Prologue
YUP. I couldn’t do this any longer. No. Freaking. Way.
It was lunchtime. Feeling like a drowning person finally breaking the surface to gasp for air, I shouted, “Hey, guys!”
All conversation stopped, and four pairs of eyes turned to me.
Two of the girls in my friend group chorused, “What’s up?” and, “What’s the matter?”
“Are you okay, Rena-chan?” asked another.
Eeep! I raised my hand so that I did not in any way, shape, or form have to make eye contact with the star of our entire school who was sitting in our midst, Oduka Mai.
“Sorry!” I babbled as fast as I could. “I, uh, oh—I just remembered that there’s something kind of urgent I need to take care of. You guys go on and eat without me. Sorry, sorry! I’ll catch up with you all later!”
Then I booked it out of the classroom. Oh my god, they must have thought I was such a weirdo, but I seriously couldn’t take another minute.
I speed-walked down the hallway, and the minute I got to the landing and saw that no one was around, I scrambled up the stairs as fast as I could. I didn’t even care that my skirt was flying up, causing a draft around my legs. I was headed for the roof, where there’d be no one around but me.
I shoved the key into the lock and banged the metal door open. Finally, my field of vision opened up around me. I took a huge, deep breath and basked in the feel of the bright blue sky. What a relief. I could feel all my cells rejoicing in the taste of that sweet, sweet oxygen.
I closed the door behind me and tottered on heavy legs to the edge of the roof. The fence was so short it barely came up to my chest, but I curled my fingers around it and leaned out over the top. The hustle and bustle of the school below me sounded so far away that it was almost like I was in a different world. Phew! Hello again, my will to live.
I dangled there against the fence and let my knees hit the concrete. “I knew it,” I muttered to myself. “There’s no freaking way I’ll ever not be a loner.”
That cold, hard fact had really been hitting me these past two months—no matter how hard I tried, I was nothing but a big, antisocial loser.
My name’s Amaori Renako, and I did an amazing job of turning over a new leaf when I started high school this year. Back in junior high, I was your total average Joe. Or at least I was, until I messed up the whole having a social life thing. Then I stopped fitting in anywhere and became about as much of a loner as physically possible. Sure, I really missed having friends, but I tried to act like it was nothing big, like I was only alone because I liked it better that way, and I lived with that secret for the rest of my time in junior high.
But then, one day, I started thinking back on how fun elementary school was, and I got the idea to look up all my old classmates on social media and see what they were up to these days. Surprisingly, I actually found a couple of them. Seeing what they were doing with their lives brought back good memories, and I idly wondered if I should reach out and talk to them again. But no, there was no way I could do that. I was no longer the kind of person who could reach out and talk to people.
That night, as I lay in bed swaddled up in my blankets, I kept scrolling through my phone. They all had these amazing things going on in their lives: making expeditions to Harajuku to eat pancakes, shopping in Shibuya, getting crushes on so-and-so, attending tough club practices that would surely pay off since whoever was posting wanted to make the championships this year, and so on. My old friends’ lives were so ridiculously amazing that it just about broke my eyes to look at them. It was like they were all completely different people now.
But I didn’t have the time to moon over what massively different worlds we lived in. I took a good look at myself, me with my pajamas and my bedhead. Was the issue…that I just sucked?
Yikes! Major danger warning! If I kept this up, I’d be like this all throughout high school. Would I spend my entire life as an outcast from all the societal trends, a no-effort adult, just another cog in the machine, letting force of habit drain my stamina bar?
Nuh-uh. That was not happening on my watch! I lurched upright, filled with nausea and wanting to sob at this extremely realistic vision of my future. Muttering “oh my god, oh my god,” all the while, I scrambled to look up “how to be a normal, extroverted person” and peered intently at the screen.
From now on, Amaori Renako was going to be a new girl! I was going to hang out with all the cute, popular girls, get super into gossiping about people’s love lives, and scope out the sales at the department store makeup counters on the way home from school. I was even going to date someone awesome to make my time in high school the best it could be!
And just like that, I threw myself into this new aspiration. I started putting effort into my appearance, changed the way I talked, fixed my posture, and slapped a smile on my face. I molded and prodded myself like a misshapen piece of clay until I came out looking like a model teenager. I took an exam for a coed school outside my hometown where no one would know me, so that I could get a fresh start in life. When I was accepted, I bawled my eyes out in relief.
On the first day of school, even my little sister, the supreme social butterfly, gave me the thumbs-up of approval and said, “You’re rocking this, oneechan!”
“Why, how nice,” my mother added. “Yes, you look wonderful.”
I was filled with relief. Sorry for worrying you with that junior high phase where I acted like a teenage dropout, Mom. Now watch out, world, because Renako’s about to fit in with the rest of the class and become the perfect cookie-cutter model of a teenage girl!
I was ready to tackle the first day of school head-on. I set off, full of enthusiasm—time to be outgoing!—and then I met her. It was a date with destiny.
By high school student standards, Oduka Mai-san was a superstar. Her mom was a famous designer, and, heck, she herself worked as a professional model. And not only was I in the same class with her, but I got to sit right next to her!
Oduka-san was only three-quarters Japanese, so she was blonde, blue-eyed, and drop-dead gorgeous. Naturally, this meant she stood out like crazy. Literally everyone was distracted by how stunning she was, and the whole class started buzzing with the rumor that she was actually some kind of princess from a far-away kingdom attending our school in disguise. I mean, I’d even seen her in magazines before! This girl was a literal celebrity!
At the time, I was still totally caught up in the hype of turning over a new leaf in high school, and so I decided to secure the best possible position from which to enjoy these next three years: right next to Oduka-san!
I came up to her and giggled. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “My name’s Amaori Renako. Um, do you think we could be friends?”
Instead of beheading this shameless commoner who dared to approach her, she turned to me with a smile as radiant as the sun. “Why, but of course,” she said. “Thank you for coming up to talk to me. It’s nice to meet you, Renako.”
Oh. My. God. She nearly knocked me out with one single smile.
This girl was one of the prettiest in the whole country, and there she was calling me by my first name, a name no one but my family had called me since elementary school. I had no choice but to become a total fangirl.
So, yeah, with our very first conversation, I managed to become a part of Oduka Mai’s circle of friends. I felt like it was a total fluke. This group consisted of five girls, and it went without saying that we occupied the top rung of the school’s social ladder. Oduka-san talked to us like we were all equals, which was super surreal. It was like a whole other world where only super-duper popular and extroverted people lived.
I was really happy, then, because all of my new friends seemed like such nice, cute people. Little did I know of the tragedy looming over the horizon. Oh, Renako! How foolish and naive you were!
Everything was going great. No matter where I went, I heard people singing Oduka-san’s praises.