@banjoanjo@Suku@Mistress Dizzy@chukklehed@demonspade64@HereComesTheSnowSchool Side (Saturday Morning - 11am) - NPC: Kaede YamamotoDespite having been phased out during a period lasting from the mid-90s to just after the turn of the millennium, a number of Japanese schools could still be found holding six-day school weeks, albeit mostly amongst the privately-run. Uchima Senior High had once been a member of those ranks (even though it was a public institution), but over the years, it too had given up on the concept (despite attempts by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to reintroduce the six-day school week for the purpose of "
dispel[ling] concerns of a widening “education gap” between public schools and private schools"
1), with Saturday attendance mostly limited to those participating in club activities. And for those who were less club-inclined, they could stay home, where they would waste time sleeping in and procrastinating on their weekend homework.
Thus it was quite unexplainable why Kaede Yamamoto was leaning against the school gates at eleven in the morning, still clad in his crimson uniform. He seemed particularly ruffled, the neat and sophisticated appearance he had always sought to maintain having fallen to the wayside in favour of a strange, haggard form. His face, pallid and unhealthily pale, was, upon contact with the fingers of his shaking right hand, cold and clammy to the touch. Even with the presence of his glasses, his eyes were noticeably bloodshot, as if he had been crying during the night. His night ... had not been a good one. There had been no peaceful for the Drama Club President in his sleep. There had only been more horrors.
Yet it was those horrors that had driven him to come to school today even when there was no reason for him to. No, there would have been reason, but with the ... the incident back in the room, all of the Drama Club's activities had been forcibly cancelled by the staff. None of them needed to come, and he knew that many of his friends and club members were staying home, still affected by whatever it was that had ... that had happened there. Kaede wanted to be one of them, but he wasn't. Instead, he had chosen to turn up at school despite everything, barely kept awake by the eight cups of coffee he had consumed that morning.
He shivered. It wasn't that cold, but he did.
It would've been so easy to just ... just stay home. Except four of his club members ...
his friends (Okazaki, Oogami, Hanazawa, Sasaki) were missing. No, they weren't missing, they had been taken. Taken by those monsters. Th-that whatever it was that hid in the school's clock tower. He was the Club President. They were his responsibility. If he had just arrived a bit earlier to the club room, then they could've ...
He tried to ignore the thoughts telling him that it was all his fault. He couldn't have known. He couldn't have predicted it.
However, they had still disappeared when he should've been there for them. The blame laid with him there. If he had been there, they wouldn't have been corrupted. They wouldn't have - he tried to recall the words of that ... Philemon being - been corrupted. They wouldn't have lost themselves to whatever it was that had cursing their school. So that was why it was his responsibility to save them. He -
Lightning lancing through the air.
Scent of ozone.
Bright, bright energy.
-had the power to do so now.
He had ... a Persona. He had Oberon.
Kaede glanced down at the screen of his smartphone. He had sent the texts to every single one of them, requesting their presence at school. The students that had ... followed him down to the clock tower.
He needed to save his club members. By all means necessary. He needed the help.
The club was his family. No matter how stupid they could get, no matter how rambunctious, they were his.
He would rather die than lose them.
1. japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view..