Chapter 4 - Part two

“Nao!” I heard someone calling me.

“Nao...” another voice muttered, a male one, which I didn’t recognize.

“What happened?” the first voice asked, I recognized that it was Shosuke. “Why did she faint?”

“She just fainted. I don’t know what happened. Maybe anemia or her blood pressure?”

I tried to concentrate on the answer of the second person, who I still didn’t recognize. He sounded seriously worried. But the soft sound of his voice calmed me down.

“For now I wanted to lay her down and wait. If after a short time she doesn’t come to her senses then I’ll carry her to the infirmary. But then you came here.”

With closed eyes I tried to direct my attention to my surroundings. I felt something soft under my head, which was lifted from the ground other than my body, which felt like it was lying on the ground. I felt for the ground and grabbed something cold, grass. I was lying on a meadow, but why? I tried to remember what happened before. I was looking for something behind the school, in the hidden garden. Someone was there when I found it. Yeah, right, I searched for the handkerchief, and he got there, and claimed that it was his, Maru. Now the question was, why was I lying here? In front of my eyes the picture of a big cat appeared. The tiger! I fainted when it appeared out of nowhere. So I was still lying there where I fainted? I tried to open my eyes. The first thing that I saw was a worried face, which in addition was seriously attractive and way too near to my own face. Maru, my inner voice whispered and recognized him before my eyes could. I blinked a few times because I thought I was imagining him, but until the last blink he still was near me. His face showed his relief. I wanted to sit up because I wasn’t feeling comfortable openly lying on the ground, but he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down, leaned downwards really near to my ear. “Stay” he whispered. I felt his warm breath on my cheek. His closeness made my head spin. In his words I heard the soft voice which I didn’t recognize before. He left his face near mine. Why didn’t he pull back?

To distract myself I started to feel the ground again. Something suddenly nudged against my hand and something cold, wet touched it. I slightly turned my head and saw a grey tiger. I flinched.

“Shh...” Maru softly stroked my shoulder. He probably felt the nervous twitch. Just now I noticed the reason for my head to be slightly lifted from the ground was him. My head was lying on his lap. No wonder that he felt my flinching.

“D...Ti...Tig...” I stuttered.

“Shh...” he repeated. “It won’t do anything.” He spoke really calmly and continued stroking my shoulder, but his face showed that something was wrong. Either he didn’t trust his own words and the tiger was dangerous, but I doubted that because his other hand was on the animal’s back, or something else was making him feel uncomfortable. What could be worse than a tiger? A grey tiger. Wait a moment, grey? Tigers weren’t grey! A hallucination of the both of us? I couldn’t hold back and reached out for the animals head. It was looking pretty sad. I could see the worry in its eyes. I started to ruffle the tiger’s fur. Its colour started to change. From grey to a dark grey tone, and with every passing second and every stroke it turned into a lighter colour, until it was covered in a shining yellow with silver stripes. I couldn’t resist the smile which was showing on my face when I saw the expression in the animal’s eyes. It was relieved – and beautiful, even when the colours seemed odd.

I tilted my head back to look Maru in the eyes and just wanted to ask why the tiger was here when he again interrupted me. He softly put his finger on my lips and slowly bended down towards my ear, he swiped it with his lips, probably by mistake, and muttered “later”. It was clear that he had something to hide, and I will have some explanation for something which seems impossible.

“Ehm..., if I could bother you...” I looked up to the voice. Sho was standing in front of us and watched me. I totally forgot that I also heard his voice. And when I saw how he lifted his eyebrow and looked down to Maru, I realized that I was still using his lap as a pillow. Sho looked like he was about to make a big fuss about it so I tried to sit up once again, but Maru still wouldn’t let me and used his hand on my shoulder to put pressure on it.

“Why did you faint?” Sho asked. “Anemia?”

“Calm down!” I said.

“Didn’t you eat anything today? Yesterday you were so shaken over a simple handkerchief!”

“Don’t worry. I know what I do.” I myself thought that I sounded a little bit harsh so I wanted to defuse my own words: “but thank you.” I seriously was thankful because of his worry. But I just thought it was embarrassing that we had to have this conversation in front of Maru, because of the handkerchief. And it seemed like Maru didn’t want to talk about the tiger anyway, and it didn’t seem like Sho saw the tiger.

When I noticed Sho still looking at us with his lifted eye brow I tried for the last time to sit up and this time Maru allowed me. I turned around to him and noticed for the first time that he was wearing a black shirt. That meant he was in the SA class, which meant he was special. I didn’t know anyone of that class, not in any of the other years either even though everyone saw them as special and wanted to know them. I didn’t even know one of the pupils’ names in those classes. Until now, though Maru didn’t seem to be his real name. When I looked at him I wondered why I never wanted to know anything about them. When I was still caught up in my thoughts Shosuke brought me back to reality.