Finding

"Kyohi! Kyohi!" Helia didn't know where the girl went, so she basically whisper-screamed her name while running down the hallway, sometimes, bending to hide from teachers teaching a class.

When she looked through all the girl's bathrooms in the plum wing, she decided to go to the peach wing's rooftop. Maybe the person she was looking for was up there.

Helis took three steps at a time when going down the stairs and coming in front of the connecting hallways to the other building. Although roofs were covering the way from the rain, this outside hallway was still fully visible from her class and there was a possibility that her classmate can see her and snitch on the b*tch.

Helia took a deep breath before walking the pathway confidently. If she pretended like she was just a normal student, being called by a teacher to bring an apparatus, it would seem everything is alright. Just normal. Nothing going on. Nothing weird.

After she reached the other building, she sighed with relief and quickly climbed the stairs leading to the rooftop, carefully checking if anyone was coming.

Luckily, she didn't meet anyone on the way. Partially because when she heard a class doing a chemistry practical lesson and heard several footsteps approaching her, she sprinted up until she was sure that she was safe. Even for only a few seconds, she was as fast as a flash of lightning. She was the speed.

Helia opened the door of the rooftop once she reached there, breathing heavily.

As always, the wind blew on her face, on her hair and on her clothes unmercifully, but she wasn't complaining. This was one of the reasons she liked this place.

Momentarily, she forgot that she was looking for Kyohi and took a big ass gulp of fresh air into her lungs, making her look buff for a split second before she exhaled and went back to her normal figure.

"Oh, did you bring the seed for me? Well, could you put them on the bench."

Suddenly a girl's voice came from the right side, which caused Helia to stop inhaling the oxygen midway.

When she moved silently and peeked to see who was the person that had spoken to her, she found a girl with a ponytail, a little older than her, watering the garden in the corner.

The girl was wearing a white lab coat over her school uniform, and it only took a second for Helia to register that the girl was one of the science club probably on her duty to take care of the plants and take notes about them.

"Hey, are you there?" The girl asked without tearing her eyes from her plants. She probably thought the person who was supposed to give her plants came when she heard the door close.

The girl continued to do her work by stopping watering the plants and writing a short report of the day. And when she was done with that, she turned around to talk to the person she thought they came, but to find no one.

"I must have imagined it." The girl shrugged and fixed the place of her black-rimmed glasses on her sloppy nose to continue her work. A few seconds later, another girl came to the rooftop, carrying various seeds in a white box.

Helia slipped through the door and the wall before it closed and weaved a sigh of relief before the two ponytail-tailed girls began interacting using a lot of scientific words she was too young to understand.

They were surely seniors, and Kyohi didn't like people, so Helia had no choice but to continue looking for her friend, but it wasn't for long.

Just as she reached down to the highest floor of classes consisting of store rooms and many unused, empty rooms, she heard muffled cries and sniffing from the toilet located at the far end of the hallway. Usually, this kind of sound was overshadowed by people talking and chatting if happened in plum and cherry wings but here was different.

Those sniffs and crying sounded like they came exactly from a movie which made Helia think to herself if she was hearing things. But she didn't think for long when she decided to help out the person who was making that sound in the creepiest building she knew and alone. Whoever it was, must be in distress.

Helia licked her dry lips before walking towards the source of the miserable sound. As she followed it, it brought her to the creepiest washroom in the school. The washroom never got any sunlight, with the lightbulbs flashing inconstantly, and a big red cross on the symbol of the girl's washroom.

The voice became so vivid when she was in front of the washroom. It sounded like it was coming from the soul.

'Ah, hell no.' She bit her bottom lip and cursed her stupidity internally while stomping her foot silently. But nonetheless, she walked in, just like the stupid heroine in a horror movie.

"Hello?" Even before she finished calling out, the sound vanished.

'Ah, sh*t.'

Helia was on the verge of running the hell out of there when she saw the familiar pair of glasses near one of the sinks with a broken handle. With her fears forgotten, she grabbed the glasses and looked back and forth between that and the closed door of the last stole.

"Kyohi? It's me." There was no reply. "I'm alone. What happened?"

Helia waited patiently for her friend to come out.

It took a few seconds for Kyohi to make up her mind and slowly unlock the lock on the door.

When Helia saw the only person she could call a friend since moving with red-faced, tear stains, and harshly biting her lovely heart-shaped lips to suppress her tears, she just rushed to the girl and gave her a tight hug.

She was going to let Kyohi cry on her when she felt the other struggling out of her embrace. So she let go, still holding the frail shoulders, and looked straight into the eyes. "Tell me what happened."

Even though Kyohi was biting her lips sharply to the point that it was going to bleed, her tears still fell out of her eyes like a fountain when her friend came and found her.

Helia watched as the girl pointed at the back of her skirt with crooked fingers.

She spun the girl and checked what was there just to find a sticky, transparent substance all over the back half of the skirt. It was clearly not water or corn syrup but glue. A bottle of glue.

Without needing further explanation, she spun back the girl and asked her gently. "I'll wash it."

Kyohi wiped her tears and said with hiccups, "It-it doesn't... come o-off." She then continued to show her fingers, "It has... super glue." Her delicate fingers were stuck to the other messily, and even when she tried to pull them apart, it wasn't coming off.

"We've gotta wash it one way or another, so..." Helia raised an eyebrow which the girl answered with a nod and let her friend take off her skirt.

The good thing about the school uniform was that female students were allowed to wear tights under during the cold season, and the skirt was a wrap type, like a bath towel, and could be removed from the waist since it was connected with poppers.

"Do you have extras?" Helia asked as she removed her jacket and wrapped it around her friend's waist.

Kyohi shook her head.

Helia nodded to that. "We'll go to the nurse's office after we wash this-" But stopped when she saw the horror on the other's face. "I'll cover you up until we go there. I think they have a spare of uniforms... If they don't... well think of a solution, okay?"

Kyohi nodded with hiccups but thankfully, her tears had stopped. If they continued to flow and the way she was wiping them, the skin would have peeled off.

After some time, Kyohi was back to herself and tried to help Helia wash off the mixture of glue and superglue off her skirt, but was politely rejected and told to sit down at the sink.

"I did the best I can. I don't think I can do any more." Helia stopped the running water and showed the soaking-wet skirt to her friend. The plain navy-blue skirt had some parts rigid, but other than that, it looked fine.

"Thank you." Kyohi thanked. The other just smiled and squeezed the water out of the clothing.

"Now let's go to the nurse's office."

----

"So could you repeat how this happened?" The nurse, Ms Tani, asked. Her eyes spoke confusion, doubt and suspiciousness.

Kyohi answered in a timid voice, "I was fixing my bag using superglue and accidentally spilled the bottle." Next to her, Helia nodded in support.

The nurse looked between the two girls back and forth while cross-legged before she sighed and leaned into them. "Look, if you don't want to say it, I won't force you to, but, if this kind of thing happens again, I am reporting this." With that, the teacher twirled in the chair and stood up from

"Thank you," The students said in unison.

The nurse nodded and grabbed a file. "I'll be right back."

As soon as the office door was closed, Helia impatiently asked Kyohi, "Why didn't you tell her? We had the evidence!"

"No, we don't have the evidence," Kyohi replied strongly. "We all do know who did this but there is no way to prove that. If I do report her, Momo is going to act like we framed her and she can get us suspended, or even worse, expelled."

Helia had no words to say so she just irritably sat down on the chair and crossed both her legs and arms. One of her feet began shaking from being annoyed but Kyohi didn't point it out.

Minutes later, the nurse came back. "Have they separated?" She asked as Kyohi checked on her stuck fingers.

"No."

"Try on some more. I have a meeting now."

Helia jumped up from her chair before the nurse could grab another set of files and leave. "Is there any extra skirt that she can wear?"

"Unfortunately no." The nurse answered and looked at the girl. "If you don't want to go back to class, I can write a letter so that you can go home."

"You can do that?"

"I'm a certified nurse."

"Oh... Could you do that for me too?"

----

"Where are we going?" Kyohi nervously asked her friend, who was smiling like a maniac.

"My house!"