I picked up the cards I’d been dealt. I had all four twos this round—another extremely good hand, if it weren’t for the fact that we were aiming to lose. Ideally, we’d want to keep Sera from noticing what we were up to, but the better our hands were, the harder it would be to conceal that we were playing poorly on purpose. I did my best not to give it away as I selected my cards in such a way that it seemed like I was trying to win at first glance, while keeping a mental list in my head of all the cards that Sera had already played and what he might still have in his hand.
Man, why are we wasting our time playing weird mind games with this guy on our big class trip? I couldn’t help but curse my luck as we went around throwing down cards in absolute silence. Eventually, Ushio got out first, followed by Sera, who finished with three of a kind. I’d successfully thrown the match.
“All right, Sakuma,” said Sera. “Let’s hear your secret, big guy.”
“Yeah, I remember the rules, thanks.”
Obviously, I had no intention of revealing any actual secrets to this schmuck. I was planning to just make up some random factoid about myself that seemed plausible…but right now, nothing was coming to mind. I knew there was no need to overthink it, since it didn’t even have to be true, yet I racked my brain to come up with the most run-of-the-mill secret I could imagine.
Hrmmm… Okay, I think I’ve got it.
“I’m really afraid of spiders.”
“Awww…” said Sera. “That’s kinda cute, actually!”
“Oh, shut up…”
It was actually Ayaka, not me, who was deathly afraid of spiders. I apologized to her internally for stealing her little secret, then peeked at the digital clock on the bedside table. It was 9:37 p.m., so we probably only had to make it through another two rounds or so before it would be lights-out. Personally, I would have rather we kicked Sera to the curb right now, but it was still Ushio’s room, and she didn’t seem to have as much of a problem with it. Plus, our little plan was working pretty well thus far, so I sat there and shuffled the cards for round four.
“Hey, can’t we chat a little more while we play?” he said. “It’s no fun just going around in circles, setting cards down without any conversation, don’tcha think?”
“You’re the one who insisted on playing cards,” I said. “Now shut up and play.”
“My sweet Sakuma… You’re so cruel to me nowadays. It wounds me, it truly does…”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” I grumbled as he pretended to wipe his tears away with his seven of spades. After playing it on the field, he let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine, fine… If you two aren’t feeling very sociable today, I guess I’ll do the talking.”
“No, you keep quiet.”
“Let me tell you a little story from back when I was in ninth grade.”
“Ugh…”
I was too fed up at this point to bother wasting my breath any further. It had been a long day of traveling and sightseeing around the city already; I had neither the stamina nor the willpower to keep arguing with him on this.
“So there was this girl I really wanted to get with, right?” Sera began. “Wasn’t my first crush or anything like that, but definitely the first one in a while who I fell totally head over heels for. I did everything I could to get closer to her—tried to really make a move, y’know? Kinda like how assertive I was with you last year, Ushio. I’d keep faking random illnesses over and over just to go see her in the school infirmary…”
Wait… Infirmary?
I raised an eyebrow at this but played my two of clubs all the same.
“Then when fall semester rolled around, we finally started dating,” Sera continued. “Man, I was over the moon, I tell ya. Probably the most I’ve ever had to struggle to win a girl’s heart. Though I guess I probably shouldn’t call it a struggle, now, should I? Not when I savored every second of slowly whittling away at her defenses until she finally lowered her guard, heh… Alas, the fun didn’t last for very long. Once word got out that I was dating the school nurse, it was all downhill from there.”
Sera let out a wistful sigh as he casually dropped this shocking plot twist as though it was but a minor detail. It was a testament to his mastery of misdirection that I hadn’t seen the reveal coming from a mile away, despite him foreshadowing it pretty heavily from the start. And although I was slightly taken aback, I could also totally believe it, just knowing the sort of person Sera was. The guy had zero sense of boundaries. To him, things like age gaps and social hierarchy were merely hurdles to be overcome.
“Didn’t help that the girl who caught us together was someone I’d also gone out with in the past either,” he went on. “Went around telling everyone she knew just out of misplaced resentment or whatever, and pretty soon, the whole school was talking about it. Not that I minded—but it put the nurse in a pretty awkward spot, obviously. Wasn’t long before the school board ‘dealt’ with her, as you might expect, and she never contacted me again, so I don’t know where she ended up after that.”
I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t help but listen with rapt attention to this little story of his. Even if it was just a complete fabrication, it would still be pretty impressive for a random anecdote he came up with on the spot to fill the silence. And right when I thought it had to be over, the story went on.
“It was the hottest gossip of the year for a while after that,” said Sera. “But man, kids can be cruel though, huh? Everyone started calling the poor nurse a criminal, or a slut, and you can probably imagine what else. I felt really bad for her.”
“Yeah, well…you could’ve just not pursued her,” I pointed out. “You’re the one who put her in that position by trying to force a relationship.”
I’d been planning to keep ignoring him to the bitter end, but I couldn’t help butting in to call him out on his hypocrisy.
“Ooh, nice!” Sera said gleefully. “’Bout time one of you acknowledged me—even if I do wish you’d think about how your words can hurt before you speak. Because I’m not just some total nimrod, y’know. I knew exactly what the risks were before I went after her. But the thing about love, see, is that it doesn’t stop for anyone. You can’t make the feelings go away just because society tells you it’s ‘wrong’ for you to want something.”
“Oh, please. You’ve gotta be the last person on earth with any moral authority to be preaching to people about love.”
“Lemme ask you somethin’ real quick, Sakuma, while you’re feeling so chatty. I told you that everyone started talking about the nurse like she was some perverted, inhuman monster, right? But what do you think they said about me? Any guesses?”
I contemplated this for a moment.
What would the other students say if they found out one of their classmates was having a relationship with a faculty member? Surely nothing positive, at the very least. If I had to guess, they’d probably sneered at him with contempt, just like they’d done to her. Or at least, that was what I wanted to believe.
And yet, it seemed I was way off the mark.
“They treated me like I was a king,” said Sera. “I’d just be walking down the hallway, and random kids would come up to me and wanna give me high fives or say ‘Nice going, bro,’ and stuff like that. You remember how being a known delinquent could make you cool back in junior high, for whatever reason? It was pretty much that, but taken to the extreme. All my peers seemed to look up to me like I was some kind of god for having done something so unspeakably bad and gotten away with it.”
“Pretty damn sickening, if you ask me,” I said.
“I know, right? I thought the exact same thing…which is why I figured I’d try to teach ’em a little lesson they’d never forget, if ya catch my drift.”
From his playful tone, you’d think he’d simply played a harmless prank on them or something. But knowing Sera, I was certain it had to be something far more insidious.
“So first, I did everything I could to make them hate my guts,” he said. “Tried to be as obnoxious as possible, until some of ’em got so annoyed, they started bullying me and getting violent. And you’d better believe I made sure all of those altercations either got captured on video, or happened where there were plenty of eyewitnesses, or left me with huge bruises that no one could deny… Kinda like what happened with me and Arisa-chan last year, though none of these guys went on a totally psychotic rampage like she did. Anyway, after that, I waited until high school entrance exam season rolled around, then finally busted out all the damning evidence I’d gathered up to that point and watched the sparks fly. Man, you wouldn’t believe how good that felt.”
Ushio set her last card down on the playing field.
The game had reached its climax without me even noticing.
“And there you have it,” said Sera. “Now you know a little bit more about your good friend Itsuku Sera’s junior high school career. Hope you enjoyed the extra lore.”
“So did all that stuff actually happen, or no?” I asked.
“Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. But I’m flattered to hear I’ve piqued your curiosity. You just can’t help but wanna know more about me, can you, Sakuma?”
“I never said that… Don’t put words in my mouth.”
Sera threw down his last card, ending the round with me in last place once again. So far, all was going according to plan.
“Okay, Sakuma,” said Sera. “Hope you’ve got another secret ready for us.”
“…I hate tomatoes.”
“Wow, imagine that. So do I.”
I glanced over at the clock again. There was only enough time left for one more round, and I was more than ready to be done with this, so I quickly shuffled the cards and dealt out three hands. And with that, the fifth round began—though in truth, there was something that had been bothering me for a while now.
Why does it feel like Ushio’s being so quiet?