The first time it happened, nobody noticed.
Not even Mitsuo.
He was nine years old, sitting in the back of a classroom that smelled like pencil shavings and old paper, staring at a math problem he didn't understand or like, while doodling away and making characters he saw on yesterday's television.
The numbers blurred, 6, 8, 9 they kind of all looked the same he thought, though he was jolted back with the same weird feeling that had been troubling him all class.
His nose started bleeding.
It wasn't anything dramatic, just a thin red line, warm but flowing against his nose pressing against his skin in a way that felt uncomfortable, dripping down to the floor after which he realised he needed to tell the teacher before he gets scolded for making a mess.
He sniffed it back up, like you would your snot, at least whatever left that hadn't already dripped down and raised his hand.
"Teacher," he said quietly, almost hoping he wouldn't have to, probably because this was already the third time in her class, it was embarassing wasn't it, the way the other kids would look, it wasn't in a disgusting way, just odd enough to have them pay attention to him before the teacher tells them to focus on their work.
She sighed, the way someone would when having to do the same task over and over yet not exactly being strenuous, just pitiful in the tediousness that come with being a teacher in this grade, she walked over, pressed a wad of tissue into his hand.
"You need to take better care of yourself," she said.
He nodded, the way a child would even while not understanding the things going around them, or what the problem actually was, a simple nosebleed that was annoying him.
He held the tissue to his nose, the way he'd always been told, press it tightly near the hole, the nostrils from where the bleeding occured, lift your head and lean it back slightly until the bleeding pauses and clots
He waited.
The bleeding stopped.
That should have been the end of it, but
It wasn't.
Three rows ahead of him, a girl named Aiko had fallen off the swing at the playground earlier that day.
She'd scraped her knee, cried and wailed for a while until the adults took her to the infirmary, it looked pretty bad though.
It had been bleeding all afternoon.
Until now.
Now it wasn't.
The skin was still broken.
But the blood had stopped.
No clot.
No scab.
Just stopped.
Aiko frowned at it, it felt wrong, like it didn't make sense but in a way that she couldn't articulate.
She didn't know why that felt wrong, she couldn't.
Mitsuo didn't know either, well not that he even realised anything, he was busy.
Just sitting there, holding the tissue to his nose, watching the red spread slowly through the paper.
He had the strange feeling that something had happened, just a weird sensation.
Something small.
Something nobody would write or bother noticing.
Something that didn't make sense.
He would forget about it by next week.
Everyone would.
Except the world.
Except what had already changed.