There's a kind of chaos that follows Riyura Shiko like clouds. It isn't malicious—it's just… gravitational. Like planets orbiting the sun, or paper orbiting a vacuum cleaner. The second day at Jeremy High had already rewritten the laws of "normal," and now the third day rose like a sunrise made of sheer absurdity.
Riyura arrived wearing his uniform perfectly pressed… except for the bow tie, which pulsed faintly, like it had its own heartbeat. His shoes squeaked as he walked, each step producing an unintentionally musical squeal—C note, E note, G sharp—until the whole hallway was an accidental symphony of sound.
He stopped dead center and announced to no one in particular, "Today, I will not start chaos."
A pause.
Then he produced the class hamster from his pocket and balanced it on his head like a crown jewel.
"Instead," he declared, "I will narrate its life story!"
The hamster twitched. Riyura's voice shifted to mock-serious documentary tone. "Behold… the brave hamster traverses the tundra of my dangerous purple hair. Many have perished in this climate. Few survive the altitude."
A crowd formed, as crowds always did. Students whispered, giggled, or simply shook their heads with the tired awe reserved for watching natural disasters you couldn't stop. Riyura basked in it. Until—
"Nice hair, Shiko. Going for 'discount cactus' today, or did you lose a fight with a static generator?"
The voice cut through like a blade wrapped in sarcasm.
Riyura turned.
And there he was.
Shoehead Gloveohiko.
He was tall, maybe a little too tall for a high schooler, with brown hair that looked like it had fought gravity and lost. A green hoodie hung off his frame, and, most strikingly, he wore a pair of sneakers tied together and slung around his neck like an Olympic medal for "Most Likely to Confuse Fashion."
He had the permanent expression of someone halfway between a nap and a philosophical crisis.
"Ah," Riyura said, grinning. "You must be the new rival character."
Shoehead raised an eyebrow. "And you must be the reason our school has an emergency evacuation plan for personality explosions."
The hallway gasped. A verbal duel had begun.
For the next week, Shoehead was relentless.
"Shiko, you look like a traffic cone that dreams of being human.""Careful with that bow tie, it's probably strangling your last brain cell.""Your lunch smells like regret and circus."
Each insult was sharp—but after every one, barely audible, Shoehead would mumble, "Sorry, I just… wanna be your friend. I'm too lazy though."
Riyura noticed. He noticed everything. But instead of calling it out, he'd beam his blinding grin and reply, "Sounds like emotional constipation, Shoehead!"
The entire class groaned.
By Friday, rumors had spread that Shoehead and Riyura were locked in an epic rivalry that might end in an anime opening fight scene. The truth was stranger and smaller: they were circling friendship like two planets afraid of collision.
That afternoon, Riyura followed Shoehead to the back of the school—not intentionally, of course, just through a series of "coincidental coincidences." There, he found him crouched beside a small, flickering fire made of twigs and an empty can.
A faint, burnt smell hung in the air.
Riyura tilted his head. "You… roasting… shoes?"
Shoehead didn't look up. "It's my thing."
"Your thing," Riyura repeated, as if trying to confirm he hadn't misheard.
"Yeah. Been doing it since I was little," Shoehead muttered. "At my grandparents' place. Leather, canvas, doesn't matter. Roast it, chew it, it's… tradition."
"You eat shoes," Riyura said flatly.
Shoehead shrugged. "Yeah. And I hate myself for it. Makes me feel weird. So I make jokes about other people to distract from the weird."
For once, Riyura didn't have a comeback ready. The wind tugged at his hair. The campfire crackled softly between them.
He sat down beside Shoehead. "That's the most honest thing anyone's said to me all week," he said quietly. "You shouldn't hate yourself for being weird. Weird's how the universe says it remembers you."
Shoehead snorted. "You sound like a fortune cookie."
"Then I'm the best one you'll ever crack open," Riyura said, still smiling.
They sat in silence. Just two weird kids, a fire, and a shoe on a stick slowly roasting like a culinary war crime.
Eventually, Shoehead sighed. "You're strange, Shiko. But… you're not bad."
"Translation: you like me," Riyura teased.
"Shut up."
"Accepted!"
That moment could've ended there, but Riyura had an incurable allergy to calmness. He grabbed a stick and began roasting a marshmallow beside Shoehead's sneaker.
Shoehead eyed him. "That marshmallow's gonna taste like foot regret."
"Perfect," Riyura said. "Authentic flavor."
By sunset, the fire had burned low, and Shoehead was finally smiling—just a tiny one, but enough. Then he cleared his throat. "Hey. Don't tell anyone about this, alright? The shoe thing. People already think I'm an oddball."
Riyura's grin softened into something gentler. "Shoehead, my probably-best-friend-in-denial, your secret's safe. But in return, you have to admit you like my antics."
"Do I—"
"Yes."
Shoehead groaned, muttering like a stranger signing a cursed contract. "Fine. I like your antics. They're… tolerable."
Riyura gasped dramatically. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!"
He leapt to his feet, arms spread wide to the heavens. "We are now bound by the sacred Campfire Pact of Destiny!"
Shoehead groaned louder. "What even is that?"
"It's a thing now!"
Before Shoehead could argue, Riyura snatched the half-roasted shoe and began spinning like a man possessed. "We shall baptize our friendship in the flames of FOOTWEAR!"
"Stop! That's my dinner!"
The next sixty seconds were chaos incarnate. Riyura darted in circles, Shoehead lunging after him like a desperate zookeeper chasing a manic flamingo. The shoe flew into the air, the two leapt after it, time slowed down, dramatic music played in their imaginations, and the shoe—perfectly, poetically—landed back in the fire.
Both stood in silence, breathing hard.
"…Still edible," Shoehead said finally, pulling it out with the stick.
Riyura wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. "Truly, destiny wanted it extra crispy."
Night deepened. They sat again, chewing—Riyura on his marshmallow, Shoehead on his tragic but beloved sneaker. The stars blinked above, witnesses to this utterly nonsensical communion.
"You know," Shoehead said through a mouthful of rubber, "you're more annoying when you're being nice."
Riyura smiled up at the sky. "Good. Means I'm doing it right."
The fire popped, sparks rising like tiny spirits. Something in that moment shifted—small, invisible, but real. The start of a friendship stitched together by laughter, strangeness, and acceptance.
It could've ended there. But life with Riyura never ends quietly.
The next morning, the entire school found them asleep beside the ashes of the campfire, surrounded by burned sneakers and melted marshmallows, with a handmade sign in the dirt that read:
"THE CAMPFIRE PACT OF DESTINY — MEMBERS ONLY."
By lunch, half the school had joined. The shoe-roasting trend swept through Jeremy High like a spiritual epidemic. The cafeteria staff ran out of utensils. Someone tried to roast a loafer on a Bunsen burner in chemistry class. The teachers started holding emergency assemblies.
And through it all, Shoehead and Riyura sat together on the roof, watching the smoke of roasted footwear curl into the sky.
"You started a movement," Shoehead muttered.
"We started it," Riyura corrected. "Together. I'm the fire. You're the shoe."
"That's… actually kinda poetic."
"I'm accidentally deep sometimes," Riyura said. "It scares me."
For once, they laughed together—real laughter, not the deflective kind.
From that day, Shoehead stopped hiding behind his jokes. Riyura, somehow, learned a tiny bit of quiet. Their friendship became the unspoken heart of Jeremy High—a ridiculous, tender, unpredictable thing that no one could quite define.
The final shot: the two of them walking home under the sunset, Shoehead's sneakers still around his neck, Riyura humming the school anthem off-key.
Then, mid-credits, a single line in bold:
"Next time on The Bow-Tied Hurricane: Riyura Shiko Chronicles — The Next Episode...
- The screen freezes on their laughter, the firelight still dancing behind their eyes. -
TO BE CONTINUED…