I woke up before the alarm the next morning, too nervous to sleep properly. It only took me a few minutes to get dressed and eat breakfast, and soon I was hovering at the front door holding my duffel bag.
At the last second, I realised that I should leave a note of some sort in case my parents got back early and thought that I'd been kidnapped or something. I scrawled a short message about how I was staying over at a friend's house for the night. I didn't mention the friend's name, and I didn't mention when I would be back. In a way it was the truth: I was going to see my friend Ryuu and I would stay probably stay the night… just not at his house.
It was surprisingly easy to get a ticket to Tokyo at the train station that morning. I was full of the fear that the ticket seller might think I was a runaway and report me to the police, and I had a sob story of visiting my sick aunt ready in case she asked, but she didn't even talk to me apart from asking me whether I wanted one way or return.
I was a ball of nerves right until the train left the station, paranoid that my parents were going to come running up the train platform and drag me off of the train. Things were going too easily for me; it couldn't be that easy for a ten year old kid to run away from home. Surely someone was suspicious of me?
Soon the trip to Tokyo was over, and I was standing on a crowded platform in the busiest city in the world, wondering what on earth to do now. As it turns out, not one person could be bothered to ask a small boy what he was doing all alone on a train to Tokyo. Was it just that people were too trusting? Or was it that people honestly didn't care about others?
I shouldered my duffel bag and started to push my way towards an exit. I figured that the sooner I got moving, the sooner I might see Ryuu again. Using the address that I had used to send letters to Ryuu, I had located Alice Academy on a map of Tokyo that I had found in my father's study. It wasn't too far from the train station, and I could probably keep my bearings better if I stuck to the main streets, so I decided not to take another train. The walk seemed like a good idea after being cooped up in a train for the past few hours.
Alice Academy had to be the biggest school in Japan, if not the whole world. I had circled the massive wall that blocked off the school twice now, trying to find an opening to get through. Of course, this was my plan B. Plan A was to ask politely if I could meet with Ryuu. The security guard at the gate had laughed in my face and told me to go away.
"Only Alices are allowed past these walls kid." He told me. "Go home."
"What if Ryuu came out to see me?" I suggested.
"No." The guard shook his head. "That's even less likely to happen. Alices don't come out until they graduate, and that's a fact."
I scowled, but knew better than to argue further. This guy was just a lackey, pretty low on the totem pole. He wouldn't dare break the rules to allow one kid to see his best friend, he'd lose his job.
I sighed and kicked a stone down the path. This was starting to look hopeless. Nana had been so confident that a kid might have been able to slip past security here, but neither of us had imagined that such a huge wall would be the main obstacle. I looked up, trying to gauge the distance to the top of the wall… maybe I could climb over it?
What was that? I frowned and narrowed my eyes, trying to get a closer look. At the very top of the wall was what looked like another, slightly opaque, wall that curved up and away like a giant fishbowl that topped the academy. It would have been invisible but for the slight yellow sheen it had, as well as the frequent gold sparks that it threw off. Obviously the giant wall wasn't the only thing stopping me from getting in.
Was there any point in trying to get over the wall? From what I could see, it looked like an impossible task. Like it or not, this wall looked like the end of the road for me. I sighed and turned away, scratching my head as I tried to figure out the best way back to the train station, if I hurried, I could get the last train home.
"Make sure that Nii-san reads it, it's important."
Nana's hopeful face flashed into my mind, and I thought about the letter that was tucked into my inner jacket pocket. I clenched my fists. There was no way I could go home without at least trying to get over the wall. I'd never be able to look Nana in the eye if I wimped out here. I stared up at the yellow wall, examining it closely. There had to be some sort of weakness, every wall has a chink in it.
I began to jog alongside the wall, searching the yellow wall for any kind of different surface: a dent, a scratch, anything. Sweat began to run down my back as I desperately pushed on.
"I can't give up." I told myself. "There has to be a way in."
There! A few metres away! There was a shallow hole in the yellow wall! I almost yelled out loud with glee as I sprinted to stand beneath it. From what I could see of the faint wall, it was a round hole just big enough for a child to fit through. If I could climb the wall, I might be able to squeeze through the hole.
I rubbed my hands together and looked around nervously. This part of the wall was a back street of Tokyo, practically deserted. There were no guards to be seen at all. I quickly began to shimmy up the wall, using the cracks in the bricks as handholds. My heart pounded as I climbed higher and higher. Heights had never agreed with me much, and for some reason I couldn't get the image of me falling and splattering onto the concrete street below out of my head.
Soon I reached the top of the wall, and found myself face to face with the yellow barrier. From this point it looked even more yellow, but I could clearly see through it to the school grounds beyond. The school looked even bigger from this view, most of it appearing to be forest and parklands. It looked more like a nature reserve than a prestigious academy.
The hole was right in front of me, and I was relived to find that it was actually a bit bigger up close than it had looked from down on the ground. Gingerly, I began to wriggle forward through the hole. My head was fully through when I made the mistake of touching it. My left arm brushed past the edge of the hole, and I almost bit my tongue from the shock: the barrier was electrically charged.
"Great…" I muttered. "That's just my luck." Nevertheless I kept wriggling forward, carefully avoiding touching the barrier again.
Twenty minutes later I dropped down from the top of the wall and into a nice comfy bush. I had successfully made my way inside the academy.
Now what?
I tried to think back to the view of the buildings from the fence, picturing the layout of the school in my mind. From what I could tell, there were three main buildings. I would bet anything that the largest one would belong to administration. Alice academy was an organisation with many bonds to the outside world; they would need a large headquarters to deal with that fact. That left the other two buildings. I had two different theories. One: That the largest building held the high school and middle school classrooms and dormitories, while the smaller one was the elementary school premises, or two: That the larger building was the classrooms for everyone while the smaller building was the dormitories. It was an interesting dilemma. If I chose the wrong building to go looking for Ryuu in, I could get caught and thrown out of the Academy before I even got to see my friend. I had to be very careful about this.
First things first though, I had to find my way through this forest to the buildings. Luckily I had bought my scout knife with me, which contained a small compass, so I would be able to keep a constant direction if I used that. I sighed and started digging around in my pocket for the scout knife, knowing that I had a long journey ahead of me.
