I couldn’t get away from it. Every single person in school seemed to know about my little incident from that day. They ask me about it in the corridors, at the gates before school, and one of them even tried to come into the club room. Overnight I’d become the biggest celebrity in school. So it was no shock to me when I was called into the teacher’s room after our morning lesson. Much to my horror it was not just our teacher who was present, but the principal of the school as well.

“Oh, don’t be so nervous Miyako. You aren’t in any trouble.”

Yeah, right. I’d probably caused no shortage of headaches in this room in the past few days. The video had completely blown up, being shared hundreds of thousands of times. Given the lifecycle of something like this – I was predicting that it’d be on daytime TV by the end of the week. I took a seat next to the long row of desks that cut the room in two. They sat across from me.

“I’m definitely in trouble.”

The principal shook his head, “You aren’t, although I’m sure that you know why we called you here.”

My teacher pulled out a piece of paper and scanned it with his eyes, “We’ve had no less than two hundred inquiries about it. Our phone won’t stop ringing.” As if on cue, the high-pitched wail of the old thing blared above the comparative silence. Another teacher hustled over and picked it up.

“No, I’m afraid we can’t do that.” The curt rejection was followed by the phone being put back onto the receiver.

The principal shook his head, “As you can imagine, we’re in a tough position. While we don’t want to… encourage, this kind of behaviour – to punish you for defending your sister would cause us just as many problems. I think what you did was very noble.”

He was trying to be diplomatic with me. If I were anybody else, I’d be back through the gates so fast that my head would spin. The publicity of the video and the positive response it got from many other women who’d dealt with something similar had tied their hands. Like it or not, overnight I’d become the face of a feminist movement. The irony of such was nearly enough to make me sick.

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“I’m not going to offer you some excuses. But what I can do about it? Everybody in the country will see it at this rate.”

The principal nodded and leant back in his seat. He was a naturally rotund man with a tanned complexion. He looked a bit comical to me. I noticed that he was combing over his hair, something that would distract me every time I looked at him. I was trying to find something to look at that wasn’t them. I couldn’t bluster my way through this one.

“You could… offer an apology.”

I blinked.

“An apology?”

He nodded, his smile betraying his poor read on my mood.

“An apology to the man who sexually harassed my sister?”

The smile wilted.

“This is for the good of the school. And it’ll let you get back to the peace and quiet.” I stared a hole through him for a nearly a minute. The situation had been completely turned on its head – he was the one sweating now.

“That’s a tough sell Principal, I’ll mark that as a maybe.”

I stood from the chair and turned to leave, “Wait, wait, you can’t just walk out!”

“I can and I am,” I turned back and looked down on them, “If you want to put me on camera with a live microphone, that’s your choice. But I don’t think I’ll have anything nice to say if you do. I barely even touched him anyway.”

“It’s not about what happened-“

“It’s about how bad it makes you look; I get it.”

“This will seriously impact your future!”

“I’ll take the chance.”

My teacher finally stepped in, “Sir, I don’t think this is an appropriate way to manage the problem. It’d be much better to let it blow over! These stories come and go every day. And I have to say, I don’t approve of implicating Miyako in solving it.” The principal’s bluster had been firmly cowed by him. “I do think you should make a statement Miyako,” he insisted, “If not an apology – then at least your perspective. If you don’t offer your side of the story, they’ll never leave you be.”

“Like an interview?”

“Actually,” he handed over a piece of writing paper and a pen, “I think the best way would be to make a written statement of your own. If you can finish it today and bring it here.”

I took them from him and sighed, “Fine. I’ll write a statement. But it won’t be an apology.” I hurried out of the room before the principal could try to tie me into something else I didn’t want to do. An apology? Of all the stupid things. Assault a schoolgirl in the street and get off without a punishment, and an apology from one of the victims?

It made my blood boil. Not just the idea of the principal thinking that it’d be right, but the idea that Reina might have been in danger if I hadn’t stepped in. What if I weren’t there to scare them off? Would they have gotten violent with her?

By the time the next bell rang I hadn’t written a single word. What was there to say? Any normal person could have understood why I did it, so why did I need to apologize for it?

…

I started writing. It was no apology, but it was definitely a statement.