I got back home safely the other day.
It was relatively good, but also bad, in a way. So I told my parents about it.
About the wrong subway train, about the nice lady, the running, the scary guy who almost ran me over and turned out to be a permanent close range nuisance, about the pummeled guy, and... the cigarettes.
My parents were dead laughing. My twin siblings, Kei and Kanna, were over the moon with laughter. They were on the floor. Hitting the walls. Throwing things at the roof. Yeah. They were that amused.
For a moment I thought I was the only one who understood me, but me quickly realized that the situation was actually funny, so me laugh with family too. In the end, Mom and Dad scolded me and told me to pay more attention to where I was going.
We ate our meals as usual and I retreated to my room to study some more.
But I couldn't really study. My mind was too occupied with ways to fix my bankrupt social life. It was then that I realized that I haven't spoken to anybody the whole day.
While everyone was chatting and making good (or disastrous) first impressions, I was sitting there dwelling upon the misfortunes I experienced the whole morning (plus the weewee).
I won zero brownie points that day!
I groaned.
That Kikuchi Sachie too naive, too oblivious to what would happen to her the next day, because she didn't know that she would get strangled first thing in the morning by the same scary-run-me-over guy from before. Which was happening... right now.
I struggled against his grasp.
I had just arrived at school and (thankfully) did not take the wrong train. Ha!
And then, the moment I step into school, I feel a looming silhouette behind me. And I find myself dragged away from the crowd of students and brought to the side of the school building, where probably all kinds of shady things occurred.
I had no idea that I would ever get cornered against a wall by some guy my whole life. It sounds romantic, if you remove the intense glaring and the death-wishing grip on the shoulder, which was all directed at me.
I gulped.
The scary guy—Toshinori Kazuki was his name, I think—had a monstrous grasp on me that I thought my scrawny self would be shattered by the end of this ordeal.
Kazuki's nostrils flared, and his jaw ticked. His face was up my face's own personal space, and everything felt very personal even if he said that this wasn't personal.
"Nothing personal, fugly," he murmured with a rumble.
Oh no, he said it.
He continued with a grumble, "I just wanna know... where are my cigarettes?"
YOU ARE READING
Ugly Duckling
RomanceNot everyone is beautiful. Kikuchi Sachie learned that the easy way, but the world... hasn't learned that yet.