The following short story takes place between chapter 4 and chapter 5 of Circumstances of the Revenant Braves...

It was one of those rainy days where the clouds are so dark that it feels like dusk all day long. We'd just come back from lunch break and I was already counting the seconds until the end of the school day. Three rows to my left an overly energetic Aoyama Fio struggled to sit still at her desk. Ichikawa Celeste sat calmly at the desk in front of her, hands on her lap and facing forward. They say the quiet ones turn out to be serial killers, don't they? Nah, Ichikawa's too cute to be a serial killer. Wait, don't they say to watch out for the cute ones as well?

As I tried to chase away the adages in my head that it seemed wouldn't stop picking on Ichikawa, a less abstract enemy was looming over the poor girl. Fio, it seemed, had taken it upon herself to try to steal the daisy from atop Ichikawa's head without her noticing. As I glanced, annoyed, between Fio slowly climbing up onto her desk and the teacher, who must have been completely blind not to notice, I realized that the likelihood of this ending well were slim to nil. It seemed my best chance was just to ignore it and hope it would resolve itself.



Just as I'd resigned myself not to pay anymore attention, though, the desk Fio was precariously perched upon began to wobble. She quickly retracted her left arm, which had been mere centimetres from the daisy and success, and steadied herself. Beads of sweat rolled down my back as I waited for the inevitable. But nothing happened. I let out an audible sigh of relief, but the teacher still didn't seem to notice. By this point, she was turned around and writing something out on the blackboard. There was no hope of her seeing anything now until it would be too late.

When Fio seemed to be comfortable with her level of balance again, once again her hand began to creep over Ichikawa's blonde hair. A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the window behind her and I thought for sure she would be startled and topple onto Ichikawa, but she didn't seem too phased by it. I was impressed. Unfortunately for Fio, lighting is never alone. The clap of thunder that followed can only be described as "biblical". And in short order, it had the teacher spinning around just in time to see Fio lose absolutely all of her balance and fall on top of Ichikawa, who with a mouse-like squeal, fell out of her chair and onto the floor. The whole class remained completely silent as the daisy floated gracefully through the air to land atop Fio's head.

Needless to say, the teacher wasn't impressed. Ichikawa was lucky, though. Well, as lucky as someone who's just been the victim of an unprovoked, mid-class, accidental, surprise tackling from behind can be. Our teacher wasn't unfamiliar with Fio's inability to sit still and immediately recognized which of the two girls sitting before her in a heap on the floor was to blame for the disruption. While the rest of us were free to go home after school that day, Fio was sentenced to clean the classroom on her own.

As we filed out, Fio boastfully told us to wait for her at the cafe as her cleaning skills were unmatched and that she'd easily be done in ten minutes. I filled Ichikawa in on what I believe Fio had been trying to accomplish during class when everything had gone terribly wrong. She was perplexed and wondered why Fio wouldn't just ask for the daisy. I told her she had a lot to learn about Aoyama Fio, which made it sound like I had a clue as to why Fio didn't just ask or even wanted the damn flower in the first place, but in reality I didn't.

Sol joined up with us and, after I'd filled him in on what'd happened, offered his own unique perspective on what Fio had done. He believed that it was practise for if we ever came across a mission that posed a similar challenge. "The ancient and highly practical art of removing one thing from another thing very slowly and carefully" he called it. As ludicrous as that sounds, when it comes to Fio, nothing would surprise me. And besides that, she and Sol seem to operate on wavelengths that overlap now and then.

Back at the club room along with our spirit companions, we waited. And waited. And waited. And would you believe me if I said we waited some more? After about an hour, Ichikawa was the first to give up and go home. She said that the pirates would be getting hungry. To a normal person that would sound like an idiomatic expression or at least an exaggeration, not literal fact. What a life I live.

Soon afterwards, Sol got up to leave. I was surprised that he'd give up so early and asked him about it. He wasn't going home, but rather out to patrol for vice-like suspicious activities. His dedication to the job is uncanny. I'd say that his future employers will be very lucky to have him, but somehow I doubt his fervent work attitude will translate to non-super hero roles.

In any case, Musashi joined him, but Mecha who was already asleep, stayed behind.

Left alone in the small room above my mother's cafe, the dark rain-filled sky getting darker by the minute and my only company a sleeping Mecha, I felt suddenly overwhelmed by melancholy.

I wasn't worried about her or anything, but I decided to go and find out what was taking Fio so long. I had never thought it would take her the ten minutes she boasted, but it was getting late. The field was wet and windy and I'd foolishly forgotten to bring my raincoat so by the time I got back into the school building, I was pretty well soaked through.

The school was empty and very dark now. It was amazing how different it felt from during the day. Perhaps because I was so used to its halls being flooded with noisy students I found it a bit unsettling. Around every corner, I hoped I'd run into Fio so we could just go back to the cafe and I could get out of these wet clothes, but she was nowhere to be found until I came to our classroom.

Looking in, the room was clearly only half-tidied and sitting half-way through the room at my desk was the gently rising and falling figure of a sleeping Aoyama Fio. I approached her quietly. Obviously I've been well-trained to respect someone else's sleep, but I don't really know why Fio deserves the courtesy.

Unlike the school, it wasn't unsettling to see the usually energetic Fio sleeping so peacefully. Instead it was kind of a relief. I think up until then, part of me wondered if this girl even slept at all, so it was nice to see her showing such normal human behaviour. She moaned slightly and readjusted her head without waking up.



"Kei..."

I was taken aback. At first I thought she had awoken, but it became obvious that she was just dreaming. Of me...?

"Jump off that bridge..."

I was taken aback again, but in a significantly less pleasant way.

"Why? Because I said so..."

God, I hope it isn't the future she's seeing...

I left her alone with her unsavoury dreams and set about doing her job for her by cleaning the rest of the room. Just like her, she didn't wake up until the moment I'd finished.

She started by asking by groggily asking where she was. Then why she was there. And finally, why I was there. I obliged her on all three, being certain to complain that I'd had to do half of her assigned task for her. She immediately became defensive and pointed out that I could have simply woken her up, to which I had no response. It was a short argument.

Reluctantly, she thanked me for helping her, gathered her things and I led her out into the hall. As I stepped through the threshold I felt something tug at my chest. I realized that Fio has lassoed her arms around me and buried her face into my back.



"You're not going anywhere, are you?"

I asked her what she meant.

"I had a bad dream... where you left because I wanted you to do something you didn't want to."

Her surprisingly small hands tightened their grip on the front of my shirt. I swallowed the lump in my throat before replying that it was just a dream and that I wasn't going anywhere.

Her grip loosened and I felt her rubbing her face against my back. We stood there in silence for an indeterminate amount of time. I was lost between the pressure of not knowing what to say next and the happiness of the hug and feeling needed.

Eventually she spoke again.

"Why are you so wet?"

I stated the obvious and said it was raining.

"... sorry if I made it worse."

She slowly released me and put one hand against the center of my back to let me know it was time to keep going.

Once we were fully out in the hall, Fio seemed completely re-energized; happier, even, than usual. I continued my normal walk as she skipped ahead, humming some indecipherable tune to herself. Again I stated the obvious and said that she seemed upbeat.

She stopped humming, but no skipping, just long enough to answer.

"The school's so different after-hours, don't you think? It's nice."

I smiled to myself and mumbled an agreement.