Chapter 4

That brought me up to date.

I forced my eyes opened and looked up to the faces of Chitanda, Satoshi, and Ibara. The school nurse was working off to the side, studying some blood samples she had taken from me.

"Uh," I groaned.

"Hotaru-san," Chitanda sighed. "I was worried you weren't going to be okay. What happened?"

"Well," I said, suddenly uncomfortable with her face being so close to mine. "That spider must have been more dangerous than I thought." I shrugged.
"Apparently," Ibara said, raising her right eyebrow.

"Nurse," I asked. "Am I gonna die?"
She laughed at my sarcasm, and walked up to me.
"Luckily, the spider's bite doesn't seem to have been poisonous. You must have just suffered a dizzy spell. Have you ever been bitten by a spider before?"
"No," I said, still trying to figure out exactly why I reacted so strongly to the spider's bite.

"I see, then it's probably just you're body getting used to such a bite. We'll know for sure after we take a look at the blood samples we took from you. Since we've taken blood tests of you before, we'll compare it to your blood from before the bite, just to see if, for some reason, there has been any change. For the time being, we'll let you go. Your sister will be here to pick you up in a few minutes." She then exited the room.

"Well," Satoshi smirked. "Guess all that saved up energy didn't help much today, eh Hotaru?"
"Idiot,"

"Just saying. I wasn't worried about you though. I figured, no matter how strong the spider's bite was, you could handle it. That is, if you're motto was correct."
I found it hard to bare Satoshi's constant chatter. Luckily, I found a divergence point.
"Did you go back to the demonstration, Chitanda?"
"No," She said. "They stopped the demonstration when they heard a 'strange-looking spider', as the substitute teacher put it, got into the gym."
"I see, so you didn't miss anything."
"My teacher's having us do a report on what we did find out at the demonstration."
"I see," I muttered. I started to feel strengthened, even after the bite. In fact, I felt like my whole body had just been rejuvenated with one of those energy drinks.

"What the hell did they put into me?"

"So, Hotaru." Satoshi said, leaning his legs on the bare side on one of the medicine tables. "Do you think your sister will let you come back to school tomorrow?"

"Definitley,"
"Ha ha, I guess your sister doesn't care about your well-being."
"Well, she probably does somewhere in her cold heart. But when she picks me up, she'll definitely tell me to shrug it off."
"I can see that." He remarked.

The instant rush to get out of my bed was starting to make me dizzy. After a few seconds of silence, I jumped out of the bed as excited as a blind man would be if he just regained his sight, and bounced out the window.

Somehow, I didn't notice Chitanda grab onto my right arm in a desperate attempt to keep me in my room.

The ground started coming closer and closer. When I regained my senses, I shifted Chitanda into my arms, and perfect landing feet first on the ground. I couldn't believe. I barely felt the impact of the ground.

I gazed up at my hospital window which Satoshi and Ibara were staring out of now. I had jumped at least four stories down.

"HOTARU!" Satoshi yelled. "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO!?"

I didn't feel like yelling. I was concentrating on Chitanda, who was now in my arms. Color coated my cheeks as I gently laid her down on the ground. She stood up, staring at me with amazed, bewildered eyes.

"How did you do that, Hotaru-san?" I tried to come up with an answer to her question, but couldn't. I thought back to my injection theory, and said,

"It's possible they injected coffee into my blood, so that's where the short term energy came from." I heard Satoshi hollering up at the window, while Ibara was still looking down at me.

"Don't be silly!"
"I was just guessing."
"What if it has something to do with the spider that bit you?" Chitanda asked.

"But, how could that…?" I noticed the impending need to move was dawning upon me again. Suddenly, I turned back up to the hospital and jumped right above the fourth story window I had previously jumped from. Without even thinking, I crawled up the side of the wall, and leaped onto the roof. I gazed into the sunset, not even thinking about my current condition.

Suddenly, I realized how high up I was, and turned back down to see the shocked faces of Satoshi, Ibara, and Chitanda. I heard the nurse, scared out of her wits, running up the stairs that led to the rooftop.

After a few minutes of silence, Satoshi barely got out,

"Well," He said, the expression on his face unchanged. "I guess you have bug instincts now."
It was intended as a joke, but the fact that I could bound up walls and withstand falling from four stories high did make some of his joke seem very convincing.

I felt the nurse latch onto my arm, asking,

"How did you just do what you did?!"

I stared out into space, trying to figure out exactly what had happened to me. I was starting to hope all of this was a dream. After about a minute of thinking, I responded,

"I don't know,"
"I just, don't know."