He peered down at her. She did recognize him, but oddly enough, there wasn’t any spite, disgust or fear. She recognized him, just not in the way he was familiar with.
“No prob. You need any help?” he asked.
“No...” She looked down at the camera when he had been talking about her. “I think it’ll be alright. No scratches or cracks.”
Okay...well, that’s all he needed to hear. A spin of the heel, and he was on his way again. The rush of the situation might have caused her to temporarily forget. If he hung around, she might eventually remember who he was, and then there would be no point. At least he got a little bit of excitement out of his day.
“Hey, wait!”
Now he just had to get through his last chunk of classes and he could head home.
“Wait for me!”
What was this?
He turned around. “What.”
The girl slowed from her trot and approached him, her camera now slung under her arm.
“Well...why did you start walking away all of a sudden?”
A curious question to go with the intensely curious vibes he was getting from her, but he didn’t want to bother with this back and forth. It wasn’t like he was captain of the kendo team or anything, and he definitely didn’t have the ego for popularity, but he always felt it safer to assume everyone knew about his infamy than not.
She had an energetic voice, with high tones that stood out. A simple face, somewhat round with an excited glimmer in the pair of cobalt eyes that beamed from behind large coke bottle lenses sitting on the freckled bridge of her nose. She was likely a loud talker, and given her appearance, most of the students would recognize her without knowing her name.
Eiichi returned monotonously, “Your camera’s not broken, you’re not hurt. Are we done here?”
“Well, you can’t just save a girl and run off without giving your name or something.”
“Bye-bye.”
He already had his back turned, one hand raised in a nonchalant wave.
He heard feet clomping behind him again.
“Wait a minute! Who are you!?” She was starting to sound a little irked now.
If she recognized him, why was she asking?
“Nobody.”
“That can’t possibly be your real name.”
“Wow, ya think?”
Maybe he should make it really funny and say his name was Odysseus.
So she was super curious, and an airhead. Actually, from her patterns and behavior, he was getting a sense of practicality. He could sense her taking this snide remark and neatly tucking it away someplace in the back of her memory, as if she was already mentally recording everything she picked up from him, paying attention to his words for future use.
They had already passed around the main building as other structures of the school began to appear around them. It was a straight walk through one of Aki Guro’s three courtyards to get back into the main building.
“Come on, it’s just your name!” This came out as a sort of demanding whine.
Eiichi stopped again. “Listen, I’ve got stuff to do, so I can’t really stand around and talk right now.”
The blue eyes stared broadly at him from behind her specs. When she spoke, it looked like the only thing that moved were her lips: “Yes you can.”
This was bold.
He was a little dumbfounded, and moved his partially opened mouth to speak, eyebrows scrunched and his slightly irritated voice coming out low. “...I don’t really like people telling me what I ‘can’ do.”
Still with that straight forward stare, like she could no longer control her words, she said, “You also have plenty of time.”
‘Yeah sure, let’s just start stepping on people’s toes why don’t we…’ he thought.
“...and what makes you say that?”
Suddenly she must have realized what boundaries she just crossed and began backpedaling. How careless.
Her eyes broke their gaze and blinked away. “W-Well...b-because I’ve seen you smoking at that same spot on the side of the building ever since school started...you always leave around twelve-forty on the dot...you skip class a lot as well...”
“What!?” Now it was his turn to ask the questions. “Are you spying on me? Are you some kind of stalker?”
Her hands became a blur as she waved them frantically, “N-no, no, please, let me explain!”
While the spectacled girl panicked before him, Eiichi observed her, not focused on what was going on in front of him, but on an ethereal part of her that only he could see. He had a name for it. He called it output.
Everyone has an output. It changes regularly, and can convey one’s true intentions and thoughts. It’s connected to their dreams, their ambitions, their past, their present, and a manner of subconscious processing the individual isn’t fully aware of. Whether he wanted to or not, when Eiichi was around people, he picked it up, they just had to be close enough. Only an individual could know their own output, unless they were Eiichi, who could see, hear and feel all of them.
His eyes lingered over her face and moving hands.
‘Hm...she’s nervous, but no showings of doubt, or contempt. There is some minor attraction, but nothing at the level of a stalker. She’s telling the truth…but why didn’t she rat me out?’
Eiichi relaxed, but placed a skeptical leer on her. “Alright, explain.”
The girl sighed and placed a hand on her chest. “Oh, thank you. I’m Asako Noda of the School Photography Club, Journalism Club and Yearbook Club.”
“That’s fantastic, now to the part where you tell me why you’ve been watching me.”
All of a sudden, her face lit up with inexplicable glee. “That’s just it! I’m a photographer, so it’s my job to have a keen eye!”
“Huh...”
“Photographers must remain constantly aware of their surroundings,” she began, and suddenly her speech pattern shot off at a hundred miles an hour. “—spotting anything that would be an opportunity for a good shot!! I’ve been all over this school looking for events and people to capture at just the right moment and angle...”
Eiichi, unable to control how much of the flood of excitement he was receiving from this girl, found himself feeling oddly paralleled with her mood, and trying to keep a straight face.
His eyes widened over his straight mouth, his nostrils flared as they slowly sucked in a deep breath.
Images, lots of them, flashed through his mind’s eye – images of breathtaking scenery, people milling about the school, stray animals, buildings, sky shots, close-ups of plants and flowers, all in different arrays of edited vibrant colors, sepia tones and gray scales.
Her skyrocketing mood quickly left him feeling exhausted, but mercilessly kept him in its clutches, pumping him full of excess energy and needless enthusiasm. He contemplated making a break for it, before he exploded.
“So you see, I never meant to stalk you, I just simply noticed you.”
She had calmed down now, and Eiichi had a chance to collect himself. He exhaled the pent up air in his chest and looked upon the girl with the camera.
“So, you really like that photo stuff…” he breathed, with a hand to his chest.
“Uh-huh! To get the perfect shot, it’s...it’s...so magical...”
Pink, fuzzy shades blossomed in his mind, with an overlapping of bubbly auras, and he was suddenly feeling quite content and at peace. His surroundings faded into the haze and all was good with the world.
Eiichi shut his eyes and hummed unintentionally in his daze, “Wow~...photography must be fantastic...”
“It is...” her voice joined in.
A long pause followed.
“Are you okay?”
‘Dammit!’
Eiichi snapped back to reality, suddenly realizing he and this random girl had been dreamily staring off into nothing like a couple of la la land idiots.
He jerked an anxious hand behind his head. “Yeah-wow-um, an honest student. I haven’t met one
in a while...So you’re really into that, huh?”
“Yeah! There’s nothing like it in the world!”
“I’m starting to see why that guy must have been harassing you. It makes people uneasy knowing there’s someone going around taking pictures of everything they’re doing.”
And now gloom, her head dipped down, he could feel that one hurt her. Depression would be next if he didn’t say something fast.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you down like that. It’s what you like to do...”
“It’s okay. I just happened to see you there, and so I sort of paid you a visit now and then...”
“That doesn’t sound creepy.”
“You’re not the reason why I was going there!” she shouted. “I visited here and there for a while because there’s a spot when the sun hits the trees just right that’s...wonderful...And well, you always happened to be there. You looked like you wanted to be left alone, so I didn’t bother you. I sort of thought of you as an indirect acquaintance, like a statue. I guess I should have thought of you more as a guardian...”
She was definitely telling the truth, he didn’t need to hear anymore to know this. Though he picked up that she had even given him a little nickname...‘Ishi-san’?
‘Is this girl for real?’
“So, what was that guy’s problem anyways?”
She turned to peek back the way they came. “I don’t know, he was standing by the back door of a building over there when he saw me, then he ran up and grabbed my camera.”
How bizarre.
“Well, people are strange. He was probably just trying to steal it,” Eiichi said.
For a minute she continued to look down the walkway, and Eiichi contemplated asking if he could leave now, but when Noda began slowly turning, with her curious hands clasping behind her skirt, it told him this was not over.
“Sooo...?” she said with a smirk.
He raised an eyebrow. “So what?”
She spoke in cheery tones, “I gave you my name. Now it’s your turn to give me yours.”
Being around this girl was like being on a roller coaster. If he stuck around her any longer, it might kill too many brain cells.
“You’re wasting your time getting to know me, photo girl.”
And with that, he turned and continued on his way as planned.
Before he broke into a run, he could feel her irritated output clawing at him from behind.
“Hey! That’s not fair! Get back here!”
Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 Page 3