The day started pleasantly, the morning air feeling crisp and fresh on Kogane's skin. It began as a fairly ordinary day, not really radically different from another weekday; he cast his gaze over the concrete ground, and smiled a little, as he usually did in the morning as personal encouragement.
His expectations were entirely shattered in the next few hours, however.
Through the morning classes he began to feel more and more discomfited. It wasn't really a physical sensation; it was much more a mental affliction, and his head hummed with a strangeness throughout the day. Eventually, he resorted to taking a break in the nurse's office, but even tranquil rest did not do anything to quell the resonance that filled his mind perpetually.
School let out, and he began to walk home, pace heavy with unease.
Highton View Terrace. The thought entered his mind like a slow jolt of electricity, startling him into being aware of it but passing into his thoughts only gradually. Sighing, he decided that he wouldn't set his schedule too far back if he headed there after he dumped his schoolbooks at home; perhaps it was possible to cure his incurable cranial throbbing somehow.
When he reached the place, taking a shower and getting a snack from the pantry before he headed out from home, he saw quite a few other people there. He curtly nodded at Kougetsu-san from school; she was in his class, the cheerfully interactive although not extremely extroverted girl who sat in the front few rows; he could not remember exactly if she was two rows or one row before him, who sat in the fourth row. He smiled slightly at her, and she smiled and lightly said a greeting back; he responded in kind. Their relationship did not go much beyond fairly friendly acquaintances.
Suddenly, a burst of light filled his vision, and then...
Darkness.
---
Haruna happily touched the morning breeze with her fingertips, eyes closed so as to get the greatest surface area when she touched the wind. It was a new day, and though she didn't particularly feel anything different about it, she was sure that it would be an extraordinary day. After all, wasn't one supposed to have expectations about every day of their lives?
She happily passed through her day like it was any other day; but something nagged at her cognitive processes. Its influence was fairly weak in the morning, but grew stronger and stronger later into the afternoon until she had to blink several times just to focus on the lesson that was being taught by the instructor at hand (mind you, she had to do that sometimes usually as well, but this was not caused by a lack of understanding or a presence of boredom).
She waited until a little after the bell rang, but she couldn't concentrate very much throughout her walk home with her friends.
Highton View Terrace? The name crept into her mind slowly, and though she didn't know how it got there, her intuition told her that it was probably someplace important that she had to visit. Pulling together a backpack of random foods, she slung it across her shoulders and went outside for the second time that day.
When she reached the place, she saw Shimizu-san also there, his well-known laptop back carried at his side. He inclined his head towards her, and she smiled, replying "good afternoon; how are you?" to the young man who was a year older than her. They maintained a fairly casual friendship; not that Haruna didn't maintain a fairly friendly air with everyone, but theirs was a mutual friendship, not simply her own pleasantness at work (or so she felt).
She waited for something, but nothing occurred. Blinking, she yawned, and a flash of light engulfed the space in front of her eyes.
Then nothing.
