I felt a little restless as I walked to school that morning. Frankly, I hadn’t quite believed that I’d actually be going to Eichou High until the day of the entrance ceremony was upon me. Eichou was, after all, a prep school famous nationwide for the astonishing percentage of its students who went on to attend highly rated colleges, and its entrance exams were exactly as competitive as you’d imagine.
I, meanwhile, wasn’t a brainiac by any stretch of the imagination. I’d never even considered attempting to test into an academically rigorous school like that! How had I ended up taking the test anyway? Well, basically, when I filled out the application that indicated which schools I’d be trying to get into, you could say I got a few wires crossed, and, well...to make a long story short, I signed up for Eichou High’s entrance exam by accident.
By the time I realized the mistake I’d made, it was already too late. Withdrawing my application would’ve been effectively no different than failing the exam, so in a fit of desperation I figured that I might as well go for broke and take the test...and somehow, I actually passed.
Boy, was that ever a shock! The biggest shock of my life, before or since! My family was just as astonished as I was, of course. My mom thought that I must have contracted some strange disease and took me to the doctor, and for some reason my dad swore off alcohol. The older of my two little sisters got a little mad at me for reasons I couldn’t even begin to fathom, and the younger was convinced that I’d fallen for some sort of scam.
Yeah...honestly, their reactions kinda hurt, but they really drove the point in: the idea of me going to a school like Eichou—heck, the idea of me being even remotely associated with a school like Eichou—was just that unfathomable. And yet somehow, even after the acceptance letter and admissions paperwork arrived in the mail, even after my homeroom teacher called up Eichou’s admissions office, learned that I really had passed, threw out their back, and got hauled off to the hospital in an ambulance, I still didn’t wake up from what I could only assume was a really, really long and elaborate dream. Which was only natural, considering it turned out to not be a dream at all.
Did I have my apprehensions? You’d better believe it! A moron like me going to a school like that seemed like a recipe for disaster! In the end, though, my excitement overwhelmed my concern. I mean, come on, I was finally gonna be a high schooler! Just the thought of it was enough to make me feel just a little more adultlike than I ever had before. Plus, both of the two styles of uniform that Eichou allowed its students to wear were super cute! And who knew what sort of people I’d meet there? Maybe I’d even run into the partner of my dreams!
In short: my mindset was as positive as it could’ve possibly been as I walked along the road to school. Positive enough to make me do something I’d normally have never even considered.
“Umm, excuse me! You dropped your handkerchief!”
A scrap of fabric had fallen from the pocket of someone walking in front of me, and I scooped it up and called out to them without a second thought. I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, maybe picking up somebody’s hanky isn’t exactly the most surefire indicator of a positive mindset. For the record, though, I normally would’ve at least stopped to take a look and see what sort of person had dropped it before calling out to them. In this particular case, if I had, there was no way I would’ve had the guts to say so much as a word.
“Huh...?”
“Hm?”
There were two people walking in front of me, not just one, and as they turned to look at me, I took my first proper look at them and straight up forgot to breathe for a moment.
Standing before me were two incredibly beautiful girls. They were, unquestionably, the most attractive people I’d ever laid eyes upon...and there were two of them! At the same time! Holy crap, prep schools are crazy! I marveled internally. They seriously felt like they belonged to a completely different reality than I did.
One of them had the sort of radiant aura you normally only saw from a trained actress, bathed in the spotlights as she sang and danced resplendently across the stage. Her long, brightly colored hair just had to feel silky smooth to the touch, and she was surprisingly petite for a first-year high schooler in a way that gave me the almost irresistible urge to protect her. Protect her from what? I dunno—people like me, probably.
The other was a slender, strikingly handsome girl who looked like she could’ve been the starring model at a fashion expo. If it weren’t for her double take-inducingly ample chest and the skirt that revealed her long, slender legs, I might’ve mistaken her for a boy at a glance. She gave me the irresistible desire to be protected by her...though again, the question of “from what?” loomed in the background. A bear, or something? I guess?
Anyway, the point is that the two of them were so cute, so pretty, so everything all at once that if there were, like, the equivalent of an MMA league for womanly charms, they’d be vying with each other for the title of world champion...and they were right in front of me. And I, in the face of all that, went completely off the deep end. The two of them were just so hopelessly out of my league, my state of mind shot straight past nervousness and awkwardness and landed right in the realm of unhinged, irrational bravery. In short: in that moment, I was invincible! I’ll be fine no matter what sort of outrageous hottie shows up out of nowhere right in front of me! Heck, I could stare down a starving lion and I’d still be perfectly calm and—
“Umm...is something wrong?” one of them asked.
“Ah, uh, I, er, umm...” Nope. Never mind. Scratch all that. I started stammering like a lunatic and my face lit up like a furnace.
But I didn’t run away! That’s something, right?! Considering how I usually acted in that sort of situation, it would’ve been totally unsurprising if I’d made a break for it, handkerchief and all! Then I probably would’ve spent days—maybe months—agonizing over how to give it back! Compared to that, I was doing just fine! “It’s okay! I can do this... I can do this...”
“You, umm... You know you’re talking out loud, right?” The ridiculously handsome girl peered at me with concern in her eyes.
“Ah, I, umm!” To heck with it! If I’m gonna run away, I at least need to do it after I give the handkerchief back! I took a moment to psych myself up, then thrust the handkerchief out at her! “You dropped this! It’s yours, right?!” I shouted. I also made direct eye contact with her, causing my heart to very nearly stop dead. It’s okay! It’s still beating! We’re still alive here!
“Huh...?” The handsome girl blinked with surprise.
For a second her reaction confused me, but a moment later I realized that it made total sense. After all, the handkerchief I’d picked up was bright pink, with lacy frills decorating its edges. It was super girly across the board, and if I were judging based solely on the girls’ appearances, it would’ve made much more sense to assume it belonged to the cute, pop idol-esque girl beside her. I hadn’t actually seen the moment it had fallen out of its owner’s pocket, to be clear, and I didn’t really know for sure who it belonged to. Somehow, though... “It’s yours, isn’t it?” I asked the handsome girl, holding it out to her. “Sorry if I’m wrong! I just sorta got the feeling that it belongs to you, for some reason.”
Did I have proof? Absolutely not. If I had to rationalize my guess, I’d say it was because when she noticed the handkerchief in my hand, she looked sort of sad for just a fraction of a second. Maybe she’d had too many people make the assumption that I’d almost made just a moment before. Maybe people always thought that something that cute would suit her girlier counterpart more than it did her.