Ryou woke up with bags under her eyes and extremely tired. A single sigh escaped her mouth as she turned off the alarm with her foot again and went through her whole ordeal of getting ready for school once more. Without much energy in herself, she just ate a single slice of bread and went ahead to school. Of course, not without faking the same smile again and saying farewell to her parents.
This time she had a hard time focusing in class and she couldn't keep herself awake much longer. She tried calling for the teacher's attention by raising her hand, but when she asked if she could go to the Nurse's office her request was shrugged off by her teacher who thought she was just sleepy.
Unluckily, that wasn't the only reason for her lack of energy. She hadn't eaten almost anything since the breakfast from the day before, so her body was really lacking energy to continue working. So it wasn't really a surprise to her as she fainted a few minutes after not getting the teacher's attention.
Even though she was losing consciousness really quickly, she couldn't help but hear the teacher going over to her seat and checking if she was awake. Once she didn't respond did the teacher realize his mistake and called for someone to carry her to the nurse's office, it was just then that her brain finally gave up and she closed her eyes for good.
She woke up in the nurse's office as she had done a few times during her middle school life already. It wasn't exactly a familiar ceiling to wake up to, so she was a little confused still. Ryou did notice that there was something in her hand, so she sat up and looked over the object that was left in her closed left hand.
'What the?...' She wasn't exactly used to actually speaking, so it was to be expected that her remarks would be played out inside her own head.
In her hand laid a singular piece of candy, lemon flavored. It wasn't her favorite for certain, but at the very least it was one at the top ten of her personal choice. Ryou had no idea who had left it there, but soon enough she remembered why she was in the nurse's office and just decided to open and eat it like that without question.
'Well, thank you stranger. I hope you get good luck or something...'
She prayed for that stranger's good luck and decided to rest a little more, it seemed like it would be lunch time soon so Ryou decided to wait until then to get out so she could get her eating done. A realization hit her in the head though, she hadn't taken her lunchbox with her today so she would need to go to the cafeteria and actually pay for lunch.
'...I can't really go home without eating huh?...' She resigned to her bad luck and just closed her eyes, laying back on the bed again.
Once she woke up again it was the start of lunch time so she stood up from bed and put on her shoes again, proceeding to give the nurse a single bow in thanks for the bed before heading out. Unsurprisingly, the nurse didn't bother to reply and just watched as she left walking on her own without asking once if she was okay.
Ryou herself wasn't sure if everyone in the school had organized to fully ignore her or something, but she was partially thankful to the fact since she hated being in open spaces with lots of people. Once inside the cafeteria she would take a place at the end of the line to the machine that was used to order the desired dish. She didn't had much on her, so instead of getting a proper meal she only got a singular plate of fried rice.
Once she got herself the miserable plate of food, the hard part of the ordeal would come to her mind. Where should she sit at? Of course, almost all of the tables had been occupied already so there weren't that many choices to pick from. Finding a suitable table at the furthest corner of the whole place she made her way there and sat down.
Without much apetite she ate her rice in relative peace. There weren't any others sitting with her and the table was as far as it could be from the popular ones so there surely wasn't any chance of sociable people to sit down with her right? Wrong.
Not even five minutes passed until a group of four individuals walked over and just sat down in the same table as her, two on her side and the other three on the opposite side. Not only was she unlucky enough to have people sit down by her side, but it was a full group that left her as the only one there who didn't really belong to their pack.
"Hey, we're not troubling you right? We just saw the empty space and we thought it would be fine..."
"Oh...N-No...It's alri-"
"Thanks! So anyways, as I was saying..."
Ryou was cut off mid sentence and then completely ignored. With a silent sigh she returned to her lunch, without apetite, she was eating just so she wouldn't faint before reaching her home, so it was a really awkward situation, specially while the group seemed to interact so vividly and happily with each other.
Once she was done, she stood up and walked away to return the plate and such before heading out of the hell that was the cafeteria.
'Maybe if I tried I could be like that...I don't want to keep lying to mom and-....Oh...."
Her grim thoughts didn't help her situation as they only managed to put her dream of having friends further into the trash with each step she took. Another sigh escaped her mouth and she just walked over to the classroom to sit on her chair once more, leaning over her desk to sleep until lunch time was over to have the last period and then go home.
'I should stop dreaming about thing that will never become true...'
She thought before passing out to sleep until the bell rang once again. Ryou woke up just in time to see the teacher entering the room, and once the greeting was done and everyone was back in their seats, she got to enjoy a really boring math class. She wasn't half bad at school, in fact, she held second place in her whole class on nearly every subject with the exception of P.E since Ryou was, obviously, not a very athletic person.
For her dismay, this also meant that although she wasn't brilliant, she already had gone over the regular stuff during her time at home when she did nothing but study to keep herself as sane as she could without any outside help.
While she was daydreaming, as usual, she was finally called out by the teacher to respond to a problem she hadn't pay attention to. This meant that everyone else in the classroom was suddenly staring at her, and Ryou couldn't feel worse than that. Each glare felt like a knife slowly piercing into her body at odd angles and places.
Taking the time for a deep breath, she replied.
"T-The answer....36...."
"What was that? Louder please."
"Thir...Thirty...Six..."
"I said louder, Ryou. Can't you even respond properly?"
"Thirty six."
"Alright, sit down and next time speak louder."
Her usual frail self couldn't really withstand all this pressure. She was feeling as if her heart was going to explode right out of her chest and cold sweat was slowly starting to cover her body. Ryou wasn't used to this and her condition didn't make it any easier either. Starting to feel incredibly unwell again, she raised her hand to ask for permission to go to the nurse's office for the second time in the same day.
"C-can I...Go to the Infirmary?...I'm not...Feeling goo-"
"Are you trying to skip class, Ryou?"
"What? N-no...I'm just not-"
"You think that because you're ahead of everyone else you can just go and sleep there all day long, huh?"
"No, it's not that-"
"Sit down and don't say anything else until class has ended. You shouldn't disrespect your teacher like that."
"....Okay...."
She sat back down, her hand firmly shut into a fist and held close to her chest. Ryou could feel her breathing become heavier by the second, and the new set of judging glares wasn't helping her at all. With a lowered head and a tight chest, she couldn't breathe very well. Though it wasn't enough to make her faint, she was sure it wasn't a good sign at all.
Once class ended, the teacher pulled Ryou aside and told her to wait in the teacher's room while she called her guardian. Ryou had already resigned to her fate by then, so she simply nodded and waited outside of the teacher's room, sitting down in one of the few chairs that were placed for parents and their kids to wait until they were called inside.
While Ryou waited patiently for the whole slew of lies that the teacher would tell her grandmother and the beating she would likely receive at home, she wouldn't notice a second presence walking over and sitting a few chairs to her side.
Soon enough, the grandmother arrived and she practically dragged Ryou inside the teacher's room. While the teacher told what happened, the stranger outside heard with great interest the conversation going on inside the room.
'Interesting...' The figure thought.