Chapter Seven – Yuri Hanamatchi
The first time I heard the name Ji A, it was whispered in the hallways like a curse.
Jenna Amelia La Rose. Nobody called her that. She was Ji A—two sharp syllables that cut through classrooms, through teachers' patience, through everything.
She wasn't just trouble. She was the storm.
I knew it better than anyone.
It started with pranks. Not little ones—big ones. Fire alarms pulled during exams, teachers' cars covered in paint, a classroom filled with hundreds of paper cranes that rained down when the door opened. Students laughed. Teachers didn't. But Ji A always stood in the center, smiling, daring anyone to call her bluff.
And then it escalated.
She had a temper like gasoline. One spark, and she burned everything around her.
That day—our fight—it was supposed to be nothing. Just another argument in the cafeteria, voices raised, chairs scraping. I said something stupid, she shoved me, I shoved her back. And then she snapped.
Her hand on my chest, stronger than I thought possible. I stumbled, my head slammed against the corner of a table. For a second, the world went dark. Students screamed. When I came to, blood was on the floor and she was standing over me, chest heaving, eyes wild.
They said she almost killed me. Maybe they were right.
But that wasn't even the worst of it.
Everyone remembers the teacher. Mr. Sato. Strict, cold, the kind who thought fear was discipline. He made the mistake of calling Ji A a "lost cause" in front of the entire class.
She didn't come to school the next day. Or the day after.
When she returned, she was different. Sharper. Angrier. And then, just weeks later, Mr. Sato was gone. Found in his car on the edge of the city, dead from a fall that didn't make sense. Officially, it was ruled an accident. But whispers spread fast.
Ji A pushed him.Ji A killed him.Ji A smiled when she heard the news.
I never knew the truth. Maybe no one did. But the rumor was enough.
Schools expelled her, one after another. Principals whispered her name like it was poison. Students idolized her, feared her, hated her.
And me?
I was the scar she left behind.
Now, seeing her here in Alberta, thousands of miles from Tokyo, I realized something:
You can run as far as you want.But storms always find their way back.