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1

And that’s how Yui Yuigahama decided to study.

A corner of the faculty office was set up as a reception area. There was a glass-topped table by a black leather sofa, and the whole thing was set off by a partition. Immediately to one side was a window, and from it you could see out to the library. A mild early-summer breeze swept in through the open window, making a single piece of paper dance. Moved by the impressionistic scene, I followed the scrap of paper with my eyes to see where the wind was going. The paper fluttered gently, whisking toward the floor, fleeting as a falling tear.

And then, BAM! A stiletto heel stabbed it like an iron poker. Supple legs stretched up from those heels. It was quite apparent just how long and shapely those legs were, even sheathed in a tight pantsuit. It takes impeccable style to pull off a pantsuit. The bare legs and pantyhose that accompany a skirt can compensate for a lot when it comes to fulfilling the erotic component, but the pantsuit—which intentionally obscures that allure—is prone to leave an impression of lacking sophistication and elegance. Unless sported by a figure sufficiently slim but possessing legs of the proper curvaceousness, the pantsuit can lose its essential shape and even end up looking ugly.

However, the ensemble before me was different. These legs were of such balanced proportion that one might go so far as to call them an example of the golden ratio. And it wasn’t just her legs. Her tight waist drew a gentle curve that eventually arrived at the superb mounds of her breasts. Oh-ho! Mount Fuji, here I come! The line from her feet to her chest was like a violin—nay, not just any violin. Like that famous instrument, the Stradivarius, it boasted a perfect shape.

The problem was the terrifying expression that topped it all off, like those on the Nio statues by Unkei and Kaikei. It was terrifying from an artistic, cultural, and historical perspective. Miss Hiratsuka, my Japanese teacher, chewed roughly on the filter of her cigarette and glared at me with an expression that bespoke the suppression of extreme rage. “Hikigaya. Do you understand what I want to talk to you about?”

“No…” Unable to take the glare from her wide, flashing eyes, I quietly played dumb and turned my head away.

Miss Hiratsuka began clenching each of the digits of her right hand, starting with her index finger. That alone was sufficient to squeeze a crack from her joints. “You didn’t just tell me that you have no idea, now, did you?”

“No…no way I wouldn’t understand! Is what I was going to say! I wasn’t going to just say no! I understand! I’ll write it over! Don’t punch me!”

“Of course you will. Geez… Just when I think you’ve changed a little bit, you pull this.”

“My motto is Always stick to your guns, so.” I gave her a little tee-hee.  

I felt like I could hear the vein popping out of her temple. “So I have no choice but to fix you with a whack after all. It’s always faster just to whack things—like you would a TV or anything else.”

“H-hey, I’m a precision instrument, so that may not be the best idea. And by the way, TVs these days are thin, so you can’t whack them like the old ones. You’re really showing your age—”

“Shocking First Bullet!”

Thunk. The sound her fist made as it sank into my stomach was bland compared to her dramatic battle cry.

“Guh.” I raised my head, desperately trying to reel in my departing consciousness, and saw Miss Hiratsuka giving me an unpleasant smirk.

“If you don’t want to eat the Annihilating Second Bullet, you should stop talking.”

“I-I apologize… Please spare me the Exterminating Last Bullet.” I obediently apologized, and Miss Hiratsuka sat down on her chair with a creak, looking satisfied. Perhaps my immediate apology had borne fruit, because she was smiling and looking somehow refreshed. Most of the time her behavior was so cringeworthy that I’d forgotten for a moment, but she was actually quite beautiful.

“S-CRY-ed is a good show. I’m glad you caught on, Hikigaya.”

Correction. She really was just a cringeworthy human being after all. Apparently, she was just happy I’d gotten her reference.

Lately, I had come to understand her tastes. Basically, she was into dramatic action manga and anime. I’d been learning more useless crap than I knew what to do with.

“Now, Hikigaya, I’ll ask you just to be sure. What was your goal in writing that smart-ass application form? If you don’t give me a satisfactory answer, you’d better prepare for trouble.”

And make it double, I’m sure. “I don’t know what to say…” I’d poured my entire heart out on that sheet of paper. I hadn’t prepared a more in-depth response than that. If she’d read it but still didn’t get it, what could I do about that?

As if she’d read my mind, Miss Hiratsuka flicked her gaze in my direction, exhaling cigarette smoke. “I understand your rotten, sordid personality. I just thought you’d grown a bit. Hasn’t spending time in the Service Club influenced you at all?”

“Huh?” I replied, thinking back on my time with the Service Club of which she spoke. Simply put, members of the Service Club listen to students’ problems and then help solve them. But in actuality, the club was just a bunch of kids who had a crappy time at school, all thrown together into an isolation ward. I had been forced into helping them, as that was somehow supposed to correct my deviant personality and do away with the rotten look in my eyes, but the club didn’t do anything particularly worthy of mention, so I wasn’t really attached to it. What would I even say about it?

Totsuka was cute. Yeah, that was about it.

“Hikigaya, that gleam in your eyes is rapidly devolving into something even more sordid. And wipe off that drool.”

“Ah! Oh, crap, I was zoning out.” I rubbed my mouth with my sleeve. That was close. I’d been inches from discovering my emerging sexuality.

“You’re a sad sack, and you’re not getting any better. You’re getting worse.”

“Compared to you, I don’t think I’m so bad. Bringing up S-CRY-ed, at your age—”

“Annihilating…”

“—really is something a mature woman would do. I can really tell you feel a strong sense of duty to instruct me on the classics. Indeed. Honestly, truly.” I somehow managed to rattle off something in an attempt to avoid getting punched, and Miss Hiratsuka sheathed her fist. But her eyes were sharp, as usual, reminding me of a wild beast.

“Geez… Anyway, redo your Workplace Tour Application Form. And you’re going to help me sort the forms, too, as a punishment for hurting my feelings.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was a thick stack of papers before me. I was forced to sort through each and every one like I was a part-timer at a bread factory or something. Plus, I was being monitored.

Though I was alone with a female teacher, nothing exciting was going to happen here. Neither would the impact of her punch somehow result in me touching her chest, obviously, nor would there be any other convenient, accidental groping. Stuff like that is all total fabrication. You liars! All you dating sim and rom-com light-novel writers had better come and apologize to me.

Chiba City Municipal Soubu High School has a workplace tour event in second year. They gather applications from every student, and based on those applications, they decide which workplaces to tour and which students actually go there. It’s a Yutori education–style program that just cuts into the curriculum and is supposed to give us experience interacting in society. That in itself wasn’t a particularly big deal. Most schools probably have similar programs. The problem with this thing was that it fell immediately after midterms. I was being forced to waste part of my precious prep time on these frivolities.

“Man, why does the program have to be at this time of year?” I asked as I sorted the stack of papers by job type.

Miss Hiratsuka, who was sitting in an empty desk, replied with a cigarette in her mouth. “We’re doing it precisely because it is this time of year, Hikigaya. You’ve heard that you have course selections for third year right after summer break, right?”

“We do?”

“I told you about it in homeroom.”

“Oh, I feel like I’m less home and more away team there, so I wasn’t listening.” No, seriously, why do you call it homeroom? I don’t feel at home there at all. I hate it.

Plus, the whole “day duty” system used to run homeroom is just terrible. Day duty is when you’re forced to lead the morning greetings for the whole class. When I say, Rise! Bow! Be seated! things go deathly quiet, and I’d like it if people would stop being like that. When Hayama does it, fits of tittering flit through the class. He’ll caution them with a smile, and they’re all like one big, happy family, but when it’s me—nothing. Come to think of it, they don’t even boo me, so I’m even less than an away team.

“Anyway, we set the date for the work experience to fall between the midterms and summer vacation so students form a concrete plan for their future instead of just mindlessly taking their exams. I doubt it’s very effective, though,” she added, then blew out a smoke ring with a puff.

My school, Chiba City Municipal Soubu High School, is an academically oriented institution. The majority of the students here either hope to or actually are going on to university. Of course, I’d had university on my mind since first starting this school. Maybe it was because I’d already included a four-year postponement of adulthood in my calculations, but I wasn’t that excited about my future. I’m the only one here who’s actually been thinking properly about my future. I’m definitely not getting a job.

“You look like you’ve got nothing good on your mind. So which are you going with, arts or sciences?” Miss Hiratsuka inquired, exasperated.

“Me? I—”

“Oh! There you are!” The moment I opened my mouth, I was interrupted by a boisterous cry. Her bright hair, twisted into a bun, swung in displeasure. As usual, her skirt was on the short side, and there were two or three buttons undone over her open and breezy chest. It was Yui Yuigahama, with whom I’d only recently become acquainted. But we’re in the same class, so the fact that I’d only just gotten to know her actually meant that my communication skills were impressive, in a way. Impressively bad.

“Oh, Yuigahama. Sorry, but I’m using Hikigaya right now.”

“I-it’s not like he’s mine. I-it’s totally okay,” she stammered, denying her possession of me as she violently waved her hands back and forth. I couldn’t help feeling like there was a nuance of No, I don’t need that thing! in her expression. It kind of hurt watching someone rejecting me that hard.

“Did you need something?” The one posing the question wasn’t Yuigahama, but rather the girl who’d popped up in front of her. Black pigtails bobbed as she stepped forward. “You never came to the clubroom even though it’s long past time, so she came looking for you. Yuigahama did, that is.”

“You don’t have to add that last bit to emphasize that it wasn’t you. I know.”

The black-haired girl was Yukino Yukinoshita. Her face is the only nice thing about her. She looks as pretty as a porcelain doll, and her attitude is as chilly as ceramic to match. The first thing out of her mouth to me was a subtle dig, so you can infer from that what our relationship is like.

Yukinoshita and I are in the same club, more or less—the aforementioned Service Club. She’s the captain. When we’re together, we’re constantly at each other’s throats, retreating occasionally, and basically just digging at each other’s open wounds and grinding salt into them. We spend day and night on our pointless disputes.

At Yukinoshita’s remark, Yuigahama huffily put her hands on her hips, looking quite annoyed. “I went all over asking around, but everyone was like ‘Hikigaya? Who?’ It was horrible.”

“I didn’t need to know that.” Had she come just to pierce my heart with pinpoint accuracy? She wasn’t even aiming. What kind of natural sniper was she?

“It was really horrible!” For some reason she said it again, still looking put out and painfully reminding me once more that nobody at this school even knows I exist. Oh well, I guess if everyone at school knows you, you’re easy to find, huh? If I’m this socially invisible, maybe ninja would be the most appropriate career path.

“Oh, um, sorry.” This was the first time I’d ever apologized for the fact that no one knows me. Sad. Anyone of lesser mental fortitude would have bidets spraying from their eyes by now.

“It’s…o-okay… U-um, so…” Yuigahama clasped her fingers together in front of her chest and began fidgeting as she wiggled them. “T-tell me your number? L-look! It’s weird for me to go to all this trouble looking for you, and it’s embarrassing… People asking me if we have a thing and stuff, and it’s just…unbelievable.” Unbearably embarrassed that she had been searching for me, she blushed at the memory. Averting her eyes, she squeezed her fidgety hands poised before her chest tighter and turned away before casting one more questioning look my way.

“Well, sure, why not…,” I said, producing my cell phone. Yuigahama pulled out hers, all sparkly and jewel encrusted.

“What the heck is that? A phone or a disco monster truck?”

“Huh? Isn’t it cute?” It looked like a cheap chandelier. Yuigahama shoved her cell phone in my face, a charm that looked like a strange plush mushroom dangling from it. It was superbly annoying.

“I dunno. I don’t understand ho taste. Are you into glossy stuff? Are you a crow? Or do you just like technical literature?”

“What? Literature?! And don’t call me a ho.” Yuigahama looked at me like I was some kind of fantastic beast.

“Hikigaya. I don’t think most high school students are going to get your gloss puns. That joke was outside her frame of reference… Get it, like reference material?” Miss Hiratsuka’s eyes sparkled as she gave my humor a failing grade. Man, that expression on her face like I’m so witty! was so annoying…

“If you can’t see this is cute, then your eyes are rotten,” said Yuigahama.

I was on the road to being dubbed Hikigaya of the Rotten Eye. Yes, I happened to be the poster child of the affliction. Whatever. I’d already given up, anyway.

She shrugged. “Whatever. We can just bump it, right?”

“No, I don’t have a smartphone, so it doesn’t do that.”

“Huh? Then you have to type numbers in by hand? What a pain.”

“I don’t need those kinds of functions. I hate phones, anyway. Here.” I held out my cell, and Yuigahama timidly accepted it.

“I-I’ll type it in… I don’t mind. But wow, it’s amazing that you don’t even hesitate to hand me your cell phone.”

“Well, there’s nothing on it to embarrass me. I only get e-mails from my sister, Amazon, and McDonald’s.”

“Whoa! It’s true! And they’re almost all from Amazon?!”

Leave me alone.

Yuigahama took the phone and began typing something with incredible speed. She looked like a slow girl, but she sure could type fast. From now on, I’d call her the Ayrton Senna of fingertips.

“That’s fast.”

“Hmm? Isn’t this normal? But, like, I guess you don’t have anyone to e-mail, so your fingers must be degenerating, huh?”

“That’s rude! I e-mailed girls in middle school, at least.” I said, and Yuigahama dropped my cell phone with a clack. Hey, that’s my phone. My phone!

“No way…”

“Hey, do you even realize how mean that reaction was? You don’t, do you? Please do.”

“Oh, like, I just couldn’t imagine you talking to a girl.” Yuigahama laughed to avoid the question, picking up the phone she had dropped.

“You idiot. I’m actually, like…when I feel like it, I can do all that stuff. I was popular enough with girls that when we were switching classes and everyone was exchanging e-mails, I took out my phone and glanced around, and this girl said to me, ‘Oh…so I guess we could exchange e-mails?’”

“‘I guess’? Kindness can be cruel, huh?” Yukinoshita smiled warmly.

“Don’t you pity me! We actually e-mailed each other after that!”

“What was she like?” Yuigahama asked indifferently, dropping her gaze to her cell. But her previously swift fingers mysteriously ceased their clacking entirely, not even twitching.

“Hmm… She seemed health conscious and reserved. She was so health conscious that when I’d send her an e-mail at seven PM, she’d reply the next morning with something like ‘Sorry, I fell asleep. See you at school.’ But then after that, she’d be all shy in class. She was so introverted and quiet that she wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Erp, that’s actually…” Yuigahama put her hand to her mouth like she was holding back a sob as tears poured from her eyes.

I didn’t need to hear the rest of that sentence. I’d figured it out myself.

“She pretended to be asleep in order to ignore your message. Don’t avert your eyes from the truth, Hikigaya. You need to confront reality.”

How can you say such a thing, Yukinoshita? How can you say that with such a triumphant expression on your face, Yukinoshita? “I know all about reality. I know so much I could practically write a Hikipedia.” Ahhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, this was all so nostalgic. I guess you could call it the folly of youth. I was so pure back then. I’d had no idea that she’d only asked for my e-mail to be nice and then only replied to my messages out of pity. In the end, after two weeks, I noticed that she hadn’t sent me a single message even though I’d sent her several, so I stopped.

So, like, I keep getting these e-mails from Hikigaya… He’s so creepy, it’s, like, enough already!

He definitely has a crush on you, Kaori.

What? I would never—not ever!

Just imagining what sort of conversation had transpired between those girls made me want to die. I really had liked her!

I’d tried my best to use emotes and stuff; it was so sad. I’d thought that using hearts would be creepy, so I used sparkles and suns and music notes… Just remembering it was agonizing enough to make me faint, seriously.

“Hikigaya… Y-you could exchange e-mails with me. I’ll actually return your messages, okay? I won’t pretend to be asleep,” Miss Hiratsuka said, taking my phone from Yuigahama’s hand and typing in her e-mail. This was crashing waves of pity here.

“Uh, I don’t need you to be nice to me…” E-mailing your teacher is just sad. It’s about on par with my mom giving me chocolates on Valentine’s Day every year. Where was this wave of pity coming from all of a sudden? At times like this, I was grateful for Yukinoshita’s indifference.

In the end, my phone was returned with the addition of their numbers. Though merely adding data shouldn’t have affected its weight, for some reason, it felt heavier. So this was the weight of human bonds, huh…? How light. So light that, looking back at how desperate I was—how I would beg for a few kilobytes of data—just made me laugh. Thinking about how I’d never fill up the memory in this phone, I opened my address book. When I did, I saw…

  Yui  

…written on the screen. Hey, where is this supposed to go if the contacts are organized alphabetically? And no matter how you looked at it, this was like the sender line on spam. The ho-ishness of it was very Yuigahama. I pretended I hadn’t seen it and stuffed away my phone.

I’d been brisk with my task, so I had only a few sheets of paper left. I sorted them quickly. Miss Hiratsuka glanced at my work from the corner of her eye and cleared her throat. “Hikigaya. That’s enough. Thanks for helping me out. You may go,” she said without turning toward me, lighting the cigarette in her lips with a sizzle. Perhaps the pity I’d inspired in her mere moments before still lingered, as she was being uncharacteristically kind. Wait, if this passed as kindness for her, then how mean was she most of the time?

“Yes’m. I’m going to my club, then.” I picked up the bag that I’d left flopped over on the floor and pulled it over my right shoulder. Inside was the manga I’d brought to read during club time today and a few textbooks for studying for midterms. Club time was likely going to be another few hours of idleness with no one coming to seek our help, as usual.

I started walking, and Yuigahama followed me. If she hadn’t come to get me, I would have just gone home. As I approached the door, I heard a voice at my back.

“Oh, yeah. Hikigaya. I forgot to tell you, but for the upcoming workplace tour, we’re going in groups of three. You get to choose your own groups, so keep that in mind.”

Wh-what did she just say…? As she spoke, my shoulders slumped. “Aw, man. I really don’t want anyone from class coming over to my house…”

“You’re still planning to do your workplace tour at home?” The determination Miss Hiratsuka saw in me turned her expression horrified. “I thought the ‘form groups of three’ part would turn you off that, though.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I brushed my hair up as I turned, flared my eyes, and fixed Miss Hiratsuka with my most intense gaze. I also made my teeth sparkle. “The pain of loneliness is nothing to me at this point! I’m used to it!”

“Lame.”

“D-don’t be stupid. A hero is always alone, but he’s still cool. In other words, alone equals cool!”

“Oh yeah, there is that hero who says that love and courage are his only friends, isn’t there?”

“Exactly! Wait, I’m surprised you know about him.”

“Yes, I find him quite interesting. I wonder when small children first recognize that love and courage are not friends.”

“You have twisted interests.” But it was just as Yukinoshita said; love and courage are not friends. That’s nothing more than a sprinkling of powdered, sugary words over false pretenses. The essence of it is nothing more than greed and self-satisfaction. They’re not friends. By the way, soccer balls aren’t friends, either.

Kindness, pity, love, courage, friends, and also soccer balls… I don’t need any of them.

The clubroom was on the fourth floor of the special-use building, on the east side, looking out over the grounds below. Through the open window wafted the music of youth. The calls of boys and girls avidly engaging in their after-school activities echoed among the trees, mixing with the sounds of metal bats ringing out and high-pitched whistles. Clarinets and trumpets from the brass band joined in to create a beauteous melody.

And what were we, the Service Club, doing with that wonderful youth BGM behind us? Well, nothing. I was reading a shoujo manga I’d borrowed from my sister, Yukinoshita’s eyes were pointed down at a paperback with a leather book cover over it, and Yuigahama was idly clacking away on her cell phone. As usual, we were failing at youth.

Most clubs probably waste time like this. Our school’s rugby team’s clubroom had apparently been transformed into a mah-jongg parlor, and they usually played a half round before and a half round after practice. And then the next morning, you’d catch sight of the rugby club members arguing over rugby money. (This was the currency circulated solely among the rugby club. It was absolutely not cash. Its characteristic trait was that it looked very much like Japanese yen.) From what I could tell, they were just playing mah-jongg in the clubroom, but from their perspective it was a legitimate form of communication and an important part of their youth experience.

How many of them actually knew how to play mah-jongg in the first place, though? I was sure that few among them had endlessly played Shanghai and strip mah-jongg at the ACE by Tsudanuma like I had. They must have studied the game and learned the rules to fit in with the rest of the club. By the way, Shanghai is a game that uses mah-jongg tiles, but the rules are completely different from those of mah-jongg. In other words, strip mah-jongg is the only way to learn the rules. I can get serious about these things if it’s for boobs.

Having a common language like that is essential for making friends. Yui Yuigahama used to be the archetype of this model. I considered this as I got to the “morning after” scene in my shoujo manga and closed the book, turning my attention to Yuigahama. I saw she had her cell phone in one hand and an ambiguous smile on her face. She was sighing so faintly no one could hear her, and yet I could see it was very deep. Though I couldn’t hear the air coming out of her mouth, her chest rose and fell visibly.

“What’s wrong?” The question came not from me but Yukinoshita. Though her gaze had not moved from her paperback, she had apparently noticed that Yuigahama was acting strangely. Or perhaps she’d heard the sigh. I’d expected no less from Devilman, whose devil ears could hear all the way to hell.


“Oh, uh…it’s nothing. I just got a kinda weird text, so I was just like, whoa!”

“Hikigaya, if you don’t want this to turn into a lawsuit, then stop sending her those obscene texts.” She just assumed the content was some form of sexual harassment, plus she was treating me like the criminal.

“It wasn’t me. Where’s the proof that I did it? Give me proof. Proof!” I demanded.

Yukinoshita, looking triumphant, swept her hair off her shoulders. “Your statement is proof enough. Only the perpetrator would say something like that. ‘Where’s the proof it was me?’ Or ‘Amazing deduction. You should be a novelist.’ Or ‘I couldn’t stay in the same room as a murderer.’”

“That last line is more like something a victim would say.” That was an obvious signal that someone was going to die.

“Is that so?” Yukinoshita replied, tilting her head as she flipped through her paperback. Apparently, she was reading a mystery novel.

“I don’t think Hikki’s the culprit, though,” Yuigahama offered belatedly.

Yukinoshita’s hand ceased flipping through her paperback. Her eyes asked, And where’s your proof? Come on, did she want me to be the perpetrator that badly?

“Hmm, I dunno, but, like…the e-mail is about our class. So…I don’t think it’s anything Hikki would be involved in.”

“I’m in your class, though.”

“I see. Then Hikigaya isn’t the culprit.”

“You’re accepting that as proof?!” Hello, I’m Hachiman Hikigaya, Class 2-F. Yukinoshita hurt me so badly that I introduced myself in my head. But at least this way, she wouldn’t be treating me like a criminal, so I figured I’d leave it at that.

“Well, this sort of thing happens sometimes. I’m not gonna let it bother me,” Yuigahama said, snapping her phone shut. The way she did it made it seem like she was putting a lid over her heart. It had that sort of weight to it. She’d said, This sort of thing happens sometimes, but just so you know, I’d never gotten any messages like that. Isn’t it great, having no friends? Seriously, though, people who have lots of friends always have to deal with that sort of sordid business. It seems really rough. When it came to our class, I wasn’t bound by any of those hardships smeared in the disgraces of earthly life. From a Buddhist perspective, I’m a legit Siddhartha. I’m high up there.

Yuigahama didn’t touch her phone after that. I could only guess as to the content of the message, but it probably wasn’t anything pleasant. Plus, Yuigahama was an airhead, a guileless dork, and the kind of bleeding heart who’d waste concern on me and Yukinoshita, so she was probably tormenting herself over weird stuff, anyway.

Yuigahama leaned back in her chair and stretched up high as if she were trying to forcibly shake it off. “I’m bored.” Her time-wasting item of choice, her cell phone, now stowed away, Yuigahama leisurely leaned way back in her chair. That really emphasized her chest, making me embarrassed to look at her, so I was forced to turn my attention to Yukinoshita’s chest instead, as hers had nothing to be embarrassed over. Yukinoshita, with her safe-and-sound, flat-as-a-board chest, closed her book and admonished Yuigahama. “If you have nothing to do, then why don’t you study? There’s not much time until midterm exams.”

Despite her warning, Yukinoshita didn’t appear anxious about the deadline herself. She’d said it like it had absolutely nothing to do with her. But that was only natural; to Yukinoshita, midterms were mere routine. She was generally the kind of girl who would rank top in her year in any test worthy of the name. She wouldn’t be rattled by a mere midterm at this point.

Yuigahama apparently knew that, as she averted her eyes petulantly and somewhat awkwardly, muttering through her barely open mouth: “What’s the point of studying or whatever? We’ll never use it after graduation, anyway.”

“There it is—the dunce’s cliché.” Her reply had been so very, very predictable that it went the other way and ended up actually being surprising. Is she seriously for real? Are there still high school students these days who say stuff like that?

Even more petulant now having been called a dunce, Yuigahama leaped to a counterargument. “There really is no point, though! We won’t be in high school for very long, so it’s a waste to spend our time on that stuff! YOLO, right?!”

“Yeah, you only get one chance, and that’s exactly why you’re not allowed to fail.”

“You’re so negative!”

“I prefer to say I hedge my risks.”

“You’re failing in every aspect of your life in high school, though,” Yukinoshita remarked.

That was true. I’d completely failed to hedge anything. Wait, seriously? Had this game of life come to an end, my king piece backed into a corner? In English, that’s called check out, right? What was this, a hotel? “But, like, I’m not failing… My life is just a little different. I’m quirky! We’re all different, and we’re all good!”

“Y-yeah! Quirky! Being bad at studying is a quirk, too!” said Yuigahama.

There it was—the two of us had gotten together to bring up cliché of the dunces number two. Yeah, the word quirky really was convenient…

“Misuzu Kaneko would probably be angry to hear that.” Yukinoshita put her hand to her forehead and sighed. “Yuigahama, you just said that there’s no point in studying, but that’s not true. Studying is about finding that meaning yourself. I’m sure everyone has his or her own reasons for studying, but nevertheless, you cannot deny the validity of all study.”

Indubitably correct reasoning. Or perhaps I should say, the insincere rationale of an adult. That’s why that reasoning only starts making sense to you once you’re grown up. It’s the kind of explanation that arises only when an adult is looking back on the past, wondering why on earth they had to study back then. And that’s why people still in the process of becoming adults refuse to accept it. Yukinoshita was probably the only teenager who’d arrived at that conclusion on her own, sincerely believing what she’d just said with no affectation whatsoever.

“You’re fine ’cause you’re smart, Yukinon, but…I’m no good at studying, and no one else in class is doing it, either…” Yuigahama trailed off quietly.

Yukinoshita’s eyes narrowed abruptly. There was a silence as if the temperature had suddenly plummeted, and Yuigahama, only just realizing what she’d said, snapped her mouth shut. Apparently, she remembered Yukinoshita being sharp with her about that sort of thing before.

She backpedaled with all her might. “B-but I am gonna study! Which reminds me! Are you studying, Hikki?!” Oh-ho! She deflected it before Yukinoshita got mad at her. It seemed she was plotting to escape Yukinoshita’s ire by directing it my way instead. But too bad for her.

“I’m studying.”

“This is betrayal! I thought you were my fellow dunce-in-arms!!”

“That’s rude… I’m ranked third in our year in Japanese, you know. And I’m not bad in other humanities, either.”

“No way… I had no idea…”

By the way, at our school, they didn’t post test results for all to see. They just quietly handed back test results and rankings to each individual student. So student rankings circulated through hearsay, but having no one with whom to share my grades, nobody knew my ranking. Nobody even asked me about my ranking or whatever in the first place. Nobody asked me about anything else, either, of course.

“A-are you actually smart, Hikki?”

“Not very,” said Yukinoshita.

“Why’d you answer that?” I complained. Well, maybe compared to Yukinoshita, my scores were a little lacking, but if you had to call them either good or bad, they were on the good side. That was why within this cluster, Yuigahama was far and away the dumbest.

“Ugh. I can’t believe I’ve gotta play the dumb one of the group.”

“Don’t say that, Yuigahama.” Though Yukinoshita’s tone was cool, there was warmth in her expression and the clear color of conviction in her eyes.

Yuigahama immediately brightened. “Y-Yukinon!”

“You’re not playing dumb. You’re genuinely that stupid.”

“Wahhh!” Yuigahama flailed her fists against Yukinoshita’s chest.

Yukinoshita sighed as she sat there and took it with an expression that said she found all of this utterly irksome. “What I’m saying is that it’s stupid to measure the value of an individual through things like exam scores or rankings. Some people with good grades are actually remarkably inferior human beings.”

“Hey, why are you looking at me now?” They weren’t just glancing at me. They were glaring hard. “For your information, I do it because I like studying, okay?”

“Oh?” Yuigahama was surprised.

“You’ve nothing to do except study, huh?” Yukinoshita added the self-evident commentary, as usual.

My face twitched involuntarily. “Well, yeah, just like you.”

“I won’t deny that.”

“You should deny it! You’re making me sad!” Though Yukinoshita was composed, Yuigahama’s voice was full of heartrending empathy. Apparently, she’d given Yukinoshita’s emotional wounds a lot of deep thought, because she flung her arms around her friend.

Yuigahama squeezed Yukinoshita tight, oblivious to her “This is stifling” remark and her put-upon expression.

Hey! Me too, me too! I don’t have anything to do but study, either! Why don’t I get any outflung arms or squeezes? Well, I’d feel uncomfortable if I did get any, though.

But that’s the thing. I wonder why normies get so touchy-feely. It’s like physical intimacy is natural for them, or like…Are you American or what? Whacking someone upside the head when you’re fooling around or hugging them when something happens… I think that kind of behavior is really cool. People like that are so emotionally open, if they were to pilot an Eva, they wouldn’t even be able to activate an AT field.

 

 

 

 

Yuigahama held Yukinoshita’s head and stroked it, casually remarking, “But, like, it’s kind of surprising that you study so hard.”

“Well, everyone else is studying right now, too, if they want to go on to university, right? And once summer vacation starts, some people will even take summer classes.”

Chiba City Municipal Soubu High School was geared toward students who wanted to go to university, so the percentage of students who proceeded to post-secondary education was fairly high.

Those on the ball should already have been considering university entrance exams by the summer of their second year. This was around the time when they’d start working out whether to attend Sazemi in Tsudanuma, Kawai University Prep School, or Toushin on the Inage coast.

“Plus, you know. I’d like to be a sukoraashippu student in prep school, as they say in English.”

“What? You want to be sukurappu? Like scrap material?” Yuigahama was baffled.

“If that’s what you’re aiming for, you don’t have to work at it—you’re doing fine right now,” said Yukinoshita. “You’re something like living industrial waste, aren’t you?”

“Whoa, Yukinoshita. You’re being so nice today. I would have expected you to deny that I’m even alive.”

“It’s refreshing to see you being so self-deprecating.” Yukinoshita pressed her temple, her expression pained.

“Hey, hey, what’s a sukurappu?” So Yuigahama didn’t even know what scrap meant, and that was why she’d failed to follow the conversation. What, for real, Yuigahama-san?

“A sukoraashippu is like shougakukin—a scholarship,” explained Yukinoshita.

“Prep schools these days waive tuition for students with good grades. In other words, I’d get a scholarship plus the tuition money from my parents, so I could just pocket all of the latter.” I’d jumped for joy when I came up with that idea. I’d even started break-dancing in my room and weirded out my sister. I’m more motivated in my studies when I have a clear goal in mind, and my parents would rest easy if they got results appropriate to the sum they’d invested. Meanwhile, I’d have some money for myself. It was a brilliant plan.

Both girls seemed dubious about my plan.

“That’s fraud…,” said Yuigahama.

“At the end of the day, the studying still gets done, so you can’t say that his parents are wasting their money. For the prep school, it’s just another scholarship enrollment, so there’s no problem for them, either. The fact that it can’t definitively be categorized as fraud is what makes this boy so vicious.”

I’m being totally slandered here. Wh-what’s the problem? I’m just telling a victimless fib.

“University, huh…?” Yuigahama mumbled as she glanced in my direction, then grabbed Yukinoshita’s sleeve as tightly as she could.

That strength of her grip must have surprised Yukinoshita, who peered at Yuigahama’s face with mild concern. “What is it?”

“Oh, no. It’s nothing… Or maybe it isn’t… I was just sort of thinking, since the two of you are smart, once we graduate, we probably won’t get to see each other.” Yuigahama laughed as if to cover her unease.

“Indeed… I’ll most certainly never see Hikigaya again.”

Yukinoshita delivered this declaration with a slight smile, but I just shrugged my shoulders in silence. My lack of retort apparently inspiring suspicion in Yukinoshita, she flung her gaze at me askance.

I’ve got nothing. You’re probably right, Yukinoshita.

There are people like that. They’ll pick a high school that no one from their middle school is going to, study like mad, and then manage to pass the entrance exams to get into one of the leading academic high schools in the prefecture. They just throw away the past and decide never to see their classmates again. Some people really are like that, so Yuigahama’s fears were undeniably legitimate.

Friendships can only be maintained when people are affiliated with the same group and in constant communication with one another. People are dependent upon situations like school to gradually fertilize their relationships. So when they’re torn out of these scenarios, people always end up alone. Then your only means of contact become phone calls or e-mail—or you just lose touch altogether. And people call that friendship? I’m sure they do. That’s why everyone leaves it all to their cell phones and takes the number of registered names in their contact lists to be equivalent to their number of friends.

Yuigahama squeezed her cell phone as she smiled at Yukinoshita. “But we have our phones, so that won’t happen, right? We can contact each other anytime.”

“I’d still like you to stop e-mailing me every day.”

“Huh?! Y-you don’t like it…?”

“It is occasionally extremely bothersome.”

“Aw, you’re always so honest!”

These two are sure close. But since when are they e-mailing each other? I just can’t imagine Yukinoshita doing that. “You’re e-mailing her every day? What do you even say to each other?”

“Um… Like, ‘I had cream puffs today!  ’”

“Like, ‘Oh.’”

“Like, ‘Can you make cream puffs, Yukinon?! I want to try some other sweets later!’”

“Like, ‘Understood.’”

“Yukinoshita, your replies are offensively short.”

“Adding any additional information would be unnecessary,” Yukinoshita said in a dissatisfied tone, jerking her attention away. What was sad was that I got how she felt. No, really. How do you reply to that kind of small talk? They say the bedrock of conversation is talking about the weather, but then you just go, It’s sunny, huh? and respond, Yes, it is, and then it ends. That’s way worse than a mere un ange passe, tee-hee, when there’s an awkward silence over the phone.

“Cell phones, huh…? They aren’t that reliable. They’re quite the imperfect method of communication, in my opinion,” I said. I believe a cell phone is merely a device that allows you to lonerize yourself even faster. Even if someone does call you, you can just let it ring or refuse the call, and you can just ignore texts. You can decide to accept or reject relationships with no repercussions and are able to turn on or off interactions as you please.

“Indeed. It’s all up to the receiver whether or not to return e-mails or answer calls.” Yukinoshita nodded at my casual observation. This was Yukinoshita, whose looks were the only nice thing about her. I bet lots of people had asked for her e-mail or phone number.

Even I had screwed up my courage once and asked a cute girl for her number. It was back when I was an innocent boy in middle school. She told me, “Sorry, my battery’s dead. I’ll send you an e-mail later.” As I hadn’t given her my e-mail address, it was a mystery how she could message me. I’m still waiting for it even now…

“Not to mention that I just ignore unwanted messages, anyway,” Yukinoshita added with a sigh.

“Hmm?” Yuigahama put her index finger to her chin, tilting her head. “So…that means my messages aren’t unwanted?”

“I didn’t say they’re unwanted. They’re just onerous.” Yukinoshita flushed red and quietly turned away from Yuigahama, who was peering at her face intently. It was a rather cute reaction, but as I wasn’t a part of any of that, I didn’t give a damn.

When Yuigahama saw her blush, she screeched and glomped Yukinoshita. Captive to Yuigahama’s tender mercies, Yukinoshita looked away, her expression a picture of sullen displeasure. But I wasn’t a part of any of that, so I didn’t give a damn.

“I get it—cell phones aren’t perfect, are they?” Yuigahama clutched Yukinoshita tightly, as if fully realizing just how fragile that connection was. “Maybe…I’ll study for real… It’d be great if we could go to the same university,” she whispered quietly, dropping her gaze to the floor. “Have you decided on a school, Yukinon?”

“No, not a specific school yet. I’m aiming for a national public science university, though.”

“Sounds like something a smart person would say! So…so wh-what about you, Hikki? J-just since we’re talking about this.”

“I’m going for private arts.”

“That sounds like a place I might be able to get into!” The smile returned to Yuigahama’s face. Hey, what’s with that reaction?

“Just so you know, private arts doesn’t mean stupid. Apologize to all the private arts students in the country. And you’re way stupider than me, anyway.”

“Ugh… I-I’m gonna try my best, okay?!” Releasing Yukinoshita, Yuigahama announced her resolution loudly. “So, anyway. That means we’re gonna start studying together this week.”

“How does it mean that?” Yukinoshita expressed her doubt.

“The week leading up to the test, there’s no club time, and we’re not doing anything in the afternoons, right? Oh, this week, Tuesday is a Pro-D, and there’s no club time, so that might be good.” Completely ignoring Yukinoshita, Yuigahama briskly set about planning their schedule.

But man, I hadn’t heard the term Pro-D since middle school. Pro-D referred to Professional Development days, and because all the teachers had to participate, classes got shortened, and club time and stuff got canceled.

Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t understand her plan. It must have been quite reassuring for her, having the two of us around—Yukinoshita, ranked first in our grade and aiming for a public science institution, and me, boasting third in Japanese among our peers. Plus, I had a stupid little sister, so I thought I could teach pretty okay. My sister just didn’t get results because she was stupid.

The only problem was that I had no desire to assist Yuigahama. What didn’t I like about the idea? The part I disliked most was losing my personal time. I’m the kind of guy who even refuses to go to the athletic festival after party. I-it’s not because I don’t get invited! Time is a finite resource, and it pains me to spare any on someone else’s behalf.

“Uh…” How should I refuse? As I pondered the question, the conversation proceeded without me.

“So are you okay with the Saize in Purena?” asked Yuigahama.

“I don’t really care,” Yukinoshita replied.

“Yuigahama, um, like…” If I didn’t say something fast, it’d be a done deal! But the moment I decided on a flat refusal, that avenue was cut off.

“This is the first time the two of us have gone out together, Yukinon!”

“Is that so?”

Oh.

I hadn’t been invited in the first place.

“Did you say something, Hikki?”

“No… You two study hard.”

Studying alone is more efficient, anyway! …I’m not gonna let you guys beat me.



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