by Unknown
“Huh,” I said. School had been pretty relaxed so I had never studied at home in my life.
“What do you say Dai-chan,” said Shuro as he threw one arm over my shoulder. “Once you master calculus it will be like opening a door to a whole new world, and you will never look at things the same again!”
“Ummm,” was all I could manage to say.
“You can’t waste a single moment of precious study time,” said my sister dramatically as she began pushing us out of the kitchen and towards my bedroom. “Dai-chan needs all the help he can if he ever wants to get a good job like you Shuro.”
I think Sis was just trying to spite me because she knew I hated studying, I could even hear her laughing from the kitchen. I became an exorcist so that I would never have to take school seriously again. I wanted to tell Shuro that super exorcists didn’t need algebra, but instead I was subjected to his long lectures about math from the desk in my room. It was like he was speaking another language, and after an hour everything that came out of his mouth sounded like bo bo bo bo.
I felt myself begin to drift off to sleep. My head slowly began to fall forward until I almost stabbed myself with the end of my pencil.
“Hey Daisuke,” said Shuro as he started shaking me awake.
“It’s three! The answer is three!” I yelled out.
“It’s twenty six,” said Shuro.
“Three, twenty six, its close enough,” I yawned and stretched my arms. I was dangerously behind at school and I was beginning to doubt that even Shuro could save me.
Shuro sighed and turned the page of my math textbook. He scanned the problems and then nervously began tapping the book with his finger. I thought he was about to give up on me, but instead he asked “Daisuke, there’s been something I've been wanting to ask you for a while now. Is everything okay with your sister?”
“Huh? Yeah, yeah, of course,” I said nervously. “Why do you ask?”
“Maybe it’s just my imagination, but recently she seems to be acting a little strange, like perhaps there’s something bothering her.”
“Really?” I said while doing my best shocked voice. “She seems perfectly normal to me. I’m sure she’s just busy with the laundry, and looking after Hikaru, and watching those daytime dramas. It’s really easy to get hooked on those TV shows. Apparently Ted’s in a coma and no one knows if he’s going to live or die until next week. You might think that it's just a TV show, but that sort of stress can really get to a person. Sometimes even I have trouble sleeping at night.”
“I suppose you're right, it must be something like that,” he said as he flipped through the pages of my textbook. “You know Daisuke, we might not be related by blood, but I have always thought of you as a younger brother. I might not know anything about exorcists or monsters, but if anything is bothering you, you know you can always talk to me right?”
“Okay Shuro,” I said. I felt a little bad about keeping him in the dark about the super exorcist thing, but Sis was the one who saved me from becoming an orphan, so I had to take her side.
“Now onto the next problem!” Said Shuro.
I groaned and he pointed to a problem in my textbook. All I could see was a mass of random letters and numbers and I had no idea what x was supposed to mean.
"The numbers 2 , 3 , 5 and x have an average equal to 4," said Shuro. "What is x?"
“It’s seven!” I said. I didn’t actually know the answer, but if I yelled out random numbers I had to be right eventually.
“Six!” Said a small voice behind me. I turned to see my five year old niece Hikaru standing in the doorway with a large grin plastered across her face, and a large toy cat in her right hand.
Shuro flipped to the back of the book and scrolled his finger through the list of answers. He paused in the middle of the page and then checked several times.
“She’s right!” He said.
“I lost to a five year old!” I groaned as I collapsed against my desk. I had always known that my niece would eventually surpass me at studying, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
“Looks like Daddy’s little girl might just have the potential to be a genius,” said Shuro.
Hikaru ran towards us and Shuro scooped her up in his arms and placed her on his lap.
“How about we try a few more,” he said as he flipped through my textbook and showed her the pages.
“Six! Six!” exclaimed Hikaru as she furiously stabbed each question with her little index finger. “And dis one is six too.”
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at their antics.
No matter how bad things got, I was thankful that I at least had Shuro and Hikaru in my life.
Chapter 8
Thanks to Shuro’s tutoring I managed to scrape by with a C on my next math test. Sis stuck it on the refrigerator next to Hikaru’s finger painting in an attempt to encourage me. She used to do the same thing when I was in elementary school.
“And look, Dai-chan got a C on his math test, isn’t that amazing,” she announced to everyone during dinner in the same babyish voice she used when talking to Hikaru.
I stared at her blankly and then returned to eating my food. Sometimes I suspected that Sis hadn’t fully comprehended that I wasn’t seven anymore.
My school sports day was a few days later. Akito warned me not to use my new found powers at school. He said that I might draw unnecessary attention to myself which could be difficult to hide from the organization.
Whatever. It was the perfect opportunity to look cool. I was only going to be in high school once, so the last thing I wanted was to regret not making the most of it. Unfortunately Sis also knew what I was thinking and banned me from participating in any of the events.
“Come on Sis, javelin, please let me enter the javelin,” I begged the day before.
“No,” she said while shaking her head.
“How about discus? It’s like throwing a frisbee.”
“No.”
“Shot put, just let me enter the shot put. I promise to throw it only a little bit.”
“I’m sure you would, but it wouldn’t be long before you’d get carried away and start showing off."
“Showing off? As if I would ever show off.”
“But you’ve never won a race before. Wouldn’t everyone think it was strange if you suddenly started winning at something?”
“But it’s my first year! I’ve never been in a race in high school before!”
“No! All you have to do is sit there and watch until the end of the day and we won’t have any problems.”
“But everyone will get mad at me if I don’t participate in any of the events. We have houses you see for sports, and we get points for participating in events even if we don’t win. The red house has apparently won for the past three years just because they force everyone to enter everything. Everyone calls them The Red Terror.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. All they’re doing is tricking you into exercising by competing you off against each other. You don’t even get anything if you win.”
“That’s not true! The teachers at my school would never be able to trick me into doing anything.”
Our school didn’t have any houses except for sports, but my school hadn’t been original enough to think up any good names, so they were just called the Blue Team, Red Team, Yellow Team and Green Team. Apparently the students used to vote for their favourite team names a few years ago, but it got out of hand when the blue team decided to call themselves Yellow Looks Like Urine, so now we were stuck with boring names. We also had to wear different coloured clothes to tell our teams apart, so I left the house dressed from head to toe in green like it was St Patrick's day.
Sports day was held at our school's sports ground every year. All the teams had to sit on tarps on the outskirts of the field while different events took place. There was also a grandstand, but it was just for parents, teachers, and the guy in my grade who broke his leg sliding down the stair banister.
All the exor
cists and I had been split up when it came to teams. Taisei, Mana, Souta and I were in the green team, Kurumi and Kiyori were in the yellow team, Nina was in the blue, and Itsuki was in the red team. Keira was also in the blue team so the two of us had to part ways at the beginning of the day. I saw him talking with a few of our classmates at lunch time. I was a little sad that we couldn’t be together, but it meant that there was nothing standing between Mana and I.
“Here Mana, you can sit here,” I said while indicating towards the tarp that I was sitting on. I forgot to pack a tarp that morning, but luckily Souta remembered to bring his. I even managed to convince him to enter most of the events so that Mana and I would have plenty of time together.
Taisei was also there, but he spent most of his time over at the yellow team attempting to talk to Kurumi. The school principal caught him and tried to send him away, but Taisei just borrowed someone’s yellow T-shirt and was back there straight away. Most of my team members called it betrayal, but I was just thankful that Mana and I didn’t have to go through the anguish of being separated.
Parents were also allowed to come watch. I could see a few of them wandering around the outskirts of the field and sitting in the grandstand. I was certain that Sis would have been there if she could, but luckily for me it was parents’ day at Hikaru’s kindergarten so she couldn’t make it. All my fellow exorcist's parents lived too far away to come, so the only person who made it was Nina’s brother. Most kids would have been overjoyed that their family came to watch, but Nina didn’t look very happy.
“Why are you here?” I heard Nina ask her brother from the team next to mine. “And what’s with the camera?”
“Why, I’m here to take pictures for father of course,” said Nina’s brother.
“If father wanted photos then why doesn’t he just come here and take them himself?” Asked Nina.
“Now, now Nina, father is a busy man,” said Nina’s brother as he started snapping away at his surroundings with a digital camera. “He has plenty of very important exorcist events and meetings to attend to. He’s way too busy to drive three hours to come here, so he asked me to watch instead. Now please be a good younger sister and win all your races, and remember to tell father that I was the one who trained you up to win. Maybe he’ll even think of letting me come home this Christmas.”
“I understand that,” said Nina. “But why did he have to come too?” She asked while pointing to Hugo who was standing behind him with a large camera. It looked at least twenty years old, and he must have fished it out from Akito’s storage cupboard.
“Hugo is my assistant for the day,” said Nina’s brother. “And Kurumi told him that your science teacher just broke up with her boyfriend, and I promised him a date, so if you could please point me in the direction of Miss. Kawasaki when you get the chance.”
Hugo was the happiest I'd ever seen him, but I think Kurumi must have forgotten to tell him that Miss. Kawasaki was about fifty years old and had thirty cats.
Nina crossed her arms and didn’t look impressed. As kind as Nina was, she was unmotivated when it came to exercise and training. She spent most of her time staring off into space and reading romance novels. Luckily (or unluckily) for her, her brother had decided to become her personal coach ever since I went back to school, so she had improved recently. Akito had even stopped talking to her like she was going to die every time we went on patrol.
Taisei on the other hand was the exact opposite towards his younger sister, and decided to take it upon himself to make Mana his personal photographer for the day.
“And you need to get a shot of me doing the javelin,” said Taisei to Mana as he handed her his phone. “And make sure you take it from the right, I’ve been working out more on that side.”
“Why don’t you ask the principal to take it for you? He’s already standing over there,” said Mana as a joke.
“Really? Do you think he’d do that for me?” Asked Taisei who hadn’t noticed the sarcasm in her voice. “Even after he threatened to give me detention if I was ever caught taking photos at school again?”
After a two hour argument at home, I eventually managed to convince Sis to let me participate in the high jump, if I didn’t jump. I spent over twenty minutes waiting for my turn just to run into the bar three times. It was pretty embarrassing and I could have sworn that I heard Kiyori laughing, but at least no one in my house could accuse me of not trying.
Fortunately for me, it turned out that most of my teammates were even more unmotivated than I was. There were plenty of kids who were good at sports but none of them were in my house. Most of my teammates just spent the day sun baking or playing on their phones. I even saw a guy start studying in an attempt to get out of joining the relay.
Eventually my frustrated homeroom teacher decided to drag me in front of everyone and use me as an example.
“Daisuke should be an inspiration to you all,” he said. “Even though he almost died from Ebola and can’t do any sports, he still entered the high jump and won points for our house. It’s that sort of dedication that I expect from the rest of you.”
“What’s the point?” Asked one of my classmates. “Itsuki from the red team is just going to win again.”
“Yeah!" Said another guy. "Just the way he won the one hundred, the six hundred, the long jump and the shot put,”
“If Daisuke can run into the bar, then can’t he just walk the three hundred meter?” Said someone in the crowd.
“Yeah, if Daisuke’s so great you should make him do it!” Cried a girl behind me.
Before I knew it, all the guys in my house had started chanting Daisukel, Daisuke, Daisuke while waving their hands in the air.
“What do you say Daisuke?” Asked my homeroom teacher while looking at me hopefully. “Do you think you can do it?”
I wanted to say that my over controlling sister had banned me from entering so that I wouldn’t be exposed as a super human, but I was also banned from saying that. I stood there staring blankly at my homeroom teacher until I could no longer take his desperate glare, and I nodded my head. I decided that I could just casually stroll down the field while everyone else dashed to the finish line. Yuto did that for the eight hundred meter (and even stopped to talk to a friend) until the teachers kicked him off the field. Sis would probably never find out anyway.
I jogged over to the track. I thought there would be lots of events going on at the same time, but it was the last event of the day so the entire school was watching.
“Crap, crap, crap,” I muttered as I anxiously lined up at the start line. I didn’t want to be seen walking down the field for ten minutes after everyone else had finished. They would tease me until graduation and I’d forever be known as the kid who walked the race.
I had no choice but to jog it. I knew that running was outside of my sister’s rules, but as long as I jogged along with the pack, I was certain that no one would notice me.
I gazed up and down the row of guys at the start line. Most of them were pretty athletic looking, so I probably couldn't beat them even if I tried.
I looked towards Mana and sent a cool wink in her direction, but to my surprise she didn’t wave or respond. I kept winking frantically until I noticed that she was staring at someone else behind me.
I curiously turned to see what caught her attention, and that's when I saw Itsuki lining up at the end of the start line.
Itsuki.
I clenched my fist. I couldn’t explain why, but the way Mana looked at him was a thousand times more irritating than anything he had ever said or done to me. It was like she actually wanted him to win.
A dark and terrible thought which Sis would have hated entered my head.
What if my new super exorcist powers were enough to beat Itsuki at the race?
All of a sudden there was nothing that I wanted more than to crush my rival. It was a feeling that I couldn’t suppress, and I found myself willing to disobey my sister and risk everything just to make him eat my d
ust. If I were to make Itsuki look like a loser in front of the whole school, then Mana would finally acknowledge me as a fantastic love interest, and Itsuki for the stupid loser that he had been all along. I had always wanted to beat Itsuki at something, anything, from the very first moment that we met at the beginning of the year, and maybe, just maybe, I finally had the power to make it happen.
“Take your mark!” Yelled my sports teacher as he raised his starting pistol into the air. “Go!” He yelled as he fired it.
I sprung from my starting position and dashed down the running track after my classmates. My pace became quicker like a god of speed had possessed my feet. It felt like I was flying across the track and I had never run so fast in my life. I ran past the slow kids in my grade, the guys who played sports, and a guy who beat me at the egg and spoon race in kindergarten.
Finally my only opponent was Itsuki who was meters a head of me. I could hear his house cheering his name as he dashed around the corner and towards the finish line. It felt like there was nothing I could do to close the gap between us.
"Itsuki, Itsuki, Itsuki!" Cheered the red house, but I thought I could faintly hear my teammates chanting my name as well.
I had always known that Itsuki was fast, but the guy could have been in the Olympics with that sort of speed.
My lungs began to burn like they were on fire, but I refused to give up. I put every ounce of energy I had into just trying to overtake him.
Just a little further. My thoughts screamed as I pushed myself to catch up.
My effort began to pay off when his back slowly began appearing closer and closer, until the two of us were finally neck and neck.
Itsuki was probably too smug to think that anyone could beat him, but when he noticed me running beside him his eyes almost popped out of their sockets. The temporary loss in his concentration was all I needed. I pushed myself ahead of him and passed the finish line first.
“First place, Daisuke Matsumoto!" Boomed my school principal on the loud speaker.
I jumped in the air with joy and there was a roar of applause from the green house across the field. Strangely enough I didn’t feel tired at all, but I turned to see that Itsuki had collapsed at the finish line and was frantically gasping for breath. He raised his head and looked at me like I was some kind of freak. It was a look that he used a lot, so I wasn’t surprised anymore.