“So, what do we all think about Oduka-san?” someone would say. “Though I’m sure the guys have to think she’s the hottest girl in human history.”
“Enh, I think we just look at things way too differently. To me it’s like “Yep. She’s still pretty again today. Got the sparkles going on and everything.” and that’s it.”
“She’s legit like some otherworldly fantasy being. And I wouldn’t have expected it, but she’s actually really nice and friendly when she talks to me. I feel like she’s a loving monarch visiting her subjects on tour!”
Guys and girls alike were totally gaga over Oduka-san, and I occupied the enviable position of having her constant attention. If this wasn’t being popular, then I didn’t know what was!
Speaking of which, I should mention that it took no more than three days to crown our newly elevated monarch of Ashigaya High with the nickname “the supadari.” Supadari—short for “super darling.” You know, the kind of thing you’d call a perfect male character in a shojo manga or something. (“Darling” is used overseas for loved ones, regardless of gender, so it was still pretty fitting for Oduka-san.)
I was one lucky girl to end up in Oduka-san’s friend group, with the girl who made flowers of love blossom here at Ashigaya High. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been so eager to wake up and go to school in the morning!
That was how the first two months of school played out. Time passed leisurely day after exciting, dreamlike day. It was everything I had ever wanted, and now it was here in my hands. And before long, I…got to the point where I couldn’t take another minute of it.
Disaster struck because I’d dared to associate with those far above my station. The other four girls in our group were all cute, chatty, quick-witted, and amazingly good at picking up on social cues. I’m talking at least two standard deviations above the mean here in terms of people skills. But how could I, someone who was way below average in that department, possibly manage to fit in with them?
My secret? Uh…for lack of a better idea, working my butt off. I paid close attention to follow up with everything they said. I plastered a smile on my face for dear life and focused super, super hard to keep up with all their conversations, which moved so fast they made my head spin.
The result of my hard work? Coming home every night with my MP totally depleted and collapsing into bed. Welcome to day after day of agonizing over everything I said at school and counting my numerous slipups every night before bed!
Wait…is this what it means to be a social butterfly, like I’ve always wanted? I mused one night as I lay in my beloved bed, looking totally dead inside. I felt like an ugly duckling who’d wandered into a flock of graceful swans.
The answer was as plain as the nose on my face. Yup. An introverted loser like me never stood a chance at becoming an outgoing, bubbly girl in just two months. It was hopeless.
Still, I wanted so badly to keep hanging out with all the others, so I kept trying my hardest until my head felt as hot and stuffy as an overused cell phone. And then, on the day this story began, I finally broke down completely.
Leaning up against the rooftop fence after running from my friends, I closed my eyes partway and leaned into the wind with a sigh. “The breeze feels so good,” I murmured.
On my own like this, I didn’t need to worry about what other people were thinking of me. We were supposed to stay out of this place because the fence was low enough to be dangerous, but to me, the roof might as well have been heaven. It was the place where my brain could finally let off some steam. A place where I didn’t even need to think.
I sat there like that—eyes glazed over, mouth half open, my whole body drooping over the fence—and stared way off into the distance. As one of the school’s popular girls, I could never show this side of myself in class, but right now there was no one there but me. That all added up to one thing: my guard was completely down. My person switch was flipped to off.
Then I heard the sound of the door opening behind me.
Wait. The door? What? How? I was the only one who had the key, since the teachers trusted me, a member of Oduka Mai’s friend group, enough to be their helper. With that same blank expression on my face, I turned my head to see who it could be.
An absolutely stunning girl stood by the door, looking at me with shock in her eyes. Her long, blonde hair fluttered in the wind. She was tall. She was gorgeous. She shone so brightly you could see her from the moon with the naked eye. There was only one person in the entire school who this could have been. It was the one and only super teen Oduka Mai.
Her legs seemed to go on forever past her skirt, and there wasn’t an extra bit of weight anywhere on her. Her waist was so slim it made me wonder if she wore a corset under her uniform. Her small head accentuated the well-balanced proportions of her body so well that every single time I saw her, I thought she’d walked right out of a painting.
She gave me the most horrified look and then flew across the roof. “Renako, you mustn’t!” she cried.
“Huh?” I said.
She came at me in slow motion, both arms outstretched, with such a look of urgency that I freaked out. I didn’t even think. I just tried to get out of her way by pushing off of the fence, and, with a lurch, I toppled right over it.
I yelped as I pitched forward and started to slip toward the other side. Oh no! Oh no! The ground of the schoolyard loomed up below. Was I legit falling off the roof? At this height? Was I seriously going to plunge dozens of meters and hit the ground head first? I could see the headlines already: “Society’s Dark Side: The Tragedy of a Young Girl Tired of the Constant Pressures of Human Interaction.”
And then, when it was almost too late, just as I was about to plummet off the roof altogether, someone grabbed my ankle and held on tight.
“I won’t let you do this!” she grunted. “Not right in front of me!”
“O-Oduka—”
She straddled the fence, pulled me into her arms, and then flung us both out into the air.
“-san?!”
For a moment I felt like I was suspended in midair, and then I was falling again. Wait. Was she falling with me?!
“You’re all right now, Renako,” Oduka-san murmured.
“We are literally falling?! Why did you jump? You totally just jumped off the roof!”
“Don’t worry.”
I said a second ago that she was hugging me, but it was actually more like she had me pinned tight in a nelson hold. Her voice, right up against my ear, sounded utterly calm even as we were falling to our doom. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me. Could she fly?
“You’ll be safe now that I’m here,” she said. “I’m lucky like that.”
“Are you kidding me?” I cried. “Luck is the most useless stat in every RPG!”
There was a huge rustling, crackling sound, and an impact shuddered through my body. A moment later, I realized we’d landed in a tree.
A branch caught me, and I flopped around it in a u-shape a good three meters off the ground. Now I knew what it must feel like to be a fallen down comforter. I slowly raised my head. W-we were alive…
“See? We’re safe, aren’t we?” she said. “Nothing to i… N-nothing to it.” Oduka Mai was sitting a bit farther up the same branch as me, legs crossed and completely unruffled. Like that, she would have looked right at home reclining on the side of a pool in some deck chair.
“Your voice is trembling,” I pointed out.
“I knew there was a tree planted right here,” she explained, “so I figured we could land in it, given the proper amount of momentum. Thankfully, my good luck handled the rest.”
“If that’s the philosophy you live by, you’re going to end up dead one of these days.”
It was a miracle that I fell off the roof and only had a bunch of scratches on my legs to show for it, but I had to wonder. How did Oduka-san escape unscathed?
My heart was still pounding like crazy. To be honest, I almost wet my pants back there. Bungee-less bungee jumping off a roof was way too frightening!
I instinctively sighed in relief. “Thank goodness we’re alive.”
Oduka-san nodded in fervent agreement. “At any rate,” she said, “I’m glad I decided to follow you after you looked so odd earlier. If it hadn’t been for that, you wouldn’t be here right now.” Her gentle, beautiful lips parted in a smile of heartfelt relief.
Uh, no…I think there’s been a huge misunderstanding here, I thought.
“Uh, no, I…” I stammered out. “I wasn’t going to jump or anything like that.”