"Ah...!"
A thud. Papers flying everywhere. Arc groaned as they sat up, disoriented from their unexpected fall. Someone had run into them in a hurry, and wasn't looking where they were going.
"I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"
Looking up, Arc wasn't expecting the sight before them: the same young woman with black hair and the red jacket they had seen earlier, her expression mortified as she reached her hand out to them.
Shinjuku's new teacher's assistant.
"Erm, yeah," Arc blurted a little dumbly as they took her hand. "That was on me, though. I... Should have been paying attention."
"No, no." She shook her head as she pulled them up to stand. "I was in such a rush trying to get my paperwork that I hadn't realized there was someone there. You're not hurt, are you?"
"I'm not. I feel just fine, thank you."
Arc's eyes went to the now scattered papers around them. The other girl had begun the painstaking task of collecting each and every one of them.
"Would you like some help?" Arc offered. It wasn't like Sitri was in any rush to get his water bottle back, especially with all the activity going on at the festival. "It'll be faster if we worked together."
"Well, I can deal with this myself but..." A look at the nearby wall clock easily drowned out whatever hesitation she had left. "Actually, yes. I could use the help right now..."
Arc had already gotten a few in their hands, holding them close to their chest in a growing bundle. While they weren't particularly interested in the contents of the papers they were picking up, they saw that they were just students' quizzes and homework that were yet to be graded.
A few minutes had passed by the time they gathered all the papers on the floor. Accepting the papers from Arc's hands, she carefully arranged them into a neat stack, clacking the bundle against the surface of a nearby table to keep any stray papers from falling off.
"Thank you. This should be everything... Hopefully." Setting down the stack onto the table, she pulled out one piece and laid it flat beside the rest. "But just to be sure..."
While she counted, Arc was checking the corridor to see if there were any papers they missed. They spotted one by the windows, and walked over to pick it up. Without thinking, they flipped it over to check if it was one of the assistant's. Rather than contents related to academic development however, they were instead treated to a lengthy, mushy prose of someone so bold enough to express their affections for her and to even slip it into her documents in the off-chance she would read it.
"What the..."
Lots of folks know her and like her too. She's got her own little fanclub around school, Arc recalled his feline friend saying. It was probably from one of the admirers she had. Given how she had only been teaching for a scant two weeks at the academy, even they thought this over-the-top confession was a little bit silly. It was too short of a time to even get to know who she was.
"There, that should be all of it."
Arc spun around, just in time to see the girl nodding to herself in satisfaction. Though hesitant to hand in the unsettling letter they held, they raised it up to her anyway.
"I... Found this. It seems to be for you."
"What?"
She took it from them, and started reading the contents. Her face went from curiosity to confusion to downright discomfort, and even disdain.
"Oh, for the love of..."
With an annoyed grumble, she crumpled it without a shred of hesitation and threw it into the nearest trash bin, much to Arc's surprise. Not exactly the behavior of someone who supposedly had such a good reputation amongst her peers... Especially towards one of her admirers.
"I am so sorry you had to read all of that," She apologized again, the guilt from earlier now replaced with embarrassment and frustration over something far beyond her control. "I had just been dealing with a lot of people that were, well... Like this, for a very long time. I had started working at this school so I could change things up in my life and get away from that. But even here... Even with the students..."
She covered her eyes with one hand, feeling a headache settling.
"I appreciate the fact that people like me here. It's great to know I don't really have a problem with anybody. But I just learned recently they have a fanclub dedicated to just being head over heels for me. A whole fanclub. I have only been working here two weeks and I already have this entire group of people that I don't know on a personal level crushing over me. And for what? A perceived notion of me rather than who I really am?" She threw her hands up in the air. "Maybe I'm overreacting with this but honestly—who does that? How does that even happen? Why can't I have just a normal working relationship with my students? Or is even something as simple as that too much to ask?"
After a long weighty silence, she let out another much-need sigh, trying to calm her nerves. Arc chose not to say anything in response, not trusting themself to say the right thing after such an outburst.
Thankfully, they didn't need to.
"Goodness. I'm usually better at keeping it together..." She cleared her throat, composure returning to her voice. "Sorry about that. That was truly unbecoming of me, especially since I'm supposed to be a TA." She laughed, but it seemed more of her resigning to her unwanted fate and trying to accept it more than anything. "And the fact that I did it in front of another student too... Urgh."
"If it makes you feel better," Arc started, trying to lighten the mood, "I'm actually not a student here."
She blinked. "Hm? You're not?"
"No. My friend just invited me to come visit because the school had a festival going on. He's doing some volunteer work with his friends at the event grounds right now, but he asked me to find his water bottle." They gestured to the stainless steel, red-striped tumbler perched right by the spout of the water fountain. "I was going to grab it and head back when you ran into me."
"Ah. That explains why you didn't look familiar..." Her face lit up in recognition as they held the bottle up and shook its contents to see if it needed refilling. "That's Sitri's, isn't it? You must be the friend he keeps talking about. Arc, was it?"
"Oh, uh... Yes." They didn't realize Sitri had been talking about them. "It's a pleasure to meet you, um..."
The familiar chime of the schoolbell rang throughout the halls, easily interrupting their conversation. Her gray eyes widened at the realization that she lingered too long, and she needed to leave as soon as possible.
"Sorry, Arc. I need to leave." She hurriedly gathered the rest of her things before running for the glass double doors. "It was great meeting you, though! Next time you're in school maybe we can sit down and have a proper chat!"
"Ah, hey, wai—"
But she was gone as quickly as she'd come, leaving Arc in the hallway by their lonesome... Along with the revelation that not all was as it seemed with Shinjuku's new teacher's assistant and the rumors trailing not too far behind her.
---
This idea had just been kind of lingering in my head for a couple days, but I didn't really feel like putting it down until today. I wanted to just spend more time focusing on my other OCs before circling back to this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment