'I feel sick. I knew coming to a new school was going to be nerve wrecking but this is way worse than I could have imagined.'
Shu was walking half a step behind the teacher, passing classroom after classroom with their doors shut and lessons going on inside.
He could hear a teacher giving a lecture through one wall and students answering questions through another, all of them going about their day like it was nothing while he was out here trying to keep his breakfast down.
'This is one of the biggest schools in the city. How did I even make it in? There's probably a thousand students here and I'm about to walk into a room where I don't know a single one of them.'
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
'I moved to a whole new city and I didn't think about this part at all. I just thought "new city, fresh start, it'll be great" and now I'm here and it's the opposite of great.'
The teacher was pointing at signs on the walls while explaining which floor the cafeteria was on and where to find the nurse's office. Shu was nodding along without hearing any of it.
'What if I stutter? I practiced my introduction like ten times in the mirror this morning and it sounded fine but that was in my bathroom where nobody was watching.'
He covered his mouth.
'What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out, or my voice cracks? "Hi I'm Shu Kagami" and it just breaks right in the middle of my own name. The same would be too much, I'd have to transfer again, actually, no, I would have leave the country.'
His thumb was pressing into his thigh through the fabric of his pocket and he couldn't make himself stop.
'Okay, relax. "I'm Shu Kagami, I just transferred here, nice to meet you." That's it. Three seconds of talking and then I can sit down and not say another word for the rest of the day. Yeah, no big deal at all.'
A girl walked past them going the other direction and her eyes moved to him for just a second. He was looking at the floor before she even passed.
'She glanced at me and I flinched, one person did that. And I'm about to walk into a room full of thirty of them.'
The thing was, he wasn't bad at talking. If someone came up to him and started a conversation he was completely fine, he could keep it going for hours without any issues at all.
But starting it was a different story. He couldn't be the one to walk up first and say hi or put himself out there like that.
It was like this since middle school and he really thought moving would fix it, which was stupid, because people don't change that easily, but he was still hopeful.
"This is it," the teacher said, stopping in front of a door with a sign that read Class 2-B.
He could hear someone laughing loud enough to cut through the door while a few others were talking over each other on the other side.
Just hearing all those voices was enough to make him swallow hard.
'D-Dammit, relax man, it's just other kids like you, why are you so nervous?'
"Ready?" the teacher asked, putting his hand on the door.
'No. I am so unbelievably not ready. I would rather do literally anything else right now. Go back to my old school where people already knew me, fake a stomachache and spend the day in the nurse's office or just stand here forever and never open that door.'
He took a deep breath.
'The second that door opens, every person in there is going to turn and look at me at the same time. I saw it happen to other transfer kids at my old school and I always thought "that sucks" and now it's my turn.'
"Yeah," he said.
The teacher slid the door open and Shu felt his stomach drop as every head in the room turned toward him at once.
'Fuuuuuck, why do people always stare.'
His face was getting hot while his mind was going completely blank, the introduction he was practicing all morning just vanished, not a single word of it left.
Some guy in the back row was frozen mid-laugh with his mouth still hanging open, staring at Shu along with everyone else in the room.
'I want to go home.'
"Go ahead and introduce yourself," the teacher said while walking to the front and gesturing for Shu to follow.
His legs carried him forward on their own and before he knew it he was standing at the front of the class with thirty faces staring back at him, all of them waiting for him to say something.
'Here goes nothing I guess.'
"I'm, uh... Shu Kagami. I just transferred here."
'That sounded terrible but there is not going back now.'
He gave a small nod toward the class.
"Nice to meet you."
'Cool, it's done, I can sit down now. Somebody point me to a chair, I don't care where, put me in the back corner behind the tallest kid in the room, just get me away from the front before I somehow make it worse.'
The room went quiet and Shu started overthinking, to him, the silence only meant one thing... they were going to laugh at him or say something hurtful.
"Ohhh, welcome!"
'Wait, what?'
A guy in the second row was grinning at him and giving a thumbs up. Then a girl near the window said "nice to meet you too!" and a few others started nodding and waving.
"Where'd you transfer from?"
"You can sit near us if you want!"
"Kagami, that's a cool name."
'Okay hold on, why is everyone being nice? Is this a bit? This has to be a bit right? They're going to be all friendly for five minutes and then someone's going to say "just kidding, get out" and the whole class is going to laugh. There's no way this is real.'
He was still standing there trying to figure out what was going on when the teacher pointed him toward an empty seat near the middle of the room. He walked over and sat down while putting his bag on the floor next to him.
A guy sitting to his left leaned over before Shu even had time to settle in.
"Yo, so where'd you come from? You said you transferred right?"
"Yeah, from Nishimachi."
"Oh that's far, so you moved to the city then? That's sick."
'Why is he talking to me like we already know each other? I literally sat down three seconds ago. Is everyone at this school on something?'
"Yeah, my mom got a new job out here so we moved last week."
"Last week?! Bro you just got here and they're already throwing you into class? That's rough."
'I mean he's not wrong, it is rough, but why does he care? We met ten seconds ago.'
He glanced around the room while a few people were still looking in his direction. Some were already back to their own conversations but a handful were still watching him, and it wasn't the kind of watching that made him want to disappear either, they just looked curious.
'This is so weird, I was expecting the worst and everyone is just being normal. More than normal even, they're being friendly. Did I somehow transfer to the one nice school in this entire city?'
What Shu didn't realize was that the "uh" in his introduction didn't come across as nervous to anyone in that room.
From the outside he looked like a guy who just wasn't in a rush, and the small nod he gave after came off relaxed instead of awkward.
The class saw a tall quiet transfer student who introduced himself like he didn't care what anyone thought of him, which was pretty much the coolest way to pull that off.
'Alright, now I just need to get through the day and not do anything stupid to ruin my image. I can do that right?'
The guy next to him was still going though.
"I'm Daichi by the way, Daichi Nishida. If you need someone to show you around or whatever, I'm your guy. I know this school inside out, all the hidden spots and how to hack the vending machines."
'He's really going all in on this friendship thing huh. I just sat down, man.'
A small smile came across his face before he could stop it, having someone just talk to him without needing to be the one to start it was exactly the kind of thing that made him feel okay, even if he wasn't going to say that out loud.
"Thanks, I appreciate that."
"See? You're chill, I could tell. The second you walked in I was like, this guy's cool."
'If you could see what was going on in my head five minutes ago you would take that back immediately.'