Authors Note: So I completely forgot to add an author's note this time, whatever, here is the one and only SNAFU. FUBAR has been putting off finishing the art -glares at the turtle- so instead I decided to screw waiting for the art and just upload chapter 2. This time I'll be doing the art for the chapter so that might take a little. I kinda haven't even started it for this chapter. Anyway enjoy the chapter and crazy antics of our characters.
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Chapter 2 - “The Bread Run Part 2”
The scenery of the island flashed by as Mana and Tomo battled for a lead on their bicycles. Mana glanced at her opponent, smirking when she saw that her sister’s hair was whipping around like spazztic tentacles. Annoyed, Tomo let go of her handlebars and wiggled a strawberry patterned scrunchie off her wrist to tie her mass of curls out of her face. Mana used this chance to put some more effort into pedaling and pull ahead.
“Ahahahahahahaha! I’m winning! I’m totally winning!” She laughed into the wind.
“Not if I can help it! The last time you won in a race you held it over my head for weeks, years even.” Her sister’s voice was small but angry.
“It’s not my fault you didn’t tie your shoes correctly that day. It was an accident waiting to happen Tomo.”
“-Is what you say but you tripped me Mana. You tripped me!”
“You’re seriously holding a grudge from when we were 8?”
“No! I’m holding a grudge from when you were 8 and I was 7! Completely different! And I’m going redeem my 7 year old self by winning this race, right here and now.”
A cool smile flashes on the pale girl’s face as she grunts in affirmation to pushing her pedaling one step faster. Signaling to her sister that the race had only just begun and she had no plans on losing this duel.
Though the two had only been reunited a few months, they got along startlingly well. After their parents divorced, they had spent 9 long years apart as Mana left Japan to travel the world in a jeep and a portable tiny house with their mother, while Tomo stayed with their father. Thanks to technology and creative thinking, they were able to stay in contact. Mana’s prefered communication being a falcon she picked up along the way, but the girls had not seen each other in person in all those years
Thankfully, when at campsites, Mana and her mother had Wifi. Photos were exchanged, skype calls were made and Mana sent different packages from all their travels. The two learned to accept the distance, still talking about their favorite shows of the season and playing computer games with one another.
Over the few months of their reunion, the two had constantly been picking fights over the tiniest of things. Playful sibling rivalry taken to a whole new level due to their distance apart. The race to school just one more score to be settled against their childhood duels to the bitter and blood wiping end.
Both were exhausted by the point of their arrival just past the school gates as Mana wooted in triumph at beating her sister by a meter. They each had zoomed past the gilded and highly decorated metal gates. They were large enough that only the most eccentric kind of person would even think about finding a way to climb it. The walls it merged into no less as scary, a good 3 meters of brick reinforced with the latest technology. It was a fool’s dream to even sneak into the place much less harm a hair on any of the bluebloods enrolled in the massive escalator school. Most of the richer and more privileged students having known no different school from elementary school to college.
“Hah! I won! I won! In your face Tomo! Now you have to buy me ice cream~”
“Oh come on! You only won because of the hill at the end. You’re riding a mountain bike, so of course you’re gonna beat my mommy bike! I demand a rerace with more equal standings.”
“Hmph. Fine, but you’re still gonna have to buy me ice cream. And it’ll be a race home, that way you can’t complain about the uphill battle.”
Tomo could only shake her head in silent disbelief at Mana’s childish behavior. From the way she was acting, it would be hard for people to realize that she was the older of the two. In fact it was probably hard for people to realize that she was almost an adult. At her soon to be 17 years of age, marriage wasn’t even too far of a possibility.
As they were wheeling their bicycles to the nearby rack, Mana said, “Hey, you know what? How about while I try and find out what classes we’re in, you go and scope out a nice place for us to eat lunch later on today?”
With a humph Tomo replied, “Food is all that’s on your mind huh.”
“Hrm. While I won’t deny that it is the vast majority of what’s on my mind, food isn’t all that graces this lovely muscle that I call a brain.”
Tomo just gives Mana a stare that seems to tell her exactly what she thought of her ‘lump of meat for a brain’. Which Mana doubly gives back in response only with a hint of some other emotion lacing the mixture of defiance into something more love filled than angry.
“Come on Tomo, go look around the school. Explore its corners and halls while there's no one there to bar your way. I’ll do the dangerous stuff and scope out our classrooms and competition.”
A flick of her hair after finishing all she had to say and she left her sister behind at the bike racks. A final call from the entrance to the nearest building of the high school section, “Oh and meet me up on the roof of this building at 9:20! Then we can tell each other about what we found before we have to officially join our newest version of hell. High School with only rich pricks as our classmates!”
Tomo couldn’t help but giggle in appreciation of her older sister. Taking her twisted form of sarcasm coated affection and awkward protection. With a bounce in their steps, each sister separated from each other in distance but not of heart.
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It didn’t take Mana long at all to a large bulletin board posted right at the entrance to the main building of the high school section. She couldn’t help but think of it as luck as the building she chose out of comfort of less walking being the one she needed to go into.
For a good ten minutes she scanned the entire list upon the wall, trying to find even a hint of her and her sisters names. Words were starting to blur together and she could swear that the letters were looking back at her and mocking her painful plight. No matter where she looked their names were nowhere to be found and a headache was coming.
The only other way she could think of to figure out their classroom assignments was to go the teacher’s office. Which presented a problem in an of itself. One being she had no clue where it was and two being that she’d rather not have to talk to a teacher. Something about them, teachers, had always irked her the wrong way. Maybe it just had something to do with the fact that in her experience with them they always ignored how the other students treated the kids who ‘didn’t fit in’. Like it was their fault they were of mixed blood. Also when she started to live with her mother, she dropped out of the public system. Instead opting to be taught by her mother and only going into town to take tests of the national level to prove that her mother wasn’t just screwing around with her education.
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At what could only be the most opportune moment, a figure walked through the front door. The noise having been what woke Mana from her inner monologue. Standing just over a half a head taller than her, a man, just barely not a boy, wore the categoristic turquoise pants of the school. A green tie contrasting his white button down shirt and tan blazer. The man’s hair, a shockingly deep sea blue, draped over his shoulder in a braid longer than even Tomo’s mass of curls.
“Hey! You fella over there with the Elsa-like hair! I need your help!” No hesitation came from Mana as she roped the fellow student into helping her find out her classroom assignments.
The youths expression full of confusion as Mana grabbed his arm and dragged him forward to the name board. Completely ignoring his protests and refusing to even let him stop to change into his indoor shoes.
“Can you please explain to me what you need my help for?”
A sneer fell upon her face as if he was an idiot for not being able to figure out such a thing. “Seriously? Obviously I need your help to find me and my sister’s name on this godforsaken list. How the hell are you even supposed to find anything on this list?”
“Really? But it’s organized by grade level, and then you just need to find your name. It’s in alphabetical order.”
“Exactly! Completely insane in organization! They should have further broken it down into- Wait. Why are you looking at me so weirdly? Do I have something on my face? I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the sunflower butter & banana toast. That stuff gets everywhere and stays there.”
His face further contorted into exasperation at the crazy antics of the girl in front of him.
In order to stop her from sharing anymore unnecessary information, the man spoke up,” You do realize you haven’t even told me you and your sister’s names right?” He looked down at the blue tie mostly hidden by the light jacket she was wearing. “Or whether or not your sister is a first year or a third year.”
A confused look appeared on her face. “First or third year? But my sister’s a second year.”
“Huh? Are you twins?”
Back and forth an exchange of confused looks appear as they both make noises as if to punctuate their confusion in what the other has said.
“Okay. Okay. I think there's been some misunderstanding. Me and my sister are in the same grade even though we’re almost a year apart. I was born towards the beginning of the cutoff while my sister was born more toward the end. In fact I’ll be turning 17 in a few days, that’s how close I was to being a third year student.”
“Huh, so you’re saying you were almost in my grade?”
“Wait. You’re a third year student?”
He pulls his tie closer to her face. “I mean yeah, that’s what the green stands for. If you’ve been in this school you should know that by now.”
“I just transfered so of course I don’t know that.” She put a hand to her face and sighed as if the act of transferring to this school broke her heart and soul at the thought. As though no food in the world could cure the illness striking her soul.
Lights go off in his head. “Well now that makes sense as to why you can’t find your names on this list then. Transfer students are on a separate list. Here let me show you.”
With that and a slight pointing in the right direction, Mana walked beside him as he brought her to the end of the list. Pausing only for a moment as he muttered under his breath looking for his name as well. Quickly finding it as almost every year it was generally in the same place. “Oshiro. Oshiro. Oshiro. Ah! Yuuichi Oshiro. I’m in class 3-A. Takahashi-sensei is always a pain.”
“Aye. I get it. You’re not going to have a fun time this year. Whatever. Now help me find my name on this so called ‘transfer student list’!”
Yuuichi quickly decides that angering the younger girl was a bad idea and then brings her further down the wall. They stop only after they reach the end of the third year’s list and find a completely separate board labeled in large obviously bold print letters “TRANSFER STUDENTS.”
“And there you have it. What did you say you and your sister’s names were?”
“I never did.” Mana stopped speaking as she looked on the list herself trying to find her name. Which wasn’t so hard considering there weren’t even 10 names on the list. “Wow. There really aren’t a lot of people who transfer in, are there?”
“Well, with the vast majority of the students who go here being rich, most transfer students come here at the elementary stage. Not a lot transfer in at the high school stage, it’s even a little weird for the middle school to get transfer students. And wow, 8 transfers, that’s got to be the highest amount since the early days of this school when everyone was a transfer.”
“Aha! Found it! So, I’m in 2-A and Tomo is in 2-4. Huh so I guess Tomo and me are in different classes. Nothing too unexpected.”
“Wait? 2-A? So you’re Solok Manami? The new advanced class student? Didn’t you get the highest math score for the second year admission test?”
Mana’s eyebrows pinched together as she stared at him while backing away slowly. “Why do you know so much about me? And it isn’t Solok Manami, it’s Manami Solok. I take after my european mother.”
“Well the scores for the advanced classes are basically public knowledge. And as an advanced class member myself, I make it a point to know potential competition. Even those in the lower grades.”
Even with such an explanation, Mana continues staring daggers at the potential stalker material before her. “Are you sure you’re not a yandere stalker to-be restraining order candidate?”
“Ahhhhhhhhh. Ummmmmmm. Yes?”
When she continues staring, Yuuichi once again more firmly says while shaking his head like a bobblehead, “Yes. Most definitely not a stalker.”
A smile blossoms on her face as though the sun just peaked over the horizon illuminating a field of lollipop flowers. “Perfect! Have a nice day then Yuu-senpai!” She skipped on down the hall with a little bounce to her steps while she tried to locate the classrooms that she’d be spending the next year in.
Leaving behind a stunned Yuuichi, completely flabbergasted at the redheaded girl. “What was she even doing here at 8:30? School doesn’t start for another hour.”