Ink Stained

52: onigiri*

お握り

"You have a car?" she said, stunned as she climbed into the passenger seat of the sleek black car that pulled up by the curb. She distinctly felt like she was doing something she wasn't really supposed to, but she couldn't see why not.

She'd thought that she was hallucinating when Shin told her 'to wait by the school gates for him to drive the car up front'. she'd thought that maybe he calling a taxi that he would lead up to the front of the school gates where she stood waiting – which would be weird, since she could have just walked with him to wait for the taxi.

There was no taxi.

He had a car, and he could drive it. She didn't know why that caught her so off-guard. She couldn't help thinking that it suited Shin's image. The car wasn't too simple, but not overly flashy either. It was classy. The seats were black leather and plush, and she almost unconsciously settled into them comfortably.

Luckily, there was no one around to see her getting in. Everyone was still in class. People on the streets wouldn't care enough to wonder why a student was getting into a teacher's car before the end of the school day. Although, she had to admit, that was a relatively unfounded presumption. How would they know that Shin wasn't a relative or something of the like? But what if their gossip-mongering minds ran away with them and they thought it was something more than it actually was?

I think I understand why Shiori's dead-set against them coming to school with us, she thought, empathizing with Shiori's adamant insistence that they separate with Haru and Shouta by the time they got off the train station on the way to school, and meet up right at the train station's front entrance when heading back home.

Shin smiled vaguely as he buckled herself in, the seatbelt making a satisfying click!. "I'd have flown here, but humans tend to overreact when they see a flying man in the sky."

Point.

"I see." She mumbled nervously as she wrapped her arms protectively around her bag. She pressed her knees close together and tried not to think too much about how small the space in the car was.

Shin was barely a foot away, hand resting on the throttle of the car only a few inches from her leg. She was glad that she could still wear her black leggings; otherwise he would have seen the gooseflesh decorating her skin. She felt like her heart was about to go into overdrive and explode.

"Relax," he chuckled lowly. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye with a smirk. "I'm not going to eat you."

Thousands of years of legend say otherwise, she thought as she managed to ease her self-imposed tension only slightly.

"S – sorry. I am not in cars often?" she offered. It was a lame excuse to try explaining away her edgy nerves.

He laughed a little at that. Then he put the car into gear and drove forward. The car purred as it glided over the tarmac road, so smooth that she could almost pretend that the wheels were hovering over the road rather than driving on it. It reminded her of a certain type of car ever-present in a new novel series she had started reading the other day, the Psy-Changeling series, translated h to Japanese (she may be good with English, but that didn't mean she wanted to read entire novels in the crazy language). 'Hover cars', they were called, installed with the automatic command to retract the car's wheels and hover-drive over the road.

To chase away the possibility of any awkward silences she asked, "Why did you come with a car, but Haru-san and Shouta-san walked to school?"

"For one," he began, flicking a switch and indicating left as he pulled out of the road that the school was on. The car made a pleasant chiming sound as an orange light on the side mirror flashed repeatedly until the car had made its turn. "You and Shiori-hime walk to school. At least one of us needs to be with you at all times."