Shiratori Haruto

“A week has passed since… and…”

The door opened with a bang and a student, wearing a white shirt on top of his dark grey pair of pants, rushed out of the house. The figure dashed through the lawn between the door and the gate and turned left, his black colored bag on his right shoulder. “Haruto!” The door opened again, and came wearing a woman in a yellow coat and yellow pair of tight trousers on top of a white shirt. Raising her right hand in the air which held a small black stainless steel bottle, her left hand at the knob of the door, she shouted, “Take your bottle, Haruto!”

I, the student figure who was just about to turn right, entering the road, stopped quickly, turned back, and ran back some steps to the house. My mom raised the bottle at me as I took it with my left hand, turned back, and started to run away.

“Bye-bye!” She waved with a little smile.

I tilted my head back, and waved my right hand at her as I turned right on the road and continued running. She saw my head running from the top of the wall at the edge of our house. She smiled a little, turned back, and walked inside the house again, closing the door behind her as she walked.

“I was back to my previous life. Everything was… just okay. Again. All of it was normal again. Though I think Yashiro-senpai was in talks with my mother, we were living a normal life like a simple mother-son duo like we used to live before. And today… was my first day at my high school.”

I ran and ran for some time with my black steel bottle in my right hand, my eyes fixed to the front as my hands and legs moved up and down. I continued running for a while like this, my bag flapping up and down vigorously due to my body running. I turned to the right in the narrow lane. The lane was moving upwards, and I ran for a while as I ascended up the narrow lane full of beautiful tiny houses on both sides. In front of my eyes were other kids of the same age talking and chatting and smiling and laughing with each other as they walked from both the ways to the school gate. As I saw them, my eyes suddenly widened as I felt a pain in my chest. I stopped and bent a little. I panted in and out with my open mouth as I stood on the street with a pair of boys walking from behind me. The pain lasted only a second. I straightened my knees and stood up straight again. “Maybe because I ran a bit too much,” I thought, looking at the front. I continued walking towards the gate.

“It was not because I ran too much.”

***

I slid open the mustard colored wooden door of the classroom, my bag hanging on my right shoulder. My black shoes on top of my grey trousers stepped inside the class filled with the chatter of other kids around. I turned to the right, looking at the back of all the chairs which were facing the wide blackboard in the front. The students were scattered all over. Some stood at one edge, some were sitting on their seats, and some were just in the middle of the rows of chairs. I scanned the whole room for a second, and then noticed a womanly figure just in the front of me, sitting on the seat at the right corner of the room in front of the entrance. “U-Um…” I tilted my head down at her. “E-Excuse me…”

She tilted her head to her back left, looking at me with her enquiring eyes. “Yes?”

“This is class One-B, right?” I asked.

She looked into my eyes, stood up on her seat, turned her body back to face me, and raised her right hand at me. “Yes. I’m Miyamura Hina. Nice to meet you.”

I smiled as I shook her hand. “Well, I’m Shiratori Haruto.”

“Nice to meet you, Shiratori-san.”

“Nice to meet you too, Miyamura-san.”

She chuckled a little as she pulled her hand back. With her hands in front of her skirt, she said, “Actually, I’m new to this town. So, I don’t really know many people and don’t really have many friends.”

“Oh, well, I don’t remember anything about this place too, you see,” I shyly scratched the back of my head. “I just had a little memory loss, so…”

“Really?” Her eyes widened a little. “But how?”

“Well, that’s a long story. Maybe sometime else,” I rejected with a smile.

She nodded. “Okay then, Shiratori-san, let’s talk after school today.”

“Yeah sure.”

She closed her eyes and gave a really warm smile. “Meet you after school then.”

As I looked at her face, I blushed a little, shyly turned my eyes to the left, and said, “W-Well, see you, then…”