When she arrived at her classroom, she opened the door and was met with the gazes of her classmates. This was a daily occurrence as well, so Alisa simply headed over to her seat by the window in the very last row, unconcerned by the attention. After placing her bag by her desk, she casually glanced at the seat to her right, which was assigned to a male student merely due to the alphabetical seating order. For more than a year already, this first-year high school student, Masachika Kuze, had held this coveted position next to one of the two “beautiful princesses” in their grade. Most male students would kill to be able to sit next to her.
“…”
He was lying on his desk, sound asleep before class had even started. Alisa, whose expression had remained unchanged, glared at such an unbecoming sight for a student at so prestigious a school.
“Good morning, Kuze.”
“…”
Masachika, who was using his arms as a pillow over his desk, didn’t respond to her greeting. He was completely out cold. Alisa, after essentially being ignored, glared harder.
“M-Masachika, bro. Wake up,” discreetly whispered the classmate who sat diagonally to their right, eyes twitching nervously as he watched the events unfold. But before Masachika even had time to open his eyes…
Whack!
“Gfffeee?!”
…all of a sudden, Masachika’s desk slid sideways with a bang, causing him to throw his head up with a squeal. Alisa had just kicked the side of his desk. The spectating students could not help but sigh in unison. It was already common knowledge in their grade that Alisa, despite being a high-achieving, well-behaved model student, was indifferent toward others and kept to herself. Yet she was exceptionally strict toward Masachika, who was the epitome of a slacker.
Since it was practically an everyday occurrence, everyone was used to seeing Alisa harshly criticize Masachika while he basically brushed off whatever she said.
“Good morning, Kuze. Did you stay up all night watching anime again?”
Alisa greeted her seemingly confused classmate once more while wearing an innocent expression. After blinking a few times and looking up, Masachika shrugged as if he could guess what had happened.
“Oh… Hey, Alya. And yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
“Alya” was Alisa’s Russian nickname, a pet name of endearment, and while plenty of people called her that when she wasn’t around, Masachika was the only guy in school who would call her Alya to her face. Whether Masachika was being thoughtless or Alisa was simply being tolerant was still a mystery, though. Either way, despite Alisa’s extremely cold gaze and the fact that she had just kicked his desk to wake him up, Masachika didn’t seem intimidated. His classmates’ gazes expressed both annoyance and admiration, but Masachika wasn’t trying to do anything special…because he had no idea what he was doing.
“Gfffeee”? Who screams like that? Pfft! I’ve never heard a weirder scream in my life.
There was no disgust in Alisa’s eyes as she looked down at him. If anything, it looked as if there was a smile hidden in them. It was obvious she secretly enjoyed making him squeal and jump out of his seat.
“You never learn, do you? You need to cut back on the anime if it’s going to make you fall asleep in class,” she nagged and took a seat next to him, as if Masachika couldn’t tell how much she was enjoying this.
“Actually, the anime ended at one in the morning. It was the discussion afterward that took so long.”
“‘Discussion’? Oh, you mean when people go online to share how they felt about the episode?”
“Hmm? No. I called my friend, and we ended up talking on the phone for the next two hours about the episode.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Masachika stared into the distance and smiled while basking in Alisa’s reproachful gaze.
“I’m an idiot, huh? Yeah… Discussing something you love, regardless of the time or place—if that makes me an idiot, then so be it…”
“I’m sorry. You’re not an idiot. You’re a hopeless, brain-dead moron.”
“You seem to be in a good mood today, too, Alya.”
He jokingly shrugged off Alisa’s brutal comments. She shook her head as if to say, “There’s no way to deal with him,” when all of a sudden, the bell rang, alerting the students that class was going to start in three minutes. As the other students returned to their seats, Alisa faced forward, taking her notebook, textbooks, and other school supplies out of her bag. In the room of well-behaved students, which one would simply expect at such a prestigious school, only Masachika stretched out his arms wide. He let out a big yawn as tears welled in his eyes. Alisa, who had her eyes on him the entire time, suddenly turned her gaze toward the window, cracked a smile, and whispered in Russian:
Cutie
“Милашка…”
“Yaaawn. You say something?” asked Masachika, having caught her whisper with his keen hearing.
“I said what you were doing was unseemly. That’s all,” she replied, feigning ignorance.
“My apologies, then,” he replied, acting as though she must have been referring to his yawning, so he covered his mouth when he next yawned. Alisa scornfully raised an eyebrow at him, then quickly faced the window once more and smiled. Keeping her expression hidden to Masachika, she gleefully cheered in her head:
You’re such a dummy! You really have no idea! Hee-hee!
She covered her smile by pretending to rest her elbow on the desk, but Masachika stared at her back with some pity.
Too bad I understood what you really said.
Alisa had no idea.
She had no idea that Masachika understood Russian.
And she didn’t know that he could understand every sweet word she whispered about him.
Never would the other students realize the humorous, slightly embarrassing conversations they were actually having behind what seemed like bickering.