Usually, when the last bell of the day rings, the students would swarn out of the school immediately, while it is a little different today. Besides the teachers and the janitors who have leftover jobs, six boys from Class 3-1 stay behind in the campus. They assembled on the corridor and then headed to the teachers office for a meet up with their class teacher.
Just by the moment Ishiya-sensei fetches them in sight, he stands up from his seat and proceeds to the corner of the office, he comes to an old cabinet and opens it. Then, he draws out four booklets from it, some looks new, some looks pretty old. After he draws them out of the cabinet, he takes a deep inhale and blows on the surface of the books, dust seizes upon the boys in their faces, in no time, the teacher's office is covered by coughing noises. The boys cover their mouths and noses with one hand, and wave the other up and down in front of their faces.
"Uwa-Ack! Ishiya-sensei!" slapping onto his chest rapidly, Kaito rebukes, "What! Are you trying to kill us!?"
"Gomen, gomen, hahahaha." with a silly smile, Ishiya-sensei scratches on the back of his head and apologized.
Pointing at the four books, Irie shows a curious yet excited expression, "Ishiya-sensei, what are these?"
"Ah, they are Eitsuma's annual commemoration books." with a mystic smile, Ishiya-sensei revealed. He then asks, "You boys know when Eitsuma Middle School was built?"
After a while of pondering, Momo answers, "1950."
Ishiya-sensei nods, "Correct." and then he picks the thinnest book among the four and shows it to the boys, "This is Eitsuma's commemoration book in 1950."
As Ishiya-sensei mentioned, Shinji grabs over the book and starts to flip through it.
"Uwa, what an old book!" Tetsu takes a step backwards from Shinji as he sees the pages, "It's all yellow and moldy!"
While just as Tetsu hollered, Shinji suddenly waves his hand up and down in the air summoning the boys to his side as he flips to the bottom pages of the book, "Guys, look."
There, the boys surge up and surround Shinji. They squint their eyes and stare hardy at where Shinji's pointing with his long index finger.
"Class 1-1?" with a sharp gasp, the boys exclaimed.
Genshiro abruptly raises his hand and flips through the book until he hits the last page, "There was Class 1-1!" he said, "Look, the first year's classes used to be Class 1-1, Class 1-2, and Class 1-3!"
"So they did have Class 1-1 before..." in a doubtful tone, Momo mumbled.
Then, Ishiya-sensei passes the second book to them, "This one, it's from 1996."
Shinji snatches the book over and flips through it swiftly, until he comes to the pages of the first year students, "Class 1-1." he points at the page and says, "There's Class 1-1 in 1996 too."
Abruptly, Kaito and Irie snatch away the last two books from Ishiya-sensei's hands and flip through them immediately.
"This is from 1997." first Kaito mentions, but with a frown, "There's no Class 1-1, the first year's classes had been changed to Class 1-2, Class 1-3, and Class 1-4."
"What about yours?" Tetsu turns to Irie and looks at the last book holding in his hand.
"It's from 1998." Irie mentions, "It's the same with 1997, there's no Class 1-1 in 1998."
Quietly, Ishiya-sensei nods.
"1996..." there, Shinji looks at the second book and gives his surmise, "There must be a problem in 1996. The last batch of Class 1-1."
Momo agrees, "Something must have happened to them." he states, "Why did Class 1-1 disappear since then? How?"
Pointing at Momo, Ishiya-sensei raises his eyebrows and nods, "That's what sensei wanted to know too."
Tetsu puts his fingers under his chin, he does a quick calculation, "This was just twenty years ago." he mentions, "It wasn't too long time ago. Didn't we have some old teachers here, some of them taught over twenty years in Eitsuma, why don't we ask them?"
Shaking his head, Ishiya-sensei reveals, "I've been asking since I first joined the school four years ago, no one told me anything about it. They're almost annoyed by my curiosit-"
While unfortunately, before Ishiya-sensei could finish his sentence, the office's door is suddenly opened. The boys and their teacher turn to the door at the same time as they heard the door hinges crack.