As the school day goes by, friends are still nowhere to be seen or found. Misaki never replied to my message and Tetsu is busy dealing with stuff. It's lunchtime; I eat my food by myself in the corner of the cafeteria like a loser. This has never happened to me, now that I think about it. I have always eaten with Misaki or Tetsuya, usually both. "It's so quiet," I say to myself. I take a bite of my food and look around slowly. I just watch all the students conversing with their friends, having a laugh together, or messing around. For a moment I feel a bit jealous of them—It has only been half a day and I already miss my own friends. I scoff at how pathetic I am and keep to myself.
~~~~~~
Lunch passes, and I head to my class, then suddenly my phone vibrates from a notification. I take out my phone and read the message.
"When school is over, I will be meeting you down the road from the school." The message is from Misaki.
"Yes! Now I can see what's going on with her," I say while clenching my fist in the air in excitement. I text her back and say, "Alright, but are you okay?"
My phone vibrates, and she says, "Sort of, I'll see you later." The conversation dies out.
In the classroom, I just work on my assignments with the thought of Misaki and Tetsuya in my head. I get very anxious; my thoughts are clouded, and I feel as if I am not in the moment—I'm wishing to get out of here.
School goes on; eventually, my wish comes true and it is the end of the day. The rain finally starts coming down, and it's coming down hard. My classmates start complaining about how they forgot their umbrella at home, some remembered to bring one. I watch everyone disperse slowly—I look out the classroom window to see all the students flooding out of the school, like ants coming out of their hill. I go ahead and text Misaki that I am heading out now; she immediately replies with an, "Ok". I take out my umbrella and head out.
Down the hill from the school—I speed walk to see Misaki hanging out in front of a convenience store. Her clothes are wet but not soaked, it looked like the rain caught her before she could head underneath the side roof of the store. She looked at me and her facial expression says it all—she didn't sleep last night. She had bags under her eyes from the lack of sleep and I can tell from her face that she wasn't just tired but kind of worried. I walked up to her and said, "Hey…"
"Hey…" She replied with an exasperated voice. Oh no she looks so upset, I say in my head. I closed my umbrella and stood next to her looking across the street where an empty playground stands.
"So…um…what happened? Why didn't you come to school?" I got to the point. I looked to my right and there was a wet bench. I want to sit on it but it's too wet.
"I just couldn't make it to school. I had zero sleep last night; I was worried about Tetsu and that stupid dream didn't help either. I didn't want to experience it again." She sighed and as she spoke she glanced at me a bit and back at the road. Cars whooshed by occasionally, they would run over puddles causing little waves to splash onto the sidewalks. Fortunately, we were far enough away from getting soaked. "Sorry, you've must've missed me, huh?" She said sarcastically. I quickly say, "N-no…It just felt weird not having either of you around. School felt so long too."
The rain is making the mood grim. It feels as if I'm in an anime—so dramatic. Before she said anything back, I caught a smirk underneath that cranky face.
"Do you think Tetsuya is okay?" She asks.
"Of course! He has always pulled through when his parents needed something." I give an optimistic response to try and soothe Misaki's worry.
"Yeah, but…you know how his parents are. What if they abuse him again? I always overthink it." Misaki had a point. His parents are very abusive because of how he is. He doesn't want to become a successor for the family and so they treat him like garbage for it. I then say, "I know, we just can't meddle with his affairs. He needs to do this on his own. Remember last time we tried? It went total downhill." I try to spout some sense into Misaki. "Alright…I'll drop it." Misaki then attempted to walk across the street, waiting for cars to finish passing by. "Uh, where are you going? It's raining! You're going to get sick." She didn't stop, and I went after her. I jump over a few puddles, so I don't get my shoes wet and I land on the playground beside Misaki.
I take out my umbrella from my bag and open it to cover us both. "You idiot, why would you come here?" She just shrugged and started to walk around the park—I followed her to shelter us both from the rain. In the distance I see a shadow, it looked like someone was there and when I blinked it was gone. "All this dream talk and Tetsuya has put so much stress on me, Kima. I don't know even know if I will be good for competition this weekend. Just the fact that our dreams could be linked is mind-blowing, especially we had it the same night and basically had similar experiences. I looked up online that dreams can predict the future sometimes. Certain events, things, and people in one's dream can signify something in the real world. Or a premonition." Misaki's suggestion seemed absurd, but what else could explain this? I felt like she was on to something, but it was hard to believe. It seemed so magical like someone was trying to warn us about this inevitable fate. I then say, "You could be right. I mean, we have no other logical explanation. If it is true, then this premonition could be our fate that we have to face…"
I look at her and her eyes open in shock. "Maybe…but how? Monsters? Those aren't real. Why weren't there any police or the military? It just doesn't add up realistically." The rain lightens up and the clouds are slowly moving away. I think it is going to stop raining soon, "Yeah… there's just no way it could possibly be anywhere here on earth." I let out a small snicker.
"But what about in a different universe!?" I look to my left thinking Misaki said this, but she didn't. She was looking into a fog that just formed out of nowhere. We see a shadowy figure approaching us slowly. Frozen, we just watched as it came closer—each step became louder when it came closer. I can feel the soggy wood chips as I take a step back. I said hesitantly, "H-hello? Who are you? Did you say that?"
Misaki then said, "Don't come any closer or I will hurt you. Do you intend to harm us?" she gets into a fighter's stance. The mysterious figure then appeared…it was a girl.
Misaki lowered her stance and had a look of confusion. I let out a sigh of relief. Yet, something wasn't right. She had this very strong feeling to her; her presence seemed very overwhelming. I wonder if Misaki felt it too. If she went to go attack this girl…what would have happened? The mysterious girl then says, "Silly humans, if I were to even poke you…" Her tone of voice became ominous, "You would be dead in an instant." A frightening smile appeared, and I noticed fangs. A gust of wind blew by and the rain was gone with it. Her whole body finally appeared clearly. A chill went down my spine, and something told me she wasn't kidding. I looked at Misaki, but it looks like she was able to maintain her composure.
The girl laughed, "Hahaha! I am kidding, relax. I'm not here to kill you!"
She's wearing a black and red sailor uniform, with a stitched phoenix on the left side of her chest, black thigh highs and brown shoes. She looked about 4ft 9in (about 150cm). Her appearance is that of a 13-year-old girl. Her eyes are slit like a cat with a bright blue color, in stark contrast to her striking silver hair that reached her waist. Her lips pink in contrast to her fair milky skin, she smiled and her small like elongated fangs showed. I look down to her waist and see she has two pistols, one on each side of her hip. They're encased in a white & gold leather holster.
She holds out her hand to me and I flinch back a bit; she looks me dead in the eyes and in a slow high pitch voice she says, "Pawn Wielder, let me take you to a world filled with magic and prosperity."