Disorientated Feelings (Part 8)
Today's lessons seem to involve a lot of writing of notes into the notebooks the teacher wrote, some of which are handed in to the teacher. However, each year I progress since primary school, the hiragana of words I'm familiar with have been slowly been replaced by kanji that gets more complicated as I progress through each year. To tell you the truth, I don't know when I started learning this language, but it somehow seems to be my native language by the time I know what was going on. I also seemed to have learned another that has a completely different writing system and way of pronouncing words to the extent that the ones that are being taught in schools are like a joke, but is useful only when communicating with people of other countries. Anyways, with the learning kanji that has more strokes becoming more of a necessity, my hands are getting tired from all that writing.
Too bad I can't write with both my hands, but at least I only need to enter the pronunciation for the kanji for it when using the computer in romaji or kana. Luckily the lesson before lunch today is mathematics, so it's less tiring to write, but more thinking is involved. I find it strange that my given name is written in hiragana while almost everyone else has theirs in kanji.
When lunch break arrived, the teacher asked everyone to hand their assignment books to the front where I would collect and bring those to the teacher's office.However, knowing the thickness of each assignment book multiplied by the numbers of people in my class would mean having a tall and somewhat heavy stack of books to carry. Should I carry all at once, or should I carry some and come back later? Well, almost everyone seemed to have left, collecting the books earlier already ate up time for lunch, and heading back to class to collect the rest would take up even more time. Not to mention that I have to make my way through the now-crowded corridors.
So, how do I get about carrying these all by myself at once? The teacher left when the lesson ended and is now out of sight. Looks like I have no choice but to carry them by myself so that I can quickly have lunch wi... AHH! WATCH OUT! :'(
I tripped my right leg with a table and found myself falling through the front door near it. There wasn't anyone when I started to fall, but a guy suddenly appeared in front of the door.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on top of him and that our lips made contact and my heart was beating rapidly as a result. Huh? What happened? His face is too close to tell who he is, but reminds me a lot of Hisakawa-san I met at the office of Hiroko's dad a while back. Oh wait, if I was falling forward as I was about to... Oh no, I could bring trouble to him by the other guys just because of this incident out of jealousy. I can tell that people are now already looking at us, including the few that are still in the classroom. Argh! My mind is going crazy now! What should I do?
I hurriedly got up from him, grabbing a book that was scattered around me to cover my face, and gathered the rest of books, and ran towards the teachers' room with the pile of books in front of me. Before I could get away, however, he asked for my name. That voice... it IS that Hisakawa-san that I had recently fallen over with. I deliberately replied to him in a voice that no one hears me speaks in before in order for them to not know it's me since practically everyone in school recognizes me by my usual voice. Wonder if they can still tell by my hairstyle though.
My friends have almost finished their lunch by the time I joined them.
******
I carefully made my way to the roof at the end of the day so that I can be out of sight of everyone. If I were to leave a message to him, I can't just drop him a love letter in his shoe box as his friends or people who are jealous of him over me could just grab it and not know about its contents, but there's no other way, to my knowledge, to communicate to him without others knowing. I wonder if I can use the letter of my workplace and have it typed in an official-looking letter... He must somewhat know that other language, as I recall him saying that he is good at programming. I bet someone who is looking at a letter that is written in a completely foreign language to them, but hope Hisakawa-san can understand well, would not have a second look at it. The official letter look would lower their suspicion if it being a message from me even more.
There is one small problem with this: what name should I use? It would be far too obvious if I use my real name as the signature is probably one of the first few places to see whom my letter was from. Hmm, "great granddaughter of (insert difficult-to-remember great grandpa's birth name)"? Well, my late grandfather was a foreigner... But still, it's too lengthy! (My family name came from his wife, who generously gave money for our family car recently) Yoko Takahashi? That's as good as sending an actual love letter, but I'm not sure if there's actually anyone in this city with that name. Um, I don't know...
I lied down on the ground and stared blankly at the sky, with my feet pointing towards the buildings just opposite the main school gate. (Aiko's school would be visible if I turned 90 degrees to my left.) The scene of houses or low-rise buildings in the horizon and clouds floating in the air is rather calming to look at than to seeing houses cramped together or tall buildings everywhere.I don't how how long I have been staring at the sky, but the sky had already turned orange as a result of the sun setting. That was when I heard Itsuki, talking to another guy he calls either Kenjiro or Tanigawa, talking about me as they walked between the shoe locker and the main gate:
Itsuki: "...in the music club today."
Kenjiro: "Why? What happened to you?"
Itsuki: "Promise you won't tell anyone else? Not even with our other classmates?"
Kenjiro: "What are you talking about? I'm your best friend! I would keep this matter only between ourselves. So what is it all about?"
Itsuki: "Well, I was heading towards the cafeteria during lunch earlier today and walked past class 1-1 when a girl popped out of nowhere through the front door and landed on top of me."
Kenjiro: "Oh ho ho! Was she cute? What's her name? What did she do to you?"
Itsuki: "Well, she claims to be that famous Miyazawa-san, but I can't see her face as she seems to keep covering it with one of the books that had scattered around when she fell on me and quickly ran away. When she was on me, her face was too close and I was too shocked to tell. Her voice doesn't sound like Miyazawa-san we both know, but she does have her trademark hairstyle..."
Kenjiro: "Wow! She even goes to the extent to claim that she is that goddess of ours that is the main reason why all the guys like to be in this boring school. On top of that, that girl even had her timing, location, and even the hairstyle perfect! She really have a huge crush on you and used this chance to kiss you and make it look like an accident!"
Itsuki: "The location? What do you mean? And why would she fall for a nobody like me who does poorly at grades? I barely even passed the entrance exam of this school while Miyazawa-san scores the highest ever: a perfect full score!"
Kenjiro: "Well, true, but didn't you know? Class 1-1 is Miyazawa's classroom! That girl who was pretending to be her even bothered to rush down to her classroom, waited for you to walk past the front door, and pounce on you! It's not everyday our teacher would held us back that would take up that much of our lunch break, so she picked the perfect timing and used Miyazawa-san's name so that you don't know who she really is. I'm sure you would get a love letter from her quite soon. Ah! A secret admirer! Your luck seems..."
.........What? They think that I am the girl who is pretending to be myself? I had only covered my face and use my bathroom singing voice (erm...) and they can come up with such well made deductions? Well, from Hisakawa-san's point of view of what happened, it does seem possible. However, I am that Miyazawa-san they are talking about who did it out of clumsiness, not some pretender who had everything planned perfectly.
I'm still relieved that they didn't know it was actually me, but dropping what appears to be a love letter into his shoe box is now out of the question. I have to now resort talking to him at work (but he works at a branch quite far from mine) or use that "official letter" plan I thought of earlier to have a rendezvous or other messages with him. Not sure about the other people who saw me and the people whom they told about it.
This has become such a big mess...
*****
Various versions of the rumors on what had happened that day seemed to have spread among everyone but they all have something in common: They don't know who Izumi was, they think the whole incident was intentional, and most ruled out of the possibility of me doing it.
Most girls who heard it got angry that they think that there was someone pretending to be me . The guys now seemed to be more on a photo hunting spree looking for the mysterious girl. The few classmates who saw it and myself seemed to be the only ones who know the true story. Now this is getting silly already, though it would be interesting to see how far this goes without me admitting to doing it.
I have done a letter that unless you look at it closely and understand it, it would look like an official letter of a company containing many complex words that were not taught in our foreign language classes. As for the position title, I used my given name with my late great grandfather's surname, and the official title of my job position in that language complete with my signature. Bet they weren't expecting this.
The letter says to meet me alone inside the storeroom on the 3rd floor, where the hidden entrance to the roof is, during lunch of the day after I put it in his shoe locker. I'll do so only when I'm mentally prepared for that though.
(Continued in Part 9)
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