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2- Arrival

You see, I didn't give much thought into Hachiro's story at all. But well, that changed quite a bit the next day.

I had woken up very tired as my night was interrupted by my little sister who made it clear she won't let me sleep by deciding to vomit on my bed. I literally had to hold back foul curses as I washed my sheets in bitter frustration. In the morning I saw that Hachiro had left me a message saying he's going to skip school because he wanted to catch up on some classes he missed. I didn't really believe that story as he hasn't missed any classes so far but then realized that he hadn't finished a week's worth of math homework. Ah, sad guy. I would have helped him but my parents are not ones to let me skip school under any circumstances. They'd send my corpse in a coffin to school if I died.

I myself was a couple of minutes late to school that day since I was painfully slow at getting ready, thanks to the aftereffects of only several hours of sleep. When I did reach my classroom the first person I noticed was Gisa, another person in my circle of close friends. She was squinting at something in the notice board on classroom door and didn't look happy at all. I walked up to her and was about to say hi but she spoke first.

"Good morning man. What do you think of the new kid?" She said, not bothering to look at me.

"...Good morning. New kid? Umm... you do realize that I just arrived at school, right? Are you ok? You have that i-want-to-kill-everything expression on your face." I put my bag pack down on the shelf next to the board and rummaged through the contents to see if I remembered to bring my geometry box.

"You aren't one to talk. You don't sound so happy yourself." Gisa sighed, stepping away from the door. "I'm not feeling well. I caught a fever the other day but I haven't recovered yet".

"Ah, so that explains why you were absent yesterday", I muttered as I found no geometry box in my bag. Damn it.

Let me tell you a bit about Gisa. She was one of those friends who I would hang out with to rant out my problems and talk about how annoying the world is and lighten up each other with badly timed jokes that no one else may find funny (except my other friends of course). She absolutely adored puns and has a sixth sense of coming up with them. Come to think of it, she's the one responsible for that part in my head that just hunts for puns to come up with. The part about her that reminded me most of myself was however, her anger. She's not exactly a sweet person when she's pissed and makes sure to outwardly express some form of her displeasure. It really reminded me of how I used to fume when I was little. Actually....I still do that.

That day, it was pretty clear that she wasn't in a good mood so I decided not to bother her with any more conversation. We entered the classroom silently and I walked over to my desk to notice the unfamiliar face belonging to the student sitting beside me. He was glancing at his desk in a confused fashion as he carefully arranged his pens on the table.

Ohhh, so this was the new guy Gisa was talking about, I thought to myself. I realized I was staring and hastily attempted to look away when he spoke.

"Is it a common thing to scrawl inappropriate content on the desks with permanent markers here?" His sarcastic tone reflected the mock surprise on his face as he looked at me with his hands on his head.

I couldn't help but chuckle a bit.

"Actually yes. Not that the staff and especially the janitors enjoy trying to clean it up but oh well. Most students don't really give a damn."

He grinned at my response.

"Ah I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Malcolm Johns and as of today, I'm going to be your classmate. Hopefully I'll also be good friends with you unless you turn out to be a sadistic serial killer. If so, that would seriously suck."

I looked at his outstretched hand for a few seconds then shook it with another chuckle. This guy doesn't seem so bad. He did have a good sense of humor to say the least.

"Nice to meet you Malcolm. My name is Dean Merton. I'll let you be my friend but it's up to you to figure out if I'm a killer or not. Enjoy your time here". I flashed him a genuine smile before I sat down on my chair and covered my face with my hands, trying to think of a legitimate excuse for forgetting my Geometry box.

Later that day, I joined Gisa and my good buddy Saleem during lunch. I had just endured a savage lecture from my math teacher for being a forgetful ass but my frustration vanished at the sight of Saleem trying to sing a screamo version of "pumped up kicks" while swallowing down his lasagna. Gisa seemed to be in a much better mood and we were having quite a lot of fun. Normally we would have been accompanied by Hachiro but alas, the bastard was probably huddled miserably with the math textbook at the time.

When lunch-time came to an end, all three of us were breathless from laughing uncontrollably at Saleem's imitation of Mr. Alaric, our computing teacher. We separated to our different classes, Saleem and Gisa to chemistry and moi, I had Geography. Despite my hatred for Mr. Riley (my geography teacher), I managed to tolerate his super lame jests and focus on the lesson. Keep in mind that the only way I am ever able to concentrate on something I don't like is when I feel comfortable and generally happy. And I guess I had the liberty of saying that I felt like I was having fun. Since I had double Geo, we actually covered a whole lot of content on the syllabus. That itself was quite rare since Mr riley had an annoying habit of drifting off the main focus of the lesson. It occurred to me that I haven't seen much of Malcolm, the new dude. Guy must have taken a completely different set of subjects. He wasn't even in my math class, meaning either he skipped it or was placed in another batch. I guessed that it was the latter.

The final lesson of the day was Physics but it was a free period since the teacher didn't show up. This mean that most of us would be on our phones or finishing of homework. I didn't indulge in either of these activities, choosing instead to chat with Troy, Saleem and a few other classmates. Before we knew it, the bell rang and the lesson ended because well, time flies quite fast when you have a good time. We packed our bags and made our way downstairs to the school exit. Gisa and Saleem were picked up by their parents, while Troy and I walked home as we did every day. Our houses were only a few blocks apart from each other so we walked together. As usual, we spent this time indulging in pointless conversations with nonsensical topics.

At one point, I took out my phone to text my mother to tell her that im almost home. I realized that I never actually looked at the sketch Hachiro sent me the day before. Grinning sheepishly, I opened it up and hit the save button. I looked at it carefully. It was quite impressive, even at first glance.

He had used ink for the initial outlining and used some light wash to shade it. Hmm. It was a speedily drawn sketch, but it was detailed enough for me to make out the features of the face. .....and to be honest, it seemed very familiar. This was clearly the first time I paid attention to the drawing, but my mind told me that I knew this face. Frowning a little, I glanced at Troy, who wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing.

I took a deep breath and stared at the picture for another minute. And then it clicked.

Of course I knew this face.

Hachiro had sketched a portrait of MalcolmJohns.