December 3, 2019
Shujin Academy, 10:00 am
I wake up with a gasp followed with students laughing quietly. I lift my head up from my arms on the desk and try to recognize my surroundings. A few minutes later after glancing at the students with their textbooks on their desks, I realize my past actions before I took a nap.
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Somewhere in Aoyama Itchome near Shujin Academy, 7:45 am
As I just arrive from train to head to Shujin Academy, I look at the texts I sent to Akira moments before I left my house.
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「Today 7:10 am」
Me: Place the Manila folder on my desk face down when you arrive. If anyone asks, just say that I’m checking your personally written works.
Akira: So is today a study day then?
Me: Yeah. Focus on finals for now and I’ll go through the contents.
Akira: Ok
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As soon as I stored my phone in my suitcase, I hurriedly run towards the school moments before security starts to close the gates. Once I made it inside, I move to the side to let other possibly late students run to their classrooms. Some of them give me incredulous looks as I catch my breath. I don’t blame them, though I’m still in shock that this happened due to a nightmare that Jace predicted.
Once I finally feel rested enough, I hurriedly walk towards my class. As I enter the classroom, I see a Manila folder placed on my desk, face down. Good, now all I need to do is to announce to the class that this class period is the time to study for finals.
...
As soon as I did, I sat on my desk, feeling strangely tired. Putting my arms on my desk, I lay my head down and close my eyes for a few minutes...
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That’s right: while my students study quietly for finals, I would occupy myself with reading the contents in the Manila folder. I open the top drawer to my left and take out a pen and a pad of sticky notes and tabs. I then place it on my desk and open up the Manila folder to take out the contents and pick up where I left off at.
As I browse through the contents, I notice a few additional drawings on one of the tracing papers. Did Akira do this last night? I wrote on the sticky tabs, “Did you add these yesterday?” and placed them near specific drawings.
Something feels off. I feel something that feels different from all the other pages, and it’s located at the last page. I pull out the last page and discover a new drawing: it’s me as “Rosalina,” whoever she is.
Looking at the writing, I realize that Akira didn’t draw this. But if that’s the case, then that would mean that he also didn’t draw on the tracing paper. But if he didn’t do it, who did? I thought Akira and I were the only ones who view through the contents, especially since we both went through it yesterday.
After a while of debating, I decide to place a sticky tab on the new drawing and write, “Where did this come from? How did this get inside the folder?”
I put the new drawing behind all the other drawings for now and continue browsing through the pages of drawings. Once I get to the page with entries 12-14, I begin reading entry 13. However, the moment I do, I suddenly realize that I never finished reading entry 12 yesterday and return to where I left off at.
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M: You should be doing that instead of looking for photo evidence against me.
K: What photo evidence? I don’t fucking care about evidence.
M: Really.
K: Really what? I am pissed off right now. My anger’s getting the best of me.
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As I read, I annotate the entries just like any other story read and discussed in class on the sticky tabs.
”What were Maaron and Ken fighting about at the time? Why did she start having doubts about him? What did Ken do behind her back?”
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M: Like I said, despite all the arguing, I still want us to be friends.
K: What do you mean? We’re still friends.
M: Yeah, but I want us to resume talking like how we used to before the arguing. Which, by the way, I really hate.
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”What happened between the ellipses? Why did it get cut off right there? Did those two made up? Or did they just put the issue aside for the time being?”
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M: School mascot?
...
K: No, it’s not too personal. It’s a dolphin.
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”What could she possibly gain from knowing about the school mascot from Ken’s school?”
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K: I am worried really bad about Emily.
M: When was this? Last night?!
...
K: I am worried and scared to death….
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”Bottom: Rather then worry about her, why didn’t Maaron and Ken report this to the authorities or something?”
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M: You’re a guy. Of course that’s gonna happen. My brother is taller than me even though he’s two years younger.
K: I am, let’s see, four years younger than her.
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”Wait, what happened to Emily? Did they report this?”
Entry 12 finished, and the the pink sticky tabs are all used and filled with unanswered questions. Why are so many things omitted? What happened between the three of them? Will the next entry answer these questions? Or will it lead to more unanswered questions?
To be continued…
Sources: Intermission and Background
Several months later, and I resume working on this series. I would’ve done the next few entries, but this is already too long and I still have plenty of assignments to do as well as a midterm test to study for.
The result of annotating my own works below
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