Chapter 7 Fish, Prawns And A Squid - Part 2

Back in the dorms, I took a pretty long shower.

**

The next day, I arrived at school early as usual. As I entered the cold, quiet classroom, I noticed that someone was already seated.

"Hey, Mizuhara!"

The happy-go-lucky, carefree girl greeted me from her seat.

"Hi, Fujiharu."

I wasn't really expecting her to be here already. I guess she noticed my daily schedule and decided to match me by arriving early as well. It was getting much more convincing that she was in fact the 'seatmate bully' that some people call her. There was no way that this could have been a coincidence.

Suddenly, she grabbed a book out of her bag.

"You know, since you were reading it, I thought it'd be interesting."

Turns out she also had a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, not only that, judging by the appearance of the book, it was definitely brand new. It wasn't a library copy or an old copy, she likely went out and bought it a little while ago from a bookstore.

"Ah."

"Hehe, aren't we matching now?"

"I guess."

I took my seat beside her and placed my bag on the floor. I grabbed my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and began reading it. I had done a significant amount of reading the previous night, so I was only several pages from the end. When I flipped to the page that I left off, Fujiharu glanced at me with a perplexed look.

"You're already that far in?"

"Yeah, I did some reading last night."

As if taking it as a challenge, she quickly flipped open her copy and began quickly reading it. She seemed to have quieted down as a result so I wasn't too fussed.

I brought the book up to my eyes and began reading through the final few pages. The father-daughter relationship between Scout and Atticus was just reaching its narrative conclusion and all the loose ends were being tied up.

There were still around twenty minutes before more students generally arrived. In that time, I finished the book and placed it down on the table in front of me.

Fujiharu looked over.

"You're done already...?"

"Yeah."

"Ah... but I've just started."

"That's fine, have fun reading."

"N-no... that's not wh..." her words trailed off.

I wasn't dense enough to be unable to tell what was going on. However, I still couldn't decipher the true intentions behind all of her answers. It just didn't seem to make sense, was everything coincidental? Was she deliberately trying to make me fall for her?

Well, it didn't really matter that much.

Class doesn't start for another 25 minutes. In that time, I decided to go to the library and borrow another book. As I got up from my chair, I noticed that Fujiharu was still avidly reading the novella. I made my way out of the classroom and over to the school library.

As I entered the large haven of literature, I looked around and contemplated what I was going to read next. I decided to make my way over to the contemporary section and find another novel. I quite liked mystery novels so I looked through that section. After a few moments, a novel caught my eye, it was Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. It was another relatively old novel but it seemed to be quite interesting.

After flipping through the first pages, I took it up to the counter and passed it to the librarian.

The librarian scanned the books and my library card. I returned To Kill a Mockingbird and made my way back outside.

​ As I walked back into the classroom, I noticed that several other students had also entered. Fujiharu was still quietly reading To Kill a Mockingbird and I took my seat next to her. There were still a few more minutes until class began so I decided to read through the first few pages of my new novel.

A few minutes later, I looked up at the teacher who was fiddling with some television cables. Apparently, she was trying to connect her laptop to the TV but it wasn't working. A few students helped her and before long, the television lit up with the contents of the lesson.

I looked over at Fujiharu who was still reading the novella even though the class had started.

It seemed she was trying really hard.

The source of this content is no//vel//bin[./]net'

"...the helper t-cell then activates the naive b-cells which undergo clonal expansion. After that, the b plasma-cells produce antibodies which bind to the pathogen..."

As usual, the lesson was relatively uninteresting. It wasn't really anything I hadn't learnt before and a few days prior when I was completing the homework, I managed to learn everything she was teaching right now anyways.

I decided to just sit back in my seat and listen to the lesson. I looked around me at the students who were frantically taking down notes. With some scribbling down every word the teacher was speaking to others who were busy choosing which colour of pen to use.

I wonder if life was more fun for them.

Obviously, nobody liked to be under stress. But maybe something even worse than stress was boredom.

The class went by without much hassle and after setting us some work to do, the teacher then moved on to the next lesson. Turns out the next lesson was chemistry.

"Alright everyone, did anyone struggle with the homework I set yesterday?"

There was a uniform answer of yes.

It seemed that the homework last night must have been quite hard—I didn't have much issue with it last night but I guess I mustn't have found it as difficult as the others.

The teacher sighed and pulled up a digital copy of the homework on the television.

"...in the redox reaction, you have to balance the charges on both sides of the equation..."

As she explained the answers to the homework, I noticed that Fujiharu was still fully concentrating on reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Her eyes were glued to the pages like they were gospel and page after page, she read through them without any break.

Honestly, I couldn't understand her.

I remembered that I needed to tell her something.

"Fujiharu, is it fine if we postponed the visit to the cafe? I have something I have to deal with after school today."

"Huh?"