With the first period of the day over, we had just a few minutes to get to the science room before second-period chemistry was set to begin. All around me, my fellow classmates were gathering up their textbooks and writing implements and rising from their desks one by one. Right as I started getting ready to leave myself, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation being had by a group of five or six chatty students standing in the middle of the classroom.
“Oh, goddamn it. I left my textbook at home again,” said the girl at the center of the group. Sure enough, it was Nishizono—and she was, as usual, more than happy to make her displeasure known.
As she clicked her tongue with chagrin, Hoshihara offered a solution with a nervous smile. “W-well, we’re in the same group, so you can just read off of mine!”
“You sure? Awww, thanks, Natsuki! You’re a lifesaver!”
Hoshihara bashfully scratched her cheek, walked over to her desk, bent down, and took a peek inside. She reached in and pulled out her textbooks one by one, but none of them were the chemistry book I assumed she was searching for. Eventually, she lifted her head and coughed out an awkward chuckle.
“Er, sorry… Looks like I forgot mine too… Eh heh heh.”
“You moron,” said Nishizono, rolling her eyes. For once, I couldn’t help but crack a smile at her derision; the comedic timing was just too good.
“Wow, looks like we’ve got two space cadets with us today,” quipped one of the boys in the group, willfully adding fuel to the fire. “Man, that is too good.”
“Um, excuse you?” Nishizono fired back with a piercing glare. “I don’t see what’s so funny here.”
“Y-yeah, you’re right. M-my bad,” the boy said, instantly recoiling at her sharp tone. I couldn’t blame him for backpedaling. Her needlessly harsh personality was one of the main reasons I always tried to steer clear of her. She wasn’t even big or tall like your average bully—in fact, she was slightly shorter than even Hoshihara—but from an intimidation standpoint, she was easily the scariest kid in class. As I looked around to see how all the rest of my classmates were shrinking in their desks so as not to draw her ire, Ushio—who’d been watching quietly in the background—stepped up to the plate.
“Okay, how about this: you two can just read off of mine for today,” he said. “We’ll have to move our seats a little bit, but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
The two girls beamed at this suggestion.
“That’s our Ushio! Knew I could count on you!” said Nishizono.
“Wow, thanks, Ushio-kun!” said Hoshihara.
“Yeah, yeah. Just try not to forget them again, okay?” Ushio teased, and the two girls chorused an “Okaaay” (though their tone was less than convincing). Watching this little exchange take place, I felt a strange discomfort brewing in my heart, and I rose from my seat in an attempt to shake it off. I grabbed my pencil case and shoved it and my chemistry textbook under one arm, then promptly made my way out of the classroom.
If only I could be like them, I thought to myself as a wistful wave of envy rippled through my chest. When I looked at Ushio, always surrounded by friends and being fawned over by girls, and then back at me, heading by myself up to the science room like a loner, I couldn’t help but wonder when this disparity between him and me began, despite us being such good friends as kids. Maybe it was some innate inability or a failing on my part to keep up. I knew it was pointless to overanalyze things like that in retrospect, so I tried to shrug off this negative train of thought.
At that moment, a student burst out of the door to the classroom I was walking past and crashed right into my shoulder. Before I could even say, “Whoa,” my aluminum pencil case slipped out from under my arm and spilled all its contents across the hallway floor with a loud, metallic clang.
“Whoops, my bad!” said the hit-and-run artist before dashing off down the hall, leaving me to kneel down and pick up all my scattered pens, rulers, and whatnot myself.
“Don’t apologize if you’re not gonna help…” I grumbled under my breath. I might have even said it to his face, but he was long gone by now. This was about as embarrassing as it got: me on my hands and knees gathering up stationery like loose change while everyone else in the corridor rubbernecked on the way to their next class. Each and every laugh I heard echoing down the hall felt directed at me, and my face grew hot with rage.
Goddamn it. This sucks. I reached out to grab an eraser that had rolled a few feet in front of me, only for someone else to snatch it up before I could get to it. I lifted my head to see who’d beat me to it: Ushio, standing over me with his own pencil case and chemistry textbook tucked under his right arm.
“Here, I’ll help,” he said.
“Th-thanks, I owe you one,” I replied.
Ushio leaned down in front of me and started picking up some of my runaway pens. I glanced up at him and saw a sort of nonchalance to his expression—like this was just business as usual to him, not embarrassing in the slightest. He probably would have been just as cool and collected even if he had been the one to spill his pencil case all over the floor. He was just a good guy like that—to the point that I honestly felt bad making him waste his time on me.
“Shouldn’t you catch up with Nishizono and Hoshihara?” I asked, unable to bear the awkward silence.
“Hm? What do you mean?” he replied.
“I mean, you just offered to sit and share your textbook with them, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. No, Arisa’s on day duty today, so she has to wait until everyone else leaves to lock up the classroom. Natsuki’s hanging back with her too.”
“Ah… Gotcha…”
“Here you go.”
Ushio handed me the eraser and pens he’d helped gather up, and I gratefully placed them back in my pencil case. Everything seemed to be accounted for.
“Thanks for the help. I appreciate it,” I said, then promptly turned on my heel to leave. But I didn’t get far before Ushio called after me.
“Hey, w-wait up!” he said. “We’re going to the same place, you know… You don’t have to walk there all by yourself.”
That was a fair observation to make. Even if I did feel a little awkward walking shoulder to shoulder down the hall with Ushio, I’d feel bad turning down this invitation after he went out of his way to help me through an embarrassing situation.
“Good point,” I said. “Okay, let’s go.”
Ushio nodded emphatically, and the two of us headed up to the science room. I couldn’t help but feel a little on edge the whole way, but I thankfully managed to navigate the inevitable small talk pretty smoothly (mostly because Ushio did all the talking, so it didn’t require more than the simplest possible responses on my part).
“But yeah, I think Misao’s started to enter her rebellious teen phase a little bit,” he said as we were climbing the stairs. “Feels like she’s been a lot more temperamental lately.”
Misao was Ushio’s younger sister. She would be in her last year of junior high now, if I remembered right. In my memories, she’d always been a polite little girl—very dainty, very light complexion. She played with Ushio and me pretty often when we were younger, but I hadn’t seen her in quite some time. I’d been wondering how she was doing lately, and I hoped she’d been well.
“Always yelling at me to hurry up and take a bath so she can—Sakuma? Are you listening?”
Whoops. Guess I kinda got lost in my thoughts for a second there.
“Er, yeah, sorry. You were talking about Misao-chan. Yeah, I can’t really picture her as a rebellious teenager at all, if I’m being honest.”
“Huh, really? Well, I guess she is pretty well behaved around other people. But yeah, no—when we’re at home, she definitely won’t hesitate to get in your face and tell you what’s what.”
“Wow. I never would’ve guessed.”
“Wanna come over and say hi one of these days? You’re always welcome.”
“Huh?!” I did a double take at Ushio as we continued walking, but he didn’t seem to be joking around. “Oh, no, no, no—that’s okay. I mean, she’s probably busy studying for her high school entrance exams, right? Don’t wanna be a bother.”
“Pretty sure she wouldn’t mind at all.”
“Y-you don’t think…?”
I was really struggling to gauge how to take this particular invitation. I wasn’t used to being invited over to other people’s houses these days, but maybe for someone with as many friends as Ushio, those casual invitations were second nature.
“Well, I’m pretty sure this is her first-choice school anyway, so you’ll probably end up seeing her around campus next year whether you like it or not,” he added.
“Huh, yeah… Hope she gets in.”
“Same,” Ushio said, nodding.
We were almost to the science room; it wasn’t even a three-minute walk from our classroom, yet today it felt quite a bit longer than usual. Just when we were a stone’s throw from the door, a couple of boys from our class—both members of what I would consider the “cool kids” clique—emerged into the hallway, and one of them looked in our direction.
“Oh, hey,” he called. “There you are, Ushio. C’mon, we’re headed down to the vending machine.”
As the two boys approached, Ushio stopped in his tracks to wait for them. I walked a few more steps, then turned back to look over my shoulder.
“All right. Guess I’ll catch you later, then,” I said, and Ushio furrowed his brow.
“Wait, why don’t you come too?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I’d feel pretty out of place hanging with those guys, no offense.”
“But—”
“Really, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
I waved Ushio goodbye before he could get in another word, then walked off toward the science room at a brisk pace. Halfway down the hall, I passed by the two boys who’d called out to Ushio, but neither of them turned to look at me. It was as if only Ushio registered in their perception—like I wasn’t even there. While this definitely didn’t help my inferiority complex, it didn’t ultimately bother me too much. Besides, this was for the best; Ushio probably didn’t want to be seen hanging out with a loser like me, so if anything, I was doing him a favor.