The new week brought annoying rumors.
"… student council elections."
"I knew Touko-san would … "
"She's so reckless."
Each individual whisper was quiet, but when they were all added up it made them easy to hear. The excited chatter about last night's TV shows, so loud it could be heard out in the hallway, was far less irritating.
That said, if she were asked if she'd rather be insulted directly, then she'd probably say no, since that came with its own set of problems. If she got fed up with pretending to ignore them, she could always confront them directly.
(So moronic.)
If only recess would end soon. Touko turned a page of her book. And with that, she felt depressed that her own time was going to waste.
If the words on the page had made their way into her brain then she wouldn't have called it a waste of time, but she couldn't just shut out everything and concentrate on her book when her name was being whispered around.
So, regardless of whether she took in the words or not, when her eyes reached the last row of text she turned the page. By keeping up her, "I don't care at all about the rumors," act, Touko was at least able to retain some of her pride.
(Ah.)
Noriko returned to the classroom and walked past Touko's desk. After the election, she would look at Touko as though she had something she wanted to say, but she hadn't yet said anything.
Has she finally given up?
That was to be expected. Touko was just paying for her own mistakes.
She was frankly amazed that Noriko was still willing to be seen with her.
She still felt an empty hole in her chest.
Touko understood that this was her reward for picking apart the threads that bound them together, one by one.
Why was it that she always did this sort of thing?
If she was just a bit more honest, she probably wouldn't hurt herself and others as much.
"Hey, is that any way to be talking about one of your classmates?"
The loud voice coming from behind her brought Touko back from the hole in her heart to the first-year camellia group classroom.
"Aren't you ashamed about getting together to spread malicious rumors?"
The moment she realized that the conversation was about their behavior towards her, Touko instinctively turned around. Expecting Noriko to be the speaker.
But she was wrong. Noriko was sitting at her desk, a short distance away, also staring in amazement at the center of the commotion.
"Don't you think it's a bit late to be the good little girl? Last week, you were saying you wanted Touko to lose the election too."
The maligned students hit back, not backing down. The two arguing parties had, indeed, been in agreement last week. Attacking Touko, ignoring Touko, they were both the same thing.
"What was it that you said again?"
Pressed by her former comrades, the classmate who came to Touko's aid acknowledged her own crimes as she responded:
"While I may have called her reckless, Touko-san gave it her all in the election. You must have seen the effort she put in too? All on her own? It was incredible. It made me feel ashamed of myself. I asked myself, as her classmate, why didn't I help her? Why didn't our whole class unite behind her?"
Then, from within the group of gossipers, a couple of voices piped up, endorsing this opinion with, "Me too." There was internal discord.
"Look, I like Touko-san as a person. But if she wanted our support, shouldn't she have discussed it with the class before running off and nominating herself?"
"Isn't that a problem with our class not providing the right environment for such a discussion?"
"Oh, so now you're saying that we're the problem?"
The argument between the two factions gradually started to heat up. Even though Touko herself had never wanted this to happen.
If she'd wanted them to argue, it would have been over some other topic - having the fight be about her made it more of a nuisance.
Fed up with this, Touko turned to face the front and found someone standing in front of her desk.
"Unforeseen repercussions are a pain, aren't they?"
Kanako-san smiled, gently shifting her long hair so it didn't spill onto the desk. She was tall at the best of times, and Touko was seated, so she was quite the imposing sight.
"What do you know?"
Touko responded. Kanako-san's know-it-all air was a bit annoying, but it was ten, no a hundred times less annoying than the people arguing behind her.
"Nothing. But you're making that face. You were annoyed that someone would speak out like that. And now you're fed up with it."
"That's quite observant of you. I'm impressed."
Touko said with just a touch of sarcasm. Implying that Kanako-san must have a lot of free time, to be able to study each and every person's face.
But Kanako-san completely missed the sarcasm. Or maybe she got it, but chose to ignore it.
"Well, since you're complimenting me, I'll let you in on something. When you're reading a book, it looks more realistic if you subtly vary your pace every so often."
"Huh?"
"Normally, you'd stop when you got a kanji character mixed up, or you'd have to re-read some difficult passages, right?"
Indeed. Basically, she was telling Touko that she'd seen through her "reading a book" act. Kanako-san grinned and walked back to her own seat.
"That was informative."
With a nod, Touko closed her book. In truth, she didn't have to put a bookmark in there, but she thought that it made it look more realistic.
The argument behind her continued until the bell rang and their teacher entered the classroom.