So yeah, I got that worked up over lunch break. Even I could acknowledge that I was having so much emotional turbulence I was scared of an overflow.
But now I waited alone, trembling, in a deserted area behind the school building. I’d noticed someone had left a slanderous note on my desk which I clutched in my hand. What had I done to deserve this? I was a nobody, just someone allowed to lap up the sweet nectar that came from being around the queen of the school!
The person who showed up before me and my too-long rap sheet was the last one I’d ever expected.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she chirped.
“Y-you!” I cried.
She was one of Takada-san’s friends, the one who kind of copied Ajisai-san: Haga Suzuran-san.
“I’m glad you could make it,” she said.
“Well, no duh!” I said. “I had no choice but to make it after you sent me this!”
I brandished the paper at her. Its contents were as follows:
Amaori Renako,
I know your big secret. If you don’t want it to get out, you’d better meet me behind the school buildings during lunch. Come alone.
“What do you know, Haga-san?” I asked. I was totally stiff. I wish I’d borrowed Satsuki-san’s mom’s taser before coming here.
And then, in the very next instant, Haga-san bowed deeply to me. “I’m so sorry!” she said.
“F-for what?” I quavered.
“Um, well, you know that whole letter thingy? Yeah, none of that’s real.”
“I-it’s not real?”
“Yup.”
“But you said you knew my big secret, so like, what’s up with that…?”
“Oh, that’s just ’cause you stand out as such a big people person,” she explained. “I figure you gotta have one or two big secrets, y’know?”
“Uh, biased much?” I shouted instinctually. “Besides, I’m sure there’s a people person or two out there who doesn’t have secrets.” Mind you, I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head, but whatever.
“So that means you have one, right?” she asked.
Oh shoot! That was a trap!
“I have the right to remain silent,” I insisted.
No shit I had secrets; in fact, I might well have had more secrets than any other girl at Ashigaya. There was the matter of me being a loser in junior high. And then kisses with Satsuki-san. And my appearance in a cosplay competition the other day. Plus dating Mai. Not to mention Ajisai-san. Any one of those getting out would be more than fatal.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Haga-san said. “We’ve all hid a bad test score from our parents or blown too much cash on a phone game or, like, eaten too much chocolate in the middle of the night.”
“Right, true! I feel better.” She’d just made it even worse.
At any rate, I asked, “So, what’d you need me fo—wait a sec.”
I looked around us. Was this going to be like that thing the other day with Satsuki-san, but this time I was the one they’d lured in and ganged up on? Oh, heck no! The only reason Satsuki-san had survived that was because she was Satsuki-san! Sure, I may have been the first born in my family, but I was no Satsuki-san. I couldn’t handle this.
“N-no, it’s not like that,” she said. “Please don’t be so wary.”
She could say that, but like hell could I just go, “Oh, sure, if you say so.”
“You know, I was actually hoping to talk about Himi-chan,” she said.
“Himi-chan… You mean Takada Himiko-san, right?”
“Yes, but it’s not what you think,” she insisted. “Amaori-san, I’d like to ask you for a favor.” Once again, she gave me a huge bow. “I’m sorry. Um, I know this is asking way too much, but all the same…I really don’t have any other options, sorry.”
“Wh-what’s the favor…?” I asked.
She sounded like she was at her wits’ end. It sounded real, not like the letter she’d written earlier, and so pathetic I felt like I simply had to hear her out.
When she looked up, she couldn’t meet my eye. She whispered—and I would never have expected this in a million years—“Amaori-san, would you please…give Himi-chan a handicap?”
I knew almost nothing of this group of Class B girls, never really interacted with them, and yet still got bothered by them all the same. And now they were asking me this ridiculous thing.
“Um, what?” I said. Did that mean… “You want me to throw the match?”
After a moment, Haga-san nodded slightly.
I didn’t bother to beat about the bush. “Nah,” I groaned. “No freaking way.”
Obviously, there was no freaking way I could do that for her. I felt a stronger sense of refusal than when Satsuki-san had asked me out. Did she want an easy win that badly? So she’d try to go after me, the weakest-looking member of my whole friend group?
As I recoiled from her request, Haga-san shook her head. “I mean, I just…I just can’t have Himi-chan lose.”
“Why not?”
Like a popped balloon with all the air leaking out of it, she said, “Because this match is a matter of life and death for Himi-chan.”
“Wh-what’s that supposed to mean?”
She’d die if she lost? What the heck, when did this turn into a freaking death game? This was terrifying!
Haga-san stammered out her explanation. “See, Himi-chan’s always been hostile toward Oduka Mai even before the interclass athletics competition came up. I remember Himi-chan used to complain about how annoyed she was because Oduka Mai’s literally all anyone talks about here.”
Takada-san just talked shit nonstop, huh.
“I thought that her obsession with Oduka Mai was kinda weird, you know?” Haga-san continued. “And like it just got stranger as time went on. So I asked her about it, and it turns out Himi-chan used to be a model.”
“Wait, really?”
“Oh, you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, I’m serious! I think she’d be super embarrassed if anyone dragged up her old articles or something.”
Come to think of it, Takada-san did have the height for modeling… Dang, how many models were there in this one school? Tokyo, man. Incredible.
“But one day, the magazine that Himi-chan was in did a special on Oduka Mai,” Haga-san went on. “It sold so well, that…they dropped Himi-chan from the magazine… And Oduka-san stole some of her other jobs too. Himi-chan’s got a lot of pride, so she quit the modeling career as a whole.”
Oh…