Languages always went slowest. For the most part, it was because the students were trying to cover two or three seperate languages in one sitting. It was the general conensus of the adults that the more languages their children knew, the better chance they would have of being able to go on with life in a drasticly changed world. On a more paranoid level, it was probably so that they could meet up with kids from anywhere else and have the potential to get into a relationship. Half of the human population and a declining birth rate were leaving the future with a bleak uncertainty.
At the start of class, Tatakura had the new student stand and greet the class, although he didn't seem to have any of the apprehension of other new kids. His accent was strange, and made some of them snicker. A northerner, the new student was introduced as Nagisa Kaworu. He was an albino, which might have been stranger twenty years ago. Albiet, he did stand out like a sore thumb against the rest of the class. Juni could look up from her desk at any point and see him- the white hair was like a beacon across the room in a sea of black.
Nagisa didn't speak, didn't shuffle and didn't call attention to himself in class. People would glance at him whenever a question was asked aloud, expecting some sort of response, but it was as if he'd always been with them. He was just as apatheticly silent as the rest, and paid just as little attention. When Tatakura wasn't watching him, he was looking down at his desk, just like the rest of them.
When the bell finally rang for dismissal, only the students who had cleanup that day would remain, but Juni straggled. Nagisa straggled too, but not in the same way she did. He seemed to have forgotten that class had existed at all.
Slinging her bag across her chest, Juni zig zagged through the desks to where the albino had sat, unmoved, through the last four class periods. Nagisa looked up as she approuched, and although she had expected his eyes to be off colour the deep red struck her as odd...didn't albinos have pinkish eyes? Juni dismissed the thought. Her palm came down on the edge of his desk and she leaned forward, noticing now that Nagisa had been busy all through class...just drawing.
The albino's face remained emotionless, completely flatline as she Juni stood above him. Without even taking his crimsion gaze away, Nagisa moved his hands fluidly, snapping shut his note book and secreting it into the folds of a pack. "Yes?"
Juni smiled, taking her hand off his desk for a very quick informal boy. "I'm Sekai Juni, I just wanted to welcome you to our class."
Nagisa blinked impassively, incomprehensably, the stillness hanging in the air a moment. It was not an awkward wait...but it was a delay. "Why?"
"I saw you come in. And well," Left hand on her hip, Juni jerked a thumb to herself and then pointed to the albino. "You and me? We're the same."
Nagisa arched an eyebrow a moment, a strange faint smile hinting on his lips. "Why do you think that?" The albino's voice was strange- it had a sort of lethargic tone to it that left Juni feeling empty and slightly off center. Juni took a step back as Nagisa stood, finding he was taller than she had initially noticed.
Maybe she was just a naive girl. Maybe it was that Juni was dense, and couldn't take a hint that made it so she didn't step away and leave Nagisa to his own ends. Or maybe it was as she said - they were the same. So instead, Juni stood her ground with her hands on her hips, and did her best to keep an air of superiority. "Haven't you ever just known anything? When you see someone, and you can tell by the way they move that they're like you are?"
"I can't say I have." Nagisa folded his arms, his backpack doubled around his pale right wrist. Something about his demenor was...off, Juni noted to herself. It wasn't sinister or contrived, it was just out of character for the outward appearance of Nagisa. His word's weren't what reflected it so much, she noted, as his movements.
The silence lay between them like a wall again, weighted and thick. And Juni, before she was even aware of the way she thundered through it like an elephant in the forest, was speaking. "You have to see something. Come on." Her hands closed like traps around the albino's exposed wrist, and she began to lead Nagisa.
Surprisingly, he did not resist, but followed instead with a sort of naive curiousity.
*******
The roof of the school had never been designed as a place that was accessable to students. There were no basketball courts there, as there were in some of the city schools. There were no gardens for the younger children, no benches to sit on and eat lunch. When the building was first constructed, a guardrail was ordered to be put around the lip of the building, but the workmen found it tedious to get around when working on the sides of the school and so it sat in a rusty, disgarded heap to the side of a domed skylight.
Getting to the roof in and of itself was a challenge. For adults, they still needed to climb on top of an a-frame ladder to pull down the cracked wooden staircase that folded into the ceiling. For the students, like Juni and Nagisa, there was a required teamwork effort.
Under the offcolour square in the ceiling on the top floor, Juni positioned the albino boy specificly. Nagisa didn't make any move of protest, even when she took both his hands and cupped them together in front of his stomach, interlacing the fingers. The thick red colour of his irises seemed to draw the colour from his cheeks- it was as if the albino's eyes themselves were causing his condition.
It bothered Juni just slightly when the new student didn't speak a word as she instructed him on what to do. It wasn't annoyance, but more an alien unfamiliarity. Nagisa seemed to take no real note that what they were doing was out of the ordinary, nor did he question her the entire time. She could never reach the roof alone, and it was always the other students she took who asked her. "Where are we going? Are we supposed to be doing this? Can't we get in trouble?" Her answer, like a music box when it was opened, was always the same. To put on her headphones, and continue to lead them.
But Nagisa had never asked. It wasn't that he came off as timid, or submissive. His height alone dispelled those thoughts. He wasn't just quiet, he was devoid. It was as if Nagisa wasn't even with her at all.
"Stand just like that," Juni instructed, her hands on his shoulders as she gave him a slight shake. "And don't look up my skirt."
"Why would I?" Nagisa's voice was blank, without emotion surprise or question. Juni gave a slight sound of disgust and put a foot into his cupped hands, clamping onto his shoulders and hoisting herself up.
She was light, which she was thankful for, because it meant that every time she did this she could be the one entrusted with retreiving the ladder. Her knees wobbled as she took hold of the dangling string in the center of the discoloured spot, Nagisa looking with his head upturned and his expression impassive.
Fist clenched onto the ratty peice of string, Juni jumped back out of Nagisa's hands and landed on the floor with a sharp clacking, her uniform shoes taking the abuse with auidable protest. The ladder came creaking away from the ceiling, its steps unfolding into the sky like a dragon's maw. Juni stepped back from the rear of the ladder and smiled through the workmen's steps at the albino.
Nagisa's stare was only curious confusion.
With a sigh of frustration, Juni faced the fact that the new student was either socially inept beyond belief or mentally short in one way or another. Swinging on the unsanded stairs, she slipped once on the polished tiles of the school and regained her balance before catching onto Nagisa's bird-white hand.
She didn't grin as she pulled the albino up the steps, eyes locked on his. Nagisa was dragged behind her, but it was like leading a child and not forcing a man.
Shoes crunched on the tar-stuck gravel of the rooftop as Juni scrambled to pull shut the wooden staircase behind them, her school uniform scuffed and wrinkled from the climb. She was glad, she realized when the staircase groaned shut, that it was the end of the day and she wouldn't have to return to class and explain her appearance. Straightening, she turned to find Nagisa standing at the rim of the rooftop, looking down the five stories to the ground below. A light updraft caught his grey-white hair and ruffled it, causing Jumi to subconciously catch her own hair between two fingers and hold it still.
"Is this what you wanted me to see?" The albino boy's hands delved into the pockets, a stark contrast on the dark fabric of his pants. As always, his voice was unidentifiable. There was an emotion to it, but not one Juni could readily identify. Taking a step back from the rim, Nagisa's ruby eyes rested on Juni.
She did not feel uneasy. He was taller than her, a boy. She knew nothing about him, because he was new. Everything about him was strange and misplaced, but not in a grotesque way. Nagisa was not a wolf- he was more akin to a stray cat that had wandered into her house looking for food. Juni couldn't help herself, and smiled at him. "Not just that. Look out there." She pointed towards the sun, which was crawling lower in the sky as the afternoon edged towards its close.
Nagisa's head turned, his feet following with an exaggerated slowness. "It looks like a temple on the hillside. Are you religious?"
"No, but did you know this is a haven for the buddists?"
His back to her, Nagisa seemed to float like a ghost on the edge of the building. His voice carried away from her and into the distance, making it all the harder to hear what he said. "I don't see what this has to do with me."
Juni felt her shoes scraping on the rough surface of the rooftop as she moved to stand beside the albino. Truthfully, the rooftop made her giddy, its height a rarely treated drug for her to indulge in. Her voice reflected this, sounding airy. "When the buddists came here, I think they got a feeling. Something inside them said that this place was where they needed to be, where they needed to converge. Back over a thousand years ago, this was even the capital of Japan. It just felt right, people just knew that this was where to build a city and rule from." Juni's hands were clasped at her back, and she gazed on Nagisa'as face. He hadn't changed expressions. "I know it's hard for you to be in a new school, I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I've got a feeling about you."
"It feels strange," The albino spoke at length, eyes moving over the landscape with the naivite of first-time sight. "I've never thought of myself as being like anyone before. Yet you said we were alike."
Juni nodded, watching the last straggling students leave through the great double doors far below. "You just don't know how to open up to others. You'd make a lot of friends if you'd try."
"I don't understand," Nagisa knelt, curling until he was seated on the rooftop with his feet dangling over the side. Hands clasped in his lap, free of the pockets and locked together. "Why should I need friends?"
Juni's face melted into laughter as she slouched down to sit beside him, her legs kicking as they hung over the edge. "They sure are strange up north. Does everyone there talk like you do?"
"No."
"At least you're not snide when you speak. But you want friends so you're not alone," She grinned, hands splaying out behind her on the rough gravel as she leaned back. Every one of the small rocks was like a tooth gnawing at her palm, but everything about the roof was special, and she relished it. "Nobody likes being on their own. So start out by smiling." Juni's face turned towards the albino and she grinned, a demonstration.
"It's just a way of showing joy, that's it?" Nagisa looked at her a moment before returning his eyes to the all encompasing landscape. "It seems strange to me, that's why I don't do it often."
Shaking her head, Juni paused to hold a strand of dark hair back from between her eyes. "No, it's not just for that. It means you're at peace."
"Peace?"
"The monks, out there, like I was talking about before? They smile all the time. They're very wise."
Nagisa's eyes slitted very slightly, the red seeming to thicken as he did so. "But they don't know everything, do they?"
"Of course not. Maybe they also smile because they know that."
Deep crimsion pools opened against the ivory face as Nagisa watched the unmoving temple in the distance. Very slowly, like incoming tide, his lips moved upwards. The smile was so distinctive, like the albino's voice. It was an emotion, but an unnamed one.
Juni could only laugh in response, because something so original could never be seen again. The girl climbed to her feet, dusting the loose gravel on her hands against her skirt. The pebbles fell and skittered on the rooftop, but she took no notice.
"So where do you live? I'll walk home with you."
At the start of class, Tatakura had the new student stand and greet the class, although he didn't seem to have any of the apprehension of other new kids. His accent was strange, and made some of them snicker. A northerner, the new student was introduced as Nagisa Kaworu. He was an albino, which might have been stranger twenty years ago. Albiet, he did stand out like a sore thumb against the rest of the class. Juni could look up from her desk at any point and see him- the white hair was like a beacon across the room in a sea of black.
Nagisa didn't speak, didn't shuffle and didn't call attention to himself in class. People would glance at him whenever a question was asked aloud, expecting some sort of response, but it was as if he'd always been with them. He was just as apatheticly silent as the rest, and paid just as little attention. When Tatakura wasn't watching him, he was looking down at his desk, just like the rest of them.
When the bell finally rang for dismissal, only the students who had cleanup that day would remain, but Juni straggled. Nagisa straggled too, but not in the same way she did. He seemed to have forgotten that class had existed at all.
Slinging her bag across her chest, Juni zig zagged through the desks to where the albino had sat, unmoved, through the last four class periods. Nagisa looked up as she approuched, and although she had expected his eyes to be off colour the deep red struck her as odd...didn't albinos have pinkish eyes? Juni dismissed the thought. Her palm came down on the edge of his desk and she leaned forward, noticing now that Nagisa had been busy all through class...just drawing.
The albino's face remained emotionless, completely flatline as she Juni stood above him. Without even taking his crimsion gaze away, Nagisa moved his hands fluidly, snapping shut his note book and secreting it into the folds of a pack. "Yes?"
Juni smiled, taking her hand off his desk for a very quick informal boy. "I'm Sekai Juni, I just wanted to welcome you to our class."
Nagisa blinked impassively, incomprehensably, the stillness hanging in the air a moment. It was not an awkward wait...but it was a delay. "Why?"
"I saw you come in. And well," Left hand on her hip, Juni jerked a thumb to herself and then pointed to the albino. "You and me? We're the same."
Nagisa arched an eyebrow a moment, a strange faint smile hinting on his lips. "Why do you think that?" The albino's voice was strange- it had a sort of lethargic tone to it that left Juni feeling empty and slightly off center. Juni took a step back as Nagisa stood, finding he was taller than she had initially noticed.
Maybe she was just a naive girl. Maybe it was that Juni was dense, and couldn't take a hint that made it so she didn't step away and leave Nagisa to his own ends. Or maybe it was as she said - they were the same. So instead, Juni stood her ground with her hands on her hips, and did her best to keep an air of superiority. "Haven't you ever just known anything? When you see someone, and you can tell by the way they move that they're like you are?"
"I can't say I have." Nagisa folded his arms, his backpack doubled around his pale right wrist. Something about his demenor was...off, Juni noted to herself. It wasn't sinister or contrived, it was just out of character for the outward appearance of Nagisa. His word's weren't what reflected it so much, she noted, as his movements.
The silence lay between them like a wall again, weighted and thick. And Juni, before she was even aware of the way she thundered through it like an elephant in the forest, was speaking. "You have to see something. Come on." Her hands closed like traps around the albino's exposed wrist, and she began to lead Nagisa.
Surprisingly, he did not resist, but followed instead with a sort of naive curiousity.
*******
The roof of the school had never been designed as a place that was accessable to students. There were no basketball courts there, as there were in some of the city schools. There were no gardens for the younger children, no benches to sit on and eat lunch. When the building was first constructed, a guardrail was ordered to be put around the lip of the building, but the workmen found it tedious to get around when working on the sides of the school and so it sat in a rusty, disgarded heap to the side of a domed skylight.
Getting to the roof in and of itself was a challenge. For adults, they still needed to climb on top of an a-frame ladder to pull down the cracked wooden staircase that folded into the ceiling. For the students, like Juni and Nagisa, there was a required teamwork effort.
Under the offcolour square in the ceiling on the top floor, Juni positioned the albino boy specificly. Nagisa didn't make any move of protest, even when she took both his hands and cupped them together in front of his stomach, interlacing the fingers. The thick red colour of his irises seemed to draw the colour from his cheeks- it was as if the albino's eyes themselves were causing his condition.
It bothered Juni just slightly when the new student didn't speak a word as she instructed him on what to do. It wasn't annoyance, but more an alien unfamiliarity. Nagisa seemed to take no real note that what they were doing was out of the ordinary, nor did he question her the entire time. She could never reach the roof alone, and it was always the other students she took who asked her. "Where are we going? Are we supposed to be doing this? Can't we get in trouble?" Her answer, like a music box when it was opened, was always the same. To put on her headphones, and continue to lead them.
But Nagisa had never asked. It wasn't that he came off as timid, or submissive. His height alone dispelled those thoughts. He wasn't just quiet, he was devoid. It was as if Nagisa wasn't even with her at all.
"Stand just like that," Juni instructed, her hands on his shoulders as she gave him a slight shake. "And don't look up my skirt."
"Why would I?" Nagisa's voice was blank, without emotion surprise or question. Juni gave a slight sound of disgust and put a foot into his cupped hands, clamping onto his shoulders and hoisting herself up.
She was light, which she was thankful for, because it meant that every time she did this she could be the one entrusted with retreiving the ladder. Her knees wobbled as she took hold of the dangling string in the center of the discoloured spot, Nagisa looking with his head upturned and his expression impassive.
Fist clenched onto the ratty peice of string, Juni jumped back out of Nagisa's hands and landed on the floor with a sharp clacking, her uniform shoes taking the abuse with auidable protest. The ladder came creaking away from the ceiling, its steps unfolding into the sky like a dragon's maw. Juni stepped back from the rear of the ladder and smiled through the workmen's steps at the albino.
Nagisa's stare was only curious confusion.
With a sigh of frustration, Juni faced the fact that the new student was either socially inept beyond belief or mentally short in one way or another. Swinging on the unsanded stairs, she slipped once on the polished tiles of the school and regained her balance before catching onto Nagisa's bird-white hand.
She didn't grin as she pulled the albino up the steps, eyes locked on his. Nagisa was dragged behind her, but it was like leading a child and not forcing a man.
Shoes crunched on the tar-stuck gravel of the rooftop as Juni scrambled to pull shut the wooden staircase behind them, her school uniform scuffed and wrinkled from the climb. She was glad, she realized when the staircase groaned shut, that it was the end of the day and she wouldn't have to return to class and explain her appearance. Straightening, she turned to find Nagisa standing at the rim of the rooftop, looking down the five stories to the ground below. A light updraft caught his grey-white hair and ruffled it, causing Jumi to subconciously catch her own hair between two fingers and hold it still.
"Is this what you wanted me to see?" The albino boy's hands delved into the pockets, a stark contrast on the dark fabric of his pants. As always, his voice was unidentifiable. There was an emotion to it, but not one Juni could readily identify. Taking a step back from the rim, Nagisa's ruby eyes rested on Juni.
She did not feel uneasy. He was taller than her, a boy. She knew nothing about him, because he was new. Everything about him was strange and misplaced, but not in a grotesque way. Nagisa was not a wolf- he was more akin to a stray cat that had wandered into her house looking for food. Juni couldn't help herself, and smiled at him. "Not just that. Look out there." She pointed towards the sun, which was crawling lower in the sky as the afternoon edged towards its close.
Nagisa's head turned, his feet following with an exaggerated slowness. "It looks like a temple on the hillside. Are you religious?"
"No, but did you know this is a haven for the buddists?"
His back to her, Nagisa seemed to float like a ghost on the edge of the building. His voice carried away from her and into the distance, making it all the harder to hear what he said. "I don't see what this has to do with me."
Juni felt her shoes scraping on the rough surface of the rooftop as she moved to stand beside the albino. Truthfully, the rooftop made her giddy, its height a rarely treated drug for her to indulge in. Her voice reflected this, sounding airy. "When the buddists came here, I think they got a feeling. Something inside them said that this place was where they needed to be, where they needed to converge. Back over a thousand years ago, this was even the capital of Japan. It just felt right, people just knew that this was where to build a city and rule from." Juni's hands were clasped at her back, and she gazed on Nagisa'as face. He hadn't changed expressions. "I know it's hard for you to be in a new school, I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I've got a feeling about you."
"It feels strange," The albino spoke at length, eyes moving over the landscape with the naivite of first-time sight. "I've never thought of myself as being like anyone before. Yet you said we were alike."
Juni nodded, watching the last straggling students leave through the great double doors far below. "You just don't know how to open up to others. You'd make a lot of friends if you'd try."
"I don't understand," Nagisa knelt, curling until he was seated on the rooftop with his feet dangling over the side. Hands clasped in his lap, free of the pockets and locked together. "Why should I need friends?"
Juni's face melted into laughter as she slouched down to sit beside him, her legs kicking as they hung over the edge. "They sure are strange up north. Does everyone there talk like you do?"
"No."
"At least you're not snide when you speak. But you want friends so you're not alone," She grinned, hands splaying out behind her on the rough gravel as she leaned back. Every one of the small rocks was like a tooth gnawing at her palm, but everything about the roof was special, and she relished it. "Nobody likes being on their own. So start out by smiling." Juni's face turned towards the albino and she grinned, a demonstration.
"It's just a way of showing joy, that's it?" Nagisa looked at her a moment before returning his eyes to the all encompasing landscape. "It seems strange to me, that's why I don't do it often."
Shaking her head, Juni paused to hold a strand of dark hair back from between her eyes. "No, it's not just for that. It means you're at peace."
"Peace?"
"The monks, out there, like I was talking about before? They smile all the time. They're very wise."
Nagisa's eyes slitted very slightly, the red seeming to thicken as he did so. "But they don't know everything, do they?"
"Of course not. Maybe they also smile because they know that."
Deep crimsion pools opened against the ivory face as Nagisa watched the unmoving temple in the distance. Very slowly, like incoming tide, his lips moved upwards. The smile was so distinctive, like the albino's voice. It was an emotion, but an unnamed one.
Juni could only laugh in response, because something so original could never be seen again. The girl climbed to her feet, dusting the loose gravel on her hands against her skirt. The pebbles fell and skittered on the rooftop, but she took no notice.
"So where do you live? I'll walk home with you."
