"Fucking losers."
"That's what happens if you mess with Yuri Okabe-chan."
"But it's a shame for Hamano-san."
"Yeah, poor Hamano-san."
"But why she hangin' out with Nuki-chan and that other girl?"
"And why they messin' with the soccer team?"
"Fucking idiots."
"What's surprising to me is that they haven't been bullied until now. You know what I'm sayin?"
"No. Nuki-chan has always been bullied, and a lot of people talk shit about Hamano-san.
"Yeah, but what about the other girl?"
"Who? The tiny one?"
"Who fucking cares about her?"
"Hahaha, yeah, when I first saw 'er I was like: 'what's an elementary school girl doin' here?
"Really? I always thought she was one of those genius little girls who graduate at twelve or something."
"Hahahaha, lol."
"SHUT UP!" I yell. "IF YOU WANT TO TELL US SOMETHING, WE'RE RIGHT HERE!" I turn towards everyone in the classroom, and they all shut up and start checking their phone just to avoid my glare.
Fucking cowards.
I hit my desk with my open hand and yell:
"COME ON, IF YOU WANT TO TELL ME SOMETHING, I'M RIGHT HERE!" I yell again.
But no one tell me anything.
And they never will.
Anyway, I turn towards Izumi. She's lying on her desk.
"Hey, Izumi," I grab her by the shoulder and shake her a bit, "help me clean my desk, and I'll help you clean yours."
But Izumi's not waking up.
Is she already fast asleep already?
I don't know, but she's already drooling.
And snoring.
Didn't she slept last night or what? She went to sleep on the living room.
With Sotoka-san.
Ok, that explains everything. I bet she didn't sleep at all last night.
And she didn't let Sotoka-san get some sleep either.
Speaking of Sotoka-san, both her arms are over her desk, and her head's lying over them.
I approach her.
"Sotoka-san?" I touch her shoulder.
She turns towards me. Her smile's seems more forced than usual, and her eyes are kind of ked.
Oh, Sotoka-san.
"Hi," she says.
"Come," I tell her, "let's go get some cloth, and I'll help you clean your desk. Come on."
But she doesn't stand up.
"No, it's fine," she says with an even more forced smile. "If we leave the desk as it is right now, they won't write on it again and, I don't know, it doesn't look that bad with my books on top of it."
That's bullshit: she's over her desk right now, and I can still read a couple BITCH, WHORE and SLUT that are written there.
"I don't care," I tell her, "if they write on it again, we'll clean it up again. Let's see who gets tired first."
"Me," she says. "I'm already tired."
"Well, too bad, Sotoka-san, because this is only starting."
"No, leave them alone!"
"And do you believe the soccer team—because they are the ones who did all this, and everyone knows it—is going to leave us alone?! You really believe they will stop bullying us?!"
"Shut up!"
"Why are you like this, Sotoka-san?! You think everything is going to be alright is you just cry enough?!"
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Sotoka-san cries as hard as she can, tears flowing through her face.
"WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?! YELL AT THEM! OR WHAT?! YOU ONLY YELL AT ME BECAUSE I'M TINY AND NO ONE KNOWS MY NAME EVEN WHEN WE'RE BEEN IN THE SAME CLASSROOM FOR MONTHS AND I SAY HERE EVERY DAY WHEN HORINOMI-SENSEI CALLS INO YAMAMOTO?! BECAUSE MY NAME'S INO, GET IT RIGHT!" I take a piece of chalk and start writing on the chalkboard. "I-N-O! INO! WHAT'S MY NAME?!"
"INO-CHAN?!" someone yells from the door.
And that someone is Nagai-san.
She approaches me, takes me by the shoulders and glares at me.
"You disappoint me, Ino-chan! Why were you yelling at Hamano-san if she's your friend, and WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO WITH HER DESK?!"
Sotoka-san's no longer over her desk, so the WHOREs and the SLUTs and so on are clearly visible.
And they're also too many.
It's almost the only thing written there.
"ANSWER ME! WHY YOU DO THAT?!"
"No, I didn't—
"You didn't what?! You didn't yell at her?! You didn't make her cry?!"
"I didn't write that!" I point at Sotoka-san's desk.
"Oh, really? So it just wrote itself, right?!"
"IT WASN'T ME!"
"DON'T YELL AT ME!"
"YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!"
"NO, I DID LISTENED TO YOU… WHEN YOU WERE YELLING AT HAMANO-SAN!"
"SHE WASN'T LISTENING TO ME!"
"HOW DO YOU WANT HER TO LISTEN TO YOU WHEN YOU MADE HER CRY?!"
"I DIDN'T MAKE HER CRY! SHE WAS ALREADY CRYING!"
"YEAH, BECAUSE SHE SAW WHAT YOU DID WITH HER DESK, RIGHT, HAMANO-SAN?!" Nagai-san asks, and Sotoka-san glares at me.
This seems really, really bad.
"Yes," she lies. "She wrote all this on my desk and yelled at me and made me cry."
"WHAT?!" is she serious?! "IT WASN'T ME! WE WERE TOGETHER ALL THE TIME! AND WE'RE FRIENDS!"
"Yeah, you're so her friend you're yelling at her again" Nagai-san said sarcastically.
"YOU YELLED AT ME!"
"BECAUSE YOU WERE YELLING AT HER!"
"What's up? Who was yelling at Sotoka-chan?" Izumi asks and yawns. She's has half her face covered in ink. That probably happened because she slept over her vandalized desk.
"Ah, Izumi-chan. Come here," Sotoka-san took a kleenex from her pocket and started cleaning Izumi's face.
"What are you doin'? Do I have somethin' on my face?" It seems the always foolish Izumi still doesn't know. "WAIT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR DESK, SOTOKA-CHAN?!
Until now.
"I don't know," Sotoka-san says. "Ino wrote all that."
Izumi glares at me more hatefully than ever.
"Omae wa mou shindeiru!" she yells me that, whatever that means, with a low and guttural voice.
And I'm going to pretend I didn't hear any of that.
"I DIDN'T WROTE THAT! WHY ARE YOU LYING?!" I yell at Sotoka-san.
"DON'T YELL AT SOTOKA-CHAN AND DON'T CALL HER LIER, LIER!" Izumi yells at me.
"DON'T YELL AT EACH OTHER!" Nagai-san yells at us.
"WHY DID YOU SAID THAT, SOTOKA-SAN?!" I yell at Sotoka-san. "YOU KNOW THAT'S BULLSHIT!"
"STOP YELLING AT SOTOKA-CHAN!" Izumi yells at me.
"LANGUAGE, INO-CHAN!" Nagai-san also yells at me. "AND STOP YELLING! IF YOU YELL ONCE AGAIN I'M GONNA GIVE YOU A REPORT!"
"WHAT?!" I yell. "WAIT! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"
"NO, BUT I CAN REPORT YOUR BEHAVIOR TO THE PRINCIPAL, AND HE'LL SURELY GIVE YOU A REPORT!"
"WAIT, NO! I DIDN'T WROTE THAT! SOTOKA-SAN, TELL HER!"
"WHAT DID I TOLD YOU ABOUT YELLING AT HAMANO-SAN?!" Nagai-san yells at me for the umpteenth time. "OH, YOU'RE REALLY ARE IN TROUBLE, MISS!"
"INO DIDN'T WROTE THAT!" Sotoka-san finally says. "INO DIDN'T DO ANYTHNG!"
"Of course she did," Nagai-san replies. "She yelled at you who-knows-how-many times!"
"Yeah, but that was my fault, really. But still I got mad at her and I just wanted to get even. That's why I said that." She says embarrassed.
Well, she should be.
Nagai-san starts laughing loudly and grab both Sotoka-san and me by the shoulder and hugs us very strongly.
"Man, I'm glad you two reconciled!" we didn't. But she let us go. "Now we only need to clean your desk and look for whoever wrote on it."
"TA-DA!" yells Izumi.
We turn towards her, and she's in front of Sotoka-san's desk, but it's now completely clean.
What? How did she…? Oh, she simply switched it with a lonely and near desk.
Sotoka-san sees this and:
"What did you do, Izumi-san?" she takes the vandalized desk and starts to push it back to her place. "Nagai-san, can you help me out, please?
But Nagai-san doesn't help her out.
She instead grabs the vandalized desk from the opposite side and pushes it back where Izumi left it.
"Nagai-san, stop it," Sotoka-san's pushing as hard as she can, but she can't even move nor the desk or Nagai-san an inch, and Nagai-san's not that big (she's about Sotoka-san's high) and she doesn't seem that strong.
But considering even Izumi's afraid of her, she must be.
"Why?" Nagai-san asks pretending to not understand. "I'm just putting this desk back to its place. Why are you pushing it?"
"Because this is my desk," Sotoka-san replies.
"No, your desk is at your place," Nagai-san says and point at the desk Izumi left there.
"That's not mine, and you know it!" Sotoka-san keeps pushing as hard as she can, and it's as useless as before. "Izumi-san switched them!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Hamano-san. I didn't see Izumi switching anything. Did you see something, Ino-chan?"
"No, I didn't see anything," I say, and it's the truth; we were so busy yelling at each other we didn't noticed Izumi switched the desks.
"Did you see something?!" Nagai-san yells at the rest of the classroom, but everyone pretend to be busy checking their phones.
"But that desk is still written all over," cries Sotoka-san. "We can't just give it to someone else."
"Yeah, but you didn't write that, so why you worry?"
She's right.
"Maybe, but also they'll know we switched them—
"So?" Nagai-san asks violently. "They'll keep bullying you? They'll do that no matter what," and that's exactly what I tell her before, but she's so stubborn! "But I'm on your side. Don't you trust me? Don't you think I'll help you out? You underestimate me, Sotoka-san."
"And I'm on your side too, Sotoka-chan, 'cause daisukidesu!" Izumi yells near the chalkboard.
We all turn towards her, and there are a lot of OTAKUs and NUKI-CHANs and GO-DIEs and etceteras written all over there.
"Izumi-san, why you wrote that?! Erase it right now!" Sotoka-san heads to the chalkboards and starts looking for something (probably the eraser,) but the doesn't find it. "Please, just erase it all."
"No, Sotoka-chan," says Izumi, eraser in hand. "'Cause when Horinomi-sensei sees this, she'll think whoever wrote on your desk did this too, and she'll be like: 'what? Someone from my class wrote all that lies on Sotoka-chan's desk and also wrote all over the chalkboard? Man, this is serious, and I can't just pretend nothing happened—like I always do—'cause all my superiors will probably find out about this. I have to do something.' And besides is fun to write whatever you want here. Try it out, Sotoka-chan," Izumi offers a piece of chalk to Sotoka-san.
But she obviously rejects it.
"Just erase that, Izumi-san! I'm not kidding!" Sotoka-chan's seems to be about to cry now. "And everyone knows you wrote all that!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Hamano-san," Nagai-san says with a grin. "I never saw Izumi writing on the wall, and I'm pretty sure neither do you. HEY! DID YOU SEE IZUMI WRITING ON THE WALL?!" she yells at the rest of the classroom, and they, as always, pretend they are super busy checking their phones.
But they also seem really nervous.
And if Sotoka-san doesn't want to write on the chalkboard, so…
I take the piece of chalk Izumi offered Sotoka-san.
And I fill the chalkboard with all the profanities I can think of.
Sotoka-san begs me to stop, but she also said I wrote all that stuff on her desk.
And she's not the only one who wants a little retribution.
The chalkboard soon fills up with a lot of ASSHOLEs and WHOREs and TINYs and FUCK-YOU-FUCKING-CUNTS-SONS-OF-BITCHES-GO-DIE-SOONs
You know what? This really is very relaxing, like a lift that I've been carrying for years is finally getting off my shoulders, and, best of all, no consequences.
Now I get why bullies do it so often.
"Yamamoto-san, what are you doing?!" That's Horinomi-sensei's voice.
Oh, fuck.
I turn towards the door, and yes, Horinomi-sensei's there.
And everyone in the classroom has their phones up and on their hands.
They're recording me.
And I bet they recorded since I started to write all that crap in the chalkboard.
A chalkboard that had already written a giant INO.
Or maybe they started recording since I started yelling at Sotoka-san.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh, fuck indeed.