Tokyo Ryme

Chapter 1: 2

Part 2

"I hope we can all be friends." I said.

They gave me blank stares.

I looked at the teacher, thinking that I'd done something wrong. She was just smiling at me. "Thank you, Unami, for those lovely words. You can take a seat in the back of the class."

As I passed the students all sitting at their desks they just stared at me with bizarre expressions. It was like I'd introduced myself wrong. I started thinking that I'd said my name wrong, but how could they have told the difference?

No. Something else was going on in this room. Maybe they were worried that I'd get in the way of their cheating?

"Alright class, open your books to page 96 to continue from yesterday's lecture."

I opened the book that was laying on my desk to 96. As I looked around I saw that people were barely paying attention. Some were texting on their phones, listening to music, reading magazines on the inside cover of the book they should be reading. Some of them were staring off into the distance. But one thing was certain. All of them were not paying attention.

By the time lunch rolled around I'd gotten nothing. All I knew is that their reaction to a new student was bizarre, none of them paid attention, and the kid sitting in front of me smelled like the inside of a toilet. His name was Buki, I think. Buki or Banki or something along those lines.

I was just about to get up from my seat to go report in, hopefully to meet up with Shu, until a girl sat in the desk beside me and turned the chair over. She placed her bento box on my desk and smiled at me. A little confused I looked around, then tried to say hello.

"Hel-"

"You're the new student!" She exclaimed. "I didn't know we were getting a new student."

"Y-yeah. I enrolled a few weeks ago."

She looked skeptical. "Are you sure?"

I frowned. What did she mean 'are you sure?' Wouldn't I know when I enrolled into school? "Yeah. My family just moved here from Osaka."

"Oh really?" She asked. Her voice sounded excited, but her eyes looked like they were finding it difficult to trust me. "Do you like Tokyo?"

"Um, yeah. It's nice."

To be perfectly honest I don't think I've ever been to Osaka. Once my class went there on a field trip, but that meant overnight and I was terrified that someone was going to pull a prank on me while I was sleeping so I stayed home. I was born and raised in Tokyo. I'm too afraid to go anywhere else.

"My name is Nami Kawano. But you can call me Kano for short." She held her hand out for me to shake it. I found that strange but I took it anyway. "Also, what was with that introduction? I hope we can all be friends? That's like something out of a manga."

Oh. That's what the looks were for. "Y-yeah. I'm new to being new."

"Well I hope we can be friends anyway." She smiled. "Don't you have a lunch?"

I looked down at my bare desk. Given the fact that I didn't know I'd be playing high schooler today, I definitely didn't pack a lunch. Besides, I always ate in the courtyard or the roof when I was at school anyway. If I stayed in the classroom while the teacher wasn't there I was sure to get hurt.

"At my old school I usually ate in the cafeteria." I played a simple lie.

"The cafeteria?" She pondered the thought. "Well don't go there. That's where all the Zero's hang out."