Waves are one of the few constants in Kasasagi.
They come and go, time and time again, never ceasing.
Come morning, and they are there.
Come evening, and yet they persist.
Try as you might, you cannot change them. You might gather a hundred men, and they'd still be there, laughing at you for such foolishness.
Yes, foolishness. That is also abundant in Kasasagi.
We all live our tiny, meaningless lives in a city where only waves stay.
Everything else slowly, quietly fades away into a distant memory. People, places, culture... so surely, so tirelessly, all of them disappear leaving nothing but hollow spaces to mark their graves.
It's a bit like our imagination, come to think of it; our sense of adventure, our thirst for the unexplained.
We all have it when we are born.
That natural instinct to ask: "What's beyond that hill?"
But at some point, it withers within us, being replaced by cold, harsh reality where nothing of interest ever happens.
According to a book I read, there are 7 billion people on this blue marble we call Earth.
A fraction of that population is important.
Only a handful of them ever do anything meaningful with their lives.
And absolutely 0% of them ever experience something we would call supernatural.
By logic, it means that that zero percent also applies to Kasasagi.
I'm sick and tired of such city.
A city without miracles.
I don't want to live in such a dreadful place.
I'd go crazy and die of boredom if I didn't do anything about it.
I once read another book by a foreign author, and found an interesting passage there.
It said:
Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
I happen to agree.
Just because 0% of us ever witnesses something out of this world doesn't mean it's impossible.
It just means people aren't trying hard enough.
7 billion people and nobody tries hard enough.
How sad is that?
I, for one, am going to try as hard as I can.
There must be something out there.
The truth, maybe?
Whatever it is, if I devote my self, my whole being, into finding it, maybe I can do something about that depressing zero percentage.
Perhaps I can change it into 0,00000000142857%
Now wouldn't that be something?
Just how can such measly percentage make one person in this stagnant world the most important one out of all?
And there's my answer to all the boring people who keep asking me:
Why are you doing this?
Why are you wasting your life with something so silly?
Why can't you enjoy your life as an adolescent now? You can't have fun in the same way as an adult, you know.
Idiots.
Unlike them, I don't have time for fun.
See, from the moment I realized all of this, I started working.
I was working while these mindless clay golems were still playing tag in the sandlot.
My work is finding that something that'll make me the 1 out of 7 billion.
And then I'll be the first person who actually has a reason to exist.
The quote I mentioned before also had one more sentence to it.
It read:
Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
And that's why I believe.
Because if I don't, I'll never notice it even if it was staring me right in the face.
If I just believe 'that something' exists, it must be there.
That's a whole another level of faith we're talking about.
I'm not required to believe in anything.
It does not dictate my way of living.
It does not demand anything from me.
But as long as I'm willing to observe it, I'm giving it a chance to exist. A chance that I'm about to seize.
So, I gathered some like-minded people, and we set out to search for our miracle. Some believed almost as much as I did, some did not. But they all believed enough for me to tolerate them.
I'm not that good with people.
For three years I bit my tongue and tolerated all of them in the hope of catching our elusive blue bird.
I got called by a lot of names during that time.
The only one I can be proud was 'Mulder-senpai'.
I think they meant to insult me like the rest, but I found it a badge to be worn proudly.
Alas, three years is a short time, especially for a young girl.
My time in high school ended last March.
I'm on my own now. High school is a perfect place for youthful adventures as you are supported by society, but once you have to support yourself, time seems to slip away from you.
Even the people I knew drifted away, each swallowed up by what we call society.
I'm not bitter.
No, I knew this was going to happen from the very start.
That's why I made plans to accommodate my changing lifestyle.
If I can't do everything on my own anymore, I'll have to find those who are willing to carry on my torch.
I already know exactly who to pick.
And so here I am.
Standing on the rooftop of my old school, staring at the screen of my phone.
I see a faint reflection of my own, smiling face on that screen.
People used to say it looks creepy.
I wonder if those five have enough balls to say it.
Well...
We'll see it soon, won't we?
As soon as I press the send button.
Which I'll do...
Now.
Location: Azamori High - Various Classrooms
Time: 11:58 - Noon
Date: April 2nd - Monday
[BGM]
As a rule, the spring in Kasasagi City was unnaturally chilly. Students were often encouraged to keep using their winter jackets despite the start of a new term, where many wanted to show off the new accessories they had bought. Maybe it was because of the city's location right by the sea, or perhaps they were just in the path of some runaway northern wind every year. Whatever the reason, despite sun shining on full force from above, it was hard to call anything in the scenery 'warm' by any meaning of the word. Sakura petals desperately clung to the trees that seemed to have forgotten all about temperature. Wind blowing from the Seto Inland Sea had a habit of sometimes snatching the cherry blossoms away before they could even showcase their full bloom.
Luckily for the students of Azamori High School, their school still held onto its pink brilliance.
Inside each of the classrooms, only two sounds filled the otherwise quiet air. The first one was a teacher's droning voice, emptying out the bucket of information into leaky heads of teenagers sitting at their desks. The other sound came from said teenagers, their numerous pens rustling as the scribbled either notes or doodles into their notebooks. For some it was maths, for others it was geography. Whatever the subject, nothing broke the monotone march of time as it dragged forward, counted by clocks on the walls.
Inside classroom 1-3, the lesson today was English. Their teacher, a young woman in her late twenties called Miss Kugarawa, read from a novel by Isaac Asimov while occasionally stopping and asking a student to decipher what was meant by the passage she had just read. For students like Funaba Miosa or Futsuu Yuuki, this was not what counted as fun past-time. Sometimes it was even rumored that Miss Kugarawa specifically liked to torment students who had earned her ire by asking them about especially difficult passages. It was a petty grudge, but so were all grudges in high school.
On the other hand, class 2-3 was studying history; that of Japan in particular. They were going over Edo period and the concept of 'floating world' at the moment. The class was taught by an assistant teacher Kiribyuu Otogi, whose voice was almost like a whisper echoing through the sleepy classroom. It was hard to resist the urge to just lay against your desk and doze off, but so far, both Ishikawa Minato and Tashima Akemi had resisted the urge. Only two minutes to go, and they'd be free from this comfortable hell.
But worst of all had to be class 3-1, which had just had P.E. For some reason their teacher had decided the best thing to drive away the stiffness caused by cold air was to play some soccer - outside. Boys had divided into two teams and off they went, while girls stayed inside for volleyball or something similar. It was a weird feeling, to have your own sweat freeze on your skin; or at least that was what one of Fujiwara Michio's team-mates had claimed when they were finally changing back to their regular uniforms in the classroom. Speaking of which, the team where Michio had been had lost. In the opposing team was another student named Suda Rikiya, whose team-mates were celebrating their victory.
Such was life in Azamori High. Nothing was ever likely to change its course, but small moments of relief did occasionally happen.
Like when the bell finally rang, signaling that it was time for lunch break.
"Stand! Bow! Dismissed!"
In each of the three classes mentioned, the class representative's piercing yell announced momentary freedom for everyone. For a good few seconds, it was nothing but chaos. Seat arrangements were changed, lunchboxes were dug out from bags and those without such luxury raced towards cafeteria. Meal Set C was available only to the few lucky ones that were first to be on the scene; and though no one knew what the Mystery Meat included in the set was, it was good enough to cause droves of teenagers to bee-line towards cafeteria. A rare delicacy to be sure.
Amidst all this hubbub, something a bit odd happened. While it was nothing new for students to take out their cellphones or gaming devices on lunch break to enjoy some recreation after long, hard day of staring at the blackboard, it was rare for multiple students to feel a familiar vibration in their pocket at the same time. Six students, in fact. All of them fished their phones from their pockets, only to see that they had received a text message.
Text message from an address that was a true blast from the past.
Outthere7@dmail,com - It was the address of a senpai that graduated from Azamori High last March.
[BGM]
For the six students mentioned before, seeing this address was something they had never expected. It was an address they all had a connection to, memories with... most of them, if not bad, at the very least bothersome. Funaba Miosa and Futsuu Yuuki of class 1-3. Ishikawa Minato and Tashima Akemi of class 2-3. Fujiwara Michio and Suda Rikiya of class 3-1. Those were the students who received a message from this address. Each of them took a long, hard look at the screen of their phone.
The person behind this address should be, if anything, approached cautiously. Doubly so now that she was an alumni.
After all, she was Kikikaikai Shakuma - Former captain of now-disbanded X-Club and the one the whole school had known as Mulder-senpai.
A girl with vicious mind and tongue, no regard for the safety of herself or others, incapability to understand emotions or basic tact, and social skills of a recently relapsed sociopath - There was much to be said about the former supernatural-hunter extraordinaire of Azamori High. None of it good. It was not that she wasn't liked, she was entertaining after all. But on personal level, like these six had come to known her, Kikikaikai Shakuma was... something else.
And for each of these six students, seeing the address and remembering this senpai, it brought to their minds a certain sentence from the past.
- For Futsuu Yuuki, it was: "There's nothing unnatural about you. You're just naturally boring."
- For Funaba Miosa, it was: "... Suddenly, this coffee tastes bad. I think I need to switch cafes."
- For Tashima Akemi, it was: "I see you've misunderstood what we are. I think we're done here. Forever."
- For Ishikawa Minato, it was: "I suggest you send your sister to the nearest mental ward. She's delusional."
- For Fujiwara Michio, it was: "You know, you've never been nothing but dull. I think it's time to end this."
- For Suda Rikiya, it was: "Oh, that reminds me. I don't think I wanna see you again. Ever."
Nothing but unpleasant memories, to be certain.
No one could thus blame them even if it took them a few moments to push open the message. While Kikikaikai-senpai might have had her problems (Lord knows she had many problems), that did not take away the fact that she was still an acquaintance for all of them. The least they could do was to look at what she had sent them. Perhaps, now that she had graduated from high school, she had finally opened a new page in her book of life? That sounded unlikely, considering she was a mystery maniac to the bone. Perhaps she was in trouble of some sort? That would not be the first time. Maybe she had finally learned what tact means and wanted to apologize? As if.
Nevertheless, these six, one-by-one, opened their messages and peered at their contents.
There was just a single sentence written there.
Five words.
Five words that none of them of them could have predicted, considering she should have been in wherever her university was.
Yet, their meaning was irrefutable.
"I'm waiting at the rooftop."
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Originally Posted by Bird of Hermes
