Red Data Girl - Series 1 & 2

My First Familiar - 5

An American Girl in Japan

Data Girl: My First Familiar
Chapter 1: Izumiko
Part 3 (1 of 2)

Izumiko's homeroom teacher, Kanako Nakamura was unsurprisingly pale.

When the repairman had come to look into the computers and data, he had declared that the machines were unusable. This had started a flurried search for the culprit. During homeroom, they were strictly questioned about the cause of the crime and whether or not they had seen anyone acting suspiciously before the computers had broken. They were asked to come forward and truthfully report anything they knew.

Although she would have liked to crawl into a hole if there had been one available, Izumiko had had no choice but to turn herself in. And so she told Ms. Nakamura that she was pretty sure she had been the one to break the computers, but she had no idea what she had done.

"It was you?"

Ms. Nakamura gazed at Izumiko in surprise. Izumiko was standing in front of the teacher's desk, her eyes downcast. It seemed like she had been expecting a more troublesome student such as Youhei.

"Miss Mida, did you see Miss Suzuhara doing anything?"

Haruna, who had accompanied Izumiko, shrugged. "No. Well, I think she was only doing normal things."

"But she wanted to do it on her own. Why?"

"If she was doing anything strange, I didn't notice..."

It would only happen again. Yes, she had wished that the computer would shut down, but she had never imagined all them in the entire school would stop working.

Ms. Nakamura sighed. "Computers don't break without a reason. What's more, it wasn't just one or two computers. It was all of them. Miss Suzuhara, please come with me to the principal's office. Explain to him what you did. When all the computers are replaced, your family will be in charge of paying for them."

I've become the sort of student who gets called to the principal's office...

Izumiko couldn't think of anything more shocking. Up until now, she had never been involved in such a conspicuous incident. Even so, while she wanted to be a student who didn't stick out in anyway, she had somehow become the sort who was disciplined by the principal.

Ms. Nakamura led the depressed Izumiko to the principal's office and knocked on the door. Upon entering, they stopped in front of the principal and the student advisor, Mr. Karasawa. Then they rationally sorted out the business of Izumiko and the computers. The scolding wasn't hash, nor was the principal's or Karasawa's tone severe. But with the dejection Izumiko felt over what she had done, it felt like they had scolded her for all she was worth. She revisited the events in the computer room over and over.

I probably am a little strange...

As the thought came to her, she realized just how many things coincided with the idea. She was strange... It had to be the reason why she had been sent to a shrine in the middle of the mountains to be raised. She was the right sort of person to be isolated in such a place. Wasn't this all just proof of that? She hadn't become strange because she had been raised at a shrine. She had been sent far away to her grandfather's shrine because she hadn't been normal from the start.

If I've always been the sort of person that should be shut up on a mountain, what should I do?...

Surrounded by teachers, hounding her with questions, Izumiko began to feel more and more trapped by the idea that no one could help her. At this point, there was no way she could go to Sototsugawa High School let alone a school in Tokyo.