Seishun Buta Yarou Series - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.5

5

“That’s all for today,” the professor said in accented Japanese.

Second period started at ten thirty and wrapped up on time ninety minutes later, exactly at noon.

“¡Hasta la próxima semana!”

See you again next week. With that salutation, Professor Pedro left the podium.

“¡Hasta luego!”

This boisterous reply came from Uzuki and was accompanied by a big wave.

Pedro grinned back.

A cheery Spaniard, he meshed well with Uzuki’s energy.

As Pedro left, Takumi stuck his head in the door.

“Azusagawa, lunch?” he called, moving toward Sakuta. But halfway there, his eyes turned to one side, where Miori was putting her books away.

“Chao,” she said and got up to go, waving. She brushed past Takumi and vanished down the hall.

“What the hell was that, Azusagawa?” Takumi hissed, planting both hands on Sakuta’s desk. “I thought you said nothing happened!”

“I’ve been promoted to potential friend.”

“Let me in on that!”

“You’ll have to ask Mitou.”

“You’re already that chummy with her?! I knew the man who nabbed Mai Sakurajima had game!”

His eyes had glazed over.

Up at the front of the room, other students were discussing lunch plans.

It was that group of girls again, Uzuki included.

“Cafeteria?”

“I want a yokoichi-don!” Uzuki said, the first to respond. This donburi was a school specialty. It was usually rice topped with sweet-and-spicy ground chicken, with a poached egg on top.

Just hearing the name made Sakuta want one.

“Then let’s go,” one of the girls said.

“Augh!” Uzuki yelped. “I’ve got a shoot today. I can’t, sorry.”

She slapped her palms together, but the girls took it in stride.

“That fashion magazine again?”

“That turned out real cute.”

“I’m definitely buying a copy!”

“Same!”

“Knock ’em dead!”

“¡Hasta mañana!” Uzuki yelled, waving good-bye. She went running out the door.

The girls’ chatter stopped dead for a moment. Then…

“You hungry?”

“School store?”

“I ate too much yesterday, so I really just wanted something small like a sandwich. Huge relief.”

“Yep. Same here.”

“Let’s go.”

A very different energy. Chuckling, they left the room.

Nobody talked about Uzuki at all.

When they were well out the door, Takumi said, “Girls scare me.”

“That’s just how people are.”

The fact that they could pretend to be friendly when Uzuki was around seemed like a strong sign they worried about social ties less than most junior or high school kids. When the idea of a class was this rigid thing, everyone got used to drawing definitive lines and making it clear whether someone was in or out.

College made things more relaxed. Those boundaries grew fuzzier. And that worked just fine.

“You scare me sometimes, too,” Takumi said.

“The cafeteria’s filling up fast.”

The cafeteria was down the row of trees from the clock tower. You turned left at the end, and it was up ahead, on the first floor of a building with a large hall and a number of different shops.

It was peak lunch rush, and all four hundred seats were full. Finding anywhere to sit was a struggle.

Sakuta managed to snag a table as three other boys left, and Takumi joined him, bringing an extra tray for Sakuta.

They were both eating yokoichi-don.

The regular size was a low three hundred yen. The cafeteria menu was generally quite affordable, with soba and udon dishes going for less than two hundred yen. The school lunchroom was a vital ally to any starving student.

Every now and then you’d see parents with kids or groups of old ladies coming through who didn’t really seem like they belonged, but the cafeteria was open to the public, and they were welcome, too. These days, many universities were trying things like this out, hoping to earn some goodwill in the neighborhood. That motivated lots of schools to remodel their cafeterias to look like fancy cafés. They’d get featured on TV sometimes.

It took maybe five minutes for them to empty their bowls. They washed it all down with free tea from the bar.

“Azusagawa, you gotta introduce me to a girl.” This was Takumi’s default conversation opener.

“Didn’t you get numbers at the party?”

“Nobody’s answering.”

“Rough.”

“I’ll settle for Toyohama.”

“If she even hears you say her name and settle in the same sentence, she’ll snap. It’s not hard to make her snap.”

He took another sip of tea. Then something glittering at the entrance caught his eye. Speak of the devil.

She wasn’t the only person on campus with blond locks, but she was definitely taking care of them better than anyone else. At school, she always bunched them low and let them hang in front of her shoulders.

Nodoka looked around the cafeteria, searching for someone.

As soon as her eyes met Sakuta’s, she headed his way. Apparently, she’d been looking for him.

“There you are!” she said, like it was his fault she couldn’t find him right away.

“Whatcha need?”

Nodoka glanced over at Takumi.

“Gotta borrow Sakuta for a bit,” she said.

“Go right ahead. Help yourself!”

So easily relinquished.

Without any confirmation from Sakuta himself, Nodoka did an about-face and stalked off to the exit. She’d be livid if he didn’t follow, so he dropped his dishes in the deposit area and hurried after her.

Outside, Sakuta and Nodoka strolled absentmindedly over to a bench by the research building and sat down on it. Nearby, the dance club was using the building windows as a mirror, rehearsing their routines.

They watched that for a while, but Nodoka didn’t say anything.

“So?” Sakuta asked.

“…You saw Uzuki today?”

“I did. She was in Spanish with me.”

Nodoka knew that, which was why she’d been looking for him.

“She say anything?”

“Like what?”

“……”

“You hauled me all the way out here. Don’t be coy.”

“How was she acting?”

His flippant jab didn’t lighten her mood. She didn’t take her eyes off the dancers.

“She seemed like she always does.”

Sakuta hadn’t picked up on anything wrong.

Her barging into his conversation with Miori, offering a sip of bubble tea, then dashing off to the group of girls, enthusiastically using all the new Spanish she’d learned…and the way the girls had dropped her the second she left the room. All of that was typical Uzuki.

“She didn’t mention me?”

“Nope.”

“Or Sweet Bullet?”

“Not a word.”

“Oh…”

He was still lost.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

She finally turned to look at him. The look in her eyes was half-angry, half-lost.

“Yesterday, we kinda…”

“Kinda what?”

“Had a fight.”

“A fight?”

There were two reasons why that didn’t seem real to him. First, he simply couldn’t picture Nodoka and Uzuki going at it.

Second, the way Uzuki had acted today—she’d been totally normal. The total opposite of Nodoka’s gloomy disposition, which made him feel like there must be some mistake.

“What about?” he asked.

“…You know two of our members already graduated?”

“Yeah.”

Nodoka and Uzuki were both members of an idol group called Sweet Bullet.

At the start of the school year, two of the seven members had left the group (“graduated”), leaving five behind.

“Since that happened, we’ve been having talks among ourselves and with the agency…about our future.”

“One of those ‘break up or keep going’ deals?”

“……”

She neither confirmed nor denied. Her silence suggested she wasn’t happy with where things stood, which was all the answer he needed.

“Our goal was to play the Budokan in three years.”

She used the past tense because that date had come and gone. That had probably forced them to take stock.

“But your fans and gigs are still on the upswing, right?”

They’d played a big music festival that summer and done a headlining tour of the major cities. Kaede had brought her friend Kotomi Kano to see them in Tokyo. They’d filled two thousand seats, and it had apparently been pretty wild. Kaede had been super pumped up about it when she got back and kept going, “It was so much fun! Just…amazing!”

And the individual members were getting work. Uzuki was making a name for herself on game shows and the like, and she was doing more guest spots on about-town showcase pieces. Her unpredictable behavior won her smiles wherever she went.

Nodoka was often paired with her, keeping her in line, and the contrast between Nodoka’s wild appearance and earnest nature was quite popular.

The other members were doing modeling work, taking acting jobs, or throwing themselves into spots on athletic variety shows—everyone was getting opportunities.

But they were still the kinda group that only the fans recognized.

“Yeah, so we had a talk about what to do as Sweet Bullet. Uzuki in particular has a lot of offers…and it’s getting harder to align her schedule with the rest of us. The agency has thoughts on that, too.”

“Thoughts?”

“…Like having her go solo,” Nodoka muttered.

She stifled all her emotions, trying her best to sound and act normal.

“Yesterday, we had a concert with other agency groups. And I heard the chief director on the phone with someone.”

He was starting to see how they’d wound up fighting.

“The agency aside, Hirokawa knew about this?”

“She probably doesn’t.”

He’d figured. If she had, that would be a whole different problem.

“What do you want?”

“I…I still wanna play the Budokan. As Sweet Bullet.”

But Nodoka’s eyes had turned back to the dance club.

“But at the same time, I want everyone’s hard work to pay off. Uzuki’s worked harder than anyone else, and…she really has something, you know? She brings a smile to everyone’s face.”

“Mm-hmm. And you tried to tell her that in a roundabout way, but she didn’t get it at all, and you found yourself losing your temper and lashing out at her?”

Nodoka might have a flashy look, but deep down she was a very serious person. Her concern for Uzuki had likely gone unnoticed and led to her saying things she regretted.

“…Basically, yeah.”

That explained why Nodoka had called it a fight. But the heightened emotions had all been on her side. Uzuki had been wholly unconcerned today because she didn’t know about the solo offer and hadn’t known what to make of their difference of opinion.

“Everyone else felt like I did, so…it wound up feeling like we’d all turned on her.”

And she felt guilty about that, couldn’t quite face Uzuki herself, and was using Sakuta as a cushion.

“Is that all?”

“Huh?”

Nodoka scowled at him, clearly wanting more.

“This is a real problem!”

“A first world problem.”

“……”

“You’re basically griping because you’ve got more work and things can’t be how they’ve always been. If you told Mai that, she’d slap you.”

“Ugh, yeah…”

Sakuta had a sinking feeling it would somehow end with him getting slapped instead. He definitely didn’t want her catching word of this.

“……”

Nodoka had definitely heard him but wasn’t quite swallowing it.

“If you’re super hung up on Hirokawa, go talk to her again. Don’t go sneaking around picking the brains of unrelated dudes.”

“You be quiet! I know that much.”

He’d managed to get under her skin, and she jumped to her feet.

“Only a dumbass would talk to you,” she said. “Thanks!”

Was she mad at him or grateful? Her emotions were swirling every which way as she stomped off.

One of the dancing girls shot him a look like, “What did you do?” When Sakuta caught her looking, she hastily averted her eyes.

“I don’t need to be any more notorious than I already am…”

He felt like Nodoka had it together a little better now that she was in college, but…not when she was with him.

“Which is fine.”

He got up and stretched.

The rain that morning had left the air feeling clean.

The story he’d just heard was like the weather. Emotions were like the sun, the clouds, and the rain. He could let Nodoka and Uzuki be, and it would all work out. Today had just been some bad weather.

Those two weren’t just any old run-of-the-mill friends. They were part of the same group, working toward the same goal. They’d been through thick and thin together and forged bonds of trust.

They might not be friends, but they could lean on each other.

They might not be besties, but they could support each other.

He knew they’d built something stronger.

Changes around them would not be enough to shatter that now.

At the time, Sakuta genuinely believed that.

Believed this was a trivial concern.

That it would blow over.

But things have a way of turning out differently.

And the next day, they did.

The campus might not have looked different, but the change itself was all too clear.