Chapter 2
Even with the shocking start, Takasu Ryuuji’s high school life as a newly minted second-year student was going well.
There were several reasons for this.
For example, despite his most pessimistic expectations, the rumor that Takasu was a delinquent quickly evaporated. Along with Kitamura, he was lucky to have quite a few people from last year’s class with him once again. But more than anything, the simple fact that he had been terrorized by the Palmtop Tiger on opening day sealed the deal: He was just a normal kid. (On that point and that point alone, he wanted to thank Aisaka Taiga.)
On top of all that, he also wasn’t inconveniently pushed to join the student committee, and the seat he got by drawing straws was a window seat three rows from the front. It was in a location where he could pretty much lay back and relax. He also knew their homeroom teacher (Koigakubo Yuri, single with a capital “S,” twenty-nine years old) from when she had been the assistant homeroom teacher the year before. Although she was getting on in years, and still single, she wasn’t unhappy at all.
And then…
“…And then, the part near the rim of the bucket was solid, right? Like, the parts around the—what’s it called? The parts around the circumference were solid. But then the entire center was still liquid, and if you tilted it, the jiggly parts around the circumference would go like this…”
“Ow!”
“Ah, Takasu-kun! Sorry!”
But the most important reason things were going well was this one:
The existence of his new classmate, Kushieda Minori. She was the sun that cast a beautiful, rose-colored tint over his life, his sunlight that shined without fail. That radiance would never harm him, but only warm his heart—even if, for example, it poked him in the eye.
“A-are you okay?! Sorry, I didn’t know you were behind me! Ohh…I totally touched the squishy part, didn’t I?”
“…Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”
“I’m really sorry! …Uh, what was I talking about? Oh yeah! Like I was saying before, the part around the rim of the bucket that firmed up, right, was like this…”
“Ow!”
“Yikes! I think I got you even deeper that time. Sorry!”
Despite that incident, which he magnanimously waved away, Ryuuji was happy. As Minori bowed her head down in apology, an indescribable floral fragrance wafted from her hair. Regardless of what had happened, as she apologized, her eyes were currently looking at him, and only him. Getting poked in the eye twice was nothing compared to that happiness.
It didn’t even matter whether she was talking to him or not. It would have been enough if she were just talking to someone near his seat. He could listen to Minori’s voice forever, sweet enough you could practically smell it, and when she swung her arm around to describe the circumference of that bucket, her fingertip even touched him—touched his eyeball, to be exact, but still: She had touched him!
But why were they talking about a bucket just now? His face must have looked puzzled, because she explained: “I, like, made pudding…in a bucket.”
“Don’t hurt anybody else,” Minori said, admonishing her own finger as she grabbed it with her other hand. Then she gave Ryuuji a very thorough explanation. No, wait—what she actually said was, “Takasu-kun, do you like pudding?”
They were having a conversation. Ryuuji’s heart suddenly skipped a beat. He couldn’t respond with anything sensible. He was well and truly flummoxed. Even mustering the full strength of his will, all he could say was, “Yeah…”
She probably thought he was a boring guy. She probably didn’t want to talk to him anymore. But Minori was already leaving Ryuuji behind, unaware of the inner turmoil that never reached his face. Minori’s charming cheeks took on a rosy color as she continued. “Bucket. Pudding. A woman’s greatest weakness.”
“But I just couldn’t get it right! Getting it to firm up is hard. Still, because it’s so big, the gooey parts and jiggly bits live in perfect harmony… Oh, I know—Takasu-kun, do you want to judge it for yourself? As an apology for poking you in the eye.”
“Wha? J-judge it…?”
She couldn’t mean she wanted him to try a taste of her homemade pudding, could she? Did she really mean that she wanted him to try it? Ryuuji’s gaze intensified as he looked at Minori’s adorable, smiling face.
Minori nodded. “Yeah! I’ll bring it over right now, so you can take a look at it.”
If this kind of happiness waited on the other side, what a lucky day, to be poked in the eye! However, as Minori cheerfully made her way to her own seat, and Ryuuji’s eyes bored into her back, he felt a sudden urge to flee.
Once he received the pudding, what expression was he supposed to make as he ate it? And wouldn’t it be weird for a guy like him to be slurping up pudding when it wasn’t even lunch time? And before he even considered all of that, was it the type of thing he was supposed to eat straight away, or was he supposed to thank her for it and put in his bag?
“I-I don’t… I don’t know…”
He stroked his cheek nervously, but for the time being, he cleaned the notebooks off his desk, just in case he got his heart set on eating it right there.
Both nervous and excited, Ryuuji skillfully averted his gaze as Minori came back. She was so bright he couldn’t look at her. Minori tilted her head and stopped right in front of Ryuuji with a brilliant smile on her face. Then she said, “Here, Takasu-kun. Here you go.”
Her voice was so gentle, he could hear a heart emoji follow his name. Ryuuji nervously lifted his face and, with both hands, reverently received the pudding.
“O-oh. How nice…”
It was thinner than he thought it would be—lighter, too…
“…That you took these pictures…”
“But it’s kind of gross, right?”
When she said, judge it for yourself, she had meant to judge the pictures—not the flavor. And on top of that, the thing in the photo looked downright disgusting. His brain felt like a crashed web browser. A huge bucket lay squarely planted on a vinyl rug, and inside it was a dead squid, pale yellow in color… No, worse—it was filled with something that looked like slime. He felt like he was letting Minori down, but no matter how he looked at it, it just didn’t look like pudding. In the second photo, the part-liquid, part-solid slime had dribbled onto the vinyl.
“It tasted weird, too,” she said, as he looked at the third picture. “Maybe I didn’t wash the bucket well enough?”
In the picture Ryuuji now had in hand, Minori was sitting down with one knee bent, eating the slime with a massive spoon. I’ll take just this one, Ryuuji thought for a fleeting moment, but then she spoke again, interrupting the thought.
“Thanks for looking at them! I’ve got to show them to Taiga, too. Huh? Where did she go? Wasn’t she just over there a second ago?”
Minori quickly collected her photos. Then she darted away from Ryuuji to search for her companion, the Palmtop Tiger Aisaka Taiga, who had vanished unnoticed. And with that, the time had run out on his dream.
Taiga, too, huh?
Ryuuji involuntarily let out a sigh as he watched the apple of his eye disappear into the hallway in search of her friend.
It was an unexpected blessing that Minori was in the same class. Every day, be it during class or whenever, he got to see Minori. He could see her smile without having to peek from into some class he wasn’t part of. To return to soccer terms, sometimes even being a steady sweeper paid off. If this wasn’t happiness, what was?
Still, if he wanted to get even closer to Minori, there was one huge problem he had to overcome. That problem was that more often than not, she hung out with Aisaka Taiga.
Other than the incident during opening ceremonies, Ryuuji had tried to avoid getting involved with Aisaka, who somehow seemed to be an actual thug. Avoiding her, however, inevitably created a new problem: He couldn’t approach Minori. (Granted, there were plenty of other reasons why he couldn’t start up a conversation with her.)
He was about as interesting to Aisaka as the husk of a dead bug. As long as Ryuuji kept his distance, they didn’t really make any contact, and it seemed unlikely that any real harm would come his way. Ryuuji’s current goal was to do his best to avoid getting involved with the Palmtop Tiger and get close to Minori alone. If he could just accumulate more lucky moments like the bucket incident and turn them to his advantage, it might not be completely impossible.
All things considered, Ryuuji’s bittersweet days were going pretty well.
…At least until school ended that day.