2009.
A little girl moved to a remote village just as she started elementary school. Her parents worried that she might struggle to adjust to country life, but what hurt her more was being separated from her friends.
The entire school had nineteen students.
They all shared one classroom.
Simply because her schoolbag was blue, while everyone else's was red or black, some mischievous classmates hung it up high out of her reach.
It's okay... it's only a little thing.
The little girl kept reassuring herself as she dragged over a chair to stand on and tried to reach her schoolbag. Perhaps even she hadn't noticed the tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.
The bag had been hung so high that even standing on the chair, she could barely reach it. As she tugged it closer, little by little, it came loose and fell toward her head.
Smack!
The little girl squeezed her eyes shut in fear. When she realized the bag hadn't hit her head, she turned around in surprise. Another little girl with short brown hair had caught it.
"Thank you..."
"Hey! Xiao Wen! Let's trade schoolbags... come on, let's trade!"
Faced with the brown-haired girl's repeated pleas and sparkling eyes, the little girl called Xiao Wen blinked blankly. And just like that, she made her first friend in the countryside.
Nobara Kugisaki. That was her name.
Unlike Xiao Wen, who was easily bullied, the outgoing Nobara cheerfully fought back against anything that rubbed her the wrong way.
Even faced with the oppressive atmosphere of the countryside, where everyone was expected to fit in, Nobara calmly ignored it.
"This village is way too small. It's harder to stay strangers than to become friends. It's disgusting," Nobara said casually as she played a video game.
Sitting beside