Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 Page 2

His name was Eiichi Kozuka, and his name had become well known during his prior freshman year at Aki Guro. However, not for good reasons.

  The sun in a cloudless afternoon sky shone spears of light down upon his blank surroundings. The winter had been mild that year, and spring settled in little more than a month ago. Though Eiichi was alone, he took comfort in the silence of his surroundings. This was his spot, and had been ever since he was a first year. Not that it was his favorite spot, and if he could find a better one, he would convene there for his afternoon breaks instead. It was just a spot. Someplace away from all the noise. He was not very well liked at this particular school. It was not any fault of his own, and he himself would not suppose it was any fault on the part of his peers either, though their quick judgments and inferior reasonings could be irritating.

  He spent a lot of time alone. He preferred it. People tended to cause him to react in ways he had little control over.

  His phone vibrated from the inner pocket of his gakuran. Not a text, but a timer he set up as a signal it was about time to head back to class. He was not punctual like this usually, considering he skipped two of his morning classes because the subjects were simple enough for him, but Kamon-sensei’s math class could be brutal.

  He took one more drag and stopped before he started sucking filter fumes. Stamping the cigarette out against a concrete step, he stood and with hands in his pockets, stepped around the wall and began following it back to where he could reenter the school premises.

  It wasn’t like he was all that concerned about his grades or anything. He honestly couldn’t give a damn, he just wanted to get out of this place so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. High school, to Eiichi, was just one big, weary chunk of time taken out of his day that could be used in much more effective ways than sitting in a classroom as one sensei after another passed through, giving boring lectures that seemed to all blend together after the first couple weeks.

  A distressed voice met his ears and suddenly pulled his attention away from flitting over the back wall of the cafeteria.

  “Let go of it! Give it back!”

  It was a girl’s voice. He didn’t have to look far.

  Some distance ahead of him were two people locked in a struggle. A female student, roughly his height with two braids of brown hair that hung down past her shoulders, and were currently flapping about in the midst of her panic, was trying to wrestle something away from a male student twice her size.

  The male student had a cord or strap in his fist, which he kept yanking toward himself with a belligerent snarl on his face.

  The guy’s voice bellowed back, “What’s this, ha!? What pictures were you taking with it!?”

  The girl yelped, “That’s none of your business, give it back!”

  Eiichi didn’t much care for the students at this school, mainly because he was different in ways they could not possibly understand on a normal level, and if they knew the truth, they’d only have reason to hate him more. Simply put, they were all just a pain in his head. But there were some things, like what was happening right now, that just made his blood boil.

  He didn’t have to think about it. One foot stepped forward and he was on the move, heading toward the situation at a steady trot. As he got closer, his pace increased, until he was practically sprinting.

  The girl wrestled harder, writhing her upper body, hugging close whatever she was trying to protect. Eiichi kept his eyes on the lummox. His vision tunneled on the guy’s ugly mug. His right hand retracted into a fist, and he lunged.

  BAFF!

  “Ah! You son of a bitch!”

  The guy never saw it coming.

  Less than a minute later, after some panting, and a cry that he would get back at him for this, the attacker became just a shrinking silhouette headed for the farther regions of the school.

  He actually didn’t look that different from the crowd of people that others thought Eiichi might be seen around, if he actually spent time around people. Though Eiichi could not remember seeing him around campus before. It was possible, but judging by his size, it was unlikely he was a freshman. Unlike Eiichi, his uniform had actually conformed to dress code. It was that haircut that was awful.

  ‘This isn’t 1985, guy…’

  Eiichi watched, hands in his pockets again with the thumbs hooked out, panting a little himself with a welt on his left jaw where his opponent got a lucky shot. It wasn’t that troublesome a match. The attacker had been bigger than him, but he didn’t really know how to maneuver or use his weight, which told Eiichi, if he had been into anything, he either ran with a gang, or did something less active. Whatever it was, it didn’t involve much fighting.

  Eiichi had been in a number of fights since his junior high years. He couldn’t say he hadn’t come to like it. After doing it enough, the adrenaline rush died down, the dopamine levels evened out, and it became just something that happened from time to time. But his emotions, and the emotions of others, were always still there, and sometimes, that made things interesting. People falsely accused him of a lot of things, because he didn’t fit in anywhere, but if there was one thing he was guilty of, it was brawling.

  “Wow, thank you!”

  The girl had stumbled back and fell in the grass after her attacker let go of the cord, when Eiichi delivered the first punch. She was there now, beaming up at him from a wariza position with her feet splayed out to the sides. The item she had been desperately trying to protect was seated in the lap of her skirt, her hands rested on it. A camera, one of the expensive looking ones with the hand adjustable lens.