“He’s a total freak, I’m telling you.” Kaname stressed to Kyoko as she undid the ribbon on her chest. “Have you heard him say one thing that’s in tune with reality? There’s no way he’s doing it to be funny, either. He’s just one card short of a full deck, right? First-class crazy?” She talked and talked.
While she did, she unbuttoned her blouse, removed it, and reached out to arrange it on its hanger. But the sleeve got caught, and knocked over the Mizuno bat she had leaned against the locker. “Oh, for the love of...” she grumbled, but then went back to her rant. “And did you see the way he kept looking around all during class? And at lunch break, how he kept going back and forth from the hall?”
Kyoko was next to her, undoing the hooks on her skirt. “Oh, did he do that?”
“Yeah, he did! Ugh, I hate watching nervous types like him. It so gets on my nerves...”
“Then... don’t watch him, maybe?”
“I wasn’t!” Kaname stammered. “Like I’d ever be watching that geek!” But, as she adjusted her bra, she went right back to it. “Oh, oh, also! I made eye contact a few times. He was totally watching me!”
“Who was?” Kyoko questioned.
“That guy, duh! Then he’d look away like ‘oh, I wasn’t really looking at you,’ but come on, it was so obvious! Ugh, it’s just creepy...”
“Well, you’re pretty attractive, Kana-chan,” Kyoko whispered with the smallest hint of jealousy. She put on her stirrup socks and reached for her orange pants.
“Well, thanks, but that’s beside the point. Those eyes were the eyes of a total sicko.”
“You know, Kana-chan, you’ve been spending a whole lot of time dissing Sagara-kun...”
“I have?”
At that exact moment, Sousuke was striding across the athletic field. He stopped in front of the sports clubs building, looking up at the line of six second floor windows. There should be a staircase... yes, there it was. He checked the paper he was holding one more time, then started to climb.
“You have,” Kyoko affirmed, back in the club room. She knew her friend all too well.
Kaname was a loudmouth, but that was actually something people liked about her; her no-holds-barred attitude was a large part of why last year she’d been dragged (reluctantly) into the student council vice presidency. She also had a fundamentally people-pleasing nature, which was why she was here now, helping out Kyoko’s team. It was odd to see her complain this much about someone she barely knew, and odder still for her to badmouth him behind his back.
“Are you that into him?” Kyoko asked.
“Oh... what? No way!” Kaname denied. “Ah... ahahahahaha!”
Kyoko knew what that “ahahahaha” meant, too. That was her way of saying, “I don’t know, but this conversation is over”—even if Kaname didn’t realize that herself.
“Okay, let’s go.”
With their uniforms on, Kaname and Kyoko headed for the door. But as they swept open the curtain that cordoned off the changing area...
There were two sharp knocks, followed immediately by the club door opening wide. The boy who had opened the door—Sousuke—locked eyes with a girl in the middle of changing.
“Y...” The girls present—eighteen or so in total—all sucked in a deep breath, and then...
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!” Their scream was loud enough to shake the windows.
Sousuke stood there, first confused, then alarmed; he was probably more surprised than they were. The first thing he did was clear his mind of the information “most of these girls are in their underwear” (a trivial factor during an emergency). Then he dove into the room, grabbing Kaname’s collar and pulling her to the ground as he passed. In one fluid motion, he yanked the revolver from his ankle holster, shouted, “Everyone, get down! Get down!” and rolled onto his back with his gun aimed at the door.
It had taken less than two seconds in all; his reaction speed was remarkable, honed by years of practice. Sousuke remained just as he was, senses on full alert.
Then after a moment, he switched to confusion. There was no one in the doorway—no one at all. Kaname still on the floor under his back, his gun still pointed at the door, he looked around and around, growing more and more puzzled.
There was no sign of threat anywhere in the room.
Correction: he was surrounded by girls with murder in their eyes.
Ten minutes later, the chaos in the club room had finally subsided.
“You had another one of these on you, huh?” Kagurazaka Eri, who had been notified by one of the girls, snorted as she picked up his .38 five-shot revolver.
“Yes,” Sousuke said. Then he added after a moment, “I’m very sorry.” He shrank into the folding chair they’d sat him in, looking completely run-down. His uniform collar was torn, and he could see traces of scratches forming on his flesh here and there. His hands were cuffed behind him, holding him in place—they had used the very aluminum alloy handcuffs Sousuke had brought with him. It was like a prisoner interrogation.
“I’ll be confiscating this, too,” Eri told him. “I’m sure you won’t object.”
“Right. But...”
“But what?”
“At least remove the bullets,” he pleaded. “They’re hollow points. Extremely dangerous.”
“Yes, I’m sure they are...” Eri said dismissively. Then she stood up and declared, “Chidori-san, he’s all yours.”
“Huh? But...”
“I have a teachers’ conference to get to. There’s a field trip coming up, remember? He’s unequivocally in the wrong here, so talk it over with the others and deal with him as you see fit.” Whether from her trust in Kaname or a basic lack of giving-a-damn, Eri turned authority over to the girls and stepped out. Sousuke, facing an uncertain future, viewed Eri’s exit like the UN peacekeepers’ departure from Cambodia.
“All right...” Kaname, Kyoko, and the other girls all glared down at Sousuke.
Anticipating the torture in store for him, he timidly said, “The Geneva Convention specifies...”
“The what?”
“...Nothing.”
Kaname had never heard those words before—She actually thought “Geneva” was the capital of Brazil. “All right, Sagara-kun, let’s go right to it. What were you thinking?” Kaname hissed. “The Peeping Tom stuff is bad enough, but what about that whole scene? You pulled out that model gun, you threw me around the room... You don’t think that’s crazy? Like, the first-rate kind?”
“F-First rate?” he stammered. ‘Crazy but first rate?’ What kind of contradiction is that? Is it I who am mad, or the world? No, wait, what is it I did that was crazy? Crazy is normal, normal is... (abridged). Such (pointless) philosophical agonies turned over and over in Sousuke’s mind, in an instant that felt like eternity.
“First rate, you know? First-rate crazy?” Kaname pointed an index finger to her temple and moved it in a looping gesture. Then she yanked up her sleeve. “Look at my elbow! You broke the skin! What are you gonna do about that, huh?” There was a very slight red spot on her porcelain arm. You’d barely notice it if it wasn’t pointed out—The harm they’d caused Sousuke was far more severe, but none of them seemed to care about that.
“It should heal quickly enough...” he said, foolishly.
Immediately, the girls pounced on him. “How dare you!”
“A scar can haunt a woman all her life!”
“I can’t believe what a jerk you are!”
He felt bombarded from all sides. It was worse than a crossfire between tank battalions.
“Well? Say something already!”
“Tell Kana-chan you’re sorry!”
After a struggle, he managed to put together that they had found his behavior unacceptable. So at last, in the name of good faith, he said, “I apologize for being overly rough with you. I wasn’t trying to harm you or your friends.”
“Then what were you trying to do?!”
“I can’t tell you. You don’t have appropriate clearance.”
And like that, the good faith was down the drain.
“Huh? What clearance?! Tell us!”
“I can’t. I’m sorry...”
Kaname mussed up her hair with her hands. “Why did you even come here in the first place?!”
“I wanted to join the club,” Sousuke said evenly.
In perfect unison, the girls responded, “Huh?”
“I was in this same club at my last high school. I believe the team found me very useful, so I wanted to join your club as well. I’m quite athletic, and I believe I could be an asset to you. Will you let me join?” Confidently, he recited the lines he’d memorized in advance. He thought it was a pretty good performance, all in all.
“Sagara-kun...” Kaname intoned, as if fighting off a pounding headache. “This is the girls’ softball club...”
Sousuke furrowed his brow. “Boys aren’t allowed to join, then?”
“Of course not!” she shrieked.
He thought for a minute. Then at last, he spoke, “Isn’t sexual discrimination a serious issue in these cases?”
“What cases?!”
The girls cast Sousuke out of the room, chair and all, and sent him flying down the stairs.