NaNoWriMo8

A series of three thuds on the table dragged Kiyomi out of her thoughts.

She couldn’t help it, really. She had found her mind drifting to the familiars, and to Kurogane Masahiro himself, and how they had to be stopped. She’d just found herself distracted by it.
Right in the middle of lunch, even.

“Eh?”

Kiyomi refocused, coming to realize that it was Kadowaki Sanae who had rapped on the table. Sanae was about Miko’s height, with neat brown hair cut to her neckline. She had green eyes. However, physically she had always seemed… small, to Kiyomi. Slight, slender, there was little of anything to Kadowaki Sanae’s body. As for her personality...

“Hey! What are you doing zoning out like that?” asked Sanae, in an incredibly impatient tone of voice. She was currently staring with a surprising amount of intensity at Kiyomi, an expression of quite possibly over-the-top determination displayed on her face.  “Not only is it not like you, but we’re talking about important issues here! Geez, and you’re normally so focused!”

As if to illustrate her ‘focused’ point, Sanae held her hands straight and flat at either side of both her eyes, as if to focus her vision down one specific path.

“… I zoned out?” Kiyomi asked. She hadn’t realized that she’d gotten that lost in her thoughts…

“Yeah, you were staring out the window and thinking about… something, I don’t know, you looked like you were thinking pretty hard,” Sanae waved her hand dismissively. “But that’s not important. But what is important is that I’ve got a new plan for the greatest club to ever grace this high school with its presence!”

“Another one?” said a soft, quiet voice.

Sanae turned.

Minori Mai was a short girl, whose long green hair seemed to have somehow achieved a state of constant bedhead. According to her, her hair defaulted to this state even after she brushed or combed it. Perpetually half-closed pale blue eyes looked out from behind large, round glasses. Mai wasn’t as slender and slight as Sanae was, and looked, in a word, ‘soft’. She wore a brown sweatjacket over her school uniform, with sleeves too long for her hands. Mai raised her hands, and the sleeves slide down her arms. She picked up a premade sandwich and slowly nibbled on the end. It looked like she had no intention of finishing the sandwich before lunch was over, at this rate.

“Well, yeah, of course!” declared Sanae, grinning at Mai. Kiyomi leaned back in her seat. Really, Mai’s question seemed a little silly. Mainly because- “I make one every week, one of them has to work, and it’s going to be this one!”

After a few more moments of slow nibbling, Mai lowered the sandwich away from her mouth.

“You say that every week,” she said, in that same, soft voice, “And I still don’t know why you try to make the most outlandish clubs…”

Deciding to enter the conversation, Miko spoke up. “Well, I suppose Sanae-san wants to try something that no-one has ever done before.”

Sanae was silent for a moment, before quickly latching onto that explanation. “Yeah, exactly! Something no-one has ever done before! So, for the first time ever…”

Sanae shot to her feet, and pointed straight ahead… at the wall behind Kiyomi and Sanae.

Mai spoke up, at that.

“There’s nothing there.”

“It’s not that kind of pointing! Anyway… for the first time ever…” Sanae made a dramatic pause, as if to increase tension that was, in Kiyomi’s opinion, non-existent. “The Shiratori High School will have a Moe club!”

Miko stared. “Ehh?”

“… Moe… club?” Kiyomi asked, scratching her head.

“… What?” Mai tilted her head slightly, and then nibbled a little more on her sandwich.

“A Moe club! The FIRST Moe club!” Sanae declared with pride.

The entire table managed a blank stare. Kiyomi had heard of moe before, sometimes in connection with a few of the anime she watched and manga she read. She wasn’t particularly deep in the community of fans for the media, but she knew enough to know that moe was a sort of specific type of cuteness. She had no idea how this connected to a club.

“… What… what would that even be?” she eventually asked, partially to break the silence.
“I’m glad you asked!” replied Sanae, with enough energy to power several large buildings, “A moe club would have one, simple goal: To both record, and spread the wonderfulness of moe!”

There was a long moment of awkward silence. Some of the people at neighboring desks were starting to stare.

“I can see you’re all stunned by the brilliance of my plan,” continued Sanae, picking up on the ‘stunned’ part but not the reason behind it, “So I’ll explain in more detail! We’ll find girls all over this school, and if they’re moe, we’ll make them join the club! And then we’ll maximize our own moe factor, and thereby spread moe!”

She leaned to the side, and rested her arm on Mai’s head. The short girl flinched. “H-hey…”

“Even though she doesn’t always act like it,” Sanae began, with ever-increasing gusto, “Mai-chan is the most moe out of us all! Just look at her! Meganekko, that soft voice, that cute and slightly-drowsy-looking expression! Those too-long-for-her-arms sleeves! So many moe traits! But we can go further then that! I’ll bring in some costumes, and we’ll find the best way to maximize the moe!”

Kiyomi glanced at Miko. Her friend looked hopelessly lost. Kiyomi felt no different, really.  Sanae’s club plans were always strange, but this was taking the cake. A moe club? Even after that explanation it was so… out there. It was just plain ridiculous! Kiyomi would ask what Sanae was thinking, but… really, it was usually impossible to figure out what Sanae was thinking. Especially when she made weird plans like this…

“Miko-chan comes with a costume built-in! Miko have a type of moe all their own!” declared Sanae, which earned a baffled stare from Miko. Kiyomi sighed, and began to speak up, “Sanae-chan, maybe-“

“And you don’t apply to a specific moe type,” continued Sanae, gesturing to Kiyomi, “But you’ve got a good level of potential moe, and I think you could make a good maid! But we’ll start with Mai-chan. Put Mai-chan in some pyjamas and a blanket, and she’s perfect! Maybe even cut out the pyjamas, or any clothes at all, and just leave her with the blank-owowowowowowowowow!”

Mai was not normally the type to hit someone. However, she had chosen this moment to drive her elbow into Sanae’s side and grind it in. Sanae bent double, shocked that Mai had reacted so quickly. With her free hand, Mai continued to passively nibble her sandwich.

“… I don’t think Mai-chan likes that idea,” Miko said, finally having something somewhat logical she could latch onto and understand. “I still don’t really understand it…”

“It’s just weird,” Kiyomi said with a shrug. That idea was arguably one of the strangest things she could recall hearing from Sanae “I don’t think anyone would support a club like that. Maybe if you came up with more normal ideas for clubs, they’d actually be successful.”

“But… but… it’s the best club idea ever! I’ll even show y-owowowow!”

Mai had begun grinding her elbow in again. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually she relented… near the end of the lunch period. But Kiyomi had lost focus by then. Her thoughts had drifted back to those familiars… and that Kurogane Masahiro. Would they even find him at all? No, of course they would. If everything they knew about him held true, he was a dangerous man with a dangerous goal. They had to find him, and they had to stop him.

It was unquestionable.

When the bell to single the end of the period rang, Kiyomi finally regained focus as the students began to reorient their desks to face the front of the room once more, as other students returned from various locations. After lunch was, as usual, Kaname-sensei. Most students avoided missing Kaname-sensei’s class. For one thing, her classes were always entertaining. And then there was her reaction if she thought someone had decided to cut class…

Shortly after the last of the students returned and the last of the desks was facing forward, Kaname-sensei walked in. She was a short woman who was incredibly easy to mistake for a girl of around thirteen as opposed to a teacher in her twenties. She had short pink hair and an expression of perpetual cheerfulness. Her features were soft and childish, and her eyes matched her hair. She smiled at her class.

“Hello, class! How are you?” Kaname-sensei cheerfully asked, with a large smile. “I’ve had a wonderful day! Okabe-san picked me up some snacks, and-“

From there, Kaname-sensei went on a somewhat disjointed ramble. This… wasn’t the first time this had happened. Kiyomi was actually rather used to this happening, as were many other students. None of them had ever spoken up in an attempt to get Kaname-sensei to stop, though she usually realized what she was doing and stopped herself. Of course, that… wasn’t always the case. Once, Kaname-sensei had taken an entire lesson to first talk about her day, and then play a board game with the students, before realizing she had a lesson to teach. When she was able to focus, however, she was a an excellent teacher.

About three minutes later, Kaname-sensei paused.

“Oh… oh, I’m sorry!” she said, “I got distracted and lost in my own thoughts, and I didn’t realize I had taken up so much of your time!”

She bowed low.

“Sensei is very sorry!” she said, before straightening.

And with that, she went about her lesson.

~

The familiar had gained the necessary information. Staring in from outside, it had been able to read the abilities of those within. It was a special familiar. Kurogane Masahiro had made it with the purpose of being able to register such things from a distance. And two of the girls in the class hard proven to be powerfully magical…

The familiar slithered away. It had to relay the information back to its creator.