The voice that had both ordered them to stop catches both of their attention, they both turn over to the door nearest to the front and both of them react in a shocked manner.
⋆｡°✩
Earlier, before all this commotion started, Satoshi, with his leather briefcase held over his shoulder and free-hand in his pocket, is seen walking through the hallways on his way to the classroom of his blonde-haired friend, Kazuo.
"If I'm not mistaken, Kazuo-chan is in room 1-E?"
He exhales through his nose as he closes his eyes, clearly tired with the distance he has to walk. Specifically, all the way from his homeroom, which is 1-G.
As he continues on with his steady pace, he hears footsteps rapidly approach him, he opens one eye and looks over his shoulder, curious as to what is causing such a ruckus.
Suddenly, two male students run past him, one of them nearly bumping into him; the said student who nearly bumped into him continues his pace while looking back and apologizing profusely.
Satoshi raises an eyebrow, at first out of frustration, which then slowly morphs into curiosity. He begins to ponder to himself as he continues walking, "What's with the rush? Is there something going on?"
A passing conversation between two girls then reaches his ears.
"Did you hear? There's already an argument in room 1-B, of all places!"
"Eeh~? On the first day of school? Does anybody even stay content in this school anymore?"
"Right? Hey, do you want to go check it out?"
"I don't feel like it right now... we still have a club meeting, you know?"
"O-oh~! I forgot, my bad..."
The red-haired boy then stops in his tracks in the middle of the hallway as a thought passes through his head, "Class 1-B? Wait... Isn't that Koyasu-kun's homeroom?"
He begins to feel something is off with this entire situation. He begins to connect the dots, beginning from when he first saw room 1-B which was during lunch period, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
His eyes then widen as he realizes something; to when they were on their way to the rooftop, he saw a pink-haired girl hurryingly rush down the staircase, nearly bumping into the two of them on the way down.
She didn't bother with apologizing as her face clearly told something was off and that she was focused on something else entirely, but he didn't pay any attention to it, probably because of the fact she looked worried.
But then, after climbing a few flight of stairs…
"Save me!!!"
Those screams of Kane and the sight of him being grabbed by the leg by a silver-haired girl was enough evidence for Satoshi to begin running toward the room, he knew he had a friend to save.
With each step forward was an ever-increasing feeling of dread. What if he was too late? What if he was already accused of something that could ruin his reputation? What if he stopped going to school because of this? These were the thoughts running through his head.
He had no time to waste.
He runs past room 1-E, completely forgetting his original plans, which caught the attention of Kazuo, who was talking with another boy inside his classroom. He squints his eyes, and wonders, "Was that Ryūzaki right now?"
He turns over to his classmate, before asking, "I'm sorry but we have to cut this conversation short, I need to go somewhere real quick — let's talk another time, okay?"
His classmate then responds with a nod, allowing Kazuo to turn around and grab his leather briefcase before running out of his homeroom to chase after Satoshi, he shouts while chasing after him, "Oi! Ryūzaki! Hold up... damn it!"
Kazuo finally catches up to Satoshi after a couple of seconds, who is trying to squeeze through the small crowd that had formed infront of the homeroom, he calls out his name, "Ryūzaki? Ryūzaki!"
He can hear the faint struggles of Satoshi as he tries to squeeze through the crowd, his voice visibly shaken, "E-excuse me, please... my friends..."
His eyes widen as he looks over the shoulders of the various students blocking the doorway, as he sees Kane being confronted by a girl with pink hair. His eyes grow with disdain and hatred, "Damn... what's your problem with Koyasu-kun? What did he ever do to you!?"
And suddenly — without warning — a door is suddenly heard sliding open which catches the attention of both Kazuo and Satoshi, who had now stopped forcing his way through the crowd.
They begin to turn over to the sudden noise. A voice then booms out while ordering, "That's enough, you two."
With a shocked expression shared by both Kazuo and Satoshi, they then realize that it was indeed...
"Erisa-san..."
Kane had muttered under his breath as soon as he saw Erisa by the doorway, his demeanor quickly changing to that of a defeated man with nothing to lose, his eyes devoid of any color.
Inari stares at Erisa with a confused expression. Was she mistaken knowing now that the girl she thought was being harassed was now defending the boy that had supposedly harassed her?
She furrows her brow, simply unwilling to give in to this defeat that was displayed infront of her. She had instead came to the conclusion that she was being blackmailed by Kane into defending him. She begins to wryly smile.
"Eh~? What are you doing here? Aren't you meant to side with me?"
"No. Instead, could you please stop attacking Koyasu-san? You can clearly see he has had enough."
Inari turns her body over to Erisa completely utilizing her heel. She places her hand on her chest, before saying, "Mou~, can't you see? I'm trying to help you... even if he has dirt on you, we could just report him to the school principal and get him out of here."
An evil and distressing smile forms on her face. Shadows begin to form over her pink eyes, which pierced through said shadow and toward Erisa. She spoke in a low and aggressive voice, "Scum like him don't deserve to be here."
Those words hit Erisa like a knife even though it wasn't directed at her at all. She knew the boy she was defending was innocent in all circumstances, and it was her that was in the wrong — she was the one that was supposed to be called scum.
She approaches the pink-haired girl slowly as her expression remains the same, calm and collected. She says in a mature tone, "Look, you probably misunderstood something."
"I saw everything, okay?! Clearly-"
"You didn't see everything, you only saw a small portion of it."
Her gaze sharpens at the pink-haired girl. It had seemed the façade she had put was a front to cover her anger toward the girl that had been attacking a dear friend of hers.
The expression on Inari's face changes almost suddenly. It had seemed she was caught in a checkmate.
Inari couldn't feign ignorance however, so she opens her mouth and readies herself to answer, but it is soon cut off as Erisa continues.
"I would have noticed you peeking through the window in the door the entire time, yet you only stood there for a couple of seconds, long enough to think Koyasu-san was harassing me."
Inari's expression shifts to that of regret, she started having thoughts that she may have just misunderstood the situation.
Those words from Erisa begun to resonate within her. She did in fact not watch the entire situation.
"But honestly, I don't blame you."
Without any warning, Erisa caught her off-guard. She looks at her with a confused look plastered all over her face as tears begin to form in her eyes.
"You were just worried about me, weren't you?"
Inari stands in silence for a moment, before looking down at the ground as a reddish hue grows on her cheeks and tears begin to drop onto the hardwood floor.
Deep down, she was indeed just trying to defend someone from the bottom of her heart.
Her lips begin to tremble as a tear drops onto the floor. Not long after, that singular tear turns into a fountain of tears.
It was over exaggeratingly delivered as her tears kept on flowing. She almost began to resemble a new born baby with the way she cried.
"I'm showwy~! Pleashe forgive me~!!! Wahh~ wahh~!"
"E-eh?!"
Erisa is taken off-guard by her reaction. The sudden shift from a serious and evil looking person to that resembling a soft-hearted and cute individual.
She starts looking around the room and notices the confused look of all the students in the room and the hallway outside.
She tries her best to calm down the crying Inari as she slowly approaches her while also blushing herself. "C-calm down, calm down!"
"Mouu~!!! I thought I was doing a good deed for a shecond~! Wahh~!!"
As Erisa slowly approaches, Inari turns her head slightly to the right, which in turn causes Erisa to become doused in tears.
"Bllrrllbb... blrrllbbb..."
"I'm sowwy Koyashu-shan~!!!! You aren't actually a bad person~!!! Wahh~!!"
Kane looks on in terror — his once dead expression now gone completely. He watches Erisa get drowned in tears, literally.
He then snaps over to Inari in order to comfort her while wearing a half-smile on his face, "H-hey, I'm not mad or anything! You can calm down now! Just please stop drowning Erisa-san!"
As soon as Inari hears that, she begins to slowly turn back over to Erisa while still crying.
"Wahh~!!! I'm showwy for drowning you in my tearsh~!!!!"
Erisa is freed from the prison of tears as Inari continues turning to her right. She breathes heavily, trying her best to take in as much air.
She bends down and holds onto her knees as she feels weak due to the lack of air in her lungs.
Kane — proud of what he had done — looks up at the waterfall of tears that is slowly approaching him. His face slowly coming to accept his fate as a worthwhile sacrifice.
His soul shortly ascends into the afterlife.
"Bllrrlbbb... Blrrlllbbb..."
This goes on for a couple more minutes, as the two take turns drowning in the tears of Inari in an attempt to calm her down before she floods the entire homeroom.
The onlookers stare at the three of them confused, albeit relieved knowing that there was no issue at all on the first day of school. This was indeed, a rather peaceful day in Goshogawara Academy.
⋆｡°✩
The crowd had dispersed and the ones who had remained in the now empty homeroom was Kazuo, Satoshi, Erisa, Inari, and Kane. All by the open window that our deadpan protagonist likes to stare out off.
Kane and Erisa, who are still indeed drenched in tears, look defeated and tired as they sit in a seiza-style[1] way of sitting.
Their expression either stems from the fact that they now had to go home in drenched clothing, or that they had just nearly escaped a reputation-ruining scenario.
Inari on the other hand, is also sitting in a seiza-style way on the floor with an awkward half-smile plastered on her face and a gaze directed sideward; seemingly too shy to look both of them in the eye.
Satoshi, with arms crossed, once again acts as the mediator of a conflict between a person he knows and someone he just 'supposedly' met.
This crazy situation he has been gifted with experiencing will now be forever immortalized in his mind as the first day of his first year in high school.
His expression however is more irritated compared to the calm expression he wore with pride earlier this morning on the rooftop, it was a complete night and day comparison based on his expression.
"Déjà vu, huh?" Satoshi said with an annoyed grin.
Behind him, Kazuo stops himself from laughing as he covers his mouth and leans himself against the metal locker. An audible snicker escapes his lips, which is thankfully ignored.
With a half-hearted sigh, and making himself look more like a disappointed parent, he looks over at his two friends, "So... I'm probably beginning to understand what happened on the rooftop before we arrived."
"Y-yes, I suppose so..." Kane spoke in a low voice as he shakily looks over at his red-haired friend with a shadow over his eyes and a scary grin — albeit with a more 'drenched in tears' look.
"Now it's starting to really feel like déjà vu, you know."
Now done with that witty remark in a flat tone, Satoshi then turns over to Inari, who is seemingly frozen in time, holding that same expression she had earlier.
With a snap of a finger however, she comes back to the real world. "Honestly, do you always have to pick fights with people who look somewhat suspicious, Inari-chan?" Satoshi said, tired.
All three of his friends look at him in confusion, and the first to break the silence is Kazuo, who asks with a raised eyebrow, "W-wait, you knew her all along?"
Satoshi looks up at him with a blank stare, seemingly unaware of the confusion that has been caused by him knowing her name. He answers innocently.
"Yeah, me and her are childhood friends."
Silence befalls the three, and a singular thought, if you could even consider it a thought, is shared between all three of them.
"Eh~?"
[1] Seiza is the formal, traditional way of sitting in Japanese culture. To sit seiza-style, one must first be kneeling on the floor, folding one's legs underneath one's thighs, while resting the buttocks on the heels. The ankles are turned outward as the tops of the feet are lowered so that, in a slight "V" shape, the tops of the feet are flat on the floor and big toes overlapped, the right always on top of the left, and the buttocks are finally lowered all the way down.