The morning sky stretches across the town of Kibgoura. The rocks, and river streaming a gentle flow hold a stark difference to the chatter of students who stand aside of the girl, Takei. They speak of the news last night.

  “Do you really think they’re going to go through with it?” A female student asks.

  “Hell no, how would they even accomplish that?” says another male student.

  “I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibilities. Have you seen what they’re capable of?” returns the third.

  “What do you mean? That massacre at that military base?” The girl shivers in instant fear.

  “Yeah, seventy-four people died. Surely, that shows how serious they are,” says the boy.

  “Tragic, yeah, but c’mon, you think that was one person? Nah, definitely a militia they have or something for sure,” the third protests.

  The thought pops into Takei’s head. It definitely couldn’t be one person. In less than ten minutes, all those lives were lost, and a secret was taken from the base. It’s classified, the news reported, but the public can’t help but wonder what it could have been. Her father may be aware of it. Working for an offshore base, an added worry of her.

  A student struggling with her books takes a tumble, her notebooks and papers scatter the pavement. Takei taking instant notice makes her way in a haste. Her instincts gather the papers and notebooks bundling them together near the girl as she checks her body for injury like a field medic.

  “Are you alright? You took a nasty fall.” Her voice was soft, a note of concern reading from her lips.

  “Yeah, it was just very heavy.” The girl responds embarrassed and set on her knees.

  “You’re right. The books get heavier every year, don’t worry, you’ll grow into them.’ She smiles seeing this girl is a first year. The girl takes notice showing more respect in a polite bow.

  “I apologize for this inconvenience!”

  “Inconvenient? No, a fall is inconvenient sure, but not to others, most the time.” She reassures standing up and offering her hand to the girl. “Come on, we don’t want to be late for class.” The highlight purple of Takei’s hair glimmer in the sunlight. The girl is surprised to see an upper classmate with such compassion. She was nervous they would look down at her. She takes her hand now comforted to know this year may not be so bad.

  “Thank you…” her name wasn’t said.

  “Takei, Emi, Takei, but you can just call me Takei.” The girl was confused, only calling her by her last name when they weren’t close. She however spoke it with truth, so despite it.

  “Takei. Thank you, Takei.” She grins.

  #

  In class she sits at her desk. An immediate sensation, a warm, tender hug from behind, and a soft cheek pressed against her shoulder.

  “Takei, Takei, ah goodness you’re as warm as a bunnnnn”

  The girl named Shinohara Keiko holds her. Her petite body presses making her feel the welcome of the week. The affectionate, eccentric jokester of a girl never fails to share her love with the world, physical, mental, or emotional.

  “Morning, Keiko.” She laughs singling for her to not squeeze with such force.

  “You don’t have to compress me i-“

  “Like a diamond! That’s what you are!” She interrupts. The girl is overcome with joy, there is a clear vision in her head knowing what day it soon will be.

  “Takei, Takei! Guess what day it almost is? You should know the most out of anyone, right?” She smiles, her eyes lit up as if fireworks ready to set the soon-to-be celebration.

  “Oh, I forgot. My birthday, right?” she answers.

  “You’re going to join the adult club soon. You’ve been a slowpoke at it but it’s almost here. I already have your favorite pink balloons.” The excitable girl sits on the edge of her desk, a smile lighting any room.

  “It’s kind of weird you have favorite balloons, I never did question that. Do you also have favorite party hats? I can get some!” she clamors.

  “Keiko, calm down, it’s too early for this.” The boy with an unkempt class outfit lays his head on the desk. His hands straddle against the brink of the wood, gripping it with a tight grasp. Okazaki Ryota the hard-headed, strong, boy grimaces.

  “Oh, come on. Okazaki. No need to make her feel so bad for being herself,” says the boy, Ishimoto Yoshihiro. His hair, uniform, and demeanor are all more classed up and fit for a presentable appearance. A contrast to the boy who pounces his head on the desk in his direction, giving him an ugly stare.

  “Shut up, egghead, and why are you eating chips at eight in the morning? Wait for lunch.”

  “Leave me be, I didn’t have dinner last night.” Ishimoto, notable for his large size, eats chips he kept in his desk. If he wasn’t so put together, one can call him an average couch potato, yet he is the opposite and is a hard-working student who aces grades.

  “Yeah, right, you haven’t missed a meal since we were six years old. You expect me to believe you’d allow that?” The cocky boy bounds his body up. The teacher starting to take notice of their antics.

  Ishimoto lets out a soft sigh. “Some people have important things to attend to, so I’m eating now,” he states.

  Class begins, and Takei is occupied with the thought of her upcoming birthday. It’ll be the day she becomes an adult, the last of her friends to reach the threshold. Leaning on her hand, tapping her pencil, and her fingers at her cheek she stares at the birds chirping outside of the classroom window. They spin around in a hypnotic flight. There is one she noticed, ebony dark and feathers stretch with purpose in each wing.

  “Godddd, I wish this class would end already. He always drags with his lessons. Can’t he give us a rest?” Keiko whispers to Ishimoto.

  “Well, you know Mr. Atsushi, Keiko. Always wanting to make sure it’s properly planted into our heads. It’s boring, sure, but we can all pick up something from it, can’t we?” He responds ever the one to indulge in a lesson.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “When are we going to use these mathematical terms in our daily lives anyway? Let me tell you, madam, our stock of square frustums is fresh out. Come back in two to three business days.” She says, her hand covering her snickering.

  “The hell is a frustum?” asks Okazaki.

  “No idea, I don’t pay attention.”

  “Keiko…” Ishimoto scolds.

  “Yeah, maybe we should all just drop out. School’s a hell of a waste of time, but we can make better of it. Like, building bikes or going down the hills.” Okazaki reminiscent of his glory rides down the nearby mountainous hills brings a smirk to him.

  “You two shouldn’t be like that. Have some ambition,” Ishimoto says, disappointed.

  “Over what, egghead? The world could end tomorrow. What are we preparing for?”

  “Yeah, Ishi, wearing a cap and gown underground after the world ends doesn’t sound as appealing. Sounds kind of stupid, really stupid,” Keiko refers to the media claiming Mr. Nuke Happy’s ambition of world domination, much like an old-time villain. Truth is, nobody knows his ambitions, he is purposely vague.

  “You guys don’t think that’ll happen, do you?” Takei pauses. Nuclear weapons is the goal the major networks sites as the reason. It causes panic to the masses, some believe it a gross overestimation of their capabilities, others believe Armageddon is next week. Takei teeters.

  “Someone will stop them, or maybe their predictions could be wrong.” Ishimoto offers his perspective.

  “Come on, Takei, Mr. Nuke Happy? I don’t think he’s serving up sodas to everyone. Though a soda named after a nuke? That sounds kind of tasty. Mmm, radioactive soda. I could really, really go for one right now.” A swoon of her head, and she shifts over closer to Ishimoto, a smile growing on her face. “Hey, you have to have one hidden somewhere in your desk, right? Come on, gimme, and I’ll pay you back later.” She taps her fingers on his desk hope in her eyes.

  “Fresh out, Keiko. Otherwise, I’d give you one. I drank the last one yesterday.”

  “Oh, come on, you didn’t even think about me at all! Now I’m a disappointed girl in a boring class. What a stormy day,” she says, turning forward reluctant.

  “I’ll get you one later at the vending machine. I got 500 yen at least.”

  “Oh really!? You’d do that for me? Aren’t you a sweetheart!? You darling boy!” Her heart practically flutters at the offer.

  “Of course he has a sweet heart, Keiko. It’s all covered in sugar and caffeine,” Okazaki jokes while laughing loud enough to catch the attention of the teacher.

  “Okazaki!” The teacher notices the laugh instantly, giving him a heated look that could burn through a lampshade.

  “If you don’t hush your delinquent mouth, I’ll give you three weeks of detention, got it?”

  The face of anger on him is enough to stab anybody in the heart. Okazaki just scoffs, feeling annoyed by the intrusion of his laughter before deciding to stay quiet.

  The teacher facing away, Ishimoto whispers, “Justice is best served at eight.”

  “The hell does that mean, candy bucket?” Ponders Okazaki. Ishimoto isn’t the best at comebacks.

  #

  The march of a soldier feeling confined to his home, friendly territory, yet feeling like a minefield to Takei’s father. He may be a paperboy at his age, keeping files for military superiors at forty-seven years old, but he takes it seriously. The file in front of him reads “The sightings of Kibgoura,” a top-secret file given clearance to the higher-ups. It’s not for his eyes, yet, he can’t fight the urge much like a glass filled with sake.

  He is hesitant to open the file. His hand lingering over it as if he were a toddler attempting to grasp a wooden block. The sweat drips down from the side of his face and onto the paper.

  “Damn!” he chords. “I can’t give it to the bosses with my sweat all over it.”

  He closes his eyes, the image of his wife deeply ingrained in his mind. His wife was beautiful, a woman with porcelain skin softer than that of a silken cloth; her kisses were like the kisses of a divine angel. Too soon did she join their ranks, too soon did Emi need to learn about death and why she can never see her mother again.

  His heart slows, he remembers the touch of her lips against his. A warm, pillow kiss and her sweet smile. Her eyes would open, and the unique feature of her most beautiful world would reveal. The starry-gray eyes, not like sundered grey clouds, but of the surface of the moon were underneath they shared their first and what they hoped to be everlasting kiss. His body calms itself.

  He opens the file with the warmth of her memory hugging his brain. The file read of strange sightings and patterns. ‘Sightings of numerous displaced children were calling out to what they called “the void.” An act of defiance against partial figures or an internet trend appears to be absent.’

  “Damn kids. Don’t they know better?” He self-soothed the ignorant ways of children in this age.

  A clip catches his eye, there is a photo, the only one of the page depiction of what seems to a bird from its blurry outline. Other then it’s figure, he can’t tell anything else. The color or specifics, may as well be a UFO.

  “Birds? Birds. Birds and people with inhumane power. How do those correlate?” His breath sinks out and he closes the file. The kids come back to his mind. They’re impressionable, and these days more prone to disobeying their parents, an unpresented phenomenon in Japan. Emi, his daughter. She’s always been a good girl, but her friends. Her friends can be a different matter.

  #

  “Come, come, one and all, we shall fall and be enthralled. Come, come, one and all, become like us and fall, fall, fall.” Yasui Usagi mocked the trend of singing to the Remnants. It was all over social media, teenagers singing in a rallying call that was started by one of their higher ups known as Rika. Nobody knows who she is, like Mr. Nuke Happy she is a shadow figure but her voice has allured many. Her name made her unique, none below Mr. Nuke Happy used their names, she however was different.

  Usagi is skipping class holding to an important envelope. It hits from her side making her western-inspired gothic shirt treble. Her nose scrunches when she stops singing, remembering what’s in it and her fanged-teeth slither out onto her lip. She didn’t notice, but her upper fang cut into her lip making it bleed slight, her body tense and stressed.

  “Look at what we got, our trouble making girl out here scurrying the hallways.” Her head leads to Okazaki and her friends making their way down the hall. “Should have told me, glass was a drag again today.”

  “What, and make you a troublemaker like me? There’s only room for one of us at the top.” A confident curl on her lips mask the fact she is nervous. She doesn’t want them anywhere involved in what she’s having to do.

  “Usagi?” Takei was interested in her singing. It was often herself that was the vocals of the group. Usagi was more stout, kind of like a boxer or scrappy back alley fighter. “What was that song you were singing?”

  “The chant of Rika. That’s what they’re calling it. Some stupid trend they have going around about the Remnants, I was mocking it.” Her breath hitched. Sure, it was innocent to ask but mentioning them even in passing made her cautious.

  “I see. I don’t think I will be singing that. It seems a little odd to me.” She responds with a light chuckle showing the little seriousness.

  “They’re a bunch of bums anyway, people follow the dumbest things.” She scoffs at those who believe in them. Though those numbers are small, it’s a bother.

  “I will agree.” Ishimoto nods. “I will refrain from calling them as such, but it is blatant that they are bad people and their beliefs in they can be more is outlandish.”

  “Oh yeah, they think they’re gods or something right?” Keiko questions having lesser knowledge on this subject. She didn’t like the news and preferred comedy.

  “Precisely. It’s an ignorant statement regardless of affiliation.”

  “Man, can we go to our next class already? They’re not all bad they done some good, like ridding those lumberjacks of destroying our forest, outside Japan company too.” Okazaki claims, making Usagi eyes flare.

  “Don’t ever say anything good about those lowlife’s!” she grits.

  “Yo, easy, I was just offering a different perspective.”

  Keiko sees the envelope she is holding, her soft light-brown hair flows to the side with a head tilt.

  “Do you have a secret crush? I see that envelope, putting it in some lucky boy’s locker?” Keiko teases.

  “No, nothing like that, just something I got to do.” She starts walking away.

  “Where are you going? Aren’t you going to join us for music class at least, Usagi?” Ishimoto leans on the wall resting himself against it. He grows weary easy, his size a factor, it distract from his other features, though his friends always noticed his light brown eyes. Keiko loved saying he had hairy eyes, her hair being similar in color.

  “Eh, I’ll see. Got something to do first, so I’ll catch you all later or in music class.” She steps away and they all go to class. Her wheat hair drips to her eye and she brushes it out of the way, the dye irritates her. The worry returns, her knowing where she’s going, the knowledge both a curse and burden. She is meeting with a Remnant.