So things weren’t awkward at the club without me. They were worse.
Yanami sat in her chair, hunched over, a stiff breeze away from crumbling like a pile of ashes. Komari, meanwhile, was having a staring contest with the wall and completely unresponsive. Muffled music came from the earbuds stuffed in her ears. One of her semimonthly moods.
“President!” Shiratama-san trotted over with her hands clasped in front of her chest.
“Uh, what happened here?”
“I’m not really sure. We were just talking, and then…”
If she didn’t understand, I seriously doubted my own ability to do so. It was really hard not to walk straight back out the door.
“You good?” I asked Yanami. “Want some sugar water?”
“No. No, I’m okay. It’s just a flesh wound.” She languidly brushed aside the hair clinging to her face.
Seeing her like this genuinely took me aback. Apparently, you could go lower than rock bottom. What in the world had Shiratama-san done to these poor souls?
“I guess I’ll make us some tea?” The panacea for all social ailments.
While I got on that, Shiratama-san came up next to me and started taking out cups. “I’m sorry. Gosh, I’m so awkward. The younger members should be doing little chores like this.”
“Eh, we’re not really stuffy like that. It’s no biggie.”
This was the land of the free, here at the lit club. I, for example, was free to make tea. Literally every time. Every day. For some reason.
“You’re so mature,” she murmured out of nowhere.
“Huh?”
“It’s just the way you carry yourself. You’re always so composed and easy to talk to. I thought second-years would be more, I don’t know, scary. But you sure proved me wrong.”
Huh. No one had ever said that to me before. The others better have been listening. I poured the tea, sending them a bit of side-eye.
“Most people are nice once you get to know them,” I said. “Your classmates too, I bet.”
“Maybe. But the girls don’t like me very much, so I usually hang out with the guys, to be honest. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a tomboy.” She poked her tongue out.
I believed her. She was cute. Too cute. Controversially so. Urge to protect rising.
“Tea’s ready, everybody!” Shiratama-san placed a cup in front of the fossilized Yanami and near a petrified Komari. Neither acknowledged her. I sat with my own cup, and she was quick to take the seat next to me. “Say, you were pretty late. What were you doing?”
“Oh, just talking to Konuki-sensei. She’s our supervisor.”
“Sayo-san’s so pretty, isn’t she? Sometimes I wish I was her.”
She would need no monkey’s paw to regret that wish. But I kept that to myself. “You two know each other, I hear.”
“Right. She’s an old friend of my sister’s. I’ve had her tutor me in the past, and we used to go out together sometimes.”
Out. With Konuki-sensei. Define “out.”
Before I could decide whether to give voice to those concerns, Shiratama-san filled the silence with a warm smile. Why was she so darn cute? It was like an aura she emanated.
I smiled back, only to sense a disturbance. It originated from the one called Yanami, who was staring at me with half-dead eyes. “Having fun, Nukumizu-kun?”
I had been. Before the disturbance. “Well, uh, hey, if you’re feeling better, I’ve got an idea.”
“An ‘idea,’” she repeated doubtfully. Yanami sat upright again, scratching her head. Points to Shiratama-san. What kind of points? Irrelevant.
“I was thinking this weekend…” Iglanced at Komari. She wouldn’t hear squat with those earbuds in. So I called her phone.
She squawked.
I waited for her to answer, put her on speaker, and then set my phone in the middle of the table. There. Included.
“I was thinking this weekend,” I continued, “we could go somewhere together.”
There was a long period of tepid silence before Yanami finally dared to speak up. “You mean, like, an overnight thing?”
“Nothing that involved. Just a short excursion. Look for inspiration. Then we could have a meeting and spitball writing prompts.”
Last summer, the club had gone on a rather heartwarming field trip. Unless I was misremembering things. One person had gotten the short end of the stick. Two were dating now. That was a net positive, right? Hopefully there’d be less drama this time, but the spirit was the same: to get to know each other better.
Shiratama-san’s hand shot up. “That’s a great idea! I say let’s do it!”
Yanami side-eyed her, then fiddled with her phone. “I dunno, man, you can’t just spring this on me. I’ve got plans. And stuff.”
Komari nodded at the wall in agreement.
Great job, guys. Knew I could count on them. Granted, it was sudden.
“Okay, then let’s find a date when we’re all—”
“I guess it’s just the two of us then, huh?” Shiratama-san interrupted me. Yanami and Komari twitched. “Gosh, now I’m nervous. What to wear? Oh, but we should pick somewhere to actually go first, shouldn’t we?”
“Uh, the two of us?”
She gasped, then cast her eyes down sadly. “I’m sorry. I just assumed and got so excited. We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to.” Compared to the bottomless pit and the statue who could stand there reading for two hours straight while I wondered when the hell we were going to leave, yeah, I might have preferred her. She’d have to commit a crime or something to get on my bad side at this point.
Shiratama-san lit up. “Really? Then actually there’s this one place I’ve been meaning—”
“I’m going,” muttered Yanami.
“I thought you had plans,” I said.
“Nuh-uh.”
Rock solid defense. She had me. Honestly, I’d gotten so good at tuning her out I very well could have misheard her. Bad habit.
“Then how does Sunday sound?”
“I-I’m free too.” Komari half raised a trembling hand. How long had she been with us at the table for?
“Didn’t you have plans?”
“F-finished them.”
Already? The work ethic on that girl.
Yanami crossed her arms and put on her thinkin’ face. “So. Destinations. We doing lunch? Let’s figure out lunch.”
We would figure out lunch. After we figured out what we were actually doing.
“You were saying something about a place?” I said to Shiratama-san.
She looked around at each of us. “I was thinking Aeon Mall in Toyokawa.”
“Oh, I know the place.”
It was a big shopping center in the next town over. New enough that I hadn’t been myself yet. The closest train station to it was only twenty minutes from Toyohashi Station, so well within day trip distance.
I checked with the old guard. Yanami gave a thumbs-up. “Not bad, Shiratama-chan. We’ll eat like queens there.”
The hungry one was satisfied with this arrangement.
“Th-there’s a bookstore I w-wanted to look at there,” said the small one. She pulled out her wallet and started counting. She didn’t count long before her shoulders slumped.
“All right, then I guess keep your Sundays clear,” I said. “We’ll go over details in the group chat.”
Wait. I had Shiratama-san’s number, but she wasn’t in our group on LINE yet. I hadn’t added her, which complicated things.
Reading the situation, she offered her phone. “Feel free to friend me. If you don’t mind, of course.”
“Um, no, not at all.”
Murder. There was murder in the air all of a sudden, and it came from Yanami and Komari. The kind of aura devised by women to protect other women from predatory men who would use positions of authority to learn their contact details. Highly specific, yes, but very real.
“Let’s get you in that group! There we are! The group chat! The one I’m adding you to! Don’t miss the invite! To the group chat! The literature club group chat!” We men had our own defense measures. Less subtle kinds, maybe, but no less vital to survival.
Shiratama-san held her phone to her chest once it was all set up. “Oh wow, my first high school friend on LINE. That’s you, President! You were my very first.”
More murder. So much murder. But this time I refused to accept responsibility.
I turned away from the immense, seething urges to kill, only to meet Shiratama-san’s puppy dog eyes. “I hope I’m not being annoying when I say how happy that makes me,” she cooed.
“Um. No. You’re good.” I tried to smile at her, but the truth was, a doubt was starting to burgeon inside me.
Was she actually doing this on purpose?