Whoo, back again! Higurashi Month 2019, because it has become one of my lowkey life goals to keep perpetuating this until it becomes a proper tradition for all three-and-a-half people in this graveyard of a fandom. And then keep doing it anyways, because tradition. If you wish to check out the prompt list, its on my tumblr page under the same username.
June 12th, 2019
It's not easy to exchange covert information in a 16-student classroom, but Keiichi Maebara is used to making do. Not to mention, his old cram school only had three or four other students, and on the rare occasions they wanted to interact under the teacher's gaze, it was even harder to do so subtly, so by now Keiichi has mastered such knowledge. The subtle-poke-with-toe-under-desk, combined with the hissed-whisper-out-of-corner-of-mouth or folded-note-pass, all without moving his head or eyes from straight ahead, the dart-eyes-downwards-and-sneaky-arm-movement-to-draw-attention-to-note-on-desk, Keiichi knew them all.
Having grown up in this classroom, the others have their own ways. Mion's up at the front a lot, as class rep, so she can get away with a quick mime behind an oblivious Chie-sensei's back before dropping her hands, contriving to look innocent, or more usually, waiting until Chie-sensei is occupied with another student and trusting to her knowledge of who struggles how much to be able to exchange a properly covert conversation in hushed undertones before Chie-sensei turns around again.
The others use that tactic a lot, too –Keiichi's even seen Rika subtly signal Hanyuu on multiple occasions, who immediately developed a mysteriously persistent lack of comprehension, despite Chie-sensei's eventual efforts, until Rika's hissed conversation with Satoko was done and she gave her flustered cousin another hand signal, which magically cleared up her understanding on the instant.
The notes and whispers are definitely more fun now than they used to be, so the stakes are comparatively higher: plans of things to do after school in the club, bold plots of victory and defeat and hissed rejoinders and challenges when Chie-sensei's back is turned, all delivered with a menacing, excited sparkle in the eyes and a toothy smirk from both sides. Complicated missions of sabotage and reconnaissance, of getting supplies and organizing their resources for another faux-bloody battle. The squirt-guns and soakers and water balloons have to come from somewhere, after all.
Most of the notes are delivered in ragged, toothy edges of notebook paper, thin as a whisper and dusted with faint grime or watermarks from playing too hard and too long with schoolbags quite literally dropped by the side of the road, a far cry from the sterile, equally-flimsy paper he passed notes with back home. The messages are written in colored pencil and fat swipes of markers and as often as not have little chibi designs on the edges, especially if it's a note from Rena. (On one memorable occasion she hissed and passed him a note with, among other things, a chibified dustbin dancing merrily around the edges, which made even less sense than one would think, as it was an invitation to the suspension bridge by Satoko and Rika-chan's house to fly kites.)
And on the whole, he thinks as he looks at the inky smudges of red and blue left over from the markered notes of his friends throughout the day, that was a better thing.
AN: I'm trying to do happy things to balance out the other times when I give into the temptation to indulge in the horror fiction that is Higurashi.
11.04 AM, USA Central Time