Ayano Aishi, the Emotionless Lover

Week Six, Monday

Week Six, Monday

    Ayano shouldn’t be surprised to see her friends still waiting for her, but she is. The five boys are talking, waiting outside of her house as if nothing has changed.

    And honestly? Maybe it hasn’t. During the walk to school, the boys don’t stop to question if everything Ayano does is real or not. They don’t even mention it, just talking about plans for the week, and the upcoming play on Saturday. Kizano, especially, loves to talk about that, and all of the remaining work for the Drama Club.

    “And I’ll leave one day to work on any remaining trouble spots that don’t have my Juliet, since she’ll be with the Student Council that day,” Kizano says at one point, then looks to Ayano. “What day will you be leaving us, darling?”

    Ayano shrugs. “I think I’ll go on Wednesday again. I’ll probably stick to Wednesdays, maybe Thursday occasionally.”

    Kizano nods. “Okay, so Wednesday will be trouble spots for everyone else, and…” Kizano proceeds to take the rest of the walk as a chance to hash out his schedule.

    When the six students get to Akademi, they all go their separate ways. Aso heads off to the track. Osano and Amao head to the Cooking Club, going to inventory all of their ingredients so they know what they can bake for the play easily. Oko heads off to the Occult Club, and Kizano heads to the Drama Club room, in search of some costumes he’s wanted to check out. Ayano, alone, goes to the Student Council room. The other four are already there.

    “Ayano!” Akane greets instantly. “How was your weekend?”

    Ayano smiles. “It was nice.” Then her smile slips. “I documented all of the texts.”

    She had done it after all of her friends left. Playing music on her computer, Ayano had pulled up the phone conversation with Otohiko and typed out every single message that he had sent her, marking the time beside each text. As she went down the messages, they only got worse and worse. Otohiko became more and more clingy, and was practically begging Ayano to respond to him, to love him, to be with him. Ayano cranked up the volume more and more as she retyped the texts, nerves filling her blood and making her shake. 

    Ayano shakes her head slightly, forcing herself to stop thinking about the texts. She sets down the papers with all of the texts. Curious, Shiromi glances through them. Only a page in, Shiromi looks away, annoyed and disgusted.

    “Alright, I’m going to go patrol around. Have fun, Ayano.” Shiromi stands up and walks off without waiting for a response.

    Ayano heads back to her piles of papers and continues reading. She’s halfway done with the second stack by now, and knows that, after this, she’ll have to be a lot more precise. The next stack starts talking about the current year three students. Ayano knows that, when the year graduates, their papers will be refiled again, in a more basic order. But it’s Ayano’s job to file them the first time, and to file them precisely. 

    ‘ It looks like everyone will have to be alphabetized. ’ Ayano thinks, and sighs. That’ll be a job for Wednesday.

    For now, Ayano spends her time going through the second stack, reading the documents about students that Ayano will never meet, and incidents that happened long ago.