On Yuuei's Rooftop

Chapter 2

The walk to school seemed to take less time than usual for Shouta the next day.  It was weird.  Normally the morning walk felt like hours of dread and loathing while his feet essentially dragged behind him.  For some strange reason though, the 18 minute walk seemed to pass by in an instant.  No matter the case, the bullies kept to their routine.  Pulling him aside to copy his homework answers, stealing his lunch, and giving him a little punch in the ribs before they walked to homeroom.  

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Shouta had learned how to deal with his bullies to an extent.  He didn't really mind not having a lunch, it was only one meal a day, it wasn't going to kill him.  After a few bruises on his ribs, he found out that he could wear some shirts around his waist (tied kinda like a belt) to soften the punches.  The final part of his defiance, if you could call it that, was using super big words in his homework, give that copy to the bullies to copy and then have a second, simpler version ready to turn into the teacher.  His reasoning behind the fancy words was simple, the bullies made it pitifully obvious how much intelligence they lacked.   By making his copy for them fancier, they would have to copy it down word for word, and hopefully get caught cheating.  

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Now, yes there was an easier way: beat the living daylights out of the brutes.  The only two flaws to that option were the facts that Shouta was outnumbered three to one, and that a fight would most definitely appear on his application to Yuuei.  As much as Shouta could have and would have liked to hand their ass to them.  Risking his spot at Yuuei was not a considerable option.  So he would continue this painful pattern until school let out in two weeks.  

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Unaware of his soon-to-be classmates situation, Oboro was enjoying his day as he normally would.  He switched his shoes and went to home room, sat on his desk and chatted with some classmates.  Fifteen minutes later he was in math class, and to be clear not enjoying his day as much.  Mr. Teacher (bear with me it's almost 2:30 a.m. and my creativity is dead) asked the class to take out their homework.  Oboro froze, "We had homework?!"  He whispered to the girl sitting behind him.  "Yeah, I can give you the answers real quick.  Just hurry up."

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A

He let out a sigh of relief.  Mr. Teacher usually went to the bathroom just after he asked for homework back.  'It's so weird that he does that.'  Mr. Teacher shut the door behind him as he strolled down the hallway.  Oboro hurried away at copying down answers.  The class had erupted into conversation and some other kids were also copying down homework from their friends.  The doorknob slowly turned and Oboro gave the nice girl her homework back as quick as he could.  

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The big, bold, red numbers were screaming at Oboro from the page.  "SEVENTY-THREE!!  SEVENTY THREE!!"  The chant was echoing throughout his brain.  It's not like it was a bad grade, it just wasn't his best.  The girl walked up to Oboro.  "Sorry for the seventy-three, math isn't where i get good grades ya know?"  Forcing a chuckle, Oboro replied: "Don't worry!  It's better than the zero I would've gotten otherwise."  They laughed, " My name's Fukukado by the way."  "I'm Shirakumo."

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At yet another school, a future radio star was growing more and more desperate to escape middle school.

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A/N

welp, I did it, idk what I think about it.  It was hard to choose a closing to that, I might change it later. Anyways, constructive criticism is welcome and I hope you liked chapter 2

- Circus <3

(published 4/20/22)