The Miniest Skirt (third part)

As Mayama sensei explained the day's assignment, Mitomu faded off as usual. There times when he would listen with such clarity that he felt as if his teacher were speaking to him directly, no other student present in the room. However, often the teacher's voice would dissolve as well, leaving Mitomu to float on by himself, suspended on a cloud of weightless figures, dreams, and abstractions. Sometimes it was the dirty golden side of the hills across the river, which one could see from the classroom, to which Mitomu floated. He could imagine what was out there, past the city--maybe some wild animals, the cold wind, a few pieces of trash, silence. This didn't ever deter him from idealizing though. From his seat in the classroom, anything distant resembled that which he wanted. The hills, the sky, the isolation from the school grounds, the city, the people. He would usually come back to class right when it was time to work on their calligraphy.

Today's characters were reasonably simple. As he wrote them out, slowly, coaxing each line to move out of the brush and not from his unsteady fingers, Mitomu appeared to forget his prior thoughts. He even was pleased with something that he was making. A very strange and honorable feeling. When finished the words dried on the thin paper, the ink puddles hardening like a face ossified by Medussa's glare. "行雲流水," "A cloud moving through the sky, a river flowing over land."

"Wow! Mitomu, you're a natural! How do you make your characters look so beautiful and effortless?" It wasn't the voice of Mayama sensei that spoke but a girl's voice. Aya was the cutest girl in the class, but also one of the shiest. She was friendly with everyone, but never outgoing. She paid attention in class, but never asked questions. Boys paid attention to her secretly, but never asked her out. She was also known among the boys in their surrepetitious lunchtime discussions as the girl with the miniest skirt.

"Huh...uh it's not all that good, is it? I just wrote this now. It's nothing compared to Mayama sensei's calligraphy. "
Mitomu was always nervous. In this rare moment of conversation with Aya, his anxiety gripped him stiffly, he too turned to stone.