He was masculine despite his height. But for a guy, having pigtails on the sides for a hairstyle made him look weird. Rei ignored his rants and went straight forward. The little guy glanced at him and raised his eyebrows in shock after recognizing his face.
"Kuro-chan!" he squealed.
Having no idea he was called, Rei ignored him and kept on walking. The little guy, however, was persistent in calling him.
"Kuro-chan! Kuro-chan!"
Rei kept on ignoring him and he thought, "Who the hell is that guy calling?"
Upon noticing that they were the only ones inside the covered court, he decided to look back at the little guy.
"Thank goodness, he heard..." said the little guy. Seeing Rei up close, the little guy was certain that he was the Kuro-chan he kept mentioning.
"Long time no see, Kuro-chan!" he said enthusiastically. Rei looked confused after the sudden change in the little guy's expression. It was warm and welcoming. But the thing was, he couldn't recognize him at all. As he saw Rei scratching the right side of his head due to confusion, the little guy noticed and shouted out,"Kurogane Rei! My first friend in Todai!"
Rei gasped and wondered, "His first friend?"
The little guy kept on shouting things that were related to him, "Five years, Kuro-chan! It's been exactly five years!"
Right before he could continue spewing words, a girl arrived and scolded him.
"Nii-saaaaaaaan!! Stop screaming!"
Rei glanced behind and saw the girl and he recalled that she was the usherette before.
"That girl..." he sighed.
Covered Court Unofficial Opening Theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPqcNNj1EM&feature=youtu.be
By the way she called the little guy, Rei concluded that they were siblings. Embarrassed by her brother's actions, the girl twisted his left ear and reprimanded him.
"How many times have I told you not to wander off?"
The little guy seemed to have calmed down as he looked at the girl with a pout on his face and pleaded,"But he's a long-time friend, Konan-chan."
The girl named Konan then glanced at the professor and asked, "Do you know my brother, sensei?"
The unsure look on the professor's face was enough to confirm that he doesn't know him, so she told her brother, "He doesn't seem to agree with you, brother."
"But... but..." he insisted.
She looked at the time on a wrist watch on her left hand and told her brother, "It's getting late, bro. We still have to help mother..."
She then apologized to the professor for the commotion her brother caused and accompanied him away from the covered court. Rei saw them leave and saw the sad look on the little guy's face. One thing that bothered him was that the little guy seemed to have known a lot of things about him but he couldn't remember anything about the little guy.
"That shorty sure was weird..." he thought.
While on their way outside the university premises, Konan noticed her brother's gloomy expression and asked, "Why are you so upset about that, bro?"
The little guy chanted words she couldn't hear, so she asked him to say it again. This time, her brother stopped and repeated what he said, "That guy was Kurogane Rei, right?"
Konan nodded and asked him why he was screaming back then. Then the little guy took out a magical princess-themed wallet from his pocket and opened it. Inside was a picture taken from a Polaroid camera. It was a picture of him and a fat guy sitting beside each other. He showed it to his sister and pointed his right index finger to the fat guy.
"This is him from ten years ago..." he said.
Konan gasped as she saw the picture. Looking at it closely, she couldn't find similarities between the present professor and the fat guy.
"You might want to look at it again, bro. There's no way that this guy here is the professor, you know."
The little guy forcefully took back the picture from his sister and told her, "I knew you'd say that, sis. You wouldn't understand the feeling of meeting an old friend after several years..."
With that being said, Konan stood still as she saw her brother ran away. The image of the fat guy from the picture was still fresh in her mind, so she wondered, "Was that really the professor? But he looks so different..."
As the little guy ran further, he saw an elephant-masked mascot standing along his way. The mascot, who wanted his attention, called out his name.
"The demon's child, Akuma Kochibi!"
The little guy stopped, looked at the mascot, and wondered, "How'd you know my name?"
The mascot approached him and leaned its head on to Kochibi's and told him, "You shouldn't waste time, young lad. Rei needs you. He just doesn't know it."
Kochibi somehow recognized the mascot's voice, so he asked, "Wait a minute... Aren't you..."
But before he could finish his question, the mascot then adjusted his voice to sound like a clown and interrupted, "What are you saying? Shouldn't you be going somewhere?"
Kochibi clenched his right hand, stamped it on his left hand, and said, "That's right! That's right!"
As the little guy dashed off, the man inside the costume sighed and thought, "There's no time, Kochibi..."
Kochibi mindlessly ran away from where he left Konan. A few minutes later, he wondered why he kept on running, "Where was I going, anyway?"
He then realized that he was just running on circles and hadn't known that he already stopped at where he left his sister. Of course, Konan was still there waiting for him.
"You've exactly wasted fifteen minutes, bro! Stop screwing around and let's just go home!" she scolded.
Kochibi cringed in shame as he recalled their objective, that is to help their mom at home. Konan then twitched his ear again and dragged him like a dog.
"You idiot of a brother! Stay by my side so you won't go astray."
The little guy squeaked in pain pas they walked and said, "Ouch ouch ouch! Isn't this too harsh for someone from the student council? I could report you after all, you know!"
Without hesitation, Konan brought out the sadist in her, twitched his ear harder and said, "This is my way of disciplining my irresponsible otaku brother! Why don't you act your age already, huh bro?"
Hearing those words kept him silent for the rest of the time until they reached home. They live in a medium-sized apartment in Hongo like a typical Japanese family. It was evening at that time when Kochibi's silence caused the atmosphere to be weird. While having dinner, their mother noticed his silence and asked, "You seem to be out of energy today, Chibi-kun. What happened?"
He remembered what his sister said a while ago and replied, "I guess I'm just tired, ma..."
He made his after-meal rituals and then excused himself from the dining area and went inside his bedroom. After setting up his futon bed, he laid down and thought about what Konan said.
"Irresponsible otaku brother, huh? How long has it been since then?"
As he stretched his arms upwards, he suddenly remembered what the mascot said.
"Kuro-chan needs me but doesn't know it? What does that mean?" he wondered.
He stood up and approached the wooden cabinet at the left side of the door. It was filled with different photo albums. He then started browsing one of them where the fat guy was present.
"He needs me but doesn't know it..." he repeated.
As he scanned through a lot of pictures, he kept on repeating the same sentence over and over until he could finish looking at three albums. Konan, who was behind the door, glanced at him and thought, "He's persistent..."
Just as he was about to give up on trying to convey the message, the expression Kochibi saw on Rei's face popped out from his mind.
"He looked confused after what I said..."
And then he gasped as an idea ringed up on his head, "Don't tell me Kuro-chan has..."
Meanwhile, Isabelle took a plunge on her personal sauna at the family mansion back in France. She used the time to relax and unwind from work. However, that didn't stop her from thinking about Rei.
"One time has already passed, Rei... Will destiny be good to you or not? There's not much time left..."
A couple of minutes later, she got out from the sauna, wore a bathrobe, and went out to the porch of her bedroom. She stood still and held her silky blonde hair as the wind blew.
"Rei-kun..." she sighed.
On the following day, Rei went to school as early as usual. Since his classes that day were held during the afternoon, he had time to gallivant around the school grounds. He couldn't stop thinking about the encounter he had with the little guy, so he planned on going back to the covered court hoping to see him again.
"Was he really someone I knew five years ago?" he wondered.
He then started walking from the parking lot all the way to the entrance of the covered court. He wasn't disappointed because he saw the little guy leaning his body on to one of the entrance's columns. Likewise, Kochibi expected Rei to come, so he greeted him, "Kuro-chan..."
He smirked and corrected himself, "No... Kurogane Rei-san..."
Rei moved in closer to Kochibi and asked him, "Who are you, shorty?"
Kochibi chuckled since his name somehow means the word shorty. He then placed his left hand on the left side of his face and beamed his eyes towards Rei.
"Kuro-chan... You can't be..."
He then started laughing hysterically, making it sound evil. Rei, after seeing his gestures, looked a bit freaked out and depicted Kochibi's voice to be like a demon.
Kochibi suddenly stopped laughing and placed his hand down, but his eyes beamed even more. He approached Rei, tiptoed his feet, and leaned towards him and said, "That's my name, Kuro-chan... You just said my family name!"
Without an idea what he was talking about, Rei grossed out as he pushed him away and took a few steps backward.
"Stop doing that, seriously. Can't you just introduce yourself normally?" he asked.
Kochibi pouted for a few seconds and then he took out a photo album from his bag laid on the rubber floor. He then held it in front of his head. But before he could open it, he told Rei, "Let me show you something first..."
As the little guy flipped the cover of the photo album, the first page showed a picture of a fat guy eating a meat roll.
"Who's this?" asked Rei.
Kochibi kept silent as he flipped on to the next page. It was a picture of the same guy choking a classmate. He stole a glance at Rei to see if he could recall. Upon looking at the expression on his face, he wondered why Rei looked clueless.
After having him shown several pictures of the same guy, Rei remembered what Kochibi told him about being his first friend.
"This fatty..." he sighed.
As he browsed on to the next picture, he saw a close up on the fat guy smiling. He stared at it for some time and then his heart suddenly started throbbing. The throbbing rapidly increased as he took a look at the succeeding photos until his head started to ache. Kochibi noticed the change from Rei's expression and thought, "I can't believe it... He really did..."
Rei looked hysterical as he found the pictures striking towards him. He groaned in agony as the these pictures gradually formed a recollection in his mind. On the other hand, Isabelle had goose bumps after having dropped an expensive porcelain vase on the floor.
"How clumsy of me..." she said.
Deep in her heart was fear. Fear that something might have happened to Rei in Japan.
"Rei-kun... Hang in there..."
A few minutes later, Rei seemed to have calmed down after taking in a deep breath. He then held his hat by his left hand and smirked at the little guy.
"Akuma... Kochibi..." he muttered.
Hearing this made Kochibi grin in happiness as he rushed towards Rei to hug him and said, "I knew it, Kuro-chan! I knew something was wrong with you!"
Dealing with that stress made Rei exhausted. After regaining his composure, he asked Kochibi a favor.
"My memory seems fuzzy after what you have shown me, Chibi-chan. Now I understand why I couldn't remember the people I came across from a month ago. Something's not right. Can you help me retrieve my memories, Chibi-chan?"
Kochibi fawned after hearing his friend calling him by his nickname and he gladly accepted his favor.
"I'll do my best, Kuro-chan!"
Covered Court Unofficial Ending Theme
(Listen to this while reading the last sentences below.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3WT6EndPDw
After saying that, he was curious why Rei's memories were lacking, so he thought, "I knew it... He seems to have some sort of an amnesia..."
Daigo stood from a distance not so far from where Rei and Kochibi stood. He held the head part of the mascot costume as he observed them and said, "The recollection of memories begins, huh? Brace yourself, Kurogane Rei..."
To be continued...