[Ring, ring, ring.]
Tsukino’s phone rang. It rang, and it rang, and it rang. Eventually, it stopped ringing, and Tsukino then shifted to a sitting position. There was a clock situated at the corner of her bedside table; it read 7:21 a.m. Tsukino gave a large sigh, her small shoulders rising and falling in unison. For her, today was yet another day at school. The calendar date would have been 3/11, a Tuesday this time. This was no time, then, for Tsukino to be sleeping.
She groaned as she stood up and stretched - her body was sore, and it was clear she hadn’t had a good night of sleep.
“Today should be rough. Brilliant.” Her voice was absolutely dripping with sarcasm, and she shrugged.
A few seconds later Tsukino shuffled to her wardrobe to pick out her school uniform; a simple enough design, it was just a pleated skirt and a white shirt, accompanied by a red tie that would identify her as a second year. Once she had picked it out, she began to undress, discarding her pyjamas on her bed and replacing them with her underwear - which she had retrieved from the back of a chair next to her dresser, having laid them out the previous night - and her school uniform. When she was done, she began to button up her shirt, starting at the bottom and moving upwards.
“It’s now 7:25… that gives me about twenty minutes I guess?” She sighed again; she definitely had overslept. “Of course, it would be today of all days, after Hoshinori told me to wake up early…”
She grabbed a hair tie from her dresser, and examined it for a moment. A rather thin wisp of hair, a chestnut shade, was stuck to it. She quickly picked it off before tying her hair up into a messy bun. There was no time for her to brush it today, after all. Twenty minutes to prepare for school.
“Ten minutes to walk there. Five to get to class. That takes me to eight exactly, huh?”
She slumped a little, before walking to her bedroom door. It was slightly ajar - as she usually kept it - so she pulled it open the rest of the way before she exited the room. Her next destination was the bathroom, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth. This took her all of five minutes itself, leaving her with just fifteen to eat.
“Fuck, I’m going to have to be quick… I’ll eat on the way.”
Tsukino gave a third sigh, and shook her head.
“I guess it can’t be helped.” she muttered, with a tone of disappointment in her voice. She quickly left the bathroom and ran down the stairs. Her family was most likely already awake - she was an only child, her father worked early mornings, and her mother was the family driver, meaning she would have been the one to drive him to the train station. As such, she didn’t have to worry about waking anyone up. She did, however, have to lock up before she left.
“Maybe I should set my alarm earlier?” she pondered, opening the freezer door and peering inside. From it she grabbed a bottle of Bikkle and an apple.
“This will do.”
She placed the Bikkle and the apple on the table before picking her bag up from behind the door. Next, she placed the bag down next to the victuals and opened it up. She checked to see if all of her stuff was there, and, when she was satisfied that it was, she placed the victuals inside too. Her final task was to put on her shoes and leave; the shoes were next to the door, and she had a key attached to her bag.
“Okay, I’m leaving now!” she called out, to nobody in particular. It was a habit of hers to do this; announce she is leaving, even if nobody was around. It didn’t feel right, to her, not to do so. She sat down next to the door to slip on her shoes; first the left, and then the right. After having finished that, she stood up and grabbed her bag. It was a standard, over-the-shoulder schoolbag, nothing too special. Her final action would be to walk out of the house, and lock the door. After testing the handle to make sure that it was definitely locked, she turned around and walked down her street.
The street itself was relatively empty. Of course it would be; around here, most of the students were already at school or hadn’t yet set off. For her, though, it was likely the former. Her school was a fair distance away from her house, making the journey there a rather boring one. The school had no reason to be so far away other than the fact that it was not an ordinary school by any means - Tsukino hailed from a family of magi. As such, this school was a school for child magi to hone their skills. Due to this, it was placed in a remote location not near any town, city, or village, for the safety of both humans and magi.
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She lived in a small community of such magi, yet most of them were either younger or older than she was. She didn’t know many of them, so she always walked to school alone. Her grade was, by far, the smallest in her school, with just three classes, rather than the usual six or seven. This was something she had no explanation for; all she knew was that it was much smaller, and that was that.
Her journey to school was, also, very quiet. But she was used to this; that’s just one aspect of walking alone. She did it almost every day and she had done for almost two years. It was second nature to her by now; she opened her bag, rooted around for her phone and earphones, slipped one in each ear, and began to play some music, placing the phone back into her pocket. After that, she plucked out the Bikkle and the apple, and began to partake in what would be her first meal of the day - albeit a rather lacklustre meal at that.
It wouldn’t be long before she received a text.
[[Hoshinori-san]]
{Tsukino-chan! It’s your 204th loop! Unfortunately I don’t have any instructions for you today, so please be extra careful and do your best!}
She looked at it, and pondered over it. Hoshinori had been keeping this up for two hundred and four days, but still Tsukino let it happen. She knew it was a prank, but she just went along with it. There was no reason not to; it was all harmless fun. Of course, it looked like today she wouldn’t have to do anything, which made her day much less complicated - at times, Hoshinori’s instructions seemed like delusions of grandeur. But not today; today, there was absolutely nothing she had to do.
All she had to focus on, now, was getting to school. And by the time she had read over Hoshinori’s text and finished her not-really-a-breakfast breakfast, she had reached the gates. Luckily, rushing on the morning had meant she wasn’t late. Upon checking her phone, she found the time was now 7:50 a.m, meaning classes started in ten minutes. That gave her enough time to walk to her classroom, Class 2-2, and sit down at her desk. By the time she had finished, it was just five minutes until the bell would ring to signal the beginning of homeroom.
Which it soon did; the teacher, a young man, looking to be in his thirties at the latest, entered the room shortly after. Following that, the class stood up at their desks.
“Sit down, sit down. You’ll all be stood up again for registration anyway.” He waved for the class to sit back down, and with the shuffling of desks, everyone eventually sat back down in the seats. Tsukino used this time to scan the room for Hoshinori - and as expected he was in school today, three seats in front of her and one to the right. That would have put him near the door at the front of the room, able to quickly leave when he wanted to.
“Lucky.” Tsukino muttered, slightly bitter. She was almost in the middle of the room, so it would have been much harder for her to do so.
The teacher began to call out names, with the students standing up and announcing their presence. It wasn’t long before Tsukino was doing the same.
“Yes, sir. I am here.”
Yet before she could sit down, there were three big things that happened almost simultaneously.
First, there was a loud bang, rather akin to a thunder clap. And then there was the smashing of glass.
The third, and most immediate, was the sharp pain Tsukino felt in her left shoulder. She gingerly moved a hand up to where she could feel the pain, and then felt a warm liquid, and a large hole. All colour drained from her face when she realised what had happened. She had been shot. It was clear that the class knew this, too; they all scrambled to get down and some of them were either screaming or crying. The teacher was trying to calm them, but his efforts were fruitless. But Tsukino couldn’t focus on anything other than her shoulder. Her breathing was shallow, and she was shaky; she knew she would die here.
Slowly collapsing onto her knees, she muttered two words.
“Help me.”
And as she did, another shot rang in the air.