Fox 002: Foxy Lady

_{[AN: This is the second in the Fox Tale series.  Please read them in order.]}


I opened the door to classroom 203 and there was a short, stern little Japanese woman standing at the podium.  This was not right, so I shut the door and looked at the other classrooms with German flags on the doors.  They were all dark and empty.

Pulling my bag around in front of me to retrieve my timetable, I started towards the office figuring there had to be a mistake.  Walking briskly and fumbling with the folded paper put me most of the way to the stairs down before I saw for my own eyes:

07:05 L-203 German I(AP) Ohtomo

I felt like a royal idiot.  That German uncle-something I've got was married to a Polynesian of some kind, I forget, but the point being that nationality had nothing to do with it.  

This was way to early in the morning for cognitive processes.

Trudging back to L-203, I put my hand on the door right as the bell rings.  I jump in alarm, pulling myself together.  It is just a door after all, and it was simply time for the bell to ring.  I swing it open and rush through in time to hear:

"Guten morgen klasse, haben wir einen neuen schüler heute bitte lassen sie sich nicht ablenken.  Bitte nehmen sie ihre arbeitsmappe und beginnen werde durch den raum."

"Excuse me, I am just startin-" And I was cut off mid sentence and introduced to the way this class was run.

"Nein, nein. Wir sprechen nicht Englisch in diesem Raum. Natürlich sind die neuen Studenten. Bitte nehmen Sie Platz."  Professor Ohtomo barked dramatically.

She was pointing to a seat somewhere in the middle of the room.  I worked my way down the isle, trying to avoid braining anyone with my satchel until I reached the desk.

"Nein, das andere. Fräulein Maria ist heute abwesend."

I hoisted my bag back one desk, a second empty one, and look back up to Frau Ohtomo.  She did not object, so I put my bag under the desk and bowed before taking my seat.  I still have no idea why in the world I did that, but there was some laughter, followed by, "Der neue schüler schaut mir ins Gesicht und vergisst, was Klasse ist sie unter."

The fox was forgotten for the next fifty five minutes of, "Hallo, mein Name ist Benjamin. Ich hatte Eier und Schinken zum Frühstück. Wie hoch ist die Kabine in die Bibliothek? Welche Farbe hat dein Französisch Buch. Mein Französisch Buch ist blau. Warum habe ich eine Französisch Buch?"

Forgotten until I saw dots of white-tipped red ears bobbing their way through the overcrowded corridor.  Trying to follow, my odds would have been better had I been a salmon.  The fox was lost, washed away in the rivers of taller people.

I already had all my books until lunch, so I did not have to return to my locker before English, where in the pleasant company of my native tongue, I quickly lost anything I may have grasped from the hour before.  I smiled at the familiar prose and poetry.  I smiled at the sound of the professors deep and smooth timbered voice.  I smiled when he asked me to interpret the passage he had just read.  I frowned when he told me how wrong I was, shaking his head.  Brunette girl one desk over and up from me looked like she could have been a TV star when she looked back, smiling cheerfully at me.  I smiled back and this apparently was the most disgusting thing she had ever witnessed, for the expression she affected as she turned back to face the front and Mr. Sherman once more.  Oh well, at least it was English.

It was English, that is, until it was chemistry.  Chemistry and I were tentative friends, at best, but Miss English (yes, that was her name and yes, it hurt my head) seemed easy to get along with, so I figured that would help a lot in months to come.  She had this kind of way of explaining isotopes and valence electrons as though she was talking about … well about something that was not boring as all get-out.  In one day sitting in her class, I instantly understood weeks of stuff that had completely eluded me until then.  I had had nightmares of Mr. Last School leading hoards of molecular units in little tiny combat boots and hard hats treading a path clear over my head, mocking me.

Trudging against the sea of people bent on keeping me from ever reaching Maths, I had nearly forgotten about the phantom girl until I practically smacked square into a pair of fox ears that seamlessly slipped to the side and were swallowed by the tangles of arms and legs and backpacks, glimpsing me only with a flash of tail before lost in entirety.

Mrs. Fibonacci was not going to make my difficulties with algebra abate in the slightest.  Little better than reading the book on my own, she seemed like she knew the material, but seemed to think that everyone else already did as well and therefore teaching it was completely superfluous.  Lost, I raised my hand and asked a... reasonable... question and with the utmost patience of someone talking to an utter imbecile, Mrs. Fibonacci put the solution in terms that any living organism on the planet would be able to grasp.  So naturally, I was still lost.  Brunette boy two desks over and one up looked over at me, smiling in a friendly manor, pleasant and warm.  Pleasant and warm, that is, until I smiled back.  I do not understand what was more difficult to figure, these maths, or why I kept trying to engage anyone.

I was near starving when lunch came at last.  Standing half in/half out of my locker, I checked the school map adhering to the inside of the locker door for safe keeping.  The cafeteria was almost as far from my present location as was geographically possible.  I remembered thinking mutely last night, reviewing my timetable and building map that I would need to hurry from maths to lunch to get through the line with time to eat anything.  Somewhere in the course of everything else, I forgot about that.  Locker shut and, well, locked, I dash off in the direction of food, wondering why, no matter where I was headed, it was always upstream.

I walk by the open double doors to the lunch room and two things strike me at nearly the same time.  First, the doors are open.  I cannot see the handles and will look like a complete dork if I peek around to find out what they look like.  The second is that the room is empty.  I have a hard time believing how empty it is.  It had to be the singular most deserted place in the building.

As if answering an unasked question, I hear a squeaky voice by my elbow. "Nobody actually eats here."

I turn and find a pudgy, pimply, dorky looking guy with black-frame glasses, a button-up burgundy sweater over a green/yellow plaid shirt, dark and oily-looking curly hair that was probably combed meticulously some number of hours before but now only looked unfortunate, breathing through his mouth, looking up at me.  There were a number of thoughts running though my head at once and I could never be sure which of them won over influence of my facial expression and posture.  I figure it was all just kinda mixed up.

Finally, I recovered.  "Then where do they eat?  Do they not have food in the cafeteria?"

"Are you new here, or what?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I am." I sighed. "Chole.  Pleased to meet you."

Fortunately, this kid did not need to worry about looking like a dork, because
there was kind of a thing for that going around, like unfashionable was its own kind of fashion that went along with science fiction conventions and personal blogs.  Nonetheless, it was creepy with him looking at me like that, vacant, mouth open to keep from suffocating.

I tried again, "So, where do people eat?"

"Wherever they want."

Not so helpful.  "Oh-kay... Listen, um, whatever-your-name-is, I have been in town for a whopping twenty hours or so total.  I am familiar with exactly two things, this building and my home, and even those fine lines of distinction are becoming a blur - exponentially so as my hunger is now consuming me.  Do they serve food here or not?"

In retrospect, it would have been easier to have simply gone to find out for my self.

Finally, he shakes his head, but says, "Sure they do.  It's a cafeteria."

I spin on my heal in hot pursuit of sustenance and find myself face to face with, "Oh, fox ears!"  Because, yeah, that made a lot of sense to say out loud.


^{[You have been reading the second installment of the Fox Tale Series by Lady Quindecim.]
[If you received this text from a source other that DeviantArt, please let the author know via e-mail to lady.quindecim@gmail.com]
[I hope you have enjoyed this installment]}