It was a cold Thursday. The usual climate hadn’t gone away yet in Hokkaido, but spring seemed to want to barge in every once in a while. With how much the sun shined over the crisp curves of snow, I’m sort of surprised it isn’t spring already. Class had been dismissed by the time the sun decided to contradict my thoughts, seeping behind a cloud as if to taunt me and casting cues of cunning knowingness through the glass panels of the room. I wasn’t the last one to leave on most days, but, coupled by the quiet Sorika Hajime, I was today. Like all the other times I’ve managed to claim the title, I’ve either been lost in my head or contemplating an impending action of some sort. Today, it was the latter.

  Slinging my backpack onto my shoulder, I let my eyes linger a little longer than they should have at the notebook I had left atop my desk, gaze honed in on the feature as if to conjure an invisible hand into raising it into my own. I had to quit this habit: it was getting in the way of myself and my teacher, Mr. Kadokawa, the figure responsible for coordinating collaboration amongst his students, as he had to wait for his flock of minds to exempt their bodies from his reign of a room before departing his station in fulfillment. He had a family to go home to, a loyal, loving wife, three demanding, identical, brunette children who held the only discrepancy of their genders that gave them distinguishability among each other. His house was constantly full of satisfaction, as he puts it, and I’ve never doubted that with the images I’ve seen during his presentations at the beginning of our month at Soreiwaki. His life looked beautiful, gracious even with the weight of responsibility he took on with his profession. Amidst it, I was a part of his final period, tangled at the center of his class and between the ghosts of the immovable interest of my classmates, where he always led instruction under his unique, intelligent composure.

  Now, as I’m back down to Earth for the fourth time within the last hour, he’s still holding that expression of absent calamity. Pure easiness drew lighter shades across the creases beneath his tired eyes. Those superficial folds were delicate, most likely the result of years of smiling he’s told us wonders about.

  He greets my stance before him with a fraction of the aforementioned times, the speckle of the sun igniting a faint, glimmer duality across the specularity of his glasses.

  “Can I ask for isolation for the project?” I ask, slightly surprised at heart at the dimension of how suddenly I had stated the words without considering any other alternative way to compose them.

  “Isolation?” He questions, and I slowly feel the shame of my request dawn over my decision. Sometimes I forget my necessities, my wants, my ways of going on. It would be easy, after that, to falter in my conviction.

  “Yes, sir. I would like to work alone for it.” My eyelids cover some of my peripheral view, but its occupying length is not yet enough to conceal the sight of Mr. Kadokawa crossing his fingers over themselves.

  “I see,” he says as if reassuring himself in reminder, though the tone of when he begins a transition into other intonations surfaces on the conclusive letters. “I expected you to react this way. Needless to say, him as well...”

  He pauses for a moment, as if to intentionally have his mention of my partner’s reaction and his conjoining of expectancy to be comprehended as he thought of the rest of what he wanted to explain. Before I met his eyes again, I thought about it. What did he mean by that?

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mr. Kadokawa guzzled a portion of his water bottle, cleared his throat shortly after, and sturdied his lenses across the bridge of his nose. He smiles again.

  “Mr. Kodaisuke, or Mazure, declined the offer of associating as well. As you are now, he had asked me if he was allowed to tend to the task in his lonesomeness.”

  As if he had said the most shocking facsimile of reassurance, my mouth falls to the form of gaping, my eyes to broadening. Meanwhile, Mr. Kadokawa only narrows his attention, his gaze reminiscent of his understanding of how I had been feeling.

  “He came to my desk 20 minutes ago or so. I made these regiments out of pure consciousness. You two are some of the school’s most talented students. There is a bind that you could weave together. I see it. I know of your differences, but there is no better connection than the one that is inverted and available for change in the hand of another’s. You’re very gifted, Haise, and it won’t take long, at all, for the two of you to collaborate into the making of a phenomenon. Saying that, I wanted to see if you could maybe reconsider your contention of working alone. If, by the end of, let’s say, this week you keep the want to have the project done in that solitary way, you are more than free to receive a differently organized assignment, and no criticism or degrading is to be passed on from that. Does that sound good?”

  My mind stirs slowly, drifting over whatever wanton world of rumination it dwelled about earlier and, instead, now floating in the possibility, the encouragement, and the admission that Mr. Kadokawa had expressed. I was so consumed in everything he had to say, I, awestruck, had almost forgotten to reconnect my lips when I was left to my own devices of replying. A beat of consideration passed before I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Yes, sir,” I responded after, succumbing to the laudatory remarks and the suggestions accompanying them when he had spoken.

  “Good,” he mused, his grin widening lightly as he nodded to himself. I found myself more lost to who I was to provide company to. Out of the blue, with all of these statements, of his requitance, somehow so significant to me, I wanted to see him.

  “Do you know where he usually stays after school?” I proceed in inquiry. It might have sounded too straightforward and maybe even confusing to Mr. Kadokawa: When I had come to his desk, I was entirely ignorant about this character I was to soon be affiliated with, and now, as I’m verging my exit, I’m including some certainty that I am aware of a part of his schedule.

  “He stays in the music room after school, room C23,” he responds, persistent to remain subrident as he vocalizes the instruction. “Do you know where that room is?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Good to know.”

  I think for a moment, peering into the view of the hallway through the symmetrical arch of the doorway. Sorika (who I don’t know of whether or not is still here), Mr. Kadokawa, and I were currently in room C3. The music room he mentioned was only a few doors down from here.

  “You two will get along just fine,” he commented, noticing how far my eyes strayed from his. Turning my head again, I felt a hint of guilt for breaking our optical contact so soon, and I apologized for it, of which he humbly dismissed as unnecessary.

  I would hum in simple gratitude, acknowledgement.