(Nozomi Yoshida Is) Queen of the Swamp

Chapter 1: Nozomi Yoshida Is...

Nozomi
April 14, 2022

Let's start this story like every terrible valedictorian speech.

The dictionary defines "swamp" as "an area of low-lying, uncultivated ground where water collects".

They seem pretty disgusting at first, but underneath all that is an extremely vibrant and oddly beautiful ecosystem, teeming with life.

There's a swamp a ways behind my school. You can see it from my classroom if you know where to look: a speck of dark green and muddy brown nestled in the distance between two hills. The kids at my school have more than their fair share of legends and stories about the swamp.

A big one has to do with the ghost of a girl who was found dead there sometime in the late 1990s. One of the boys said he saw her ghost when he went there with his friends at night. Anyone who goes there since then, at least those who aren't immensely popular, usually are bound to become the subject of some form of rumor. For most, it seems the very idea of heading down to the swamp is pretty much social suicide.

For that reason, the swamp is pretty deserted day in and day out, save for the occasional fisherman looking for catfish.

And, of course, me. I'm the lone exception to the rules I just mentioned. And I don't have any regrets. I love that swamp.

So today, I'm staring longingly out the window during lunch. I eat my lunch at my classroom desk, right up against the window. Steamed rice, miso soup, grilled vegetables; my leftovers from dinner last night.

A few of my classmates eat lunch together around the room, chowing down on the foods they bought from the lunchroom, chatting away about boys and their friends and what they did last weekend and stuff like that.
And as for me, well, I eat alone. It's been that way since my freshman year of high school. I mean, it's not for lack of trying anyways, but I've never been very popular at all. I'm either too quiet or too weird, I'm never sure. Either way, everytime I try to sit with a group and befriend them, I never get further than 30 seconds with them before being asked to leave.

My sequence of thoughts is interrupted by a tap on my shoulder.

"Hey, Yoshida!" a familiar voice calls out. "Eating lunch alone again?"

I turned around and saw a familiar face to match with the voice. It's Saori Yamada, the closest thing I have to a friend here. She's tall and pretty, and relatively friendly as far as people here go.

We've been acquainted since I first moved here and went to fourth grade with her. We've been placed close together ever since, mainly because our last names are very close together. Every school ceremony or festival, every list we're on, we're both right next to each other. Because of this, we got pretty close when we were younger. We spent a considerable amount of time together throughout junior high, but as we graduated and entered high school, she got her own friend group that I wasn't a part of. I didn't bother her too much about it. You don't want to mess with a good thing.

Besides, she basically took pity on me by even bothering to associate with me in the first place. The last thing I want to do is ask her for anything.

"You're super lonely, Yoshida-san," she said, chuckling gently as she spoke. "Don't you have any friends?"

I smiled at the question a bit. I sound really pathetic, I bet.

"Nope. None at all," I responded.

"No way that can be true!" she retorted, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I mean, I saw you talking to Noshizawa last week."

"She was just asking for the answers to last night's homework."

Yamada smirked and giggled in a friendly way.

"That's Noshizawa for you. Trust me, you're not the first person she asked."

It made me laugh a little bit. Noshizawa was like that, and, well, she was always being chewed out by the teachers for it.

I took a bite of the food, unsure of what exactly to say next. This happens quite a bit, unfortunately. Trying to think of something, I ask the first question that comes to mind.

"Hey, are you doing anything this weekend?" I asked Yamada.

She looked at me, appearing lost in thought.

"Not really. How come?"

My face turned visibly red, I think she could tell that I was super embarrassed. I didn't mean to imply anything... did she think I was implying something?

"No reason at all! I promise..." I responded, very evidently sounding flustered.

Yamada nodded.

"Hey, I have to go," she said. "My friends are waiting for me. Take care!"

She waved graciously at me as she pivoted on her heels and exited the room, probably headed down to the cafeteria.

Embarrassed at my mistake, I sit down and eat my lunch in silence.

~

Math really isn't my strong suit. So when I got called on to answer a math problem, you can see why I started to panic. I couldn't feel my hands, and I was sweating bullets.

"Yoshida, could you please come up to the front and answer the problem?" our teacher, Mister Murakami, asked me. He held the chalk in the palm in his hand, motioning for me to grab it.

Good question, I thought to myself. As much as I try to study, it never seems to be enough to get me good grades on my exams.

Feeling thirty pairs of eyeballs staring me down, I stand up and make my way to the front of the class.

Taking the chalk in my hand, and looking at the huge chalkboard that stood before me, I shakily began.

I wrote down the formula that I remembered we were to use to solve these equations. I began to crunch the numbers.

Then suddenly, my mind hit a wall. No numbers came to my head. I was in a full panic now, as I wrote down the first number that came to me. Momentarily, I remembered what I was doing, erased that number, and wrote down a new one. I'm fairly sure that's the right answer.

"Please explain your process, Yoshida. It's not very organized," Murakami-sensei instructed.

Oh Lord, please, I thought. Anything but that.

"Ah, you see... well... eheh..." I stammered. My mind drew another blank, and the panic set in once again. It drew a striking similarity to those bad dreams... but this is real. I did my best to offer some form of an explanation, but I'm pretty sure anything I spoke was unintelligible.

Out of the blue, one of the girls stood up. I turned to see her. She had lush, shoulder-length, and wavy brown hair, and her skin was very bright.

And her chest, I thought. Huge.

"What I think she's saying," the girl explained. "You multiply both sides by the coefficient, then divide both sides by pi."

How?, I wondered. How is it so easy for you?! That took you, what, two seconds?

Murakami-sensei looked at me, looked at the girl, then looked back at the board. My stomach was churning, bracing myself for the humiliation of being told that I was wrong.

"Ah, I see." our teacher said. "Good job, both of you."

I breathed a sigh of relief, gingerly walking back to my seat. On the way there, I met eyes with the girl. I forgot her name. Shi-something, I think it was.

Either way, I smiled at her as I sat down.