Echoing Back (BxB)

※ 𝔼𝕡𝕚𝕤𝕠𝕕𝕖 𝕍𝕀 ※

(11.05.24)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"How come there's letters as well as numbers?" Kagan asked, holding the paper up to his face as he examined it.

I sighed, preparing myself for 3 hours of explaining, walking, and showing. When an idea hit me, our school was stingy, sure, but it was an organized stingy. "Here, pass it," I said. Kagan hesitated but gave me the paper.

"On your timetable, any given box would have the subject in the middle, the teacher you have in the top corner, and the time and class in the bottom corners," I said, pointing out the tiny letters. "But, because the school is so big, the room number has four digits; the first digit would be a letter, telling you what building it was; the second digit would tell you the floor; and the last two would tell you the room number."

Kagan nodded along, but it was clear that most of what I was saying was flying over his head. But that was fine; explaining two or three times was better than going through the entire school. I wouldn't have to show him where every single class was if he knew how to figure it out on his own.

So over the next hour, while everyone else was in class, I pointed out different boxes on his timetable and had him show me where they were. He was hopeless when we started, but he slowly got better. The pools still stumped him for a while, though, because instead of a room number for that one, it just said P. Too many freshmen turned up late for PE because of that.

I still had to show him where the bathrooms and cafeteria were, because they don't bother to put that in your timetable. Like I said, stingy. Believe it or not, I was sort of having fun. I knew that things could go horribly wrong, and all it'd take was the wrong combination of words, but in his presence, those things somehow didn't seem to matter as much. The worries were easier to push back into the recesses of my mind.

By the time we were finished, Kagan knew how to get to his classes at the very least, which was more than the freshmen could claim halfway through the school year. I'm pretty sure that means I did a good job.

The bell rang and the classroom doors swung open, a stampede of kids barrelling through, shoving and pushing each other. Kagan took a step back. "I think I should get to English then," he said.

Those words should have meant freedom; they should have meant that I had gotten through this hour of suffering and now got to enjoy the fruits of my labor, but I found that I didn't want him to go. The thought of him was scary, yes, but being face-to-face, I found that he was different from the person I imagined him to be.

He was a different person from when we were thirteen, and I liked that. But he wasn't completely different. Kagan was familiar, but he'd changed in little ways that shone a new light on my entire perspective of him. "We still have until lunch time." I said.

"Wait–really?"

I nodded. "Anywhere you want to see specifically?"

He looked up in thought. "Maybe the music room?" He asked cautiously.

As far as I knew, he didn't play any instruments, but then again, I hadn't talked to him in years, so what would I know? Although the image of him leaning into a microphone and belching out 'Just the Two of Us,' by Bill Withers and Grover Washington, hitting every note perfectly, made me feel things that I'd rather not discuss.

I led him out of the building we were in and into D block. The smallest of the four buildings in our school was reserved for the arts, which was a mashup of drama, art, and music rooms. I personally barely ever went into this building; the embarrassing memories of freshman year still too fresh to relive.