16 Epilogue: A New Story
[A/N: Double Chap!! Haha Merry Christmas everybody!]
——
Shidou Itsuka, 16 years old, a perfectly growing adolescent teenager.
"Yawwwnnnn, good morning...." Shidou said groggily.
After a few seconds of waking up, he checked the time and date.
6:10 AM; April 10th, Monday.
Still quite early to get up from bed.....or so what he would like to say but her little sister would probably refute it.
Yesterday was the last day of Spring Break, so today is a school day.
Grumbling, he suddenly recalled something.
As his half asleep brain slowly woke up, last night's memories resurfaced.
Both of their parents had left on business trips yesterday.
Because of that Shidou was temporarily left in charge of the kitchen, and so Shidou, who was bad at waking up, asked Kotori to help wake him as usual...
"Ah..."
Troubled that he might've done something bad, he quickly got out of bed.
Holding down his bed hair and suppressing a yawn, Shidou plodded out of the room.
At that moment, the small mirror hanging on the wall caught his eyes.
A boy whose forelocks were about to invade his vision, probably because he hadn't had a haircut for a while, was casting a lame look at Shidou.
"..."
Together with his declining eyesight, his looks had also been slightly degrading. Sighing, he descended the stairs and entered the living room.
"...Huh?"
A slightly different view than usual greeted him.
He couldn't see her little sister, Kotori, within the house.
"Ah, right. Kotori said that she slept in her friend's house for a sleepover"
Scratching his head, he walked towards the bathroom and washed his faced up relieving him from his groggy state.
After washing his face, he turned on the TV to listen to the news and proceeded to the kitchen to prepare his breakfast.
As he was cooking....
"—Early this morning, in the outskirts and suburbs of Tenguu City—"
"Huh?"
Overhearing the contents of the useless news program that usually could only serve as BGM, Shidou raised an eyebrow.
The reason was simple. From the announcer's clear voice, he heard a familiar street name.
"Hm? It's pretty close by. Did something happen?"
Leaning over the counter, he narrowed his vision and stared at the TV.
On the screen, the image of a street that had been absurdly destroyed was being displayed.
Buildings and roads had been reduced to mountains of rubble. And to the next , there was a massive "straight line" that was seemed to be cut or split by something up by something. The destruction was clearly more apparent than the first mentioned one.
The devastation was like the impact of a meteorite, or maybe the scene of an air raid. And right now, a new type that occured which causes a straight line of destruction stretching to meters.
Shidou scrunched up his brows, and releasing his held breath he said:
"Ahhhh... So it was a space quake again huh"
As if fed up, he shook his head.
A 'space earthquake' referred to the phenomenon of the shaking of a wide area.
It was the generic term given to explosions, quakes, vanishings, and such things that happen for unknown reasons at random times and places.
Like the whims of a large monster, destroying a street for the sake of it, these were extremely unreasonable phenomena.
The first occurrence of such an event was around thirty years ago.
It happened right smack in the middle of Eurasia—the region that had contained countries such as the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia, causing them to have disappeared in a single night.
For Shidou's generation, just looking at the pictures in the textbook was unpleasant.
It was as if everything above ground had been scraped off, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Casualties numbered about 150 million. It was the largest and deadliest catastrophe in human history.
In the six months that followed, similar incidents occurred on a smaller scale all around the world.
Shidou couldn't remember the exact number, but it was around fifty.
On land, at the poles, in the ocean, even on small islands, such cases had been confirmed.
Of course, Japan was not exempt from it.
Six months after the Eurasia Sky Disaster, the region from South Tokyo to Kanagawa Prefecture had turned into a circle of scorched earth, as if an eraser had been applied to it.
That's right—it includes the area that Shidou was living in today.
"But it suddenly stopped happening for a while, right? Why did it start increasing in frequency again?" Shidou asked.
No one answered his mutter.
After that South Kanto incident, spacequakes had not been detected for a while.
However, five years ago, starting with a corner of the redeveloped Tengu City, these mysterious phenomena started popping up here and there again.
Moreover, most of them happened in—Japan.
Of course humans had not been sitting around doing nothing for those twenty-five years in between.
Starting thirty years ago with the areas that had finished redevelopment, underground shelters had spread at an explosive rate.
Together with the fact that it had become possible to observe precursors to spacequakes, a certified JSDF disaster response team had been put together.
Their purpose was to travel to disaster areas and rebuild the destroyed facilities and roads, but their work can only be described as magic.
After all, completely destroyed streets could, in an insanely short amount of time, be restored to how they used to be.
Their work was classified as top secret and so no information was available to the public, but when you see a collapsed building restored in a single night, you can't help but feel like you just saw a magic trick.
However, even if the repair work could be done really fast, that doesn't mean that there was little threat from the spacequakes.
"Doesn't it seem like the area around here has a lot of spacequakes? Especially last year," Shidou muttered.
And once more, no one answered his mutter.
Normally, her sister would, but she is staying at her friend's house at the moment.
He then remembered.
"...Now that I think about it, today's the middle school opening ceremony, right? Did she forget to bring her uniform or things? Well, knowing her, she probably won't let something like that to happen..."
Even so, he would still check it out after he finished cooking whether Kotori really did forget it or not. There's nothing wrong in double checking things right?
After finishing cooking his breakfast, he then looked at the window located in the kitchen.
"Nnnnn..."
Shidou stretched lightly, and opened the small window in the kitchen.
The sky had cleared up. It seems like today will be a good day.
——
It was around 8:15 A.M. when Shidou reached the high school.
After checking the class list posted in the corridor, he entered the classroom where he would be spending his next year.
"Year 2, Class 4, huh?"
Since the space quake thirty years ago, the region from South Tokyo to Kanagawa Prefecture—in other words, the empty region of land created by the spacequake, was redeveloped as test cities using various new techniques.
The public school that Shidou attended, Raizen High School, was one such example.
Filled with facilities to be proud of, this school that one could hardly believe was a public school was just built a few years ago, so it was still in an almost perfect condition. Of course, being a high school built on an old disaster area, it came equipped with the newest type of underground shelter.
For these reasons the application rate was pretty high, so Shidou, who decided to apply just for the reason that "it was close to home", had to work quite hard.
"Mmmm...."
With a light hum, he surveyed the classroom.
There was still quite a bit of time until homeroom, but a large amount of people had already gathered.
There were people overjoyed at being in the same class, people sitting alone looking bored, and people with various other reactions... but there didn't seem to be any faces that Shidou knew.
As Shidou moved his head to check the seating chart drawn on the blackboard,
Shidou spent time sitting on his desk quietly until someone called his name.
"Yo, Itsuka! It's a great morning isn't it?"
Turning his head towards the direction who called his name out, he waved his hand. He knew who was the person who called him out.
It was Shidou's friend, Tonomachi Hiroto, before even being joyful at entering the same class was, as if showing off his waxed hair and muscled body, folding his arms and lightly bending his body while laughing.
They talked for a while about some gibberish and trivial things.
Tonomachi then brought up a interesting topic about the 'Most Wanted Girlfriends Ranking - Best Thirteen' last year.
Their discussion went to the point where Tonomachi mentioned an specific name which Shidou didn't really know much about which made Tonomachi gaze at him with bafflement.
"C'mon man, it's Tobiichi, Tobiichi Origami. She's the super genius that our school boasts about. You've never heard anything like that?"
"No, this is my first time hearing about it but... Is she that amazing?"
"Amazing can't even describe it. Her grades are always at the top of the year, and in the mock exam not long ago she got some crazy results and went straight to the top of the nation."
"Huuuh? Why is someone like that at a public school?"
"Dunno. Probably something like family circumstances?"
Giving a big shrug, Tonomachi continued.
"Anyways, that's not all. Her PE scores are also top class, and at the same time she's a beauty. In last year's 'Most Wanted Girlfriends Ranking - Best Thirteen' she came in third, I think. Didn't you see it?"
"I didn't even know there was such a thing. Or rather, best thirteen? Why is it such a random number?"
"Because the girl who organized this was thirteenth."
"...Aha..ha" Shidou laughed weakly.
"By the way, the 'Most Wanted Boyfriends Ranking' goes up to the best 358th."
"That many!? The bottom of that is nearer to the worst ranking, isn't it? Did the organizer decide that too?"
"Ahh. He really didn't know when to give up."
"Which place are you Tonomachi?"
"358th place," Tonomachi said as if it was a matter of fact.
"The organizer was you!?"
"The reasons I managed to get that rank included: 'his passion seems it'd be too strong', 'he seems to be hairy', and 'his toenails seem to smell'."
"As I thought, that's the worst ranking!"
"Well, below that are the people nobody voted for. At least with the negative points I managed to win in that category."
"That's pushing it a bit far! With a rank like that, it would have been better to give up."
"Don't worry Itsuka. You were entered as Mr. Anonymous and got one vote and 52nd place."
"Wrong response!"
"Well other reasons include: 'he doesn't seem interested in women', and 'to be frank, he seems like a homo'."
"It's an iron hammer bringing death by unreasonable slander!"
"Just calm down. In the 'Fujoshi Selected Best Couple', you and I made the top ranking as a pair."
"I'M NOT HAPPY WITH THAT AT ALL!"
Shidou shouted. He was slightly worried at being part of the couple in first place.
However, it seemed Tonomachi did not mind at all (or rather, he seemed to have gotten over it), as he crossed his arms and returned to the original topic.
"Well anyways, it's not an exaggeration to say that she's the most famous person in the school. Itsuka, your ignorance manages to surprise even this great Tonomachi."
"What kind of character are you trying to be?"
As Shidou said this, the familiar warning bell that he had been used to hearing since his first year rang.
"Ah. It's time. See ya later Itsuka," said Tonomachi as he waved goodbye to Shidou as he found his directed seat.
Sitting down, Shidou noticed that there were 2 seats that remained vacant even after the bell rang.
'Are they absent?' Shidou can't help but think to himself as his other classmates also did the same.
After pondering over the matter for a brief moment, Shidou turned his eyes towards the blackboard and waited for the teacher to come.
As if matching that moment, the door to the classroom opened with a rattle. From there a short female wearing thin-rimmed glasses appeared and walked behind the teacher's desk.
From around, students were whispering excitedly.
"So it's Tama-chan..."
"Ah, it's Tama-chan."
"Tamae-sensei!"
"Seriously? Yeahhh!"
—In general, good things were being said.
"Alright, good morning everyone. For the following year, I will be everyone's homeroom teacher, my name is Okamine Tamae."
The teacher in charge of social studies, Okamine Tamae—nicknamed Tama-chan, —spoke in a slow pace and bowed. Perhaps the size was a bit off, as her glasses slipped slightly, and she hastily held them in place with both her hands.
Her childish face and small build that couldn't even pass off as being in the same generation as her students, combined with her leisurely attitude, has earned her tremendous popularity amongst the students.
"A-ah! Let's get our daily attendance shall we," Tamae said as she tapped her attendance book.
"Minami Takao-san"
"Yes!"
"Gudako Fujim—"
The attendance continued on and on. Shidou's turn was also finished.
"Yosh! It seems that almost everyone was present. The only absentees were.... two. Ah. Origami-san apparently got caught in an accident so she was excused for a few weeks," Tamae said it aloud in order for everyone to hear.
"Is she alright, Tamae-sensei?" One of Shidou's classmates asked.
"Yes, she is alright. Although her recovery might take a few weeks or even a month, that is what they informed me"
"I hope she recover well," One female student expressed her concern.
"It's a shame to be caught in an accident at these recent times," One student chimed to it as a response.
"I am happy to see that you are concerned about her well-being. I'll be sure to send your messages to her"
"Yes~!" The students answered in unison.
"Now then.. as for the other one... Hm? The transfer student....?"
As her words came out from her mouth, an audible sound coming outside the classroom was heard. It was as if someone was running at full speed towards here.
And then.
SLAMM!!
The door was slammed open that startled everyone in the room. Even Shidou was surprised which left him questioning what kind of person who would practically do that.
All the students eyes were shifted at the intruder's direction.
Some girls blushed. Some boys gritted their teeth in frustration. And some almost practically showed no care about it.
His features were that of foreign descent. He has long silver hair tied in a ponytail to his back. His violet eyes were like a pair amethyst jewels. He was quite tall, has handsome features, and wore a white colored jacket that goes well with the color of his silver hair on top.
"S-sensei, good morning, am I late perhaps?" he asked as he looked at Tamae-sensei with a hopeful glint in his eyes.
"I-I'm sorry but it's seems that you are late by a few minutes... erm, Ainsworth-san," Tamae-sensei told him rather sounding apologetically.
"Ah..." The person in question showed a somewhat dismayed expression on his face.
He did not literally expect that he would be late in the first place. If he wanted something to blame, then he should blame that cat that he stumbled upon earlier!
"Well, it's okay, right? At least you are not absent. As some say, 'better late than never', okay?"
"Oh ah, yes..."
"Ah! How about you introduce yourself? Everybody already introduced themselves earlier. It won't hurt to add a last call introduction"
"Oh, yes. Thanks sensei..." He slightly bowed at her as he relayed his gratitude for her consideration.
"Mm," Tamae nodded in response.
"Erm, though it's quite late, let me introduce myself," he paused as his somewhat gloomy or dismayed demeanor from earlier just vanished like it wasn't there on the first place.
"My name is Rei Ainsworth, I hope we all get along within this school year," Rei said as he ended it the best smile he could give them.
It was relayed in in a formal yet friendly manner which gave him a first good impression towards the eyes of his classmates.
Shidou himself also thought the same and concluded that this guy came in late for some good reason or something.
As Rei introduced himself, his gaze roamed all over the room and then landed at a single boy with blue hair with a pair of clear brown eyes.
It was at this moment, the encounter between the protagonist of this world and the anomaly first began.
This encounter marked a new beginning and a unknown end of a already predetermined story.
Whether this could be a good thing or not.
Who knows?
What we should all know is that it now all depends on what happens here on and onwards.
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——
[A/N: Merry Christmas guyz!
Take note that I will have at least a 1-2 week break of writing this novel for several reasons okay.
First, it's Christmas Holidays so I decided to take a break on almost everything that I am doing up to New Year's Eve.
Second, I have to finish up some stuff regarding IRL which would probably take another week again to finish up after taking a break.
Third, I need to plan up the things I would write next since the next vol. Since this is the start of the REVISED CANON ARC of the novel kuhahaha! Well, in short, it would take a lot of time to add some changes from the canon to this novel.....
Fourth, I want to laze around for a while..... yeah, I'm just too lazy too write for a while but I'll be back.... probably....no, I'm not really lazy to write to be honest....
I just want to take a break! Yes! That's it!
With that said, PEACE OUT and MERRY CHRISTMAS~! and an advance HAPPY NEW YEAR~!]
