With that, Hoshihara marched over to her desk as our fellow classmates snickered in the background. Like Ushio, she was one of the most popular kids in class. Whereas he was more of a natural-born leader type, always pulling the rest of the class along to follow after him, she was more like the beloved comic relief character whom everyone could get a laugh out of and poke fun at from time to time. She was a bit of a ditz, true, but a sweetheart all the same. She had a ton of friends and a knack for putting smiles on other people’s faces. To a complete social outcast like me, though, she may as well have existed in a totally different universe. In fact, as far as I could recall, she and I had never even exchanged so much as a simple greeting.
No sooner did Hoshihara reach her seat than Ms. Iyo realized the bell was about to ring and scrambled to wrap up our morning homeroom period as quickly as she could.