kashiwrites (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kashiwrites) wrote2007-11-03 06:43 pm
kashiwrites) wrote2007-11-03 06:43 pm
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NaNoWriMo 2007 - Anime-style Story (Sequel to 2005) - Chapter 1
Prequel to this story, NaNo2005, can be found here
Chapter 1
Toshi and Miaki Nakamura stood in the doorway of the dining hall, and looked over the new term’s student body of the Institute for Space and Cyber Exploration (technically abbreviated “ISCE,” and sometimes “ICE,” and pronounced “ice” by those most intimately familiar with the school).
The cousins had arrived on one of the latest shuttles of the day, and had checked into their dormitory rooms before coming to the hall for the evening meal. This had been a deliberate strategy on their part, as they hoped to slip in relatively unobtrusively, if possible. They hoped that the start of a whole new school year would mean they could kind of get back to normal, after the madhouse (Toshi’s description) of the second half of last year’s term. Everyone had had a summer off, and hopefully all the returning students would have gotten everything out of their system now, and settled down.
There had been good reason for the madhouse; even Toshi admitted that. The two young men, and four of their friends, had in fact saved the world at the end of first-term last year.
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Toshi and Miaki Nakamura stood in the doorway of the dining hall, and looked over the new term’s student body of the Institute for Space and Cyber Exploration (technically abbreviated “ISCE,” and sometimes “ICE,” and pronounced “ice” by those most intimately familiar with the school).
The cousins had arrived on one of the latest shuttles of the day, and had checked into their dormitory rooms before coming to the hall for the evening meal. This had been a deliberate strategy on their part, as they hoped to slip in relatively unobtrusively, if possible. They hoped that the start of a whole new school year would mean they could kind of get back to normal, after the madhouse (Toshi’s description) of the second half of last year’s term. Everyone had had a summer off, and hopefully all the returning students would have gotten everything out of their system now, and settled down.
There had been good reason for the madhouse; even Toshi admitted that. The two young men, and four of their friends, had in fact saved the world at the end of first-term last year.
When stated so bluntly, it sounded like megalomania of the highest order. Yet it wasn’t at all an exaggerated or grandiose claim. Miaki and Toshi, along with their friends Jin, Julie, Kenji, and Chika, had uncovered a plot by several high officials in the Pacific Rim government to take over the world, with the aid of several extremely advanced Virtual Reality simulations in the files of ICE itself. The six students, travelling through these simulations and uncovering just how vast the conspiracy was, had broadcast all their discoveries to every news system on the planet, and the conspiracy had been uprooted and cleaned up. Two teachers at ICE itself had been imprisoned.
As had been Kazuo Tanaka, a high official in the Military department of the Pacific Rim government. A man who, in fact, was Kenji’s own father. And, even more tragically, the man who had murdered Miaki’s father a year before, by sending a killing force through the man’s own Virtual Reality system when he had accidentally stumbled on information relating to the conspiracy, while innocently researching for a novel he was writing.
Second term, last year, had been tumultuous. Both Miaki and Kenji had had to find the time and emotional resources to deal with what had happened to their fathers, and also deal with the uncertain relationship the two young men had with each other as a result. But on top of that, the six students were famous after what they had uncovered. They hardly got a moment’s peace from their fellow students – adulation, praise, hero-worship, constant questions, constant requests to re-tell parts or all of the tale, a little envy here and there – oh, they had run the whole gamut of reactions. They had begun to long for the days when they’d been relatively anonymous. (Not that Miaki had ever really been that; his reputation for brilliance had preceded his arrival at the school for his first-year, and he truly stood out, even in a school of routinely brilliant students.)
Thank goodness the location of ICE itself was completely unknown to almost anyone but its founder, Mr. Ian Woon. (Even the shuttles were programmed and controlled from the school, so no one could lift any data from them to try to find out where the school was situated in the world.) So at least the six famous students had had peace from the importunements of journalists or others wanting to take advantage of their notoriety. They agreed that they’d all likely have gone completely mad if they’d had to deal with that on top of everything else. Though they could only imagine the deluge of interview requests that Mr. Woon’s secretary (secretaries?) had had to deal with during that term, and turn down on the students’ behalf.
Mr. Woon had been immensely supportive all the way, as it turned out. He’d had the wisdom to recognize that although he could deny interview requests from reporters, he probably shouldn’t deny requests from high government officials. But he never allowed such interviews to take place without his own presence, and usually that of one or two trusted teachers from the school, and often the parents or a supporting relative of the student being interviewed. No one would be allowed to intimidate or unduly grill any of his students while they were in his charge.
It had been hard to concentrate on their second-term studies which were, of course, what the six students were there for in the first place. And this malady affected their fellow students as well. Even when an effort was made to get back to normal, the entire school year had already been flavoured by the exploits of the six, so it had been good to have the three-month break, and get everyone’s heads completely away from that atmosphere.
Somehow, Mr. Woon had even managed to keep most journalists away from them over the summer, and had miraculously shown up half an hour before any government official arrived to try to interview one of them in private.
If the six of them had thought the Pacific Rim conspiracy was intricate and complex, they joked among themselves that Mr. Ian Woon’s network made that conspiracy look like the work of amateurs. Good thing he was one of the Good Guys.
Now they were back at ICE, hopefully to get back on track with a normal life. Miaki and Toshi stood in the shadowed doorway and looked around the large room. It was unlike any regular school cafeteria or dining room. In fact, their friend Julie (one of “The Six,” as they’d come to be called) referred to it as the “airport lounge.” Round tables that could seat six were set all about the room, encircled by leather-upholstered chairs. Upon each table was a four-pronged arch, with a lamp set into it, and with room for a plate or other dish underneath it. The whole mood was very subdued, and a little posh.
The room itself was subtly illuminated (or at least, that was the theory) by small recessed lights in the ceiling. But the main lighting actually came from the long wall opposite the doorway, which was entirely taken up by a screen portraying a scene of the planet Jupiter with its faint rings, and its moons slowly revolving around it.
The cousins surveyed it in silence for a moment.
Then Miaki stirred. “It makes the lighting in here rather...orange,” he remarked.
“Makes it very orange,” Toshi nodded his head. “A bit like Mars, last year. I’d have preferred a blue room this year, with Saturn.”
“It’s like they’re cycling through the planets each year.”
“They are,” Toshi nodded his head again. “My first year, it was Venus, and everything looked kind of yellowish-pinkish. Everyone looked a bit sick all year.”
“Whereas last year,” Miaki’s lips twitched, “they looked sunburned.”
“And next year they’ll all look cold, when Saturn comes to town. All those blue lips and white skin.”
“So, where should we sit?” Miaki wondered, his gaze moving across the tables full of noisy students. “It’s pretty full.”
There was one more day before the first day of the new term, but most of the student body seemed to have arrived already. The exuberance of the returning students getting reacquainted made the place rather loud. Though they could see quiet tables here and there, where first-years congregated, hunched in on themselves, watching the other tables and feeling really out of place.
“That was you, last year,” Toshi grinned, pointing to one of those tables.
“I wasn’t that bad,” Miaki shook his head.
“No. You were a lot worse,” his cousin laughed.
It was true, of course. Miaki had arrived here a year later than Toshi, needing that year to recover from finding his father dead on the floor the previous summer, after returning from his high school graduation. Even after that year, he hadn’t exactly been “recovered,” but had arrived here turned completely in on himself, grimly determined to use ICE’s facilities to find out who had murdered his father. Describing him as “sullen and uncommunicative” would have been an understatement.
But it had been the things he discovered, while trying to learn who the murderer was, that had eventually led him and the others to unearth the larger conspiracy, of which his father’s murder was only one element.
He had also gained four new friends, apart from his cousin. And while he was nowhere near as exuberant as Toshi, he no longer hated the world, and had almost returned to the pleasant, kind-hearted person he had been before his father’s death.
“I wonder if Kenji’s here yet,” he murmured.
“That’s easy. Just look for serious orange – there he is,” Toshi pointed, to a table a little off to the side and close to the far wall, near the edge of Jupiter’s rings. “And it looks like – yes, all the others are there too.”
They were indeed. Apart from Kenji (who had been glaringly visible from behind, because of his bright orange hair), they could now see Julie standing up and waving to them. Chika was peering around her toward the door, and they could just see the edge of Jin’s arm as she, being the shortest, was almost completely obscured behind Kenji.
“I guess we’ve found a table,” Miaki smiled as he started over, Toshi trailing in his wake. The light made the tips of Miaki’s dark brown hair flash with auburn glints, while Toshi’s short, spiky blond hair turned reddish gold under Jupiter’s influence.
A couple of other third-years hollared from a table on the left as they passed it, “Hey, Toshi! Stop over when you get a minute!” The call was repeated at another table farther away, as people began to notice the cousins walking through.
“There they are!” they heard someone else say. “I wonder if they did anything spectacular in the summer.”
Toshi muttered, “If you call hiding out by the swimming pool most of the summer ‘spectacular’.” Miaki laughed.
The news of their arrival was obviously spreading, as heads turned and people waved or made comments to their neighbours. And another whisper began to spread, from table to table, as the first-years started realizing who these two people were.
“That’s him!” they heard as they passed a table full of newcomers. “The one who caught the conspirators!”
A gasp. “Really?”
“I recognize both of them! From the news!”
More heads turned. Some, at tables farther away, stood up, craning their necks. Most conversations stopped, except for the whispered ones, people watching them, people nudging others in the next chair, people pointing.
“Well,” Miaki said, casting a wry glance at his companion, “if we thought we could sneak in by coming in late, I think we made a mistake.”
“Gosh,” said Toshi. “Ya think?” He began to bow extravagantly, especially to the tables of first-years, drawing groans (and a few bits of thrown food) from the upper year students as he wended his way in and around tables.
Miaki, while no longer quite the surly hermit he had been last year, still didn’t enjoy being in the spotlight, so he pressed doggedly on toward his friends’ table, knowing that Toshi would eventually make his way there too, even if he fell behind a bit while cavorting in the spotlight.
Julie came toward him now. She was dressed, as so often, in her purple tights, with the diaphanous multi-coloured tunic on top, the purple streaks in her dark hair turning a rather muddy-looking brown in the orange light of the dining hall.
“Need rescuing?” she asked with a grin.
“Don’t I always?” Miaki replied sardonically, making her laugh.
“Come on, then. Hopefully they won’t surround our table.”
She slipped her arm through his – something she wouldn’t have dared have to for much of last year, but which their shared adventures now made a much more comfortable thing to do – and led him the last few feet toward the table.
Even then they didn’t escape altogether. A young gentleman with blue hair stepped in front of Julie and said, “Hey there! So you’re back.”
“Well, of course I am,” she retorted. “Where else would I be?”
“Want to partner up in the VR exercises again this year?” he asked.
“Sure, that would be fun.”
“Great. Hi, Miaki,” the young man added cheerfully. “I’ll see you later, Julie.” And off he went to another table.
Miaki remarked, “I see Akio is still sweet on you.”
“Oh, shutup,” Julie sniffed, then smiled at him, eyes twinkling. “We’re good friends. That’s all.”
“Of course you are,” Miaki agreed, and she punched him in the arm.
Chika, the fourth-year South American Alliance student, smiled broadly at him from the opposite side, the two orange vertical stripes painted down one cheek almost glowing in the matching light from behind her, glints of bronze shining from her short dark hair. “Hey there,” she said.
Across the table from her, just in front of where Miaki stood, sat Kenji Tanaka, who smiled up at him a little tentatively. Miaki put a hand on his shoulder and smiled back, then looked across the table at Jin.
“You cut your hair,” he blurted in surprise.
The short, slight girl flushed, laughing a little. Her hair wasn’t short by any means, brushing her shoulders as it did, but he’d been expecting the same long, straight fall down to her mid-back. And she wasn’t wearing her usual plain white blouse like she did last year, either; this evening she sported a bright blue sweater.
“It is allowed, you know,” she said.
Miaki laughed. “Yes, sorry. I was just surprised, that’s all. It looks nice.”
“There, see?” Julie said to Jin, as though continuing a previous conversation, “I told you he’d notice.”
Jin’s face coloured again, below her glasses (which hadn’t changed), and she murmured, “Well, we’ll see if Toshi does.”
“See if Toshi does what?” said that very person, finally approaching the table. “Hey, Jin, great hair! So, what is it I’m supposed to be doing?”
He raised his eyebrows as everyone laughed. “Just sit down, Tosh,” said Miaki comfortably, sliding into the chair between Jin and Kenji.
Toshi took the remaining chair between Kenji and Julie. “I am starving!” he exclaimed, pulling a plate from a recessed slot under the table in front of him. He shoved it under the lamp in the centre of the table, and began furiously pressing buttons on the keypad on one of the lamp arms. “I think I’m going North American, here – steak, potatoes, the whole thing. I could eat a horse. So, how are you all? Did you have a good summer?”
He actually knew the answer to the question, since there had been plenty of messaging back and forth among them all. Naturally they had other friends, both at home and here at ISCE, but there was a bond among these six that seemed to transcend most other friendships, after what they’d been through together last year.
Julie mused, “I’m trying to think of any important news you don’t already know.”
“You heard about me and Yashin?” Chika asked the newcomers, returning to her own supper.
“Getting engaged?” Toshi answered, pulling his own heavily laden plate toward him. “Yes, Julie emailed us. Just last week, right? Congratulations.”
Yashin was a Russian student who had graduated last year. He and Chika had worked on some projects together in the second term, and things had developed naturally over the summer.
“Anything else new?” Toshi continued, turning his gaze around the table. When there was no reply, he jammed a fork into his large steak, and began to cut it, remarking, “We’re a boring group, suddenly, aren’t we?”
“This,” said Julie, “can be a nice way to be sometimes.”
“Except...,” Kenji suddenly ventured. “I might have some news, actually. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell, so I thought I’d ask the rest of you what you thought.”
“What?” Toshi perked up. “You engaged too?”
Miaki interjected quietly, “What’s wrong, Kenj? What’s happened?”
The others stared at him in surprise before turning to peer at Kenji. But Miaki appeared to be right: the red-haired young man had his shoulders hunched up a bit, as though wishing he could disappear. This was not a good sign.
“It...it might be nothing...maybe I just imagined...”
“Kenji,” Miaki said gently. “Just tell us. If there’s a problem, you know we’ll help.” This was another change, since this time last year. From being almost Kenji’s enemy when they’d been new students, Miaki had gradually adopted an almost protective attitude toward his fellow student. They’d done a lot of healing together, second term.
Kenji shrugged a little, darting a glance at him and then lowering his eyes again uncomfortably. “It’s just,” he began. “It’s just that...I went to see my father in jail a couple of days ago, before school, and...”
“Oh no,” Julie responded tartly. “Did he start saying awful things again? I’d like to go in there and give him some good smacks, Kenj. You know that whatever he said, it’s not true. You don’t have to believe anything he ever says about you – “
“I know that. It – it wasn’t exactly about me.” The young man’s miserable frown was alarmingly familiar to the others.
“Let me guess.” Miaki’s tone was sardonic. He pushed his own plate under the lamp and began touching the keypad. “He said things about me.”
“He...well, he did mention you,” Kenji admitted, darting another glance. “But it wasn’t so much what he said, as it was...his attitude.”
“What do you mean?” Chika frowned.
“I tried to figure it out, and couldn’t put a finger on it at first. But it hit me just as I woke up this morning.” He turned his gaze around the table. “You guys, he...he was acting like he wasn’t defeated at all. He...for some reason, he still thinks he’s going to win. And now I’m scared again.”
As had been Kazuo Tanaka, a high official in the Military department of the Pacific Rim government. A man who, in fact, was Kenji’s own father. And, even more tragically, the man who had murdered Miaki’s father a year before, by sending a killing force through the man’s own Virtual Reality system when he had accidentally stumbled on information relating to the conspiracy, while innocently researching for a novel he was writing.
Second term, last year, had been tumultuous. Both Miaki and Kenji had had to find the time and emotional resources to deal with what had happened to their fathers, and also deal with the uncertain relationship the two young men had with each other as a result. But on top of that, the six students were famous after what they had uncovered. They hardly got a moment’s peace from their fellow students – adulation, praise, hero-worship, constant questions, constant requests to re-tell parts or all of the tale, a little envy here and there – oh, they had run the whole gamut of reactions. They had begun to long for the days when they’d been relatively anonymous. (Not that Miaki had ever really been that; his reputation for brilliance had preceded his arrival at the school for his first-year, and he truly stood out, even in a school of routinely brilliant students.)
Thank goodness the location of ICE itself was completely unknown to almost anyone but its founder, Mr. Ian Woon. (Even the shuttles were programmed and controlled from the school, so no one could lift any data from them to try to find out where the school was situated in the world.) So at least the six famous students had had peace from the importunements of journalists or others wanting to take advantage of their notoriety. They agreed that they’d all likely have gone completely mad if they’d had to deal with that on top of everything else. Though they could only imagine the deluge of interview requests that Mr. Woon’s secretary (secretaries?) had had to deal with during that term, and turn down on the students’ behalf.
Mr. Woon had been immensely supportive all the way, as it turned out. He’d had the wisdom to recognize that although he could deny interview requests from reporters, he probably shouldn’t deny requests from high government officials. But he never allowed such interviews to take place without his own presence, and usually that of one or two trusted teachers from the school, and often the parents or a supporting relative of the student being interviewed. No one would be allowed to intimidate or unduly grill any of his students while they were in his charge.
It had been hard to concentrate on their second-term studies which were, of course, what the six students were there for in the first place. And this malady affected their fellow students as well. Even when an effort was made to get back to normal, the entire school year had already been flavoured by the exploits of the six, so it had been good to have the three-month break, and get everyone’s heads completely away from that atmosphere.
Somehow, Mr. Woon had even managed to keep most journalists away from them over the summer, and had miraculously shown up half an hour before any government official arrived to try to interview one of them in private.
If the six of them had thought the Pacific Rim conspiracy was intricate and complex, they joked among themselves that Mr. Ian Woon’s network made that conspiracy look like the work of amateurs. Good thing he was one of the Good Guys.
Now they were back at ICE, hopefully to get back on track with a normal life. Miaki and Toshi stood in the shadowed doorway and looked around the large room. It was unlike any regular school cafeteria or dining room. In fact, their friend Julie (one of “The Six,” as they’d come to be called) referred to it as the “airport lounge.” Round tables that could seat six were set all about the room, encircled by leather-upholstered chairs. Upon each table was a four-pronged arch, with a lamp set into it, and with room for a plate or other dish underneath it. The whole mood was very subdued, and a little posh.
The room itself was subtly illuminated (or at least, that was the theory) by small recessed lights in the ceiling. But the main lighting actually came from the long wall opposite the doorway, which was entirely taken up by a screen portraying a scene of the planet Jupiter with its faint rings, and its moons slowly revolving around it.
The cousins surveyed it in silence for a moment.
Then Miaki stirred. “It makes the lighting in here rather...orange,” he remarked.
“Makes it very orange,” Toshi nodded his head. “A bit like Mars, last year. I’d have preferred a blue room this year, with Saturn.”
“It’s like they’re cycling through the planets each year.”
“They are,” Toshi nodded his head again. “My first year, it was Venus, and everything looked kind of yellowish-pinkish. Everyone looked a bit sick all year.”
“Whereas last year,” Miaki’s lips twitched, “they looked sunburned.”
“And next year they’ll all look cold, when Saturn comes to town. All those blue lips and white skin.”
“So, where should we sit?” Miaki wondered, his gaze moving across the tables full of noisy students. “It’s pretty full.”
There was one more day before the first day of the new term, but most of the student body seemed to have arrived already. The exuberance of the returning students getting reacquainted made the place rather loud. Though they could see quiet tables here and there, where first-years congregated, hunched in on themselves, watching the other tables and feeling really out of place.
“That was you, last year,” Toshi grinned, pointing to one of those tables.
“I wasn’t that bad,” Miaki shook his head.
“No. You were a lot worse,” his cousin laughed.
It was true, of course. Miaki had arrived here a year later than Toshi, needing that year to recover from finding his father dead on the floor the previous summer, after returning from his high school graduation. Even after that year, he hadn’t exactly been “recovered,” but had arrived here turned completely in on himself, grimly determined to use ICE’s facilities to find out who had murdered his father. Describing him as “sullen and uncommunicative” would have been an understatement.
But it had been the things he discovered, while trying to learn who the murderer was, that had eventually led him and the others to unearth the larger conspiracy, of which his father’s murder was only one element.
He had also gained four new friends, apart from his cousin. And while he was nowhere near as exuberant as Toshi, he no longer hated the world, and had almost returned to the pleasant, kind-hearted person he had been before his father’s death.
“I wonder if Kenji’s here yet,” he murmured.
“That’s easy. Just look for serious orange – there he is,” Toshi pointed, to a table a little off to the side and close to the far wall, near the edge of Jupiter’s rings. “And it looks like – yes, all the others are there too.”
They were indeed. Apart from Kenji (who had been glaringly visible from behind, because of his bright orange hair), they could now see Julie standing up and waving to them. Chika was peering around her toward the door, and they could just see the edge of Jin’s arm as she, being the shortest, was almost completely obscured behind Kenji.
“I guess we’ve found a table,” Miaki smiled as he started over, Toshi trailing in his wake. The light made the tips of Miaki’s dark brown hair flash with auburn glints, while Toshi’s short, spiky blond hair turned reddish gold under Jupiter’s influence.
A couple of other third-years hollared from a table on the left as they passed it, “Hey, Toshi! Stop over when you get a minute!” The call was repeated at another table farther away, as people began to notice the cousins walking through.
“There they are!” they heard someone else say. “I wonder if they did anything spectacular in the summer.”
Toshi muttered, “If you call hiding out by the swimming pool most of the summer ‘spectacular’.” Miaki laughed.
The news of their arrival was obviously spreading, as heads turned and people waved or made comments to their neighbours. And another whisper began to spread, from table to table, as the first-years started realizing who these two people were.
“That’s him!” they heard as they passed a table full of newcomers. “The one who caught the conspirators!”
A gasp. “Really?”
“I recognize both of them! From the news!”
More heads turned. Some, at tables farther away, stood up, craning their necks. Most conversations stopped, except for the whispered ones, people watching them, people nudging others in the next chair, people pointing.
“Well,” Miaki said, casting a wry glance at his companion, “if we thought we could sneak in by coming in late, I think we made a mistake.”
“Gosh,” said Toshi. “Ya think?” He began to bow extravagantly, especially to the tables of first-years, drawing groans (and a few bits of thrown food) from the upper year students as he wended his way in and around tables.
Miaki, while no longer quite the surly hermit he had been last year, still didn’t enjoy being in the spotlight, so he pressed doggedly on toward his friends’ table, knowing that Toshi would eventually make his way there too, even if he fell behind a bit while cavorting in the spotlight.
Julie came toward him now. She was dressed, as so often, in her purple tights, with the diaphanous multi-coloured tunic on top, the purple streaks in her dark hair turning a rather muddy-looking brown in the orange light of the dining hall.
“Need rescuing?” she asked with a grin.
“Don’t I always?” Miaki replied sardonically, making her laugh.
“Come on, then. Hopefully they won’t surround our table.”
She slipped her arm through his – something she wouldn’t have dared have to for much of last year, but which their shared adventures now made a much more comfortable thing to do – and led him the last few feet toward the table.
Even then they didn’t escape altogether. A young gentleman with blue hair stepped in front of Julie and said, “Hey there! So you’re back.”
“Well, of course I am,” she retorted. “Where else would I be?”
“Want to partner up in the VR exercises again this year?” he asked.
“Sure, that would be fun.”
“Great. Hi, Miaki,” the young man added cheerfully. “I’ll see you later, Julie.” And off he went to another table.
Miaki remarked, “I see Akio is still sweet on you.”
“Oh, shutup,” Julie sniffed, then smiled at him, eyes twinkling. “We’re good friends. That’s all.”
“Of course you are,” Miaki agreed, and she punched him in the arm.
Chika, the fourth-year South American Alliance student, smiled broadly at him from the opposite side, the two orange vertical stripes painted down one cheek almost glowing in the matching light from behind her, glints of bronze shining from her short dark hair. “Hey there,” she said.
Across the table from her, just in front of where Miaki stood, sat Kenji Tanaka, who smiled up at him a little tentatively. Miaki put a hand on his shoulder and smiled back, then looked across the table at Jin.
“You cut your hair,” he blurted in surprise.
The short, slight girl flushed, laughing a little. Her hair wasn’t short by any means, brushing her shoulders as it did, but he’d been expecting the same long, straight fall down to her mid-back. And she wasn’t wearing her usual plain white blouse like she did last year, either; this evening she sported a bright blue sweater.
“It is allowed, you know,” she said.
Miaki laughed. “Yes, sorry. I was just surprised, that’s all. It looks nice.”
“There, see?” Julie said to Jin, as though continuing a previous conversation, “I told you he’d notice.”
Jin’s face coloured again, below her glasses (which hadn’t changed), and she murmured, “Well, we’ll see if Toshi does.”
“See if Toshi does what?” said that very person, finally approaching the table. “Hey, Jin, great hair! So, what is it I’m supposed to be doing?”
He raised his eyebrows as everyone laughed. “Just sit down, Tosh,” said Miaki comfortably, sliding into the chair between Jin and Kenji.
Toshi took the remaining chair between Kenji and Julie. “I am starving!” he exclaimed, pulling a plate from a recessed slot under the table in front of him. He shoved it under the lamp in the centre of the table, and began furiously pressing buttons on the keypad on one of the lamp arms. “I think I’m going North American, here – steak, potatoes, the whole thing. I could eat a horse. So, how are you all? Did you have a good summer?”
He actually knew the answer to the question, since there had been plenty of messaging back and forth among them all. Naturally they had other friends, both at home and here at ISCE, but there was a bond among these six that seemed to transcend most other friendships, after what they’d been through together last year.
Julie mused, “I’m trying to think of any important news you don’t already know.”
“You heard about me and Yashin?” Chika asked the newcomers, returning to her own supper.
“Getting engaged?” Toshi answered, pulling his own heavily laden plate toward him. “Yes, Julie emailed us. Just last week, right? Congratulations.”
Yashin was a Russian student who had graduated last year. He and Chika had worked on some projects together in the second term, and things had developed naturally over the summer.
“Anything else new?” Toshi continued, turning his gaze around the table. When there was no reply, he jammed a fork into his large steak, and began to cut it, remarking, “We’re a boring group, suddenly, aren’t we?”
“This,” said Julie, “can be a nice way to be sometimes.”
“Except...,” Kenji suddenly ventured. “I might have some news, actually. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell, so I thought I’d ask the rest of you what you thought.”
“What?” Toshi perked up. “You engaged too?”
Miaki interjected quietly, “What’s wrong, Kenj? What’s happened?”
The others stared at him in surprise before turning to peer at Kenji. But Miaki appeared to be right: the red-haired young man had his shoulders hunched up a bit, as though wishing he could disappear. This was not a good sign.
“It...it might be nothing...maybe I just imagined...”
“Kenji,” Miaki said gently. “Just tell us. If there’s a problem, you know we’ll help.” This was another change, since this time last year. From being almost Kenji’s enemy when they’d been new students, Miaki had gradually adopted an almost protective attitude toward his fellow student. They’d done a lot of healing together, second term.
Kenji shrugged a little, darting a glance at him and then lowering his eyes again uncomfortably. “It’s just,” he began. “It’s just that...I went to see my father in jail a couple of days ago, before school, and...”
“Oh no,” Julie responded tartly. “Did he start saying awful things again? I’d like to go in there and give him some good smacks, Kenj. You know that whatever he said, it’s not true. You don’t have to believe anything he ever says about you – “
“I know that. It – it wasn’t exactly about me.” The young man’s miserable frown was alarmingly familiar to the others.
“Let me guess.” Miaki’s tone was sardonic. He pushed his own plate under the lamp and began touching the keypad. “He said things about me.”
“He...well, he did mention you,” Kenji admitted, darting another glance. “But it wasn’t so much what he said, as it was...his attitude.”
“What do you mean?” Chika frowned.
“I tried to figure it out, and couldn’t put a finger on it at first. But it hit me just as I woke up this morning.” He turned his gaze around the table. “You guys, he...he was acting like he wasn’t defeated at all. He...for some reason, he still thinks he’s going to win. And now I’m scared again.”
Chapter 2