The Opening Ceremony
"Hana, you're all ready, aren't you?"
"U-uh... yeah..."
In the end, the day had arrived whether I wanted it or not. It was my first day of school since I'd turned into an elementary student, and no matter how I tried to talk myself into it, going back to third grade left my heart all unsettled.
I was fairly certain I'd already graduated from college, and now I was in elementary school again? If this had been a regression, I might have swallowed it a little more easily. At least then there would have been some reason I couldn't escape. But as I was now, only my body had changed. I hadn't gone back in time at all.
When Bora spoke, I had to answer her with an awkward smile. The fluttering uniform hung all wrong on me. With a wistful look, I gazed at the dinosaur pajamas sitting all alone on the bed. I wanted nothing more than to wear those to school.
Still, I couldn't very well show up in pajamas. Everyone would assume it was a cosplay and start snapping photos, or else laugh at me for acting like a little kid.
"Hmm..."
Bora had a camera in her hands and was looking me over from every angle. A phone would have been more than enough, but she'd pulled out one of those sleek professional cameras journalists carried around, and the sheer presence of it made me uneasy.
"Bora, I really don't think you need to bring the camera..."
"No way. This is your official first day of school. If I don't get the photos right today, I'll regret it for the rest of my life."
"Hiiing... we took so many last time. Isn't that enough?"
"Not even close!"
And so I threw a puffer jacket over the uniform and slipped outside with Bora. The school was far enough that we had to go by car. The one mercy was that either Bora or Haru would drive me there and back. There was no need to bother with a bus or a taxi.
I rode along staring blankly at the scenery outside, and before I knew it we had arrived. It was the opening ceremony, so little kids were swarming everywhere, and plenty of parents had come along to bring them.
For someone with my loner's temperament, a place full of people was pure poison. I didn't want to get out and tried to stay in the car, but in the end I had no choice except to be carried forth in Bora's arms.
Holding her hand, I came to a small, hesitant stop in front of the main gate. Bora lifted the camera and left a record of me just like that. It was March, and cherry blossom petals were drifting on the wind, turning the whole scene beautiful.
Everyone looking at those petals was probably thinking something different. I plucked one that had stuck in my hair and turned the thought over. Off to the side, a cluster of students watched the blossoms falling out of the sky, laughing and trading whatever happy stories they pleased as they walked. Some of the girls gazed up at the trees, sunk deep in thought. The boys, meanwhile, treated the whole thing as nothing but a background effect and strolled right past without a second thought.
"Say cheese~"
"Cheese!"
Today, I decided, I would do as Bora said. Not that it was any great demand. I always did as Bora and Haru said anyway.
"It came out great! Hana, come here and look!"
Bora showed me the photo of myself on the camera. I was framed against the cherry blossoms scattering in front of the main gate, and standing there throwing a V-sign looked a little stiff, even to me.
A neat school uniform, the main gate of Starlight Elementary, and the countless people passing by. It was the kind of entrance-day photograph you could find anywhere.
"You and the cherry blossoms go together so well~"
Maybe it was because the shutter had caught the petals mid-fall, but it looked like a fashion spread out of some magazine. Of course, it didn't hurt that the model herself was already something special.
With my Little Magician Rumi bag on my shoulders, I was towed all over the school by Bora and pressed into service as her photo model.
The bosses had said they were too busy to come today. I was a little disappointed, but I'd already seen them at the entrance ceremony last time, so it didn't matter all that much. Still, maybe because today was the opening ceremony, everyone seemed more worked up than they had been then.
In a way, you could call it the true beginning of school life. I hadn't felt it while the photos were being taken, but the moment I stepped into the auditorium and sat through that hulking chairman's speech again, reality came crashing down on me.
I'm really supposed to study alongside little kids like these?
I sat in my chair and glanced around. When people said elementary school, it hadn't really sunk in. Seeing the actual elementary students seated in the auditorium snapped me awake, as if cold reality had finally slapped me across the face.
The kids in the fourth-through-sixth-grade rows were big enough that they didn't bother me, but the ones sitting in the first-through-third-grade rows were tiny. Come to think of it, hadn't the first graders only just graduated from kindergarten?
Of course they were young. And yet my own situation felt unbearably surreal. Taking classes alongside children that small...
Separated from their parents, the kids around me wore their nerves plain on their faces. I stole a glance toward where Bora was sitting. Thankfully, she was seated and looking my way. I waved.
Bora waved back, returning the greeting. Some of the weight in my chest eased.
Even so, looking at the number of children gathered in the auditorium, there really weren't many. In my day there had been so many kids that each grade packed forty to a class and ran all the way out to class ten. Now a single class was twenty students, cut clean in half, and there were only four classes in all.
They'd said there truly were hardly any elementary students left, and now that I could feel it for myself, the news didn't seem like an exaggeration. If Seoul was this empty, how few people could there be out in the provinces? I understood, at last, what it meant for children to have grown scarce.
Sitting in my chair, I could feel the little kids around me sneaking glances. Was it because my hair and eye color stood out? That didn't quite explain it. I could feel the boys looking at me, one after another, and the moment our eyes met they yanked their gazes straight down.
If you're a man, you ought to know how to hold a staring contest with your head high! Meeting someone's eyes and immediately tucking your tail to run — they weren't even dogs. A few times, my eyes met those of boys who kept peeking over at me.
I felt as if I'd become an animal in a zoo. And I couldn't figure out why the boys whose eyes met mine seemed to go red in the cheeks. Maybe it was cold outside.
Applause burst out, and the chairman stepped down. He didn't drag it out the way speeches in fiction always did — and in conclusion... and one last conclusion... He'd been the same when the security buzzer went off last time. I had to wonder whether he was really an elementary school chairman at all.
Judging by looks alone, calling him a neighborhood gangster instead of an elementary school chairman wouldn't have felt the least bit strange. Still, once he put on a crisp white suit, he did give off something of a chairman's air. Sort of.
The entrance ceremony was over. Now it was time for the new students to go to their classrooms. The second-through-sixth graders had been through this plenty of times and found their rooms as if it were nothing, but the first graders, here at this elementary school for the very first time, burst into tears and refused to leave their parents' sides.
It was only the first day. Everything would be finished within an hour and they'd be headed home, and they couldn't even last that single hour — what a fuss.
Some of the returning students burst out laughing at the sight of them. Were they seeing their own selves overlapping with the day they'd started first grade?
Anyway, I still had to pick up my student ID. They said my class would be written on it. As far as I knew, Bora had it. She'd probably taken it so my class could be assigned. I quietly settled into the seat where she had been sitting and looked around in a daze.
The children were all bright smiles, milling about in clusters. It was still the first day back, and you could see how awkward they were with one another. Some of them would rather play with friends from other classes.
That happened often enough. When a classmate ended up in a different room, things grew stiff unless you'd been truly close. Most likely because you simply stopped seeing each other.
I'd pulled out my phone and was steering the character on the screen when Bora came back to my seat.
"Hana, sorry! The line was long, so it took a while."
"It's okay, Bora. I didn't wait that long!"
Bora handed me the student ID with my assigned class written on it. I held it up and checked which class I'd landed in.
Hmm. Class 1. Not bad. And once we moved up a year the classes would be reset anyway, so whichever room I landed in hardly mattered.
I took Bora's hand and started walking toward third grade, class 1. It sat a fair distance from the auditorium. The school itself was huge. Even so, it wasn't as sprawling as a university campus.