What's Coming Up?
"Don't you think he's handsome?"
The other girl turned, smiling, looking from one to the other.
"Who?" the first of her friends asked, looking bewildering.
She answered a roll of the eyes, a sigh.
"Our new history teacher!"
Both girls groaned audibly, slumping forward in exaggerated exhaustion.
"You can't be serious," Yuri said rolling her head. "Really?"
Angelina sat upright in her chair, her eyes wide.
"You can't see it?" she asked, and again, she looked from Yuri to Suzuka. "I can see it." Swiftly she turned to the girl sitting in front of her, her attention held by the barren branches of the cherry blossom tree and the slow crawl of the clouds across the sky.
"You can see it, right, Sakura?"
The girl before her said nothing, her attention remaining focused on the mid-morning sky, her head turned away from them, a slight frown upon her face.
"Sa-ku-ra!" Angelina said.
The girl before her turned with a start.
"Sorry?"
She rolled her eyes again and shook her head, her hair falling about her face.
"The new history teacher! He's handsome. Right? Right?"
Igarashi Sakura stared vacantly back at her, the frown deepening.
"Mr Oogami?" she asked.
"Yes!" Angelina poured all of her frustration into her reply.
No one spoke about it, but the events before Christmas had left both students and teachers alike bewildered as to how to go forward. Angelina knew that Sakura's parents had been called in to see the principle, Ms Abe, and there had been a lot of talk about the dangers Sakura's presence at the school posed now her identity as Kamen Rider Jeanne had been revealed, but, save for some vague mention about supporting the community on a grassroots level from Fenix in their New Year's press conference, she did not know what had been decided.
Whatever it was, she thought, it couldn't have been that bad, right? Sakura was stillt here, she hadn't been made to leave school, and now she, and Yuri, and Suzuka were suddenly basking in the new-found boost to their reputations as best friends of the Kamen Rider Jeanne. 2022 was going to be great, right?
Why then, did Sakura look so uncertain about everything?
"Isn't he old?" the girl in question asked.
To her right, Yuri nodded.
"Really old."
"He's not old!" Angelina protested. "He's mature!"
"Doesn't he have a kid?" Suzuka put in.
She shot the other girl a sour look.
"That just shows he's responsible."
Yuri shook her head.
"That just shows you're weird," she muttered.
Angelina stuck her tongue out in reply, to which Yuri pushed her own tongue down beneath her bottom lip, and the two of them snorted in amusement at one another.
"Anyway, what's eating you?" she asked, reaching forward and shoving Sakura slightly.
The other girl forced a smile to her lips, shaking her head.
"N-Nothing," she said, "just thinking."
Angelina raised her eyebrows.
"About whom?" She gasped in mock surprise, lifting a hand to her lips. "A boy?"
Hastily, Sakura shook her head.
"No, not a boy."
Again, Angelina gasped.
"A girl?"
Sakura smiled, something genuine, something warm.
"Yes, but not like that," she said, "at least I don't think. A friend. Maybe."
Suzuka let out a pretend sigh of defeat, slumping forward, resting her face in her hands.
"Ah, I wish Kamen Rider Jeanne would think that way about me," she said in a sing-song voice.
Yuri laughed and pushed her gently.
"Perv."
A warm blush filled Sakura's cheeks.
"You don't mean it."
"No," Suzuka admitted, "but I bet lots of people are feeling that way now the news is out."
Momentary uncertainty crossed Sakura's face, and hastily, Angelina threw herself forward over her desk, wrapping her arms around her and pushing her head into the other girl's shoulder.
"But she's our Sakura, right?"
"Right!" Yuri cheered with equal enthusiasm.
The door to the classroom slid abruptly open, and hastily Angelina fell back into her chair, her attention drawn to the shape of the stout man in the ill-fitting jacket, the top button of his shirt undone, his tie slightly wonky, all the signs of a man in desperate need of some attention, she thought.
Hastily, he crossed the space from the door to his desk, slamming an armful of books down, possibly louder than intended.
"Okay, settle down, settle down."
He looked out at the classroom, the sea of faces before him, and he smiled sheepishly.
"I'm going to need you guys to introduce yourselves again," he said, slightly apologetically.
Yuri shot a look over at Angelina, sticking her tongue out.
"See, old," she whispered.
Angelina shook her head as if she was above such concerns, smiling broadly as she did. Of course, she didn't really think of their new history teacher like that at all, but school was boring, you needed to distract yourself somehow, right?
At the front of the class, their teacher began scribbling his name in chalk upon the board, Oogami Ryo, and Angelina glanced again at Sakura's back as she sat before her, upright and attentive.
Maybe, with a Kamen Rider in their class, 2022 wouldn't be as boring as she feared.