Burning Bright

This Amazing World

What will you be doing around this time tomorrow? You must be thinking that it will be just like it always is, that nothing will change. But is it really going to be like that? For the passengers of a certain flight, the world as they know it is about to undergo a drastic change.

[We apologize for the late departure. The plane has reached a comfortable cruising altitude of 10,000 meters and the captain expects smooth flying for the remainder of the flight,] The copilot announced over the plane's intercom once it had finally taken off. [It's expected that we will arrive in Japan in approximately two and a half hours.]

Not that anyone seemed to care. Fukui Torako, a smaller than average girl with dark eyes, could barely hear it over the noise the rest of the students were making while she sketched quietly in her notebook. She didn't blame them, since everyone was still excited from the class trip to Guam, but there was one group in particular that stood out above all the rest. It was Sengoku Akira and his friends. Sengoku Akira seemed to be the designated troublemaker of class 3-4. After making the plane late, he was now in the process of scarfing down such a sickeningly large amount of food (with all the gusto of a human black hole) that even his friends looked disgusted.

"Are you going to be a 'food fighter'?" one of them asked. Tora was pretty sure his name was Katsuragi. "He did eat lunch, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he ate a lot, plus he had seconds," another boy with longish hair who was wearing an 'I heart Guam' shirt replied. Tora couldn't remember his name at the moment.

"You guys are so noisy," Akira said, still stuffing his face. "I bought all this so I can grow."

'The only direction you're gonna grow is sideways if you keep that up...' Tora thought, sweat-dropping. From what she could see, he had grabbed something from every junk food and fast food stand in the airport.

"You... You made us late? Just for that?" the boy in the Guam t-shirt asked incredulously, sweat-dropping.

"Fuh... Safe..." Sengoku said, sighing once he had finished washing down his unhealthy smorgasbord with the cup of juice a stewardess had brought him. "Yosh! I finished eating; it's time to watch... that 'thing'," he said with a lecherous grin, and flushed cheeks. Tora deadpanned. From the shifty perverted expressions on the faces of all the boys who had suddenly gathered around him, and the fact that Morita had just handed over his camera, she could pretty much guess what they were up to.

'Well, I shouldn't have to worry,' she thought, deciding to just ignore them. She always wore shorts and a camisole under her school uniform, so there was zero chance of them having recorded something as embarrassing as a surprise panty-shot or an incident of them catching her bra showing through her shirt. Her ear pricked when she heard her name being mentioned.

"Aw man, what's wrong with that Fukui? Showing up to the beach wearing a tankini and board shorts... Move your hidden flat chest out of the way!" Suzuki Ryouichi complained. "Everyone knows the beach was made for bikinis!"

'Well, excuse me for being flat-chested!' she thought with a small vein throbbing on her forehead, while her pencil scratched against the paper.

"Yeah, that girl's weird," Sengoku's friend in the Guam shirt said. "She seems like the 'indoors' type, but she's weirdly amazing when it comes to sports! Plus, She's always sitting by herself and writing in that notebook she carries around... It's kind of creepy."

"And she seems strangely close to Kokonoe-sensei..." another boy added. They all made a face at that, clearly wondering if there was something going on between the mysterious transfer student who came to their school just a little after the second term began in September, and the perverted science teacher. Tora sweat-dropped. Is that what people were thinking? These guys were terrible...