I slept through my alarm for running with Emi today— she's probably gonna yell at the nurse, but I'm tired. So I don't mind. I've got about an hour before classes. Normal people wake up around now...well, normal for Yamaku at least. I think.

I down my medication with a half-full glass of water, pulling out a fresh change of clothes at the end of the swig. It's become a routine. I took a quick shower last night, so I don't bother taking one this morning. Half an hour to go till class, so I start walking at an easy pace. The sky is dull, calling for rain or just generic drear at this point.

When I get through the front door to the school, thunder booms. The people still outside start to hurry their pace, and the halls are quickly filled with squeaking rubber and annoyed voices. I climb up the stairs to the 3rd floor and realize I've still got 5 minutes to spare. Naomi and Natsume are chattering loudly in their back corner, leaving Hanako to keep herself buried in her book as usual. I take my seat between Hanako and Naomi.

"Hi Hisao!" Naomi lilts, clearing the room of noise for but a moment. The quiet chatter between cliques revs up again. "Sleep well last night?"

Natsume turns to face me completely at this point, extremely clear bags under her eyes. "Yeah, Hisao. Did you sleep well?"

"Like a rock. A baby rock." I shrug, laying my books across the desk and opening to the reading we needed to have done for today.

"So a pebble?" Naomi scratches at her chin, watching one of our classmates walk in-Miki, I think. "Yeah. A pebble."

Upon this realization of baby rocks being pebbles, the bell rings and class starts (complete with a soggy Mutou walking in right after the bell). Everyone, from professor to student, is showing that the weather is getting to them. Class drags on until lunch, when the bell seemingly rips everyone from this complacent lull and awakens them for...food. I guess.

I sit down and lean forward in my hand. Naomi lets out a slow shrug as she drinks from a bright and colorful can, flashes of red and purple streaking across it, "Today's going so slooooow."

"Thanks, Captain Obvious." Natsume leans into the cafeteria table, onto her elbows, "Is there much else to do this week?"

"Not really~! Hisao and I basically have the whole thing down, which is great!" On the tip of Naomi's words, the cafeteria bell rings, and the three of us shrug in near unison, standing up and walking towards our class.

Natsume slides through the cafeteria door, waiting for Naomi and I to catch up.

"You should take Hisao to the city this weekend since you're free, Naomi." Natsume lets the door close, falling back to a student I don't recognize. They catch it and glare forward at us, but turn back to the cafeteria. Oblivious, she continues talking, "He's not seen the city yet, and you just got your prescription updated on those glasses of yours. It's a perfect time."

"I dunno, I was thinking of catching up on my reading this weekend."

When the bell rings, restarting class with a dull slam, the rest of afternoon classes pass the same as the morning. Of course, as soon as the bell letting out classes rings, the rain starts to calm down and give way to grey skies.

We all make our way to the Newspaper Room, picking up Ayao along the way. Naomi unlocks the door and dumps out her bag onto the round table in the corner, flooding it with miscellaneous papers and different knick-knacks, anything from a hairbrush to a piece of what looks like an apple core.

"Right! Let's…ahaha…get started then!" She slowly picks out anything not related to the news article, bubbling with laughter under her breath, "I uh, didn't realize I had so much stuff in my bag…"

I can almost feel the embarrassment. When she finishes gathering all the... stuff... up, back into her bag, she stands back up, straight and proud, "Right, now we can actually start!" She coughs.

She gathers up all of the papers, categorizing them by the weight of their importance and the actual subject they pertain to. By the time she finishes, it looks like some ridiculous reworking of a game of solitaire, featuring papers and sticky notes instead of playing cards.

"Ehe...Sorry." Naomi smiles awkwardly, brushing her hand through her hair. "Okay, so here's all of our stories for the week."

Natsume stands up, glancing at me, "We do this every week to figure out our stories for the next issue. We keep it simple with the sticky-note-arrangements, sorta. This week's a bit more cluttered than usual since it's Naomi's week." She shoots a smirk at her, laughing.

Ayao, from the corner, shrugs. "It's true, Naomi, your weeks for arranging are always the messie-"

"Leave me aloneeeee." She groans, "I have better things to do than worry about the exact stylings of our newspaper's planning spread. Like, for example, making the contents of our newspaper's planning spread."

Natsume sticks her tongue out. "Regardless, Hisao. This is a weekly thing. So get used to it." She shrugs, slowly leaning over the spread to look over it.

I lean in too, squinting through the notes, being reminded vaguely of the swirling confusion I felt back in the hospital before coming to Yamaku. There's so many little squiggles, quick notes, organized into logical thought. If I knew making a newspaper was this complicated I probably would've just fallen into the Drill Sergeant's lap or something.

Seeing as I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing, I take a step back and watch the three of them work. Naomi chitters at Natsume, who is taking each individual page and tab, rearranging them into neat piles. Ayao takes these little...piles... that seem to keep coming, and plucks out individual tabs, placing them to the side.

"We're thinning the slugs out, Hisao. I decide what's going in this week, Natsume sorts it, Ayao prunes it. Then we all do it again." Naomi chirps, turning around to glance at me in the midst of all this chaos. "Trust me, it makes sense after a few shots of watching it all happen."

I scrunch my eyebrows, looking at Naomi. "Slugs…?"

"Oh! They're just the beginnings of stories for the paper." She laughs, and immediately jumps back into the fray, barking and chopping orders. If she weren't making any noise, I'd equate the terrifying motions to Shizune and Misha's stilted quickness.

This continues on, until Ayao hands Naomi back each of the piles she'd accumulated...And then it begins again. It's like watching a paper shredder eat it's own shreds, repeatedly. The piles get smaller and smaller, until eventually Natsume has only a single pile in front of her, spread thin across the table.

"Done!" Naomi yells, making Ayao yelp in some sort of fear at the sudden loud noise. "Oops. But finally! Sorry, Hisao, this part of things has always been a bit convoluted. It'll make sense eventually, promise!"

"Naomi, don't be such an optimist. It took me all last year to figure this thing out." Ayao sits down, taking a long breath. "He should've just skipped today."

"Bad precedent, that." Natsume sits down, groaning as she slides into the chair. "You know how it goes, when people skip class once or twice, they skip class again. The first time is always the hardest, generally. Skipping is the easy way out!" She points her hand in the air like some half-baked anime character, giggling.

"...I guess, sure. But Shizune and Misha get away with it all the time, and they're good students!" Naomi grumbles.

"Because they're the Student Council. They're superhuman drill sergeants and they'll forever escape our comprehension. We may never know how they truly function. They simply do." Ayao chimes in from her relative silence. "Still. Hisao's fine being here. Not like he has anything better to do." She raises an eyebrow in what I'm hoping is a jest.

"Ow. Okay." I give an exaggerated sigh, as I glanced at the clock and the door, "Actually, now that I think about it, I should get back and work on my homework. It's getting late."

Ayao scrunches her eyebrows, "It was a joke, Hisao, jeez. Mopey."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that. Just convenient timing to make you feel bad." A let out a quick smile, grabbing my bag off the table by the door as I leave. "I'll see you guys tomorrow after class?"

"Sure!" Naomi chirps, gathering up the papers, "I think we're all done here anyway. We can all walk back to the dorms together."

Ayao shrugs, grabbing her stuff as well. "I was gonna hit the library, so you guys can go solo."

Natsume glances at me, then to Naomi, "I'm gonna get a head start on the layout work for tomorrow so I can go home early tomorrow. Got a test the day after."

We both step out of the door, glancing at each other with scrunched eyebrows. We step together, in a stilted unison.

"So that was fun~." She grins, hopping down the small stairs as she talks, "How far did you get on your article?"

"I did most of it, I think. It went pretty alright, I'd say." I put my hands in my pockets when I get to the bottom of the stairs, "That was pretty fun though, yeah."

"Wow~! That's rare! Most people just kinda shrug and never show up again when we get to the writing portion of the club." She fist pumps and leans to the sky, "Yesssssss!"

I smile and survey the grounds, now dark and a lot more… blue, in comparison to the morning and afternoon, which instead are lively and green. I'd say I prefer this in honesty. The blues drowning out the greens, drowning it and dulling it out. The flat colors are nice.

Jabbing me in the side, Naomi peers up at me with a questioning stare, "Whatcha thinkin' about there?"

"Oh. I was just looking at the landscaping."

"Deep into gardening, or is it deeper than that?"

"Deeper than that, yeah."

"Aww. Now I can't get the picture of you in a garden getup out of my head!" She laughs, filling the night air with the reverberating lilt of her giggles.

"Well, I mean, I could garden. I never thought I'd be writing like this, so gardening doesn't seem so farfetched now."

She sticks her tongue out, jabbing me in the side and winking, "It's not that bad, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, it's great," I turn to her as we make our way across the open field, "I'm enjoying it a lot."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it! I was worried you thought I was bad company~!" She laughs belligerently again, facing the sky, "You're red, by the way."

"Red?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Nothing, nothing. Just keep your eyes on the prize, Hisao~."

I realize, at this point, that I'm staring at Naomi as we walk. I quickly fix myself and watch the sidewalk, cheeks flaring up.

"That's what I meant." She pokes me in the cheek and laughs again, the air seeming empty when she stops, "This is fun. We should do this more often." She steps up the stairs to the dorms, walking over to the girl's building. Opening the door, Naomi peers over her shoulder at me, "I'll cya tomorrow, Hisao." I glance down at the door handle, opening it with a slow forming grin, and make my way to my dorm…That was nice.

"We should do this more often." Naomi's words flash through my head at random. I'm probably just looking too far into things.