What will you be doing around this time tomorrow? You must be thinking that it will be just like it always is, that nothing will change. But is it really going to be like that? For the passengers of a certain flight, the world as they know it is about to undergo a drastic change.
[We apologize for the late departure. The plane has reached a comfortable cruising altitude of 10,000 meters and the captain expects smooth flying for the remainder of the flight,] The copilot announced over the plane's intercom once it had finally taken off. [It's expected that we will arrive in Japan in approximately two and a half hours.]
Not that anyone seemed to care. Fukui Torako, a smaller than average girl with dark eyes, could barely hear it over the noise the rest of the students were making while she sketched quietly in her notebook. She didn't blame them, since everyone was still excited from the class trip to Guam, but there was one group in particular that stood out above all the rest. It was Sengoku Akira and his friends. Sengoku Akira seemed to be the designated troublemaker of class 3-4. After making the plane late, he was now in the process of scarfing down such a sickeningly large amount of food (with all the gusto of a human black hole) that even his friends looked disgusted.
"Are you going to be a 'food fighter'?" one of them asked. Tora was pretty sure his name was Katsuragi. "He did eat lunch, didn't he?"
"Yeah, he ate a lot, plus he had seconds," another boy with longish hair who was wearing an 'I heart Guam' shirt replied. Tora couldn't remember his name at the moment.
"You guys are so noisy," Akira said, still stuffing his face. "I bought all this so I can grow."
'The only direction you're gonna grow is sideways if you keep that up...' Tora thought, sweat-dropping. From what she could see, he had grabbed something from every junk food and fast food stand in the airport.
"You... You made us late? Just for that?" the boy in the Guam t-shirt asked incredulously, sweat-dropping.
"Fuh... Safe..." Sengoku said, sighing once he had finished washing down his unhealthy smorgasbord with the cup of juice a stewardess had brought him. "Yosh! I finished eating; it's time to watch... that 'thing'," he said with a lecherous grin, and flushed cheeks. Tora deadpanned. From the shifty perverted expressions on the faces of all the boys who had suddenly gathered around him, and the fact that Morita had just handed over his camera, she could pretty much guess what they were up to.
'Well, I shouldn't have to worry,' she thought, deciding to just ignore them. She always wore shorts and a camisole under her school uniform, so there was zero chance of them having recorded something as embarrassing as a surprise panty-shot or an incident of them catching her bra showing through her shirt. Her ear pricked when she heard her name being mentioned.
"Aw man, what's wrong with that Fukui? Showing up to the beach wearing a tankini and board shorts... Move your hidden flat chest out of the way!" Suzuki Ryouichi complained. "Everyone knows the beach was made for bikinis!"
'Well, excuse me for being flat-chested!' she thought with a small vein throbbing on her forehead, while her pencil scratched against the paper.
"Yeah, that girl's weird," Sengoku's friend in the Guam shirt said. "She seems like the 'indoors' type, but she's weirdly amazing when it comes to sports! Plus, She's always sitting by herself and writing in that notebook she carries around... It's kind of creepy."
"And she seems strangely close to Kokonoe-sensei..." another boy added. They all made a face at that, clearly wondering if there was something going on between the mysterious transfer student who came to their school just a little after the second term began in September, and the perverted science teacher. Tora sweat-dropped. Is that what people were thinking? These guys were terrible...
"But she's actually really nice, you know," Akira said, coming to her defense. "She's pretty quiet most of the time, but she's friendly to people who make an effort to talk to her, and she helps people when she notices they're in trouble. During a test, she casually tossed me an eraser when I started to panic because the one on my pencil ran—WOW!" he suddenly exclaimed when the camera showed a close-up of a pair of particularly large and excellent boobs that looked ready to bust out of the bikini top holding them up. "What!? What is this!? Is this for real? Who the hell is this!?" he asked excitedly.
"Calm down, Sengoku!" his friends whisper-yelled urgently. "It's coming! Look at her face!"
"Oh! It's Akagami Rion!!" the boys exclaimed, so excited that they began to talk all once, making it difficult for Tora to distinguish between who was saying what. "Here it comes~! The school's number one idol and the star of the gymnastics team! Eiken! Make me a copy of that!" Their cheering fell flat when Akira abruptly stood up in his seat, holding the camera out of their reach. The other boys stared up at him with dumbfounded expressions on their faces. "..."
"What are you doing, Sengoku!" Katsuragi hissed angrily.
"What?" Sengoku asked, trying to play dumb.
"You... is it true that you and Akagami...?"
"You're dirty!"
"Rion-chan belongs to everyone!"
"Shut up! She's just a childhood friend!" Akira snapped defensively, blushing furiously. He flinched when he suddenly felt the camera leave his hand. The person who had taken it was none other than Rion herself.
"Hehe. I~ got it!" she laughed gleefully with a jump. The look on Akira's face was priceless.
"Ri... Rion!" he shouted, turning blue with shock as he realized how much trouble he was in.
"What is this?" Rion asked curiously, turning the camera so she could see what they had been watching. Tora watched as the other girl's eyes nearly popped out of her head, and her face turned a deep shade of red upon seeing the image on the screen. The others took that as their cue to run.
"We leave the rest to you, Sengoku!" they cried, scrambling like cockroaches in the wake of Rion's wrath. "See ya, Sengoku!"
"Oi! Oi!" Akira exclaimed, flinching in shock at their sudden but inevitable betrayal.
"Akira-kun, you pervert!" Rion screamed, trembling with rage as she slapped him. Tora sighed and shook her head. He really should have seen that coming. While Rion scolded him, Tora turned her attention back to her notebook.
"Kyaaa!"
Her head snapped up again when she heard a cry of distress, but she quickly saw that it was a false alarm. It was just one of the stewardesses panicking because she accidentally spilled a drink on Kurusu-sensei, her homeroom teacher. Kurusu-sensei was being her usual kind self, doing her best to reassure the nervous and apologetic woman. Tora also saw that Kokonoe Ugen was sitting next to Kurusu-sensei, and she frowned and shook her head again upon noticing that he was openly reading a dirty magazine that had an X-rated image on the cover as if it was the most normal thing in the world. If he wanted to read them, fine, but he could at least wait until he was home, where no one else had to see it. She decided to pretend she hadn't seen anything and got up to go to the bathroom, while the klutzy stewardess moved on, and Kokonoe-sensei started to talk to Kurusu-sensei.
"Kurusu-sensei, before you go home, please think about what happened seriously," Kokonoe-sensei said when the younger teacher sitting beside him starting acting a little too carefree. "There are two problematic students in your class, aren't there?"
"Kokonoe-sensei, calling them 'problematic' is a bit..." Kurusu responded a bit hesitantly.
"Sengoku Akira..." Kokonoe-sensei said darkly. A massive vein throbbed on the side of his face as he remembered all the crap that kid had pulled during the trip. Lighting fireworks while holding them with his mouth... Peeping on the girls while they were bathing... Stealing food off other people's plates... Drawing a mustache on a model of the Statue of Liberty... The list went on and on. "Because of him, I've faced so many hardships..."
"Aren't those just cute pranks?" Kurusu said with a wry smile.
"He even made the flight late!" Ugen reminded her, clenching the magazine in his fist. "And did you forget? The other one... Yarai..." he continued, adopting a more serious tone as he held her gaze. A bead of sweat ran down the side of Kurusu's face as they both remembered the incident at the beach. "That kid... made some scene at Guam..."
"But... Fukui-chan said it was the soldiers who started it..." Kurusu reminded him in turn. The sight of Yarai surrounded by the beaten and unconscious bodies of all those Americans as he held the last one up by his throat had been truly frightening, but according to Torako, who had apparently witnessed the whole thing from the start of the event before hurrying to get a teacher, it had been a matter of self-defense... or at least, it had started out that way...
"I don't care. You know he has a long history of causing incidents like this... That kid is dangerous," Kokonoe-sensei said with a deep frown as he cast a surreptitious glance in the direction of Tora's seat. He didn't want her to get involved with a troublemaker like that, and he didn't like the idea that she could've been drawn into the fight if things had gotten out of hand.
Meanwhile, Yarai, who didn't know he was the topic of such a serious conversation between the teachers and wouldn't have cared much even if he did, was occupying his time by repeatedly flipping a coin in the air. The boy in the window seat next to him was sweating bullets and looked like he was on the verge of having a heart attack just from being so close to him, and the student sitting in front of him was too chicken to say anything about how he had his feet propped up against the top of his seat's headrest, even tough it clearly bothered him.
'The school trip... is just useless,' Yarai Kouichi thought while he watched the coin spin in the air, nearly bored out of his mind. 'I thought it would be fun if I went to the beach, but...' Then those stupid soldiers just had to pick a fight with him, claiming they didn't like the way he looked at them because of his sharp eyes, which, at the moment, landed on Fukui Torako, who was returning from her trip to the bathroom. She sat back down on the other side of the plane, lounged with her back against the wall, with her legs stretched out on the empty seat next to hers. She started writing or drawing something in a notebook. She was wearing a black cardigan instead of the official school sweater, but since none of the teachers said anything to her about it, she must have gotten permission. "Fuh..." he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh as he pushed his seat back into a reclining position. Fukui Torako... what a strange girl. They had only encountered each other once or twice before at school, so he was surprised when she stuck up for him, especially since she was the one who had called the teachers... But even though Kurusu-sensei had been willing to take her word, many of the other teachers still blamed him for the incident. 'Ah... Nothing has changed...' he thought, flipping the coin up into the air again. 'This insignificant... boring... world...' Yarai's eyes widened when the plane began to vibrate. "Ah?"
Tora looked up in alarm, sensing something was wrong, just in time to be slammed hard against the wall as the whole plane shook so violently that many people who weren't sitting down properly had been thrown clean across the aisles. The 'fasten seat belts' light came on belatedly. The plane jolted again, and knocked the overhead baggage compartments loose.
"!!" Tora gasped and pulled her legs out of the way just in time to avoid being hit in the shins by the hard case that fell from above. She could hear her classmates and the other passengers starting to panic.
"Uwaaah!"
"Hiii!"
"Aah!"
Baggage and rubbish from people's trays were flying all over the place. Tora furrowed her brow and frowned as she began scanning the chaos around her. She paused for a moment when her eyes connected with Yarai's, but then she moved on, continuing to assess the damage. A lot of people were hurt. The senseis were shaken, but appeared to be unharmed so far.
"Uuh... It hurts..."
"Why is the plane shaking!?"
'It's probably turbulence...' she thought, just as the shaking and rocking began to die down, though she had never experienced any this severe before, and something about the angle of the plane still felt... off. 'Did we hit an air pocket...? What's going on!?' Tora wondered silently as her frown deepened.
"Please... Please calm down..." The stewardesses were trying to soothe the frightened passengers. "Did you get hurt?"
"My... My leg..." one of her classmates cried.
"That scared me!" Tora heard one of the girls seated behind her cry. "What's happening!?"
'That's what I'd like to know...' Tora thought with a concerned frown. Something definitely wasn't right. She decided it was time to buckle up.
Meanwhile, things were even worse inside the cockpit.
"Mayday! Mayday!" the copilot screamed frantically over the radio while the pilot struggled to regain control of the plane. "This is Dainichi Airlines, flight #357... Authorities, please respond! We have an emergency! Please respond! The flight instruments... they've all gone haywire! Pilot!"
"Calm down!" the pilot, Tsuchiya Masaru, said urgently, gritting his teeth as beads of sweat streamed down his face. "The joystick is still moveable; we can maneuver the plane that way."
"Then do something!" the copilot cried.
"!!" Tora and the others gasped when the lights suddenly shut off.
"What, a black out?" she heard someone exclaim. It sounded like Sengoku.
'This can't be good!' Tora thought. That bad feeling in the pit of her stomach was growing by the second. She could barely see more than three seats ahead of her; everything else was lost in the darkness.
"...!?" one of the boys seated in front of her gasped. "Oi... the outside..." he said shakily, sounding as if he had just seen a ghost.
"Wha... What? Isn't it noon?" his friend said, dumbfounded. Tora turned to look out her own window to see why they sounded so freaked out, and her eyes widened in shock. Her jaw dropped. That's right... with the windows, they should have at least had some light from the sunshine... But, outside—up, down, and all around—everything was dark. It should have been daylight out, and even if night had somehow come early, they should have been able to see stars or something. Instead, the plane was surrounded by an endless pitch-black nothingness. It was like something straight out of the Twilight Zone! She was jostled out of her stunned stupor when the plane suddenly shook again, and rolled forward in a nosedive.
"!!!" Tora gripped the armrests of her seat tightly as she cried out in alarm along with her classmates and the rest of the passengers as they plunged through the dark.
"Kyaa!" She heard screams. It sounded like people were falling.
"Noooo!!"
"We're going to crash... going to crash!"
"Help me!"
The last thing Tora remembered was the pain she felt when something crashed into the back of her head.
{ October 4th, Day 1 }
"... kui..."
Through her foggy state of mind, Tora could feel someone shaking her.
"... Fukui-chan!"
"...?" Tora slowly opened her eyes and blinked. She was confused to find Kurusu-sensei standing over her.
"Are you all right, Fukui-chan?" Kurusu-sensei asked earnestly.
"Yes... I'm fine," Tora answered slowly, taking in her surroundings. Kokonoe-sensei was checking the students on the other side of the plane. All the lights were back on and the plane was still, so for a moment, Tora thought maybe she had dreamed the whole thing... But there was too much concern and relief mixed in her sensei's expression, and she could feel a bump on her head that ached at the touch.
"Thank goodness!" her teacher said, exhaling a sigh of relief. "In that case, I'll keep checking the others. Don't be shy if you need anything, but try to stay in your seat. We had to make an emergency landing." Tora nodded in understanding and glanced out the window next to her as Kurusu-sensei moved on. She was relieved to see something other than darkness outside it again. It must have been late in the day, because the sky was gaining an orange tint, and the light had begun to fade, but there was still enough for her to see that there was lots of greenery around them. The flora looked tropical, similar to what they had seen on Guam. They appeared to have somehow landed in the middle of a jungle.
"..." Tora furrowed her brow slightly in confusion. Was there always an island like this between Guam and Japan...? She pulled out her cell phone, turned it on, and saw that she didn't have any service bars. Despite the many questions she had, Tora kept quiet and waited patiently while she watched the reactions of the others on the plane. Most of her classmates and the other passengers were already awake, but there were still a few left who needed some poking and prodding to rouse them, and it was obvious she wasn't the only one who felt confused. The plane was humming with whispering and muttering. Apparently, a lot of people had lost consciousness before the landing, and no one seemed able to remember how it had happened. Many of her classmates had been injured, but at least no one had died. They had that much to be thankful for, at least.
"Akira! Akira-kun isn't here!" Rion said, making a fuss when she realized someone important to her was missing.
"Now that you mention it... I don't see Mariya-kun either!" Kurusu-sensei said, looking around at the rest of her class. It wasn't just them. Others turned out to be missing, too after the remaining flight attendants did a head count of all the passengers. The whole plane was buzzing with talk of the mysterious disappearances. It was dark outside now.
[This is your captain speaking,] the captain announced over the intercom. [We have landed safely, but there appears to be a number of people missing. As it would be unsafe to search an unfamiliar place like this in the dark, we will search for the missing tomorrow, if necessary. Also, the radio has been slightly damaged, but we should have it fixed in no time. We'll be able to call for help tomorrow at the latest. As I said, it is unsafe to be stumbling around in the dark out there, so we will remain on the plane for tonight. That is all.]
'Tomorrow...' Tora thought, looking out at the window at the dark jungle. 'Everything is going to happen tomorrow.'