A brand-new day

Elsewhere, in a dark room hazy with incense smoke, a shinobi enters and addresses his superior.

“We finally have a lead to the last crystal.” He said. “It’s nothing solid yet, just a report of a strange event regarding a student at Hanzo Academy. A student wearing a necklace with a red crystal was present.”

“Promising.” A figure obscured in shadow and smoke replied. “We make this as clean and precise as possible. We cannot afford to expose ourselves over an unconfirmed report. Follow the student, and report back to me when you are one-hundred percent certain he possesses my crystal.”

The figure laughed with excitement. At the same time, all the incense sticks in the room immediately burned themselves out.

“Yes, of course.” The shinobi bowed deeply and then vanished.

I made my trip to school that morning with a bit more pep in my step. The night before, as I was drifting to sleep, I thought more carefully about how I was going to use my necklace. My father made it fairly clear that he wanted me to have a harem of my own by the time he returned. Personally, I didn’t care much for that idea, at least not at the moment. I was much more interested in just finding the right girl to make my girlfriend. I was pretty sure my father was half-joking anyway, at this point he would be happy I managed to get a girlfriend at all.

Still, the powers of the necklace would not go to waste. At the very least I could use it to create a nice little pool of ladies to choose from. In addition, I’d have the added benefit of knowing exactly what they would be like as lovers before I decided to fully commit. This was especially helpful since I didn’t even know exactly what I wanted. I knew I didn’t want anything that my ex was, but beyond that I was totally clueless. It would be interesting to make those discoveries in a completely risk-free environment.

There were also other uses to the necklace. At least until I was actually in a committed relationship I wasn’t above using it for sexual release. One hour was plenty of time to get my rocks off in whatever way I wanted. I wasn’t afraid of any real lasting repercussions, one look at my internet search history could tell you that intercourse wasn’t something I actively sought out often. In fact, my top search was boobjobs. It wasn’t hard to figure out why, since most of the girls at Hanzo were busty as hell.

My pocket buzzed. Curious, I fished my cell phone out of my pocket to find a text from Haru.

“Hey, get any ideas on what to do for your project yet?”

I frowned. I had totally forgotten. “Uh, not really. You?”

“Not a damn clue. This was such a dumb idea. Anytime I think of something I just imagine all of the ways it could, and probably would, go wrong.”

I chuckled a bit. “Yeah. Don’t worry, Takanashi is an idiot so he’ll probably see how bad of an idea this was after this one time and never want to do it again.”

“Lol. You got that right. Well, good luck.”

“Same.”

I honestly hadn’t thought about that since I got the necklace. I still had plenty of time to think anyway, I had until Sunday and it was only Tuesday. Then again, the more time I spent brainstorming the less time I’d have to actually pull it off. I shrugged the thought away. I was sure something would bubble up naturally at some point.

There was a park along the path that I walked to school, I knew it because I frequently took pictures there. It had a bird bath so there were plenty of opportunities to snap a few of the birds as they congregated there. Today there was someone else there. I could spy a pink head of hair on top of a female Hanzo uniform. I could only see a sliver of her face from my angle, but she looked slightly upset and seemed to be staring at something rather intently.

I checked the clock on my phone and shrugged. I was making good time this morning, I could spend a few extra minutes seeing what was going on. I turned into the park and walked up next to the girl.

“Hey, you okay?” I asked as I approached.

She turned to look at me and I was surprised to see a really strange pattern on her eyes. It almost looked like four pink flower petals across her otherwise dark blue irises. Assuming it was some sort of birthmark, I ignored it. I found her rather sizeable breasts to be much more difficult to ignore, however.

“Um, I was on my way to school when I saw that.” She turned back to what she was looking at and I followed her gaze. Sitting next to the root of a nearby tree, looking at the girl, was a brown rabbit. “It’s so cute! I wanted to take a picture, but I forgot my phone at home… then Yagyuu-chan went to go get my phone but she might be late now.”

I wasn’t sure who Yagyuu was, but I understood her dilemma perfectly. There were very few days I managed to forget my camera, but when they inevitably happened, they were misery.

“Well, I might be able to help.” I said lifting up said camera.

The girl looked at it with slight wonder. “Wow. That looks nice.”

“It’s pretty good, it would probably take a better photo than your phone.” Even though phone cameras had admittedly gotten really beefy lately, this was a professional camera. “If you’d like I can snap a photo now and have it printed for you.”

“You’d do that!?” She asked excitedly. I got the feeling she assumed it was much more trouble than it actually was. I did it all the time. I even knew the guy who ran the print shop, so I usually got a discount since I tended to print stuff in bulk.

“It’s no big deal.” I smiled and lifted up my camera, readying the shot. I took a deep breath and tried to still myself. I focused on nothing but the subtle movements of the rabbit, waiting for just the right moment. It was instinct at this point, knowing when to click the button, I could just feel the perfect shot as it came, it was like there was a rhythm to the world itself and I was tapping along to the beat.

Click.

I pulled the camera away and looked at its display to see the photo and smiled, satisfied. I turned it so the girl could see, and the wonder once again returned to her eyes.

“Wow! That’s such a good picture!”

I swelled with pride for a moment and smiled wider. “Why thank you. My name is Satoshi Saitou by the way, nice to meet you.”

“I’m—”

“Hibari!” I heard someone shout behind me. They must have moved incredibly fast, since before I could even manage to turn all the way around to see who it was, they were right in front of me, glaring at me. It was so sudden I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Whoa!”

Though the pink-haired girl looked a bit strange, this girl took the cake. She had snowy-white hair that was long and done up in a ponytail, and a dark red eye. Only one of her eyes was visible, the other concealed by an eyepatch with an old-looking coin on top. In lieu of a band or a scrunchie, her ponytail was tied in what had to be a very convincing replica of a shuriken.

“What were you planning to do to Hibari-chan?” She asked simply in a very quiet but nonetheless intimidating tone.

“W-what?”

“Answer me, now.”

“Yagyuu-chan stop!” the pinkette, apparently Hibari, shouted to the newcomer, apparently her aforementioned friend Yagyuu.

The white-haired girl looked at her friend. “You can’t trust strangers like him, especially not ones with cameras.”

Now that I thought of it, from an outsider’s perspective it seemed kind of sketchy. A guy with a camera and a cute, busty girl alone in a park.

Yagyuu pointed a traditional Japanese umbrella at me threateningly, and it took me a moment to wonder where she got that. I didn’t think she had it before, then again, she must have. There certainly wasn’t anywhere on her body she could have been hiding it.

“But Saitou-san helped me! He took a picture of the bunny for me so I wouldn’t be late!”

Yagyuu seemed to consider this, then pointed her umbrella at my camera. “Give me that. I want proof.”

I normally might have been more defensive about handing over my prized possession, but I got the sense this girl might actually kill me, or at least horribly maim me, if I didn’t comply. I lifted it over my head and handed it up to her.

She took it gracefully but firmly, seeming to scroll through the photos I had taken with her free hand. Then she looked back at me and lowered her umbrella. “Mostly innocent I guess. No pictures of Hibari, anyway.” Her gaze then shifted to the side and a slight blush appeared on her cheeks. “The picture of the rabbit was also pretty good, I guess.”

She handed the camera back to me and I returned it to its rightful place.

“See? Wasn’t the bunny picture cute!? He said he would even print it out for me!”

Yagyuu seemed surprised by this revelation. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” I said, getting my composure back. “I’m sorry if I came across weird. Thinking back on it, I guess it might look strange at a glance. I promise I wasn’t intending to harm anyone.”

“It’s okay Saitou-san! I can tell you’re a nice guy.” Hibari said.

Yagyuu didn’t reply, she just kept staring at me cautiously.

“Hey, I was planning on stopping by the print shop on my way home tonight. If you wanna meet back here tomorrow morning I’ll give you the picture.”

“Okay!”

“Let’s go Hibari, we’re going to be late.” Yagyuu took Hibari’s hand and started walking with her.

“Ah! Okay, bye Saitou-san!” Hibari waved frantically at me with her free hand.

I waved politely as they departed. Looking back through all of the photos on my camera so far, I found myself fairly glad that I had transferred all of the photos from the day before to my computer already. If I hadn’t, there would have been a few pictures of Katsuragi that would have been very hard to explain.

I shrugged and made my way, I didn’t want to be late for class either. Oddly enough, on my to school I didn’t see either of my new acquaintances up ahead.