When he overheard that word, he turned his gaze down and let the speaker go past. He felt like he could handle anything anybody might say about him. He was over the moon about being in the same class as Kushieda Minori; they’d never shared a classroom before.
But people kept talking.
“It’s really amazing… You can tell just looking at him that he’s not someone you should mess with.”
“Yeah, those eyes are intense. Be careful—if he lost his temper, you’d be a goner.”
And the spell was broken. Although the whispering voices probably harbored no ill will, the sheer number of them was starting to get to him. Until the new homeroom teacher came, hiding out in the restrooms might be the best thing for his peace of mind. With that thought in mind, he stood up. But the moment he headed for the hallway, something bumped lightly against his stomach.
“Oof…?”
It sure felt like he’d hit something, but he saw nothing in front of him. How strange. Ryuuji restlessly glanced around the vicinity. But what he saw was the faces of his classmates as they murmured all around him…
“Oh, man. Just as expected of Takasu-kun… He’s made the first move.”
“It’s the ultimate showdown already… I knew this class would be trouble the moment I saw the registry.”
They were probably going on about the look in his eyes.
“It’s the battle that’ll decide who’s in charge…the clash of the delinquents!”
“It’s like an amazing card just hit the table…”
They were acting strangely. A battle? The delinquents? An amazing card? What are they talking about? He turned his head to try and better grasp the situation—and then it happened.
“So, you run into someone, and you can’t even apologize…?”
He heard a quiet voice from somewhere nearby. The speaker sounded strange, monotone, emotionally contained to an extreme degree—but it felt like they were just barely keeping the lid on an unparalleled explosion.
The voice’s owner was nowhere to be seen.
“Uh…?”
Feeling a bit like he’d wandered into the Twilight Zone, Ryuuji slowly looked to his right. No one there. He looked to his left. No one there, either. Apprehensively, he looked in the scariest direction—up. Good, no one there.
“Which means…”
Sure enough, there she was. Way, way below his line of sight—far below even Ryuuji’s chest—was the crown of someone’s head.
His first impression of her was that of a doll. Any way you sliced it, she was small. Small, and enveloped in a long, cloud-like shroud of hair—it was the Palmtop Tiger.
“…The Palmtop Tiger?”
Without thinking, those enigmatic words suddenly popped into his mind and spilled right out of his mouth. He felt like he’d heard them from someone else, murmuring from far off.
The Palmtop Tiger. Is that her…?
“Who…?”
Is that supposed to describe the doll I see in front of me? Sure, palmtop works, but what makes this girl a tiger? On and on, his mind continued in this way.
“Who…exactly is supposed to be a ‘Palmtop Tiger,’ anyway?” Taiga asked.
It was no time to ponder the question. The “tiger” raised her chin slightly, then both her eyes.
“………!”
Her stare lasted about three seconds. Ryuuji thought she had been scared stiff, but he was woefully mistaken.
A momentary vacuum had exploded like a bomb and had only just passed. Hearing was slow to return to Ryuuji’s ears. When he came to, he was on his butt. It wasn’t just Ryuuji. Several others had also collapsed close by, whimpering. Some were even trying to crawl away.
What just happened?
Then he understood.
Nothing had happened.
It was just—the girl in front of him.
“…You’re irritating,” she said.
All she had done was glare at Ryuuji with her two huge eyes. That was all. And yet, during those brief seconds of tension, Ryuuji had been simply overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed. His mind had gone blank. Tension had immobilized his body, and he literally collapsed, right there.
He’d been so taken aback by her glowering stare—or more accurately, by the intensity it contained—that he had fallen right on his butt.
What had happened was way out there. It was on a completely different level. He had totally and completely lost. Ryuuji, who had never been bested when it came to his intimidating eyes, had lost by a country mile.
For the first time in his life, he understood. A truly savage gaze had a violent—no, murderous—weight to it.
“Hmph.” After a few endless seconds of her gaze, which seemed to unwaveringly pierce right through his heart, she finally looked away, filled with contempt. “‘Ryu,’ is it? Like a dragon… How lame.”
Her lips were like flower petals turned up by the wind. Her words struck like bullets and were just as child-like as she was.
She tousled her fluffy hair with an unbelievably small hand. Her eyes, their murderousness subdued, were now half-hidden by soft eyelids. They resembled the stare of a glass-eyed doll. Those transparent, hollow eyes reflected nothing at all as they gave Ryuuji a final once-over.
She was cute. She was terrifying.
Her milky white cheeks, her long, hazy ashen hair with its mysterious color, her delicate limbs and slender shoulders, the eyelashes that softened her gleaming eyes—she was cute as candy filled with lethal poison and as dainty as a flower bud with a deadly fragrance.
But, in the moment she glared at him, Ryuuji had seen a shape in her eyes. The form of a carnivore, bearing down on him. It was just an illusion, of course, but it had seemed more real than reality. Ryuuji had felt a weight of several tons pressing on him. His blood shuddered at the predator’s roar; he felt it breathing down his neck. It seemed to say, I can kill any of you any time I want.
Its sharp claws and giant fangs had loomed close. The smell of blood and the beast had filled the room. The illusion, many times the size of the small girl, was none other than a tiger.
“Uh, uhhh…uh, uhm, uh… Yup yup yup yup…” Instinctively, Ryuuji nodded his head up and down. He clasped one hand against the other. Right, of course. The Palmtop Tiger. He didn’t know who’d come up with that, but, “It fits perfectly, doesn’t it…”
It had a certain flair. He admired whoever had coined the name.
Then he realized why she’d muttered Ryu along with her contemptuous gaze.
Either when he fell on his butt, or maybe while the illusory tiger tore him apart, his jacket zipper had opened. And so, his shirt was completely exposed—the shirt Yasuko had so enthusiastically bought him. The shirt with a gimmicky dragon on it, exactly the kind a delinquent would wear. It wasn’t as though he’d worn that shirt, which sent totally the wrong message, because he wanted to. It was just convenient to use during laundry day, and he had figured no one would see it, anyway.
Intense embarrassment flashed over him as he quickly zipped his jacket. He was still slumped disgracefully on the floor, like a damsel just roughed up by hoodlums. Then someone briskly crossed in front of his gaze and said, “Taigaaa, you’re late! You skipped out on the opening ceremony, didn’t you?!”
“I woke up late. More importantly, I’m glad I’m in the same class as you again this year, Minorin.”
“Yeah! I’m glad, too!”
It was Kushieda Minori herself.
Minori laughed as she touched the Palmtop Tiger’s hair, as though they were close. She had endearingly called the tiger “Taigaaa,” much like the Palmtop Tiger had called her “Minorin.”
While Ryuuji watched, dumbfounded, he heard someone whisper. “In their first match, victory goes to Aisaka, the Palmtop Tiger.”
“Now that you mention it, Takasu just looks scary. He doesn’t really act like a delinquent at all.”
“Huh? You think?”
“That’s because he’s no match for the Palmtop Tiger. At any rate, she’s the real deal.”
“Takasu-kun, are you okay? Aisaka lashing out at you on day one was really unfortunate.”
It seemed that the misunderstandings were likely to be fixed faster than Ryuuji thought.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Palmtop Tiger’s outrageous, real name was Aisaka Taiga. She was one hundred and forty-five centimeters tall. She and Kushieda Minori were supposedly close friends.
If rumors held true, her prodigal father supposedly controlled the Japanese underworld, or was a genius karate master who controlled America’s underworld—or something like that. She herself held an advanced karate belt but had been expelled after attacking her teacher—or something like that.
Supposedly, when they first started high school, one guy after another initially mistook her for a vain beauty and made insistent romantic advances. However, they all got brutally rejected—they were threatened, chewed out, torn up, and teased mercilessly. A whole mess of guys were now beyond any hope of recovery. It was said Aisaka left a path of male corpses in her wake.
Anyway, when it came to Aisaka Taiga, there was no end to the dark rumors. Whether those were myths or facts, what Ryuuji was sure about was that she ranked as the school’s most dangerous creature.
Ryuuji learned all about those rumors over the days following the opening ceremonies.