The bell, which indicated that fourth period was done, rang out loud throughout the whole school. The teacher concluded our class with a "Don't forget to study," and then left. Afterwards, other students kept sitting down, while some went out to buy food from the cafeteria, and some entered from other classes to hang out with their friends here.
Sadly, I didn't have any friends from other classes to hang out with me. That might make me a person who doesn't have friends, or just someone who didn't want to bother going to their classrooms, but really, I had all the reason in the world why I didn't have go to them.
Senpai-san was doing club activities which would last for the whole day, meaning she can't hang out with me. Miku and I don't talk much in school, so as to keep her otaku side a secret. Lastly, Kentarou still has unfinished business that he has to take responsibility of in order to bring back their club's president, Akiko Tanaka, which was my senpai and club mate back in junior high, just like Senpai-san.
Other than those, that's just about it.
If I wanted someone to hang out with, I'd probably choose Yuumi out of all of them, but she was still in her final year of junior high, which meant we needed to wait for a year for her to graduate junior high and enroll here at my school.
I was bored. I didn't have anything to do, nor anyone I could talk to. I slumped down my desk and started to glance around the room.
I notice a familiar girl, Satou Rin, talking with her friends. However, when I saw Satou-san glace at me, immediately looked away. Girls are scary. What's more scary is how did she know I was looking at them.
I stood up from my seat, and headed out the door. I wasn't going to the cafeteria to eat something, but rather, I was just going to walk around aimlessly with no exact destination in mind. I'd probably just go with the flow.
After a few minutes, I spotted the school library. Come to think of it, ever since I entered high school, I haven't visited the library even once. I probably go here a lot in my junior high years, but that's probably because a friend of mine likes being there.
I entered, and the first thing I noticed was that it's isolated. Well, it's not completely isolated. There were a few students reading books, and a library committee also quietly reading at the reception desk.
I walk to a shelf, and randomly picked up a book. It was a book about neurology, so I quickly put it back.
Unlike back then, I always brought light novels to school and read it during lunch break and heading home, so there wasn't much books here that piqued my interest, especially neurology.
But putting that aside, the library's air conditioning felt really good. Even though it's a bit cold, it felt incredibly good on my skin.
I headed to an empty table on the farthest corner of the room, sat down, and placed my head on the table in my arms as I slowly closed my eyes. It felt really relaxing.
"Whoosh, down goes the falcon!" said someone in a whispering way.
Someone was saying some random stuff. I couldn't tell whether in was in my dream or reality, but it was highly realistic.
But that wasn't all. As the voice spoke, my own imagination projected those words and made it a reality in my dream.
It was a horrendous battlefield. Many men were covered in blood, and the sky was dropping red as if the world was on its end.
Most of the men is either dead from getting their heads eaten, or a giant hole has been pierced into the torso of the military.
They only had one mission: to defeat a giant falcon that has been hibernating for three thousand years.
The falcon kept on killing and killing, satiating its hunger and flying around obliterating everyone that crossed its territory. There were bodies hanging from its gigantic claws, and as it flies, the blood of those bodies pour down creating a blood rain.
After a while, the marines called out a tank, and after hitting the falcon directly on its body, it fell down, almost at its end.
And finally, a brave soldier went up to it, shooting it in the eye, and winning their battle.
"Ahh! I finally finished!" the voice said satisfyingly.
When I woke up and opened my eyes, I saw a girl that was much taller than me drawing at a paper in a landscape format. It mostly depicted all the things that happened in my dream, but it was only drawn in crayons rather than realistically.
"Um…," I said, calling out to her.
"Hm?"
When she faced me, she had the look of shock in her face, and then immediately covered with a red hue as she tried to open her mouth. When she finally did, she stood up, bowed, and shouted,
"I-I-I-I'm very sorry!!" she said, bowing her head, letting her short hair that you could even mistake her for a guy fall.
She shouted so loud, the other students in the library with us started glancing at our direction with curious looks. I didn't want any attention to be drawn, so I immediately tried to calm her down.
"I'm not angry!" I shouted in a whisper. "Please, calm down and take a seat."
She obediently followed my words, and sat down next to me again. The other students that was looking at us immediately returned their focuses on their books or studies.
"I-I'm sorry to have woken you up…," she said very meekly.
"Ah, no it's fine. Lunch was going to be over soon anyways."
I glanced at the notebook that she was holding tight.
"What's that?" I asked.
"U-Um, just some drawings… It doesn't look very good though…"
She was speaking in such a meek voice that it didn't take much to realize that this girl was the fragile type. If I wanted to communicate with her, I needed to be careful with the words I say.
"…I heard some of what you just said earlier," I said. "Something about marines, falcon, blood rain, giant holes in bodies, I heard that."
Her face started to turn deep red as I said that.
"Not just that, but it was projected in my dreams as well."
I started explaining what had happened earlier, and her face became more and more red.
"It was pretty gruesome, but… your imagination is pretty wild, don't you think?"
When I asked her that, the face that was looking at me earlier suddenly casted it down, and she didn't speak for a while. But she did eventually speak.
"…I want to be a manga artist," she said. "I really like action and bloodshed ever since I was a child, and that only overflowed when I saw those bloodshed in drawings. Manga, specifically."
She started off as meek, but slowly and slowly, her voice started to calm down.
"After that, I kept drawing my own stuff, trying to improve my skills more and more."
I'm not sure if I should be listening to this. Heck, I don't even know if I should be here. She just started speaking about her dreams to a stranger, which was definitely weird. But that's not all I got from her.
Due to her tone changing when she was talking, it seemed like she wasn't quite fond with talking to other people. In other words, she's an introvert, and you could say she has communication disorder.
After a while, she kept silent, blocking her face with the paper and turning its back on me so I don't see the results of her work.
"…What do you think?" she suddenly asked, catching me off-guard.
If I had to answer with my true or fake feelings, that would be…
"It was pretty freakin' amazing," I said.
"R-Really?!"
This was my honest feelings.
I'm not gonna lie, I got pretty into bloodshed back in junior high. I'd see those brains splattering around, blood shooting like a fountain, and organs appearing out of a single body. I haven't seen some bloodshed, so this was pretty amazing, even if it was just in my dream.
"D-Do you think it might be a good manga?"
This is where things got complicated.
Her drawings were pretty much just crayons put together to form art. There weren't any pencils, rulers, anything that an artist needed to draw, except for crayons.
"Well, I'd be lying to say that it might be good enough."
Her expression dropped.
"…Oh."
Now I felt bad saying that to her. Yes, it was true that her drawing isn't exactly good enough to be called manga, but…
"But."
I wasn't exactly finished yet.
"While this may not be good for that, the background and all the other stuff is pretty detailed."
That's right.
Her bright red sky with the dark clouds was the perfect background for a gruesome story like like this. The splattering blood and organs seemed to look as though they were actually getting thrown out of the body. The visual effects were good as well. The wings of the falcon flapping were clearly seen, the flash of a gun when it was triggered was clearly seen, and especially the screaming.
Her skills may not have been on the manga category, but in this case.
"You might be better doing picture books."
"…Huh?" she tilted her head.
There may be a lot of artists around the world, but there were a few who excelled at drawing picture books, even though it's so easy.
"You can make picture books that only the appropriate ages can see, and you can probably start from there. But don't take my word for it though, I'm not an expert in these."
While that may be true, I had little knowledge about these. It was way back in junior high, though, when I was helping out a girl pretty much the same as her.
"I-I see…"
Though faint, I still saw her smile a bit.
***
The next day passed by. After doing my usual routine of waking up early, getting ready for school, and delivering my lunch box to Shimamura-san, the day passed rather quickly.
There wasn't anything eventful to talk about. Senpai-san kept doing club activities, I let the literature club be(for now), and didn't have anyone to talk to. Satou-san was talking to her friends, Miku was busy with her work, and Shimamura-san was in her classroom, eating my lunch.
Really, there wasn't much to talk about.
I tried to message Yuumi, at least trying to have someone to talk, but she completely left me on read. Well, just about what I'd expect. She can't think of a response unless she's talking to the person directly.
While I could doze off and sleep until next period starts, the noises in the background are way too, well, noisy for me. I could go to the cafeteria and buy something to eat, but I'm not in the mood to eat anything right now. If only Kentarou was here, I wouldn't be this bored.
Which leaves me one choice.
I stood up, and started to mindlessly wander the corridors of this classroom, not having a clear destination in mind.
I passed by room after room, some filled with students, some nothing at all. Eventually, like last time, I yet again saw the library, which made me think of what happened yesterday.
I entered it, and then picked up a book. After reading an excerpt, I placed it back to the shelf and went to the same place where I dozed off yesterday.
I entered it, and then picked up a book. After reading an excerpt, I placed it back to the shelf and went to the same place where I dozed off yesterday.
The air conditioner really did feel cool. This really was the perfect place to sleep on a lunch break. If only I had a blanket and a pillow to come with it, it would've been perfect.
This time, I wasn't really that sleepy, so I just closed my eyelids to rest my eyes. Seriously, I wasn't sleeping, I was just giving my eyes a little rest from all the hard work it had done to provide me vision to see this world.