Above the Clouds - One

Chapter Two

I walked into the Academy the next day. Ayema and Hana were at their lockers, and Kaito was next to me. He was on a roll about a new game his friend bought. All of a sudden, my body forced me to turn around. In front of me was a boy I've never seen before. His hair was jet black, and he was sporting an eyepatch on his left eye. Out of the back of my head, the conversation with my dad last night came to mind. Miki isn't a what. Miki is a who. I shook my head and smiled at the boy. He stared at me, but ran into someone. His books dropped.

"Are you okay?" I looked down at the black haired student. He has a mysterious scar on his hand, and what looked like black ink on his wrist. He pulled his sleeve down over the ink. We both reached down to pick up his books, but we picked up the same book, our hands overlapping.

"I got it. Thanks." He picked up the rest of his books and walked away, his red eyes not looking at me once. My eyes followed him until he reached the end of the hall, his cold voice echoing in my mind. When I turned around, Kaito, Hana, and Ayema were staring at me, their arms crossed.

"Who was that?" Hana looked at me, her head tilted. Kaito nodded, walking up beside her. I looked away, starting at the boy. He turned a corner, and he disappeared. I was determined to catch up to him, so I start walking after him. Something pulled me back.

"Hisako! Answer them." I turned to see Ayema letting go of my shirt. I shook my head and turned around.

"I don't know. I'm going to follow him." I quickly ran after the boy, but the bell rang.

"Hisako! We have to go to class!" I stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring at the boy. He walked into the Light Tribe abilities classroom on the other end of the hallway. Ayema grabbed my arm and ran into the same classroom. He was in our next class.

Once arriving to the classroom, I sat next to Ayema. I looked at the rows of desks, and, coincidentally, in front of us sat the boy.

"Ayema! Hisako! You're five minutes late! Put your stuff down, both of you, and go get late passes from the office." The teacher, one I never saw before, yelled at us. We sighed and went to the office. The lady at the front desk, Kira, looked up at our arrival.

"Hisako, Ayema. Hello. What do you need?" She looked us up and down, as if trying to dress code us on something.

"We need late passes. Light Tribe abilities." Ayema walked forward, grabbing the two green slips of paper. We filled them out, and left back to the classroom.

"Let me see your late passes." The substitute teacher looked over them and scowled at us, but threw away the passes. "Okay. Take a seat and read the board." The substitute pointed at the chalkboard and sat down.

On the board, there were instructions. "The teacher has unfortunately lost your worksheets, so you have nothing to do. Use this class as a study hall." I turned my head to Ayema and smiled.

"Study hall. Yeah. Let's go on Star Pets!" We immediately took out our laptops and logged into Star Pets. Ayema nudged me and nodded towards the boy in front of us. He, too, was playing Star Pets.

"Look, his username. It's 'Miki.' Wasn't that the name your dad warned you about?" I nodded, typing his username in. Even if it was suspicious, I wanted to add him. I clicked the "add" button and a few seconds later got the notification that Miki added me back. I wonder if that was his name.

Suddenly, a pet popped onto my screen. The name "Miki" was underneath it. Ayema looked at my screen and smiled, and I motioned for her to join us. She did. A chat message popped up onto my screen.

"From 'Miki,' 4 seconds ago: 'Hello.'" I pointed at the message, showing my screen to Ayema, and she smiled, giving me a thumbs up.

"'Hello. How are you?' (from Hisako - 5 seconds ago)" I leaned back on my wings and stared at the screen, Miki's message slowly appearing on the screen.