Reborn as Sakura and Hinata: Lost in the Wind (Part 2)

Months Alone

Tap, tap, tap, at some point the dull click of the plastic of my pencil on the desk fell in line with the sharp ticking of the clock behind me, each second punctuated by the incessant, rhythmic noise.

Incessant was a good word, it's a word Beth would have used, and it described how things felt right now. Everyday was the same, unyielding thing, every Friday I'd sit down in this annoying English class in the back row, second seat from the right exit of the lecture room. He'd talk about essay writing, some boring writing concept, and I'd sit here and wait for class to be over. Then, I'd go home and do my assignments, maybe watch something, and then go to bed just to repeat the cycle of class, work, relax, sleep, repeat.

It had felt like my awareness had sharpened since then, the tick of the clock sounded louder, I noticed how many students were in the class and what they generally looked like, there was a guy that always came five minutes late and would park his scooter by the entrance near the professor's desk, a girl who used to be here early but who hadn't come to class in the past few weeks. Perhaps it was to ignore the boredom that I started paying attention to the world around me, or maybe I had actually gained some perception in my 'dream'.

It wasn't like it mattered though, hearing a clock ticking or how the girls to my left were talking about a party they were going to this weekend didn't make this class more interesting, and it didn't make him stop giving us essay assignments.

It didn't make Beth wake up.

It had been months now, I had just started college and it all just felt so wrong without her. She had been there every step of the way with me before, even if we didn't have all the same classes she could help me in each one, and we spent every moment we could together. It hurt to be here, but it hurt more to sit alone in my house and wait. I didn't really know when I made the decision to go back to college, maybe I'd finally had enough of sitting on my ass and feeling useless, maybe my parents' passive aggressive comments finally got to me and I did what it would take to shut them up.

Whether I was in college or not didn't change that Beth was still asleep, but it seemed to make my parents happy, and at least it gave me something to do, some sense of purpose, but it was moments like this where I wasn't so sure of that purpose anymore. I hated this class, it sucked the life out of me in a way that physics and chemistry never could, because at least Beth was there to make the concepts interesting for me.

But this... wasn't fun, it wasn't interesting, and it didn't even apply to what I wanted to do, how the fuck would writing an essay help me build anything? But I was still stuck in 'core requirement' hell, and it would be far too long before I could actually start learning anything, before I started to feel the motivation to care.

I never had this problem in that life. Everything was interesting, and there was a sense of instant gratification where what you learned had immediate visible results. You learned a jutsu, you used it, no test or essay necessary, you just could, and it was useful. The world had infinite possibilities and made concepts even from here more interesting, sealing language interpretation, the physics of combat, the chemistry of poisons, botany, anatomy, all of it took on such a new light over there... and now here I was sitting in a room with eighty other people not listening to some guy talk about the proper use of an Oxford comma.

And then my parents were so smug and proud of it, 'our genius daughter is already back in college after such a horrific event!'. They never called me a 'genius' before, it almost disgusted me to hear them say it, as if me not being brain damaged was enough to make me Einstein in their eyes. It was such fake praise too, our genius daughter, like they somehow got me to that point. I mean, yes, they twisted my arm until I gave in and went to college, but that was nothing to be proud of and said nothing about my own abilities.