeling as if she had just been caught in a trap.
"More of a promise, really."
"Oh, so you're a volleyball loanshark."
Yaku snorted, threatening to choke on air as he swallowed back a laugh. "The Volley Yakuza is very dangerous, you know."
The two went separate ways once outside of the classroom, Yaku heading to his practice with the barely hidden excitement of someone who loved their sport and Mina walking for the school entrance with the quick, jittery steps of her anxiety. Moving through the crowds of students helped; one must always stay moving if they wanted to escape the 'rush hour' of school's end.
Outside the weather was still warm, the sun still in the sky. It still felt like summer. But summer was over and only the uncertain future remained. It was time to return to normalcy.
Whatever that meant.