It's not like I was planning to peek over the shoulder of the stout man in front of me. In fact, I even suspected the answers he scribbled down with the crappy pencil were all wrong. But that's not what I was looking at.
I knew I should have been paying attention to the lecture, it was writing, a vital class that will point toward the future career that I deeply desired. But then again, it was the first real day, and I found myself staring down at the kid's drawings on his paper. They were actually good, although he didn't look like the stereotypical artist type.
I hadn't seen his face as I followed the crowd into the chilly room, just his back. He seemed quite chubby from the angle, but he still wore a white T-shirt that was tight around him. His hair was completely black, the messiness of his bed head obviously not yet combed out. But even now, as I looked at the distracting sketches on his pre-test, I couldn't help but get annoyed that I had already met someone like this in my expensive school. That thought dashed the interested thoughts about the possible art major from my mind as the professor called my name from the front of the room.
"Matsuno Choromatsu," I let out a sigh. The thing that often held me back, especially with new classmates, was my unusual name. Thankfully, no one looked up from their papers. "Cheating on the first day, are we?"
His tone of voice was mocking, I could already tell I was going to be that student for him for the rest of the year. The stooge, the demonstration. I feel my face go hot as the scratching of number two pencils ceases to silence, and sense all of their eyes gazing up at me in interest. They were all probably excited for even a dash of drama on the bland first day. Luckily, I seized an opportunity to shrug the accusation off my shoulders, just this one time.
"N-no, sir!" I stammer, voice cracking nervously as I cook up the plan quickly in my brain. I was never good at confrontation, especially when it obviously looked like I had been cheating. "He was drawing," I tattle like a child, gesturing to the chubby kid seated in front of me.
The gazes all fell on him, but one still was transfixed on me. The boy in front of me was staring back with a glare, as if I had broken some sort of secret code. His eyes were a blazing brownish red, and his lips were furled in a downward curve, with a look of complete angst. "Snitch," he snarled under his breath, and I feel myself stutter in retaliation, but not before the professor marches over and snatches his paper, tearing it up and throwing it in the recycling bin.
That was my first encounter of Osomatsu, who seemed to be some sort of evil twin of mine. The only difference between us were our hair, his jet black and mine mousey brown, and our eyes. His were so brown they almost looked red, where mine were a particularly green shade of hazel.
The rivalry started a month ago that day, when we both stomped out of class like angry teenage girls, ignoring each other. Being in the same first hour class, I discovered many things about him that I completely hated.
For one, his smug smile, a curve like a stretched out three whenever he made a mocking joke. And his work ethic was horrid, I have no idea how he could ever be accepted in a school like this. He never turned in papers, and when he did, the only thing on them were drawings, usually of himself, sometimes horses or something. He always plays pranks on me, some as childish as sticking notes on my back, (usually he wrote "gay", or other words I would not like to go into detail about.) Usually he just tripped me in the halls, which I made up for with swift kicks in his shins if he ever tried to tease or mock me, which was something my temper didn't help at all.
But enough complaining about him, I was a student at one of the biggest and best colleges in the area, and I had bigger things on my mind. At least I thought I did, but most of my time was consumed of thinking of retorts to throw at Osomatsu, (one of my favorite things was when he was too dense to understand the harsh vocabulary I used when I insulted him), and writing on the school newspaper.
It was after all of my classes, and I make a mental note to go home and get my scarf and hat. It was freezing, and to get to the building where I worked, I had to walk through wind, sleet and snow.
The school was large, so large that they payed people to write on the online blog and the newspaper. Considering I wanted a job of publishing my opinions in the paper, this job was almost an internship for me.
But when I pushed on the cold steel bar of the glass door, leaning into the conditioned warmth of the building, tranquility took me over. I pace confidentially to my desk, prepared to unzip my tidy green laptop bag until I saw the desk directly next to me.
I nearly dropped my steaming container of tea I had just gotten at Sutabaa when I observed the contents of the next table. A large sketchbook full of drawings of comic book characters, and what looked like a racehorse. Laying next to it was an open bag of potato chips that spilled onto the clean, waxed wood. Lazily draped over the chair was a baggy red hoodie, which smelled strongly of alcohol and some aroma of cheap cologne. It couldn't be him, why would they hire him? I ponder, as I nervously take my own seat. He didn't work hard, he didn't write. I slowly open my laptop, only to see a reflection of two people walking toward me in the black screen.
To my horror, it was Osomatsu, walking next to my boss in the same, tight white T-shirt and jeans. His arms were behind his head in a relaxed pose, his unkempt hair living up to its messy reputation.
"Oh, Choromatsu-San," my boss greeted sweetly with a wave. She was about a year older than me, but had apparently been doing this job since her first year of college. "His name is Osomatsu. Isn't that funny?" she smiles, probably at the fact that our names were very similar. But I was proud to admit I had never met him prior to college.
"Yeah...I guess. What's he doing here?" I ask without even a polite 'hello', which makes her smile falter a bit.
"He's our new comics artist, we thought if we added some funny parts of our paper it would appeal to more students," She explains, though the whole idea was cheesy to me. Maybe it was just because it was Osomatsu who was doing it, but really, what would he do? A racehorse Garfield?
I didn't listen to anything else my boss had to say. My eyes met Osomatsu's face, it seemed his smile grew wider at my own expression of disgust. He knew it would tick me off, over the couple months we knew each other he had learned how to get on my nerves in the first two days. But this seemed to go too far, was he doing this just to mess with me? Or did the bonehead actually have interest in a serious job for the newspaper? The thought of working with him for the rest of my life makes me shudder.
My- or I guess, our boss's voice trails off as she witnesses an awkward glaring contest between Osomatsu and I. She just shrugs, wandering off like the airhead she seemed to be.
Osomatsu obnoxiously cracks his knuckles before flopping down in his rolling chair. He spins to face me, as I angrily type. As if the noise of the slamming keys would be loud enough to drown out anything he had to say.
"So," they didn't drown it out. "When are you gonna show me the ropes?" He asks with the carefree sounding tone he always had. I wonder how he's already getting on my nerves.
"What?"
"Didn't you listen, or where you too absorbed in glaring at my face?"
My cheeks flush, I hope he doesn't realize it. I furrow my eyebrows in annoyance, realizing he was right, I didn't listen.
He must have gotten the message, and scoots his chair a little closer to mine. "You're supposed to show me how to work here." He spoke as if I was a child, or if I was knew to this language.
I want to groan and smack him upside the head, but I needed to keep this job for Akatsuka's sake. "You've got to be kidding...Why are you even at this job, anyway?"
"Is this the way you start teaching someone?"
"No, I just-"
"Then get to it, String Bean, I'm bored." He whines, making my fists clench. This would be a long 4 years with him always around.
