Chapter 4: The Girl in Red
"Shirou!" Yelled Taiga. "Get UP!"
Hmmm. What? Get up? Why would I need to get up? I still have one more day until school starts. I ignore her and curl deeper into the covers. Just as I am about to enter the warm embrace of sleep once more, a thought occurs. Yesterday was Sunday, wasn't t it? That means today is...shit. I leap out of bed, throwing my uniform on as I make my way to the door. Great, now I'm getting flashbacks to exam day. I shouldn't have spent last night fixing Mrs. Adachi's blender; I barely got any sleep because of it. As I barrel out into the hallway, I run straight into Taiga; causing her to yelp as she fell to the ground.
"Geez, Shirou!" She whined from the floor. I help her up while she scowls at me. "What's with you, Shirou? Sleeping late isn't exactly out of the ordinary for you, but today's important! I don't want Kiritsugu's ghost coming back to haunt me because you got expelled for being late since I couldn't get you to school on time!" She chastised.
"It's fine, Fuji-nee. I'll get there on time, I'll just have to sprint to catch the train," I say, moving past her and towards the door. Taiga gasps.
"B-b-but, what about breakfast?" She stutters, her face one of horror.
"I'll survive until lunch," I tell her, sliding my shoes on. I reach for the doorknob, but Taiga grabs my arm.
"But I won't!" She cries, pulling me back towards the kitchen. I break free after a minute or two of yanking back and forth and dash out the door.
"Bye, Tiger!" I yelled with a smirk over my shoulder as I ran down the street towards the station. As Taiga's resulting scream faded into the distance, I continued to speed up. After a few minutes of running, the train station came into view. I pulled out my phone and checked the time. Good, about a minute left. I'll make it! With my train pass in hand, I prepared to board. Then, something hit me from behind, and I hit the ground face first.
Owww. That hurt. I've had worse by far, though.
"Hey, are you okay?" A sweet voice says from behind me. Wait, I know that voice.
No, not her.
"I'm sorry, I was running to catch the train! Are you okay?"
No, it can't be her. What are the odds that it would actually be her?
"Are you still conscious? Did I knock him out? Somebody get help, I know CPR!"
"Nope! I'm okay!" I said as I pushed myself off the ground. Slowly, I turn towards the direction the voice of my assaulter, and would be rescuer, came from. Please don't be her, please don't be-
"Emiya?"
It's her.
"Hey, Tohsaka..." I mumbled, avoiding her gaze.
"What are you doing here, Emiya? Your school should be in the other direction based on the district we lived in." Of course. She didn't even consider for a second that I might have gotten into U.A. I look her up and down. She's wearing the U.A. school uniform. Well, that confirms what was already obvious; she got in. The uniforms standard, except for one change. Tohsaka seems to have ditched the uniform's jacket in exchange for her favorite long red one. That's not very surprising, as she always wore it over the uniform of our old middle school. Plus, she's not the type of person who you typically say no to. Speaking of uniforms, did she just gloss over observing my U.A. uniform because she was too busy telling me how wrong I was to have come this way?
She sighs. "I swear, Emyia, you are hopeless. You got distracted while trying to help someone again, didn't you?" She said, facepalming. I tried to interject, but she didn't give me the chance. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to my feet. "Come on, I'll take you there. You made me miss my train, so I'm gonna be late anyway."
"We missed the train?!" I exclaimed, finally responding to her monolog.
"No, I missed the train," she explained, putting emphasis on the I. "Now, come on, let's get going. I don't want to be even later than I already am." As she dragged me to another platform, I realized that she'd been holding my hand this entire time. My face immediately heated up, and I tried to let go, but she wasn't having it. She intensified her grip to make sure I couldn't go anywhere. "Trying to escape?" She said, looking back at me with a smirk. "Not happening, Emyia. You have to go to school, whether you want to or not." I sigh. Well, time to blow her mind.
"Tohsaka, I was already on my way to school. Also, didn't you notice something about my uniform?" I ask with an eyebrow raised. She looks at my uniform for a moment, and her eyes widen. Then she looks at her own uniform, and then back at mine again. Her eyes widen even more.
"What?! You got into U.A? You of all people?! How?" She asks, bombarding me with questions, shock obvious in her voice.
"I took the entrance exam and I passed," I deadpanned. She glared at me.
"I know that...now. What I meant was, how did you pull it off? I've never heard of a quirkless person getting into U.A." What. Does she...
"You think I'm quirkless?" I ask, dumbfounded. If her face looked shocked before, it was nothing compared to now.
"You're...not?" She managed to squeak out of her distorted face.
"No," I said slowly, still thrown off by this new revelation, "I'm not. I have a quirk. I have as long as I can remember." She just stared at me, as if she waiting for something.
"Well, what is it?!" She demanded. Oh.
"Well, I can...you know what, we're going to be really late. Can we start walking so we don't get expelled, and I'll tell you on the way?' I proposed. She crossed her arms and huffed, but still nodded her head in agreement. We left the train station and began the walk to school. As we walked, I explained what my quirk was, and she explained why she never knew I had a quirk and (reluctantly) apologized for assuming.
"So, I guess since we never really hung out and we didn't talk much, and because you never showed it off or talked about it, I just assumed it was because you didn't have one," Rin stated.
"Well, that makes sense. I never used my quirk because we weren't supposed to in school, and I only talked to a few people enough for our quirks to come up in conversation. I do have one question, though," I said.
"What is it?"
"If most people thought I was quirkless, then why wasn't I made fun of because of it?" I asked.
"Oh, that's easy. You fixed everyone's stuff, so no one wanted to piss you off. Except for Shinji, of course," Rin said, matter-of-factly.
"Huh," I said, taking in that new piece of information. "Well, that answers that."
"Anyway," she said, quickly moving on, "show me your quirk! I wanna see these swords of yours!" She said, leaning in close as she said it.
"Uhhh..." I trailed off, slowly backing up as my face became red. Then I noticed that smirk of hers again. Wait a minute. She's doing this on purpose! She's purposely teasing me just so she'll get a reaction! Ok, Shirou, you can deal with this. Just use the fact that you know what she's doing to your advantage. Just ignore her.
"Something wrong, Emiya?" She said sweetly, moving closer as I moved farther away. My face continued to get red. Okay, plan B. Retreat.
"Let's...get to class. W-w-we're already late," I stuttered as I began to walk faster than before. Behind me, I heard her snicker as she followed. Oh, I'm gonna love leaving these interactions behind once we both go off to our separate classes.
Once we reached the entrance, we both said our goodbyes and headed off to class. Except...we kept walking in the same direction. "Oh, I guess we go the same way for a bit," Tohsaka deduced.
"I suppose we do," I responded. We kept walking to class, never once deviating from the other's path. I slowly began to get nervous. I looked over at Tohsaka. She was starting to look confused. As we walked through the pristine halls of U.A. towards our destinations, something about our destinations became clear.
"Ummm, you can go on to your class now," Tohsaka said nervously, standing in front of the door of class 1-A. I turned to face her from my place right beside her.
"No, you go on ahead to your class. I insist," I told her, knowing attempts to deny what was clearly happening were just delaying the inevitable.
The thing about our destinations was...
"Hey, you guys in class 1-A?" We heard from inside the aforementioned class. We both replied at the same time.
"Yes."
...they were the same place.
I frowned and let out a sigh, as all the teasing and torture that was potentially ahead of me was confirmed to be on its way. I looked over at Tohsaka to gauge her reaction. It was pretty much what I expected. She had a look on her face that probably wouldn't look out of place if she was told a dog had gotten into the same class as her. I sighed once again and trudged on inside. This was going to be a long three years.