Windborne wanderers / kazuscara

2

huh? is that...

"you... you're from my school?"

"...! uh... yes... we have the same uniforms after all..."

"well, no shit. still, who are you and what are you doing here?"

"uhh, i'm here to relax."

weird. why was his face so familiar?

wait, red streaks...

"you the guy that stared me down in the hall a few months back?"

"wha— yes...? you were the one who started it, though."

"tch... does that really matter right now?"

"perhaps not."

even with that stingy attitude, kazuha could see right through him.

he was only acting tough as a force of habit.

"well, i'm planning on napping for a bit..." kazuha says, after an excruciatingly awkward pause.

"...okay..."

kunikuzushi walked away from the guy, completely forgetting about the part where neither of them knew each others' names.

kunikuzushi actually liked napping on the spot kazuha snatched. that's why he went there. but no way in hell was he going to sleep next to some stranger, so he shuffled around the forest trying to find a good place to sleep in.

"whatever, this'll do." kunikuzushi leaned against a tree, and put his headphones in.

the music, with the eclectic mixture of the rhythm of the waters, leaves fluttering to the direction of the soft, billowing wind, he was quick to relax, though less quick to fall asleep.

——

"—ey. w—e u...."

what? who and what the hell?

"wake up, sleepyhead!"

huh? that raspy voice...

"red streak...?"

tch, the dream was just getting good.

"it's 9pm already, so i figured you might want to head home..."

"9–?! shit... thanks."

as kunikuzushi was about to leave, 'red streak' grabbed him by the arm.

"...i'm kaedehara kazuha, by the way. i have a feeling we'd be meeting a lot outside of school."

what? whatever.

"i'm kunikuzushi. kuni is fine if you want to spare yourself the mouthful."

"alright, if you insist. see you tomorrow!" kazuha waved his arm around and walked off in some direction kunikuzushi was too tired to care about.

"meeting a lot outside of school? the hell is that supposed to mean? whatever..."

he walked back, a bit conflicted. that's the most sincere human interaction he's had in the year.

——

"you're late again, kunikuzushi!" the teacher slammed his desk out of frustration.

kunikuzushi, however, paid almost no mind to the teacher as his eyes averted to the left of the classroom.

kaedehara...? never noticed him in the class before...

"right, yeah, yeah, sorry teach." kunikuzushi dragged himself to his chair and slammed his head on his desk.

the teacher was too exhausted to care about his sleepy antics. this is where the teacher gives up.

boring class as usual. don't give a fuck if this onomatopoeia symbolises anything or not. and, the symbolism is pretty darn obvious. you needn't spend four periods just explaining what this sentence foreshadows in the whole poem... anyone with so much as a brain can figure that out, no?

apparently not. his classmates were fucking stupid, in his own words.

well, except for one. kazuha. at the corner of kunikuzushi's eyes, he saw kazuha distracted with another piece of seemingly more intriguing and difficult literature, and the lad seemed to have fun reading it. the teacher didn't mind either, given that he knows of kazuha's literature expertise.

since they were a mere two tables apart, kunikuzushi blatantly stood up and walked over to kazuha's table-side and crouched down.

kazuha, of course, was a bit taken aback.

"...good morning, kuni."

"mm. what's that you're reading?" he said in a quiet voice, as he still had some basic human decency in him.

"a compilation of poetry from one of my all time favourite authors. want to check it out?"

"beats whatever content the teacher's running through right now."

"i'll take that as a yes. here you go!" kazuha lends him the book.

"huh? what about you?"

"oh, don't worry. i've got a few excerpts in my bag; i can just read those."

"if you say so... thanks."

he walked back to his seat, ignoring the glares his teacher sent his way. well, teacher's gotta be glad he isn't sleeping and actually being productive.

kunikuzushi reads the poetry handed to him with a surprising amount of interest. he's never really cared much about poetry, but now that he was reading some (albeit to kill time), it was actually quite interesting.

classes just take all the fun out of reading literature by making students analyse the living shit out of it.