The world was too loud, so Rika Shinkawa lived in the margins.
Sitting at the very back of the classroom, Rika kept her head down, her bangs acting like a curtain between her and the rest of Class 2-B. To the others, she was "The Ghost"—a girl who didn't speak, didn't laugh, and seemed to vanish the moment the bell rang.
In her hand was a worn, navy-blue notebook. It was her shield.
“The sky today is the color of a fading bruise,” she scribbled, her pen scratching against the paper. “People move like schools of fish, identical and mindless. I wonder if they realize how much noise they make just by existing.”
A sharp thud hit her desk. Rika flinched, her pen sliding across the page in a jagged black line.
"Still writing your little spells, Shinkawa?"
It was Sato. She didn't even have to look up to know the sneer on his face. Behind him, a few girls giggled. It was the same routine since middle school—small cruelties, snide remarks, the kind of bullying that didn't leave physical marks but felt like slow-growing mold on the soul.
Rika didn't answer. She simply closed the notebook and tucked it into her bag. Her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Just leave. Just get to the bike. Just go home.
When the final bell finally rang, Rika was the first one out the door. She sprinted to the bike racks, her breath coming in shallow hitches. She hopped onto her old, silver bicycle, pedaling with everything she had. The wind whipped past her ears, drowning out the echoes of the classroom.
On her bike, she felt fast. She felt like she was outrunning the version of herself that people hated.
She reached the steep hill overlooking the canal—the shortcut home. The sun was beginning to dip, casting long, orange shadows across the asphalt. Rika gripped the handlebars, her knuckles white. She was thinking about the story she wanted to write tonight—a story about a girl who could fly away and never look back.
She didn't see the patch of loose gravel near the bend.
She didn't hear the car horn until it was too late.
A sharp swerve. The screech of metal. The world tilted violently.
The last thing Rika saw before the asphalt rushed up to meet her was her navy-blue notebook skidding across the road, its pages fluttering like a dying bird. Then, there was only a white-hot flash of pain in her leg, and the world went quiet at last.
ns216.73.216.141da2
and then Add to home screen.