The school

The school day passed rather quickly. It was just a day where you could study on different topics for your research paper, which was allowed to be on anything you wanted. If needed, you could even request specific materials for the school for any experiments, and they could also direct you to specialists in different subjects that worked in collaboration with the school. I got my study subject narrowed down to the arts, but what I wanted to study in specific I didn't know yet, seeing as it's a very broad subject.

And what would you know, my neighbor, Ayumi Katanashi decided we should be research partners, even though it's meant as an individual assignment. It's not disallowed to partner up together and have the same topic, as long as there are 2 different studies written about it by the end of it. The school itself prides itself on it's allowance of choices, wanting to be as nonrestrictive for the student as possible, without undermining it's own educational value. Even the teachers have a lot of leeway with what they're allowed to teach, even being able to create new subjects as long as enough teachers and students petition it.

Ayumi was strolling around the halls together with me, to see if the artworks strewn about there would give me any inspiration. There were many different types of art, whether modern or classic, proletarian or bourgeois, lighthearted or disturbing, all could be found in different paintings, books, statues, movies. It wasn't like the building was bloated with it, it simply had the capacity to hold all these different things easily. Now, building a library like this must've cost a lot of money, but this school definitely produces exceptional results in turn, having one of the lowest burn-out rates,happiest student rates, highest grade rates and probably many more in such fashion.

"Anything that gives you any ideas?" Ayumi asked to me.

"Only some vague general concept I have, or at least the basis for it."

I enjoyed pondering about many of the psychological aspects to the works, but didn't have a good way to turn that into research questions yet.

"Do you have any?"

"I think it's better for you to decide. But I do have some ideas if you'd like to hear them."

"Sure, all ears."

"How about studying the influence of art in politics, social norms and the like. Or how they both influenced each other."

"Maybe."

It's not a terrible way to go about it, certainly a lot more than I got for now. It seems far from the thing I'm looking for, but I'm going going to be so egocentric to not be able to compromise on it. We do have a deadline for it that I need to pay attention to. Luckily there are no tests or assignments outside of that, so we can easily finish it in time.

"Sorry for being so indecisive by the way."

She shook her head, "Take your time."

Often she helped me with my assignments, even being one of the main reasons I could get into this school, seeing as it had set a relatively high bar for enrollment.

"Well, what I'm looking for is..." My words wandered off as my trail of thought did, finishing my sentence incoherently "kind of like a thing with people."

"Art about people?" She asked.

"Not quite." I answered without being able to elaborate further.

We kept looking around until the very last minute of school for us, eventually losing our original purpose and instead exploring around, noticing many things we hadn't looked at much before. There were small buttons hidden behind the bookshelfs in the library, for example. Though it looked like they didn't do much when pressed.

In the end, we were just hanging around more than anything. Before meeting up with the other 2 and going out to play minigolf, we ate some lunch together. But when we met up, it seems those two are having another argument.