Nerusona

Chapter 7

Part 1: April

Chapter 7

April 4th. Friday.

Both Tanaka and Yamaguchi diligently paid attention in class as Roku continued to review the history of the war. He also mentioned that starting on Monday, April 7th, quizzes will be handed out and will determine which division of classrooms students will be placed in. On May 1st, most students will be changing classrooms. Other than Roku’s lectures and the announcement, the school day wasn’t particularly interesting.

…

“Is your eye healing?” asked Yamaguchi as she strolled home with her brother.

“The swelling is starting to go away,” he replied.

“I wonder if those two boys were expelled…” she mumbled. “Or if they ever recovered the original surveillance recordings. Maybe I’ll ask Roku-sensei tomorrow.”

“I don’t think those recordings were even edited.” Tanaka kept his voice quiet as they continued to wander home.

“Huh? What’d you say?”

“I wish there was a way to show you exactly what I saw that night.”

Yamaguchi quirked a brow. “You were passed out, though. You were probably dreaming.”

“I wasn’t.”

Something’s not right here, he thought.

“Were you not paying attention when those two boys confessed what they did to you?”

Tanaka frowned. “‘Worthless kids disappear on campus at night’…I’m positive that I did disappear, but somehow at 12:01 AM I reappeared.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“Let’s sneak on the campus tonight. I’ll prove to you that I really did disappear for a short amount of time. I’ll prove to you that it wasn’t a dream.”

Yamaguchi halted in her tracks. “What?! Are you insane?! That’s trespassing! We’ll both be expelled!”

Tanaka stopped as well. “There has to be a way to get into the school without being caught on camera, then…” He scratched at one of his bandages. “If other ‘worthless’ students have disappeared on campus before and the security cameras didn’t detect a thing, there must be a way.”

“Why can’t you just let this go?”

Tanaka ignored his sister. “…I got it. We’ll have a stakeout tonight.”

“What—”

“We won’t go on campus. We’ll watch the school from behind the gates to see if anything happens at midnight.”

“Okay, but,” she started to make her way back home again, “let’s say something does happen. The school distorts into something like what you described. How are we going to get inside?”

She was right. He couldn’t get outside the altered building when he was inside it.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ll have to figure that out ourselves. We’ll need to bring weapons, too, just in case we can get inside.”

Yamaguchi sighed. “I’ll bring a knife, I guess. What about you?”

“I’ll bring that wooden sword in my room.”

His sister snickered for a split second. “That one you’ve had since you were a child?”

“I’ll finally put it into good use.”