There had been a time in Shigeko's life when she had wanted to go to school.

She had been little, a first grader, and school had seemed like it would be the most fun thing ever. She had been so excited to wear her school uniform, to pick out her school satchel, to wear shiny school shoes, but most of all she had been so excited to spend time with the other kids. She had never been in a room with anyone her own age before. She had always lived in the castle with just Mom and Dad.

Mostly just Mom.

Mom had never really been fun. Shigeko had always mostly just been left to play on her own. It hadn't seemed lonely at first because she had been too young to know what lonely meant. She'd had her dolls for company. They had been as dear to her as she had imagined any friends would have been in real life. They still kind of were.

Mainly because she didn't have any friends.

Someone pushed past her in a hurry to get to class. She didn't know that girl's name, she didn't know most people's names. Nobody ever spoke to her after all. Nobody had ever spoken to her, it felt like, in her entire school career. School hadn't been a thing like she had imagined it. TV and movies had lied to her. It wasn't that people made fun of her or were mean, no, they weren't much of anything to her at all.

Sometimes that felt even worse.

She'd had dreams, before, where she was surrounded by friends. People who knew her and who she knew in return. People who she would have died for, people who she knew would always be by her side, people who she knew she would never not stand with. No matter what, and in her dreams there had been a lot of 'what', but she knew that dreams were just that. They were dreams. Things that her brain came up with to keep her entertained while she slept. She knew that her dreams would never become reality.

Nobody liked her. Nobody even knew her.

She walked into the classroom at a normal pace. She didn't much see the point in running. She wasn't a little kid anymore. She could remember that first day of school like it was yesterday. How she had run ahead of Mom, so fast that Mom just gave up and went home, how she had been so excited to see her classroom and to make friends. How she had been shaking with anticipation when the teacher asked them to go around the room and introduce themselves. How she had rocked back and forth at her desk wrinkling her very expensive, as Mom had told her many times, school uniform and making her school shoes squeak. How she had rocked so hard in her chair that her pink school satchel, the one with the cat on it, kept on hitting the side of her desk. How she had been bursting with anticipation at the thought of making friends, people her own age, or even the teacher. How just being with Mom had always been so lonely. How sometimes it felt like Mom went days and days without so much as looking at her. How Dad was away for days, weeks, and sometimes even months at a time…

The teacher had skipped over her.

Shigeko put her school bag, black and plain this time, on the hook attached to her desk and sat down. Her classmates were practically shouting at one another. Their voices all melted together to the point that she couldn't make out one word from another. She wanted to join in even though she knew that she had nothing to say. No weekend plans, nothing exciting coming up, no real life outside of the castle…she kept her mouth shut. She had never been good at talking to people. It had been this way since she had been little, since the time the teacher skipped over her when they were doing introductions, when she had been too little and too shy to say anything…when nobody had even noticed her.

Sometimes she felt like a mob character.

Like she wasn't even a part of this story. Like she was just someone who had been drawn into the background to fill space so the main character could go on adventures and stuff without the world looking empty. She was even in a Mob character desk, in the middle of the room. The main character always sat in the very back by the window. That way it was easier to draw them, that way you didn't have to draw in the mob characters unless you really had to. Not that she had any idea why anyone would have wanted to draw her into anything.

Sometimes it felt like she was even worse than a mob character.

At least they got lines sometimes. They would make background noise so the world didn't sound empty, a lot like what her classmates were doing now. They would talk about plot specific things, like rumors or something, and then the main character would overhear the rumors and the plot would start up. She didn't have anything to say, plot specific or otherwise. She was pretty much just there, not even a mob character.

More like a ghost, if anything.

She sits straight up. A ghost…a ghost! Like a spirit. There was something…something important that she was supposed to do…something involving a spirit. Something that she just…something that she knew that she had to….she stood up. She didn't know why but she just had to stand up and…and do something. Someone needed her…but that was crazy. The only person who needed her was Mom and that was just for chores and stuff, chores that she always forgot to do, so if she couldn't even do her chores right then how could she save anyone? Why would anyone have even asked her to save them? Who would have even needed saving.

"Minori."

Shigeko had spoken out loud without even realizing it. Normally that wouldn't have mattered, nobody ever paid attention to her anyway, but this time…this time things were different. The purple haired girl who sat across from her turned around. She turned around so fast that her hair hit Shigeko in the face. A part of her thought, remembered, imagined, that the girl had shorter hair or just…wasn't that girl…but that was her, that was the same girl who had always sat beside her. She had always been there since the school year had begun, since they had done introductions, since Shigeko had been skipped over for introductions like she had been every single year since she had started the first grade. She had been skipped over for so many years that she had even stopped paying attention to the introductions…

Maybe, actually, she should have paid just a little bit of attention to her classmates. Just a little bit.

"Yeah, what's up?" asked the girl. She as leaning backwards in her chair, so far backwards that it looked like she was going to fall down. That wasn't the least of her problems. She was on her way to a uniform infraction. Her hair was the wrong color, her shirt wasn't done up all the way, her skirt was rolled up, and she was wearing makeup. All of those things were so against the rules that there was no way not to know. She wondered how this girl had even gotten past the front gate like that. Shigeko had been sent home for uneven braids before, and one time because her socks were a centimeter too short…

It wasn't fair.

"You-you're uniform…" said Shigeko. The girl turned around and was staring right at Shigeko. Her eyes…she seemed so familiar, and not just because they had been classmates for the entire school year. She was just…something was familiar about her…

A bird landed in the window. A big, black, one.

"Yeah, what about it?" asked the girl, clicking her tongue. The girls behind her were looking at Shigeko too. She felt like she was under a microscope or a telescope or a kaleidoscope, or…or some other kind of scope.

"It's…um…" said Shigeko. It occurred to her that maybe she knew she was breaking the dress code, that maybe she even wanted to break the dress code, that she didn't care if she got in trouble…but that made no sense. It was always so hard on the rule makers when people didn't listen. The rules were there for a reason, usually to keep people safe. Shigeko knew she hated it when people didn't listen to-

The bird cawed and flew away.

"What? You want pointers or something?" asked the girl. Shigeko didn't know what to say so she said nothing. The girl next to the purple haired girl rolled her eyes.

"What are you talking to the weirdo for?" said the other girl.

"Come on, obviously she needs it. I mean, come on, does your mom get you dressed in the mornings or something?" asked the girl, presumably Minori. Shigeko shook her head 'no'.

"No, not since…since first grade." Said Shigeko. She felt something wash over her. Words. 'God, Shige, you're such a first grader.' Words and then…some kind of shame? She looked down at her feet. Suddenly she wanted to go back to being less than a mob character. It had been kind of nice, maybe, to have someone other than mom talking to her but…but now she had this sense that she didn't belong. That she would never belong. That there was something wrong with her…but she wanted to belong. She wanted so badly to belong.

The bird was back, or maybe this was a different bird, a bigger one.

She braced herself for the girl, Minori, to say something mean. Her friends were all looking at her now. Shigeko didn't know what made her expect Minori to say something mean, this was the first time that they had ever spoken to one another, but it was just…a feeling she had. Maybe because she had spent so much of her life watching TV. In shows the pretty girls like Minori were always super mean to the plain girls like Shigeko. Of course the plain girls were always the main characters in those kinds of shows. Usually they had something about them that made them interesting, like a special skill or something like. Like powers or-

The bird cawed again. That was a loud bird.

"Well it looks like she never stopped." Said Minori. Her friends laughed. Shigeko suddenly felt small, very small. She nodded and tried to look away.

"Um…yeah. I guess so. I mean it's the uniform that they make us wear but-" said Shigeko quietly.

"Just because they say we have to look a certain way that doesn't mean that we absolutely have to." Said Minori with a scoff. Shigeko had no choice but to look at her, after all she had never heard something so crazy in her life, and she'd heard…well she hadn't heard a lot of crazy things in her life but still, that had been pretty f-wording crazy.

"We're act school so we just…we have to follow the rules. We don't have a choice." Said Shigeko

"Sure we do, or at least I do." Said Minori

"But-" said Shigeko

"I'm Asagiri Minori, I can do whatever I want." Said Minori. Shigeko didn't feel like that made a lot of sense. Even if you were the second most powerful person in the world you couldn't just do whatever you wanted to do. Everyone had to answer to the most powerful person around, and even that person had to answer to other things. Not people, no, but things like time and money and stuff like that. Plans took time and not even the most powerful man in the world could make time go faster.

Dad had said that once. She couldn't remember exactly when but she knew that Dad had told her that once.

"You're really not afraid of getting in trouble?" asked Shigeko

"Hell no. If anyone so much as looks at me wrong then I'll just have my Dad send our people over to straighten them out." Said Minori

"That's…that's nice of your Dad. My Dad never sends his people out to straighten people out for me. I mean I don't have anyone who I need to straighten out." Said Shigeko

"Wait, your Dad has people?" asked Minori. She seemed a lot more interested in Shigeko now. She used to have kind of a bored expression on her face, or maybe tired, Shigeko was bad at reading expressions, but now her eyes were meeting Shigeko's and she wasn't even blinking. It was weird, having someone pay that much attention to her at once, but it wasn't bad.

It was actually kind of nice.

"Yes." Said Shigeko

"What, like he's a manager at a store or something?" asked Minori. One of her friends laughed. Shigeko didn't know what was funny about that, it hadn't sounded like a joke at all, though it wasn't like people in her household made a lot of jokes. She wasn't even sure if her parents knew how to smile.

"No, he runs a whole company…well actually it's a company made up of a lot of different companies, but he's the boss of all of them. He's the president." Said Shigeko

"So, what, like a holding corporation or something? Or a conglomerate or something like that?" asked Minori. Shigeko took a moment to think. She wasn't sure of the exact word for what Dad's company was, she just knew that Dad was the person in charge and being in charge of his company meant that he didn't spend a lot of time with their family.

Because he had to work, of course, not because he didn't like his family.

"I'm not sure, I never asked him." Said Shigeko

"Ok, whatever, but he's in charge, right? Like my Dad's in charge of his company?" asked Minori. Shigeko didn't know Minori's dad but she nodded anyway. She just wanted to keep on talking to Minori. Was this what it was like to have a…a friend?

She was getting way ahead of herself and she knew it.

"Yes. He has a lot of people who work for him. I've never met any, I mean, but he talks about them a lot. He says that good help shouldn't be so hard to find." Said Shigeko

"Yeah, my Dad says the same thing too. Our servants are always fucking up in some way, it's totally annoying. It's like, come on, if you can't do your job then why are you even alive?" said Minori. Shigeko wanted to tell her that she was being mean but she also didn't. If she said that then maybe the conversation would be over and then they wouldn't be friends anymore.

Not that they were friends yet…and not that Shigeko assumed that this girl even wanted to be her friend at all.

"It's hard when people don't listen. My Dad says so and…um…maybe that's why our teachers are always so…so unhappy? Because we don't listen?" asked Shigeko

"Who the fuck cares about them? We pay their salaries. If anything they should be doing what WE say." Said Minori. Her friends agreed with her. Shigeko didn't really agree with her. She knew, well she got the feeling from listening to Dad complain, that it was hard when the people under you didn't listen. That just made more problems down the road…but she got the feeling that she had to agree with Minori.

So that was what she did.

"Yeah, uh, yeah." Said Shigeko

"See? You get it." Said Minori

"I do." Said Shigeko. Minori nodded once more before getting kind of a far off look in her eyes. Shigeko wasn't sure if she was supposed to say something right now or not. She may not have had a lot of conversations in her life but she knew that they were two person activities. Otherwise they were monologues, like how Dad liked to talk, well complain, for a long time about work and things like that. Shigeko knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of that.

It wasn't fun.

Neither was having someone reach over and undo your top button. Shigeko felt herself getting warm. She remembered someone else doing that to her. A boy. A boy…it must have been a dream in that case. She had never even had a real conversation with a boy before. It would have been too awkward. Even more awkward than having someone you didn't even know messing with your school shirt.

Mom was going to be so made that her neckerchief had been undone.

"There. See? Isn't that better?" asked Minori. Shigeko nodded even though she didn't want to. That button was just there in case she outgrew her shirt during the school year. They were for fit, not fashion, Mom had said so when they had gone uniform shopping. Shigeko wanted to do up her buttons but she didn't.

She didn't want Minori to stop talking to her, to stop liking her.

"It is." Said Shigeko

"You're not so hopeless after all, are you Suzuki?" asked Minori

"You-you know my name?" asked Shigeko. She looked down at her desk half expecting to see a nametag, but of course there wasn't one. This wasn't grade school.

"Well, yeah, you've sat next to me all year, and anyway why wouldn't I know the name of one of my projects?" asked Minori

"Project?" asked Shigeko. That felt…she didn't even know how that felt.

"Yeah, project. Obviously I can't just let you spend the rest of your life as a loser. What kind of friend would I be if I did something like that?" asked Minori

"Friend?" asked Shigeko, the word ringing in her ears. Friend…it feels both familiar and new, like a new pair of shoes. Comfortable but also completely foreign, like going to Starbucks in a different county…not that she had ever been to either Starbucks or a different country. That had been weird, this whole thing was weird, and it was getting weirder.

But maybe weird was ok.

"Yeah, obviously we're friends, Suzuki." Said Minori with a roll of her eyes. Shigeko nodded quickly. She had never had anyone roll their eyes at her before but she knew that it wasn't good. She had to be better, she couldn't ruin this, she'd never had a friend before.

"Um…ok. Yeah, we're friends." Said Shigeko as the teacher walked in. Everyone went quiet, the bird in the window even gave one final caw before it flew away.

"Good. Now pay attention and take good notes. I'll copy them from you later." Said Minori

"Um…sure, ok." Said Shigeko even though she wasn't that good at taking notes. Still, she tried. She had to. Minori had asked her to and they were friends so that was what friends did. They helped each other.

Even if it was kind of hard sometimes.

Shigeko tried her best to sit still. It took everything inside of her to sit still even as the day went on. She had a friend…her first friend! Sure Minori may not have been nice to her but it wasn't like she was in any position to be passing up offers of friendship. She wasn't even sure if they had anything in common, or if she wanted to be a project, but that was ok. All of this was ok.

There hadn't been a time in her life that she hadn't wanted a friend. Now she had one. It felt good….

Right?