The Dream Shifter

Chapter 5

The morning and remainder of the time in class that followed after the introduction of the new student, Ayumi Nishimura, was carried out normally for everyone, everyone but Yuki. He had become distracted by this new girl that was sitting behind him. 

Normally, it would have been easy enough for him to let his mind wonder through his fantasies during homeroom, since nothing of importance usually happened. 'Ayumi Nishimura…why did she smile at me like that?' However, he was not able to get his mind off of her for as much as he tried and none of it made any sense. There was something that was not sitting right with him and he did not know what to make of it.

It all happened when he saw her walk by him. She smiled at him when he had been suddenly feeling immense stress. It was as though there were twenty pound weights chained to his arms and legs and he was struggling to just hold his position. 

He sweated heavily making his uniform stick to his skin and strain with his movements. Then she just smiled at him as though she seemed to understand doing it only to relieve him and release the chains around him. He could not make sense of it. 'Such a strange look, but it was just a normal smile. But why am I feeling this strangely about it. What's wrong with me?'

Yuki turned around in his chair ninety degrees to look over his shoulder more comfortably at the new girl. She wore the school uniform of Monou High the typical sailor outfit that was worn by most students with certain variations. Being that it was the winter uniform still it had the long sleeves that went firmly around wrists for warmth and thicker material. The sleeves were part of the jacket that went over the white dress blouse underneath. 

The jacket worked with the two colors scheme white for the base and blue for highlights and contrast. The usual marking for the sailor outfit with a squared cloth hanging from the back of the shoulders was removed with the dress blouse collar coming up around the neck and the collar of the jacket folded down wide in length coming to an open 'V' shape that allowed the top few buttons of the blouse to be seen. The jacket finished in dark blue buttons holding it together covering over the waist strap of the skirt, that remained at a more conservative length closer to the knees. 

The pleated skirt held the matching blue color of the jacket as its base. Yuki's uniform matched the blue through for jacket and slacks with his white dress shirt underneath. Both uniforms held the school's seal in the right upper pocket location, if there was a pocket.

Ayumi had her hair tied back with a matching colored ribbon giving Yuki sudden images of a manga he had recently read. It had been the first distraction from Ayumi he had. He still wished to know what was wrong with him, but having been turned around staring at her for the prolonged period he had garnered him more attention that he thought he was going to get. 

She was staring at him looking a little closer to him than he was planning making him pull back putting his desk edge into his back painfully. "Hello!"

Yuki put his hand on his back wincing a little in the pain striking at him. It took him a moment until he realized that the new girl had spoken to him making him become frantic almost needing to say something.

 "Uhh…I…" Sadly he could not form enough words immediately.

"Oh dear, are you alright?" she said reaching her hand out to Yuki with a concerned, yet that shy expression from earlier, look on her face. She did not want be causing problems for the other students on her first day already.

Yuki straightened himself up quickly having seen Ayumi trying to help him. "I-I'm fine. See no problem at all," he said pounding on his back though still obviously feeling the sting forcing him to roughly cover it up. 

"No, it's my fault. I was staring at you thinking that you looked like one of the characters from a manga I had just read last night."

Saki, who had been watching the exchange, slammed her head into her desk suddenly out of reaction from Yuki honest yet stupid answer that was no doubt going to get him into further trouble. 

'Yuki, you got to learn when to be quiet and not say everything that's running through your mind. Not everyone will understand. In fact no one does, usually…' She sighed to herself with her head resting sideways on the desk fearing the sort of response that will come from the transfer student.

The other students around that heard Yuki were laughing at him knowing full well what was going to happen next. There were a few comments saying that it was typical of Yuki.

Ayumi pulled her hands back and raising them to her face looking embarrassed. "Oh really? You think so? That's so sweet," she said to the utter surprise of the entire class some slipping a little and falling to the floor on their backs.

Saki nearly rammed her head through her desk in surprise with everyone else. She could not believe that she was just going to accept that. It would have sounded almost creepy to any other girl that would have heard it. She was equally confused as rest of the students were about Ayumi. 

'No one's accepted Yuki so easily…and to not even care about how weird he just sounded. Who is this girl?'

After an awkward start by Yuki and most certainly strange answer from Ayumi the two were laughing lightly for an unknown reason since everyone else had missed what happened next still trying to recover from the shock. Yuki felt a little more comfort with Ayumi now that his mind seemed to have gotten over the issues it was having previously. 

"Oh, you probably heard from Ms. Kuniyoshi, but my name is Yuki Hayashi."

"Oh, Hayashi okay…" she said still feeling cautious.

"You can call me Yuki, alright?"

"Yuki?"

"There you go," Yuki said smiling back at her. 

He was greeted by a smile from her again, different from before feeling straightforward and honest. They continued to talk for a little while longer, but Yuki kept feeling a strange poking in his back and shoulder that he could not place. He rolling his left shoulder hoping that the feeling would disappear, but it seemed to only come back stronger.

Over his left shoulder there was a glaring stare from Ms. Kuniyoshi holding a stick of chalk in her hand and a vein popping up once more. Though a little further down was Saki staring at the two of them getting along really well with not nearly the intensity of the teacher, but staring all the same and perhaps glaring, she was not certain herself.

"Mr. Hayashi! I've had enough of you disrupting my class. You will be quiet now!" Ms. Kuniyoshi said starting to look a little exhausted from the morning already. 

The other students considered laughing again, but they could see how serious she was now that they did not dare to do anything more to make her angry.

Yuki caught about half of what she said still looking back at Ayumi rather than the yelling teacher. Saki's expression changed to embarrassment now that Yuki was making even more of a scene for himself. 'He's so clueless. 

Closing out the world to focus on one thing is not always a good thing…' Though it had came to her surprise seeing a white beam run past her nose sucking in the air behind it pulling it towards its destination. 

Saki blinked to see if her eyes were play tricks on her when she saw Yuki laying face planted on Ayumi's desk unconscious and a bump on his head. She looked down at the desk's table to see a couple broken pieces of chalk rounding around to a rest. 

'Yuki…'

"Oh my! Yuki!" Ayumi said scrambling to Yuki's side trying to lift him up until she noticed the bump on his head. "Are you alright? Yuki?"

"Miss Nishimura don't let this delinquent rub off on you. Understood?" she said wanting to get her class under control finally before the time was over.

"But what about Yuki? He could be hurt."

"I wouldn't worry too much about him," a student said helping pull Yuki back up and set him into his chair. He pushed his index finger at Yuki's nose pointing his hanging head forward to pretend that he was paying attention. 

"I haven't known Yuki long, but I've seen him on the wrong end of plenty of fists and he always manages to come out fine. So you don't have to worry."

"But…" He placed a hand on her shoulder looking at her carefully letting her know he was being serious. It calmed her down letting her return to her seat. 

"I'm sorry, who are you?" asked Ayumi as she saw the student go back to his seat as well.

"Oh, I'm Hiroshi Kuroda, one Yuki's friends." Hiroshi ended it there leaving with a polite nod knowing that he was getting stared at by the teacher as well. 

He could not leave Yuki there being the center of attention even unconscious. Yuki was already in enough trouble and it was not even past thirty minutes of the school day. Hiroshi gave back an amused smile before giving Ms. Kuniyoshi his focus as well.