Twoset Senpai

1. November: Collision

A/N: 20210322 Yipeee, new book !! The pic above was one of the alternative cover pages for this book.

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Eddy is in 1st year senior high school (Year 10).

Brett is in 2nd year senior high school (Year 11).

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Before school

It was November and Tokyo was surprised with an early arrival of winter. It snowed.

The city slickers never cope well in the snow because they insist on carrying on as usual.

15 year old, 1st year senior high school student  Eddy was late for school. On any other day, it would've been okay. His home was on top of a hill and it was an easy ride on his bike to his senior high school, though a bit more laborious on his way back home. The distance to school was just over 2km, just enough to qualify him for a "bike sticker" that allowed him to ride to school and park his bike in the bicycle parking space of the school.

Eddy would pick up a substantial amount of speed by the time we descended his first hill. He would normally take advantage of the momentum he had picked up on the downhill for the next flat part of his ride and was happy with the speed he had picked up.

Except for this morning, he was riding through the snow.

By the time Eddy was rushing to get to school, there had been plenty of people who had ridden their bikes on the same road and there was a rigid groove created in the snow along the road. This would've been fine, so long as you could stay within that groove. As long as you didn't have to quickly get out of that groove. So long as there wasn't a young girl suddenly jumping out of their front gate in front of your bike!!!

"Oh sh*t..."

Eddy swerved and his tyres slipped, bumped out of the ice groove and he ended up skidding across to the middle of the narrow street with his bike. He was lucky he didn't hit the girl but he was also lucky there weren't any cars coming up from behind him!!

"I am sorry."

Much to Eddy's surprise the small girl grabbed onto Eddy's arm and tried to help him up. She looked about age 5, obviously not school age yet since she was still at home at this time of day.

"I'm okay. I'm not hurt. Don't worry. But it's not safe for you to run out onto the road like that. Don't do that again, okay?"

"Okay. I am sorry."

Eddy got up and smiled at the little girl. He checked his bike and the front wheel had twisted out of alignment. He held the front wheel between his legs. He felt the cold wetness through his black trousers but his uniform was pretty wet and muddy already from the fall so he didn't really care. As he clamped his front wheel between his legs, Eddy twisted the handlebars to fix up the wheel alignment. He then hopped back onto his bike and continued on his journey to school.

The front gate of the senior high school was utter chaos.

There was more snow, compacted into a rigid groove and students were arriving from all directions, from the bus stop, train station, on foot and on their bikes. Most of the riders chose not to dismount their bikes as dismounting meant they would take up extra space - for their bike and for them to walk along its side. Eddy also decided he would try to ride into the gate. As he approached the gate and was about to turn left into the gate, another person was heading right towards him from the opposite direction.  Eddy heard someone yell out;