The two boys turned to her, both of them frowning unhappily.
“What’s wrong with Chidori?”
“She can be a very dramatic girl sometimes.”
“Senpai! You really don’t see anything wrong with this?” Kaname demanded. “Students just can’t blow up their shoe cubbies!”
“This one clearly can.”
“It was a figure of speech!”
“I’m aware. But you appear to have missed my point...” Hayashimizu nudged his glasses up his nose, a sign that he was about to launch into his personal specialty—the rhetorical argument. “Chidori-kun,” he said next, “let’s assume that a strange man places a package on your doorstep. You pick it up and hear scratching sounds from within: it’s faintly warm, and smells obscene. You likely know what’s in the package. Would you nevertheless open it to confirm its contents?”
Kaname’s face contorted in disgust. “No way. I’d throw it out.”
“In your apartment’s wastebasket?”
“No, in a plastic bag outside the building!”
“Agreed,” said Hayashimizu. “But what if, rather than a package, all these things applied to your shoe cubby? You wouldn’t be able to take it outside. You’d have no choice but to blow it up.”
“Uh, is that the same thing?” she questioned.
“It is,” the president said pretentiously, turning his gaze up to the ceiling. “It was clear to him that there was something unpleasant in the shoe cubby. Detonating it was the natural response.”
“Uh-huh...”
“I will smooth things over with the faculty, then.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sousuke said with a salute.
“Indeed. That’s all, then.” Having dismissed them, Hayashimizu turned his chair away and went back to reading the Asahi Shimbun.
Upon returning to the classroom, Sousuke ate some shifty-looking jerky, then began carefully inspecting the tattered note he’d picked up that morning. It seemed to be written on pink stationery, but most of it was unreadable now.
“Any headway?” asked Kaname, who’d come by to check on him after eating lunch with her friends on the roof.
“I’m afraid not. It’s definitely addressed to me, though...” He pointed to one burned scrap. The name on what looked like the salutation clearly did say “Sagara.”
“Hmm... So the only thing they put in there was the letter?”
“Most likely.”
As she squinted, Kaname could just barely make out a few words. I’m always watching you— coward— heart— stop beating— put— out of— misery— wait— behind the gym after school—
“It’s clearly from a hostile third party,” said Sousuke.
He went on to speculate on the remainder of the letter’s contents: Sagara Sousuke. I’m always watching you, you disgusting coward. I’ll make your heart stop beating and put you out of your misery once and for all. Wait for me behind the gym after school. That’s where I’ll kill you.
“I’m certain that’s what it said,” he declared.
“Why’s that your first guess?” Kaname wanted to know. “It’s written in a girl’s handwriting.”
“Don’t be so sure. It could be a fabrication meant to fool handwriting analysis. A sign I’m dealing with a professional.”
“What kind of professional would that be?” Kaname felt a chill run up her spine as she imagined a burly hit man scribbling loopy handwriting onto a sheet of cute pink paper. “I think it’s just a mash note. Someone in the school probably wrote it.”
“Mash note?” he said suspiciously. “That’s extremely threatening.”
“Why do you take everything the worst possible way?!” she yelled. “I’m talking about a love letter! Someone’s confessing their feelings for you!”
Sousuke continued to look at her impassively.
“Didn’t you hear me? There might be a girl with... romantic interest in you. Doesn’t... that make you happy?” Kaname asked hesitantly.
“No. I’ve seen this same thing before. Several years back, in Cambodia, there was an otherwise very earnest NCO in my squadron who grew close to a local woman while on assignment,” Sousuke reminisced. “We celebrated their relationship, but she turned out to be a spy for the guerrillas.”
“Uh-huh...”
“She leaked word of our upcoming surprise raid to the guerrillas and nearly got the entire squad killed. The NCO shot himself that night out of guilt.”
“Uh, really...” Kaname didn’t quite understand what these two situations had to do with each other, but it was a pretty serious subject, so she couldn’t exactly call him out on it.
“Ah, memories,” Sousuke sighed. “The major and I were arm slave instructors in that squadron together.”
Who’s the major? Kaname wondered, but decided she was better off not asking. She did know that “arm slave” referred to the humanoid weapons that had recently begun to dominate modern warfare.
Sousuke placed the tattered paper inside his desk and stood up.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
“Yes. Whether it’s a threat or an attempt at seduction, they’ll be waiting for me behind the gym after class,” he concluded. “I’ll have to prepare.”
“Prepare? Uh, how? Hang o—”
Sousuke ignored her and walked away.
“Sousuke!” she called after him. “Fifth period’s coming up!”
“Security takes precedence,” Sousuke informed her. “I’ll be missing the rest of my classes today.”
And with that, he was gone.
As Kaname’s fifth period class, Math II, drew to a close, her classmate Tokiwa Kyoko tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, Kana-chan. Where’d Sousuke-kun go?”
“How should I know? He’s not my dependent... or my pet, for that matter,” Kaname said with a groan.
“Is it true someone sent him a love letter?”
“Yeah, saw it myself. Don’t ask me what kind of weirdo ends up falling for that dumbass...” She pulled her bundle of textbooks and dictionaries out of her desk and slammed them on top of it.
“Are you in a bad mood, Kana-chan?”
“Why would I be in a bad mood?!” Kaname asked, louder than she meant to.
Kyoko took it with practiced grace. “Well, it sure looks like you’re in one.”
“Ugh... You think?”
“You’re thinking about Sagara-kun, I’ll bet. He is your closest friend among the boys.”
“I-Is not! He’s totally not!” Kaname insisted firmly. “I don’t even like the guy! It’s just that as student council vice president, it’s my responsibility to deal with problems—”
“Uh-huh, right,” Kyoko agreed. “Anyway, wanna go see what he does? It could be hilarious.”
Kaname turned her nose up stubbornly. “No way,” she retorted. “Who cares what happens to him? No one’s gonna want to date that war-obsessed jerk.”
Yet Kyoko pressed on, fanning the flames of Kaname’s concern. “You sure about that? He’s pretty cute. And I’ll bet he seems pretty normal if you don’t know him.”