Bura Bura Academy

Prologue: The Promise

Shiro held a pen to his chin as he thought about what to do next.

"Aren't you done yet?" questioned his best friend, Keiko. She spooned a bite of potato salad into her mouth. "How much longer?" She asked with her mouth full of food.

Shiro tuned his friend out and scribbled something in his notebook. He placed his pen back under his chin and waited for another idea to come. When it did, he wrote it down, erased it, then wrote something else. He repeated this process until he was satisfied.

After a while, the playground grew quiet. The clouds began to roll in, hiding the brightness that had them squinting their eyes moments ago.

Shiro shut his notebook and ran his fingers down the cover. To the naked eye, it was a normal blue, one hundred-page, spiral-bound notebook with doodles on the front and back cover. But to him, it was a world of heroes, monsters, and magic.

A world he made from nothing.

"Are you finished?" Keiko inched closer to him. "Can I read it now?" She questioned, leaning in and ignoring all sense of personal space. Her hair grazed the side of his face. It smelled like freshly baked bread.

Shiro's stomach growled.

Keiko eyed him with a curious expression and let out a loud cackle. She fell back and held her hand over her mouth, hiding the gap from the tooth she'd lost the day before.

She lifted Shiro's lunch-box off the ground beside him. The same one she brought him filled with delicious food day after day. She opened it and handed it to him, along with a pair of chopsticks.

Shiro took the offering with a grin and handed her the notebook, cradling it as if to not disturb the world of characters inside.

He took a bite of breaded chicken, his eyes closing on their own. The breading had long gone soft, but the flavor was like nothing he'd tasted in any restaurant here in Japan.

Keiko moved here from Spain when she was a baby. She sometimes made Japanese-inspired food for him as best she could. But it was obvious that these were not traditional flavors. He had no complaints about it, though. He enjoyed anything she made for him. Keiko was an amazing cook.

He inhaled his lunch and wiped his lips. He opened his mouth to compliment her, but stopped himself from saying a word.

He gave a playful smirk at the little girl's posture.

Keiko gripped the sides of his notebook. Her nose was right up against the pages. Her eyes glided up and down and back again. Her reddish-brown hair tossed around in all directions by the wind.

Shiro didn't dare break her concentration. There was nothing more terrifying than an annoyed Keiko.

Instead, he looked up at the fall sky and watched the golden leaves move without rhyme or reason. They reminded him a lot of his best friend. Hues of reddish-gold, dancing wildly under the slightest of winds.

"Wow!" said Keiko. Interrupting his thoughts. "You're so talented, Shiro." She said, handing him his notebook in exchange for the empty lunchbox.

Shiro smiled, admiring his work. "I want everyone to read my stories one day." He traced his name on the cover of his newest creation, admiring the illustration Keiko had drawn for him.

"You know..." Keiko began.

Shiro looked up at the girl who was on her feet now, looking out at the trees on the other side of their school's playground.

"They're opening a new high school soon." Keiko took a paper out of her pocket and laid it on Shiro's lap. "It's supposed to be a special academy for all kinds of creative students."