The Miniest Skirt (opening)

On the first day of school, Mitomu stands alone outside the main gate. Momotani High's opening ceremony is going to start in twenty minutes, but Mitomu's mother has insisted that he catch the early train so as not to be late on this, the first day of his new life. The campus is silent. A lukewarm wind whistles through the wide-eyed cherry blossoms, making a barely audible pitter-patter above the empty parking lot. In twenty mintues, all of Mitomu's future classmates will assemble in the gym and, in the same manner as his junior high school (elementary school before that), undergo the same laborious and meaningless ritual of commencement that has been led at schools for perhaps as long as the cherry blossoms have bloomed. Two boys turn the corner around the gate. One talks to the other with a self-conscious smile on his face, as if it were any other day other than the first. Mitomu doesn't move and tries to blend in with the bushes he is standing next to.

"You are an idiot, Takeru! What the hell are you talking about!?"
"Well, I dunno. You saw them too!"
"I never said that! You're such a liar!"

The conversation goes on even as they pass Mitomu and enter the gym. What a strange conversation! Why do kids always elaborate a very small occurence, making it sound as if it is some hot topic of debate that others are intrigued about? Is it a precocious budding of an adult's worst 'sixth sense,' that is, a pubescent vanity that masks itself early on as sheer curiosity and engaged wonder about something that concerns everyone? No. At the end of the conversation, the Takerus will always assert their incredible fantasies and there will be someone there to believe him, or at least pretend to. This saddens Mitomu. Already he has begun to judge his world, has extracted the paradoxes from the pure truth. He sighs and walks toward the gym, a few small whitish pink petals falling soundlessly onto his uniform and the dry pavement of the parking lot.

"...This year all of you will enter a new part of your life. It is the budding stage, when, like the cherry blossoms you see today around the school grounds, life begins to bloom--a first and irreplacable experience of opening of your eyes to the world around you...Though these three years will most likely pass before you like the petals that shower the earth after a cursory week or two, it is necessary to make the best of things...Your time here at Momotani High is precious, so I wish you the best of luck in the next three years..."

Mitomu dozed off, catching small fragments of the principal's robust encouragement and exhaustively redundant platitudes. The three hundred or so kids in his freshman class sat motionlessly in their chairs, heads propped downwards in a respectful way so as to sleep without being noticed. Some of the teachers followed suit. A few finches chirped outside in the the dark branches of the cherry trees.