Lost and Found

chapter 2

"Long time no see, Masato"

His eyes held both astonishment and a slight fear. We stood there as if we were in our own world until Reese, the secretary, gives him a nudge to the ribs signaling him to move. With hesitation Masato begins to walk towards the principle and yet still manages to keep his distance from me.

"Mr. Ando" the principle says with amusement "I'm glad you can come. Reese please close the door. The cold air is leaving the room"

"Yes sir"

"Now, Mr. Ando, back to business" standing up the principle raises his hand and points towards my direction "as you were informed, this is Jay Anami, your roommate. You will be showing him around"

Masato doesn't say anything, he only looks at principle Petrov with blank eyes as he nods in acceptance, but I knew better than that. I knew by the way he has set his face into a blank mask that Masato wasn't welcoming me as much as it seems. My suspicions are confirmed when he dramatically leaves the room in a hurry leaving me by myself once again with the principle and even the secretary.

Reese let out a sigh, "he's a troublesome one Jay, good luck"

The principle chuckles, "he doesn't express himself well. His thoughts don't roll off his tongue the way ours do so it's as if he's decided there's no point to try"

Not wanting to lose Masato I waved them a bye so I can catch up with him. As I exited the room and closed the door I saw Masato leaning over the glass window staring at the ground, the blank mask has yet to leave his face.

"well-"

"Let's go" once again he starts walking off abruptly and leaving me behind. Rushing over towards him I start matching his pace. He was clearly trying to get ahead of me, there is no way this is his normal pace.

"Hey masa"

If possible he increases his speed

"Hey-"

"It's almost the end of the day" he finally began saying "I'll show you to our room first. Tomorrow I can show you the rest."

"Okay, thanks"

I try to hide my concern for his reaction but again no reply. Walking next to him I looked over his appearance, to see what exactly has changed since we last saw each other. He had cut his hair. It used to be pretty long but now it was about shoulder length. Other than that, he didn't do much else with it. It was still thin and layered. The color was also still a deep black, no sign of ever being dyed.

At the angle I'm at I can't really see them but his lilac eyes were as pure as ever when I saw him in the principles office. Even with the dimly lit room his eyes still glowed with radiance surrounding him. I always had the habit of focusing on his eyes rather than anything else.

Masato's physique wasn't the macho or even the lean type. He was thin, which caused his family to treat him with care. He wasn't as delicate as his family made him out to be though, when we were young we'd get in all sorts of trouble. It only resulted in more careful watch of Masato and me getting scolded a lot.

Reminiscing over our past, I grinned, "you're still quite small Masa"

Smack

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Opening the door Masato shows me the room we'll be living in for however long he stays here. It wasn't as grand as the room he had back in the Main house but it did have the warm feeling the main house had missing. There were two beds, two desks, and two closets adjacent to each other in the room yet only one side was filled since Masato had lived alone.

He points, "left side is yours" and then points to  across the room "other side is mine. Questions?"

Rubbing my cheek I groaned, "yeah, why'd you have to hit me"

"Because you deserved it. If you've got no other questions I need to finish some homework."

Grabbing some books from the top of his desk he starts opening them and writing on it. Sighing I placed my bags on top of my bed and started unpacking.

As I took out my things I looked over at Masato. He was totally engrossed in whatever he was doing, smiling I started reminiscing even more of our childhood.

When we were little I always pointed out Masato's insecurities. I always made him mad that way, but I couldn't help it, I couldn't see anything I said as an insecurity he would take offense to. Masato didn't like me calling him small, but I thought it made him cute. Him getting mad at me only added to it. I would also occasionally tell him how pretty he was whenever we took walks outside. He'd blush furiously and speed walk ahead of me. Chuckling I felt something hit my head. Looking down behind me it was an eraser.

"I don't know why youre laughing but it's really distracting me" Masato says with slight annoyance.

Picking up the eraser I walk over to Masato and placed it down next to him. Taking a peak at his papers I leaned over his shoulder "What's this? Literature? I can help you out with it if you want."

Scooting away from me Masato brings his books closer to him so I don't read the contents of what's in it, "no thanks, I have a bunch of stuff to finish anyway."

Brushing off Masato's statement I pull back the books, "which stories are you reading?"

He looked down at the book hesitantly before answering me, "Wanderer in the Woods, by Mar-"

"Marcus Dobrin right?" Masato looked at me with surprise as he gave me a slight a nod. Brushing his hands away from his papers I inspected his answers "well first, keep in mind the Wanderer is alone. Being born a naive man with idealism enough to make even a baby laugh he saw the dark side of the pure world he loved and wanted to shift it" sighing I pointed to the picture of the Wanderer "of course he didn't succeed. After many years he gave up. He ventured to the forest he saw the untouched beauty of the world he wanted and decided to forsaken the reality for his ideal."

Grabbing the book I flip to a certain page I've always kept in mind in this particular story. It read "I've left this corrupt world for the paradise of nature along with its isolation from humanity."

Isolation, I mentally scoffed. In truth I thought of the Wonderer being more in confinement. As I continued to explain the story with more detail to him,  I only really told Masato the summary of the general understanding of the story.

The Wanderer gave up on the world and made a new world for himself in isolation? Don't make me laugh, if anything, he was being forced to be confined into the woods by the very world he tried so hard to save, to love.

Snapping out of his trance, Masato quickly starts writing down what I say. We did this for the rest of the stories Masato had to write about. At this point his self awareness for me vanished and we were engulfed on literature. When we finished Masato slouched back on his chair and I stood up to stretch my back. I can't remember the last time I was so engulfed in one subject.

Since we were done I went back to put away the rest of my unpacked stuff.

"Hey" Masato said in a low voice

"Yeah?"

"Thank you"

I smiled, "you're welcome"

"Wait, I have a question about the Wanderer"

"What?"

He hesitates a little, "did the Wanderer.... really abandon the world he worked so hard for?"

I thought for a second but simply shrugged, "The world wasn't hard to save. What it contained is a different story"