Mariko was first out of the auditorium, but she stayed milling about at the door watching some of the people drift by. She knew where her class was, and hopefully most of her costudents from last year would be in there with her. She hated having to remember new faces, and it was always so hard to distinguish one peach blur from the next. She realized, not for the first time, how short everyone seemed to be. She'd hit another growth spurt this summer, it seems. And all her dresses would be too short again. Mariko brushed a strand of peach blonde hair back behind her ear, and kept watching. 

There was someone interesting. She looked too old to be fifteen, maybe a second year? No self-respecting fifteen year old would wear such an outdated piece of decorated carpet, anyway. She moved with the sort of self-righteous, holier-then-thou movements that only the blind or the ruling class had, that certainty that the entire world would conspire to leave things exactly where she wanted them to be. Something inside Mariko, possibly her lower-middle upbringing, detested that kind of person. She got blurrier and blurrier until she was finally just another dot in the white-and-green crowd. Mariko turned her eyes back, glared at a couple more new kids, and slouched off.

---

Class 2-2 turned out to be big, stately, if a little too sanitary. It reminded her of her numerous trips to the eye doctor. There weren't any open windows, and the flourescents made the light blueish and bright, which made Mariko's (Admittedly stained) uniform look dirty. Not that anyone else in the class cared, of course. Class 2-2 was where they put all the blind kids. And there were quite a few signs of that. No swingy doors on the shelves, so nobody could walk into them. Desks were made with very rounded corners to stop some clumsy sod from stubbing themselves. And the blackboard was shiny, like a beetle's carapace, having never been contaminated with anything as impure as chalk. Her new teacher was there, filing up some books. A few students were milling around and catching each other up on their holidays. And she was there too, that... girl from the auditorium, right in the front row, where she'd hog the good light. It wasn't like she needed it, anyway, the girl was clearly blind as a bat with a tiny little bat-sized blindfold. 

Mariko giggled at the resulting mental image, and looked around for a suitable spot. Two places removed from the front would do nicely, being a good compromise between being visible and being hidden from sight. That still left her a good few minutes before the first class would start, still. She pulled out a piece of paper, and began idly folding it into a recognizable shape.