"Rika"

Was someone calling my name? I wanted to sleep more to recover my exhaustion from shopping yesterday.

"Rika!" Someone yelled in a scolding tone.

"Ok! I'm up, I'm up!" I yelled when that someone snatched my blanket away from me.

I reluctantly got up from my bed and rubbed my eyes in confusion. With my eyes focusing on the person in front of me with a frown, I noticed Luke was already prepared to go to school.

I could already anticipate his lecture of waking up on time. I looked at the digital clock beside my bed on the wooden tabletop to see it was still 6AM.

Of course, it was 6AM. And when did the school day start for teachers like us? From what I remembered:

A middle-aged woman in her thirties had mentioned, "Because you're only teaching one subject, you're required to come to school by 10AM sharp!"

'That meant I had four hours from now to get ready, didn't I? But why is Luke already wearing his fancy school uniform? Surely, he wasn't going to make me do the same like he always did. Wait, didn't he wake me up to prepare for school just like he did?' My thoughts ran in circles early in the morning.

"It's 6AM and we're supposed to be there by 10AM, so why did you wake me up so early?" I confronted him to try to earn some extra hours of sleep.

"It's going to take time to commute to school from this hotel. Did you forget we're not in the first district anymore where there's no traffic?" Luke logically answered.

I was sure that the commute time wouldn't take more than two hours. Maybe Luke read about this from a book?

I passed Luke my hair brush as I didn't want to fight with him early in the morning.

Since I was young, maybe after kindergarten, my hair was ruthlessly hard to take care of with its half curly waves. Considering I didn't have this problem in my past life, I was too lazy to take care of my hair. Plus, if it became too bothersome I was planning to cut my hair.

However, when Luke grumbled about my untidy appearance, I gave the excuse that it was too bothersome. That's why I told him that if he doesn't like it, he could always brush it for me instead. Ever since then, Luke was in charge of maintaining my unruly hair.

Luke smoothly brushed my hair while I cleaned my face with a hot towel. I changed into my uniform that was sent to the dry cleaners yesterday to clean and iron after my hair was perfected.

And how long did it take to get out the door? Thirty minutes!

Knowing Luke, I was sure we were going to eat breakfast inside a fancy restaurant instead of a simple meal like a muffin or a piece of toast.

Wasn't this his true intentions of waking me up this early? The full course meal made for breakfast would probably take about one hour to finish as usual.

"Can I just skip breakfast and sleep for one more hour?" I pleaded before exiting the door.

Luke shook his head disappointingly while he directly escorted me out the door. As a result, I hung my head in despair while trying to maintain my manners at this high-class restaurant.

While I was eating my food, I saw a dash of glittering ash brown hair from the corner of my eye. There would be no way she would be here, would she?

I drove my attention away from that table and focused on my food. Why did I get a feeling today would also be a long day?

***

I yawned while arriving near the school gates early in the morning. I was put in charge of watering the garden as part of the gardening club at this school.

Our members were only had a few people so we would always rotate every week. Flowers like marigolds, red roses and lilies were planted to harvest during holidays where we would get most of our club funding.

A sudden breeze flew from the autumn wind as a sparkling car arrived in front of the school gates. From the car, there lied two people who looked like they were from another world. A boy with silky silver hair and bright ocean blue eyes wearing a suit and a girl with cascading fire red hair and orange eyes that resembled marigolds that were about our age.

Actually, these were our temporary teachers who started teaching yesterday. The girl wearing a sparkling school uniform that almost resembled a stage costume that celebrities wore was my math teacher.

For the first time, I saw someone more beautiful than Eliza who was rumored to be the daughter of a big enterprise in the third and fourth district.

Eliza was always popular from a young age, her doll-like looks attracted both genders with her innocent personality.

There wasn't a day where I couldn't find Eliza rejecting another guy who sent a love letter to confess on the roof.

Why was I at the roof?

The roof was where the gardening club planted all our flowers and strangely it was like this ever since elementary school.

Anyways, when I joined my classmates who huddled around Rika after class yesterday, the other temporary teacher came to pick her up.

I could already see the other girls falling for his indifferent image as they screamed for his attention while questioning Rika when he pretended they were not there.

This was when I saw for the first time, a guy actually ignored Eliza.

Normally every guy that met Eliza would try to gain her favor as they fell for her innocent looks. However, I saw that Eliza was no exception to the charms of the temporary teacher as she giggled among the other girls.

Today, the same guy was escorting Rika out of the car as if the scene came out from a fairy tale. When the autumn breeze swept through the school, the scene looked like it came from a romance drama with two very attractive protagonists who would make a blockbuster hit.

By the time, they entered the school, I found myself frozen in front of the school gate while lost in a daze.

I was looking forward to the rest of the week with these two people inside our school.