Lesson Learned

I'm not apologising

That made her consider it. She looked at her bag thoughtfully. "I do have some paperwork he wanted me to hand in..."

"Exactly, see!" Ritsu clapped her hands. "We can pull it off. Partners in crime, remember?"

"You're not the one who'll get shipped off somewhere cold and with no wifi," Mitsuko grumbled, sighing. "Okay, fine. We'll do it, but I need to get him out of that office."

Ritsu thought for a moment, rubbing her chin. "Hm..." Then her face perked up and an animated lightbulb floated over her head. "Let's cause a power outage!"

***

Mitsuko gulped as she waited behind the hallway to the Principal's office.

The electricity had been off for a least five minutes now.

"I hope this works," she murmured, holding her phone tight for reassurance.

Ritsu smiled up at her. "It will be, don't worry."

And, sure enough, she could hear a pair of footsteps echoing down the hall.

"I've already rung the maintenance team, sir!" The Principal's assistant stammered, hurrying to keep up with her dad's footsteps. "The back-up generator will be up and running before classes even resume—"

"Why are you wasting time explaining this to me when you should be spending time finding out the route cause," the Principal told him coldly.

She swore she heard the assistant cry a little. "Rest assured, I-I'm right on it, sir!"

"Come on," Ritsu whispered when the footsteps grew fainter.

Mitsuko nodded and rushed to the Principal's office, trying to be light on her feet.

She cautiously opened the door and stepped inside when she arrived, looking around to find the laptop.

Mitsuko placed her phone and bag on the desk. "It has to be around here somewhere." She bent down and started to raid the drawers. "Come on."

She yanked open the other drawer and shuffled through, freezing when she saw a framed photo of her and Gakushuu when they were younger, and some scrunched up crayon drawings slipped beside it.

Mitsuko frowned, picking it up to look closer. It looked like summer when they were maybe six. Gakushuu was smiling and carrying her on her back while she hung on.

She stared at it in confusion, tracing the outline of herself.

Why would dad even have this still?

Mitsuko sat on the floor, opening up the crayon drawings that were yellow and crinkly from age.

The first one was a badly drawn version of that stupid acorn Kunudon Gakushuu had made one sunny afternoon, and then the second drawing was of mountains and a river she'd drawn.

He kept these...

She felt something painful in her chest, blinking back tears.

Why would he keep these?

"Mitsuko!" Ritsu hissed. "Come on, we have to hurry!"

Mitsuko was jolted out of her memories and quickly scrunched up the drawings. "Right! Sorry!" She scrambled through the drawer and found the laptop. "Got it!"

She wiped her eyes and shoved the drawings and photo back in the drawer. Then opened up the laptop.

"Okay, hook me up," Ritsu said.