Day 114

[from StarLight]

As the bell rang to signal the start of homeroom, the classroom door opened and a pretty woman in a generic teacher's outfit stepped inside. She was in her early-to-mid twenties, had long brown hair, and generally resembled almost every other anime teacher in existence. It was reasonable to assume that she was also single and had a massive complex about it, but that's a story for another day.

Despite her seemingly generic appearance, Sanae and Amaya recognized her immediately as their science teacher from last year. "That's Inaba-sensei!" said Sanae excitedly. "We're going to have Inaba-sensei as our homeroom teacher for this year!"

"Nice!" said Amaya, smiling. "She's the best teacher ever! Except for that one from Kiniro Mosaic."

"Alright, settle down, everyone," said Inaba-sensei, motioning for her class to be quiet. "I'm sure some of you will know me already, but for those who don't, my name is Inaba-sensei. I'm going to be your homeroom and science teacher for this year." Picking up a piece of chalk, she wrote "YUI INABA - HOMEROOM TEACHER" on the chalkboard, then turned round and bowed politely to her students. "I hope we all get along well."

"Now, there's a few things we need to sort out," Inaba-sensei continued. "Firstly, and most importantly, we need to decide on your seating allocations for this year." From behind her desk, Inaba-sensei produced an upside-down top hat filled with small pieces of paper. "When I call your name, you will come up to the desk and take a piece of paper out of the hat. Written on that paper will be your seat for this year. There will be no arguments and no trading of seats, understood?" There was a general murmur of agreement from the class, and Inaba-sensei pulled up the class roster. "Okay then… Kojima, you get first pick."

As Kojima went up to the front to select his seat, Sanae patiently awaited her turn. She didn't need to wonder which seat she was going be assigned: since she was the protagonist, she was guaranteed to get seat 4A, the one second from the back on the leftmost row, next to the window. Every self-respecting anime protagonist had that seat. There was no way she wouldn't-

***

"What is this?"

Seat 2F. The seat second from the front, on the rightmost row. Sanae had been assigned the seat completely opposite to the one she had wanted.

"Is there a problem, Hikari?" asked Inaba-sensei.

"Yes!" said Sanae. "I'm the protagonist, I can't sit in this seat! I'm supposed to have that seat!" She pointed at her preferred seating location.

"Sorry, Hikari, but that's just how it goes," said Inaba-sensei. "You have your seat, now please sit down so I can call the next person."

"But it's not fair!" said Sanae, pouting. "I deserve a better seat than this!"

Inaba-sensei leaned across the desk, glaring at Sanae. "I deserve to be in a better anime than this," she retorted, "but we can't always get what we want, Hikari."

With a sigh, Sanae resigned herself to her situation, and slunk off to the seat she had been assigned to, sitting down at the desk with a sour look on her face. Her expression brightened up a little when Amaya sat down at the adjacent desk a few minutes later. "Looks like we'll be sitting next to each other this year," she said.

"Well, that's something, I guess," said Sanae.

"Bummed that you didn't get that nice window seat?" asked Amaya.

"You bet I am," said Sanae. "Who did get that seat, anyway?"

Looking over, Sanae and Amaya noticed a bored-looking male sat in the seat Sanae had so desperately wanted. He was mostly unremarkable except for his hair, which was bright blue with golden streaks and stuck out all over the place like a technicolour explosion. He may well have been the protagonist of his own anime.

"I didn't know there was a card game anime being filmed here," remarked Amaya.