Pre-Chapter Notes:

- By the way, trigger warnings apply for all chapters, including this one and everything else that comes after, just to be safe.

- Something happens. I think. It mostly depends on your perspective.

She's the first one in homeroom class that day. She's not surprised.

She's memorized the students in her class so they won't be a nuisance to her when she needs something. In her usual seat, she brings out a notepad and a pen – her favorite, too, dark purple ink that looks almost black that it fools all the teachers – and gets ready. She breathes as steadily as she can, because she doesn't think she can last for very long.

Her eyes lock onto a desk she's sure belongs to nobody else's but one certain person. Tearing out a piece of paper from the pad, she scribbles a few words on it, then places it on her table. A roll of tape and some unsteady steps later, the paper has been successfully taped atop Aya's table.

She breathes out a shaky sigh. She's not used to such things. She wishes she was back to being homeschooled, when the only thing she had to worry about was grades and whether she was too quiet or not. She wishes she stayed at home when she had the chance.

A few minutes go by. People start trickling in. Her phone says it's seven minutes before the bell when a figure dressed in black and white stumbles in class, looking quite beaten up. She spots a flash of red before the door closes behind Aya's bruised form.

None of her classmates stare or react at all, except for a few amused glances. Aya doesn't even look bothered by the fact that she's covered head-to-toe in injuries that certainly look like they hurt. Instead, all she does is laugh it off, rub the back of her head sheepishly, then skip off to sit down on her table –

She stiffens.

She waits.

… But nothing happens.

Brown eyes blinking in confusion, she hunkers down to be as unnoticeable as possible, pretending to fiddle with her phone, as she stares curiously at Aya's general direction. From this angle, she could see the reporter's table… the reporter's empty table. And Aya is holding nothing in her hands, or showed any expression that she had seen something that wasn't normally there…

Something is wrong, she can see that. 'Did it fly away? Did I not tape it enough? Is it on someone else's table? No, no, no, this can't be happening…'

"Huh, Aya, did anything interesting happen yesterday?"

A childish voice. Blue pigtails. Green backpack.

Nitori Kawashiro.

A paper flutters slightly in her hands.

Her vision goes blank.

"Eh? Ah? N-Noo, nothing much…"

"Ehh? Really now?" A smirk. An elbow to the side. "Then what's this note doing on your table?"

'No. No. No.'

"Huh? What's that… … ah…"

"So something did happen! Whoa! Aya, tell me, tell me! It must be real good to have you all speechless like that!"

"Geh… fine, you got me! Here, here, I'll tell you…"

Before she knows it, she's standing up, chair legs scraping against the wooden floor. Her phone says two minutes to bell. That's fine. It's not like it matters anymore.

Her heels clack on the ground. The door to her class slams behind her. And in her mindless rage, she finds herself curled up on top of a closed toilet, burying her face in her arms and wishing she could go back to when she was in her mother's womb so she could have killed herself with her own hands.

She hates Aya. She hates Nitori. She hates her mother. She hates herself. She hates what she's become. She hates Hatate Himekaidou.

She hates it.

Brown eyes flicker open. There's a sound. It's disruptive. It's a knock.

It's repetitive knocks on the door to her stall.

She almost shrieks. But she can't stop the horrified cry that tears from her mouth as she stumbles backwards, almost hitting her head on the back of the toilet and possibly cracking her skull. She does, however, end up with half of her body pressed against the wall and the other half standing on the toilet lid. It's a very compromising situation.

There is a simultaneous yelp from the other side – whoever was knocking – and she can spot red heels through the little space under the door. She only knows one person who wears red heels like those. 'Aya?'

"U-Uh, is this you? Brown-pigtails-girl?"

That voice.

The voice that betrayed her completely.

Her hands tremble as they curl themselves into fists. She steps down from the toilet lid slowly until she's standing on the cool metal floor normally. Her brown eyes are so dark they're almost black.

(Like my soul, she thinks.)

"It's, um. It's lunchtime. Uh… wanna eat with me? Promise, I'll tell you everything. It really isn't what it sounded like, back in homeroom."

Promise. God, how she hates that word now. It fills her with such malice and dripping venom that she can't contain herself when she slams her fist against the door. It barely even twitches at her pound, but she can't bring herself to care. She pretends the door is Aya's face, pretends it's the word promise staring right at her, and her hand is numbing from the number of punches she's applied to it already.

"What – What're you doing?! Hey, Hatate – !"

She knows her name.

She knows her name.

This is cruel. This is just too much. How does she know? How did she even find out? She wants to cry, and scream, and sob until everything is done and everything is okay. Like she promised. God, Aya said she'd protect her. She said, she promised. But she can see it was a lie, like everything else in her life.

Idly, she wonders why she's not surprised. Her fist makes contact with the door again.

She raises it. Prepares to rush it forward again for a new punch against the abused door (before she realizes her hand is the one bruised and bleeding). Then she lowers it because this isn't her.

She's sunk into the pits of despair before, but she's never done anything like beat her fist against a solid wall again and again until she can't feel the pain and anger. She didn't cry either, or wish so bad to stab something in her chest and neck and eyes so she didn't have to suffer like this anymore.

This isn't her.

(What is this ruby-eyed girl doing to her?)

Aya seems to sense the pseudo-calm that begins to enfold her, because she speaks up again, slowly, softly, like a feathery touch. (Like her hand.) "Are you okay?" A pause. "No, of course not… I mean… will you be okay? At least… for a little while?"

Brown eyes flicker. She's not sure with what, but she knows it's not fear, or exasperation, or despair.

No. It's more of I'm not okay, but I'll be okay for you.

She flicks the lock off the door, then pushes it open. Aya, short black hair and wide ruby eyes, stares at her bedraggled figure.

She doesn't collapse into Aya's waiting arms or anything stupid like that. She doesn't even smile. But she's sure her eyes say something to the reporter, because Aya tentatively reaches out for the brunette's hand.

She brushes most of it away, leaving their pinkies to interlock. That's as far as she'll allow.

"What I said, in homeroom – it wasn't about what happened yesterday, between the two of us. I made up some weird story involving Reimu and Marisa, but I swear, that's it. I didn't mention you at all, promise!"

Aya blanches under the hard gaze the brunette – Hatate – gives her. Now that she thinks of it, while brown eyes aren't anything special, hers are definitely something else. These don't just convey emotions – they convey events, words, sentences, everything that Aya would ever need to know if she ever talks to her. It's almost unsettling how much the girl gives away with a single glance.

And the name Hatate sends shivers down her spine. It's not the kind of name one normally hears, unlike Aya, which can be found everywhere and anywhere. But Hatate… it's not weird. Just… a little… unique. Like the one named after it.

It's lunch now. Aya is eternally grateful to whichever deity was watching because Hatate does follow her to her usual dining table in the cafeteria (the table everyone knew is hers because it's covered in ink stains and scraps of paper glued to it). She packs her own lunch, a cute little bento with purple and black checkers on it, like the pattern on her skirt and ribbons. Aya wants to squeal a little.

Everybody else stares at the two of them, though. It's unusual for Aya to sit with anyone during lunch, because the table she sits on is called her table, and she's only thankful for lunchtime because then she can work on the newspaper for an hour or two without being bothered, or sometimes to rush some deadlines due on that day. With the amount of work she has to do in such a small amount of time, her table is almost always completely filled with papers and pens and, sometimes, broken cameras. She doesn't even eat at all on particularly busy days.

But right now, there's a girl nobody's ever noticed before, looking worse for wear, sitting right next to Aya and eating neatly packed food and not seeming to notice anyone staring at her at all. (What a lie. She can feel them. She can feel them all. But her eyes sting from crying so much, and her hands are still so numb they vibrate when she moves them, so she can't even flinch or tense her muscles as she always does when she feels those eyes on her back.) It's almost unnerving how much attention Aya is getting now, if only because of the new arrival.

Quite suddenly, the brunette jolts. Almost everyone else in the cafeteria does, because Hatate's been so motionless for the past few minutes that everyone staring at her hadn't been expecting the sudden motion. She turns to Aya, brown eyes swirling with an unspoken question the reporter can just barely read; "How did you know my name?" Or something like that.

Aya blinks. Oh, yes, she forgot to tell her that… "By the way, I found out your name when I checked the school records. Just so you know." 'Make it casual, Shameimaru. Don't get her all suspicious and make her think you can read minds or something just as weird.' "Uhh… Hatate Himekaidou, right?"

Hatate winces, eyes darting downwards to stare at the space in between them, a mere few inches of brown wood on the bench they were sitting on. The brunette instantly scoots away, turning back to her food once she's almost at the very edge of the table. They had been sitting near the middle just seconds ago. Aya feels a tiny bit insulted.

But then she remembers the attack the girl had in the music room just a day before, and that all it took for her to start panicking had been a single glance from the reporter, and Aya decides that today's definitely a much larger improvement from before. She stares at Hatate for a little again, who seems entirely focused on her food despite not even picking at it (she's gone to staring at the half-finished rice), and wonders if has a problem or two. Or five.

Aya returns her attention to the article she's sure she normally would have finished about fifteen minutes ago. Today's another one of those rare days wherein she felt totally and absolutely unproductive and the only thing she wanted to do was lie down in bed and watch some cheesy movies with a friend or three. Granted, the day had gone from normal (Reimu beating her up for a short paragraph Aya had accidentally let out for others to see), to strange (a letter that could only belong to Hatate based on the subject written), frightening (the event in the restroom), and then to strange once more (right now). Today, after all, is a Thursday – Aya's best days were normally on Thursdays. Then Hatate came along…

'… So Hatate's the problem…' The reporter spares the still brunette another look, examining her every feature for anything that might signal that she might be an ally of Reimu's or Marisa's. But she looked innocent in every way, though perhaps not completely happy…

'Ugh. Whatever.' Aya grabs a pen – it's always nice having everything one needs around them – and began to scribble absentmindedly on the paper she held. The subject's about the infamous younger Scarlet sister and the younger Komeiji sister having a very interesting relationship, and while Aya would normally find this quite to her tastes, she just doesn't feel very up to it today. Idly, she wonders why, before she caught the view of brown eyes staring curiously at her from her peripheral vision.

The reporter turns to face Hatate's general direction, cracking a weak smile at the brunette's immediate reaction (turn back to her food and not-so-subtly continue staring at Aya from the corner of her eye). "Anything you wanna tell me?"

Hatate only averts her gaze once more, this time half-turning her back. Aya almost laughs, until she sees that the brunette is still shivering slightly, and decides that it's not just embarrassment that the girl's showing. Her smile drops quickly, replaced by a thin line of worry. 'I mean, I promised her… but if I try to comfort her, or something, I might be too pushy… she's still scared of me! And if not scared, then she's uneasy around me… I'll just let her get more comfortable with me, and then we can get to a point where I can have legit conversations with her. Yeah, that sounds good.'

Now a lot more comfortable with her situation, she shifts just a tiny bit closer to Hatate's seat and starts writing away on the article she holds. The words come much easier this time, for some reason.

(She misses the longing glance Hatate sends her way, specifically, on her hand, and how her brown eyes swim with unease and fear. The emotions are only birthed from her concern.)

Her boots bump against the corner of her room as she plunks down on her bed, instinctively folding her legs to her chest. It's become more of a habit than anything. She's even making sure to start wearing black shorts underneath now.

The first thing Hatate does is bury her face in her arms again. She doesn't close her eyes, and instead keeps them wide open to stare into darkness, or near-darkness, thoughts of all kinds sorting themselves in her brain. She can't get any closer to Aya than she is right now, no, she can't – if she did, it would distract her from getting good grades, and that's the objective she started with when she step foot in the school. To get good grades. That's nothing along the lines of 'get close to a person and potentially make your mother even worse than she already is'. She knows how her mother feels about being close to others. It only ends in heartbreak.

After lifting her face from her arms and blinking them to adjust to the light, she retrieves her phone from her blouse pocket and holds it open for her. Nimble fingers open up the app she needs and she quickly sifts through her photos. She knows what she's looking for here.

She had researched on Aya on the way home. It wasn't like there was really anybody in the way, so she could keep walking in a straight line without worrying about bumping into anyone. Hatate'd found out that most of Aya's life consisted not only of writing the newspaper, but also being beaten up by the people she writes about. She shivers briefly at the thought – are the people in this academy really that strong?

Her notes mentioned two names – Reimu and Marisa. She hadn't paid them much attention at first, because they were pretty far from her and therefore less likely to bother her, but she paid them special attention this time. Reimu prominently wears red and white clothes, has brown hair typically tied up in a ponytail with a ribbon, and sometimes uses a strange-looking stick to beat Aya up. She isn't a bully by any means, but she can lose her temper, and it certainly looks like she's lost her temper several times against the reporter by now.

Marisa prominently wears black and white clothes, has medium-length blonde hair with a braid on the side, and acts a lot like a witch. Sometimes, she puts on a generic witch hat and steals a broom from some janitor's closet to go parading about the school and set up some magic tricks. She seems to be a magician in-training, whatever that means, and likes to collect mushrooms. Rumor says she owns a mushroom garden, but no one else knows where her house is, so nobody except the witch herself knows. Hatate finds it exceedingly creepy, so she decides to stop reading from there.

So these are the two people who are part of Aya's regular schedule. Hatate frowns, staring at the screen on her phone, displaying an image with the two of them talking to one another. They seem to be best friends, or something along those lines, but they both honest-to-God scare her, really. Who could be that strong to cause that many bruises on just one person? Probably even more so if their target is Hatate herself… she trembles slightly, eyes going wide in fright. Aya looks like a tough person, but if she got that messed up… she doesn't want to know what would happen to herself if ever they decided to beat her up for a change.

'So Aya's used to it?' Her brow furrows in confusion. How can anyone get used to that sort of treatment from others? It looks absolutely nightmarish. If anything, one would normally try as much as possible to avoid writing about Reimu and Marisa to simultaneously avoid being beaten. 'But then those two seem to be the most popular in the school… so it makes sense that others would want to read about them in a newspaper from a different view… in the end, Aya puts up with the beatings so that the newspaper she runs by herself can sell well? … That's… kind of… admirable.'

She sighs and flips her phone back off, placing it in her trusty pocket. Hatate wasn't staring at Aya for nothing during lunch – she noticed the bored look the reporter had in those ruby eyes, and knew that the past few days in school hadn't been very interesting or chock-full of incidents like the previous issues of 'Bunbunmaru Newspaper' implied. (So what if she took a look at them the other day? She just wanted to see Aya's writing firsthand, that's all.) So… she does have to repay Aya for helping her out, if only just a little. And maybe an apology for all the events she's been blowing up lately.

Hatate digs through her bag and takes a look at the crumpled flyer for the Newspaper Club. There's only one date left that hasn't gone by already – three days from now, September 8 at 5:30 once more.

Next chapter: Hatate actually-maybe-I-think-she-does joins the Club.

Slacker, 11/27/14