After school, Naoya headed to the front gate and found Koyuki waiting for him. Her stiff posture made her stand out amidst the throng of students even more than usual.
Naoya headed directly over to her. “Sorry, did you wait long?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve said it before, but I don’t like to owe people,” she answered. Koyuki’s face was cool and composed, very different from her flushed and flustered expression from lunch time. Suddenly, she flourished and pointed at Naoya. Her eyes were like those of a lion about to gorge itself on some unfortunate prey, and Naoya was the hapless antelope. “Like you said at lunchtime, it’s true that I want to say ‘thank you,’ but nothing there’s nothing more to it than that. Don’t get full of yourself, got it?”
“Eh, dunno if I can promise that,” Naoya retorted in a noncommittal tone. He deftly warded off her attempt to overwhelm him and smiled wryly. “Any guy’d get a bit of an ego boost if he were about to go on a date with a girl as cute as you.”
“C-Cute?! Date?!” Her face turned the color of a cooked lobster. Unlike at lunch, however, she didn’t allow herself to be cowed this time. She turned away from Naoya and began speaking. “Hmph. Just so you know, flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard vomit-worthy lines like that—I get them all the time.”
“I’m not really trying to flatter you or anything. I don’t really have a strong presence, so I’ve gotta speak my mind straight up to get my thoughts across.”
“Shameless, aren’t you? Unfortunately for you, this is nothing new to me. I mean, have you seen how cute I am? People are always trying to sweet talk me,” she scoffed.
“Is that right?” he said, playing along. Naoya could make out a smile when he looked at her from the side and thus didn’t really believe her. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning and trembling.
Before Naoya could point any of this out to Koyuki, she began to pick up her pace. “Let’s just get going already!” she exclaimed. “Also! You’re not allowed to talk to me until we arrive at the shopping district, okay?!”
“I can tell already this is gonna be one tough date,” Naoya grumbled.
“This isn’t a date! Now shut up and follow me!”
Naoya followed obediently behind Koyuki, who was heading off in a huff.
The surrounding students surveyed the scene with great curiosity. The rumors of the infamous “Queen of Thorns” inviting some gloomy-looking nobody out on a date had already begun to spread far and wide.
The two eventually arrived at the shopping district in front of the station. Ootsuki High School was located in the heart of town. Because of that, there was a wide selection of cheap chain stores marketed toward students dotted about the area. Koyuki picked one such of these—a donut shop—and headed straight in.
Naoya didn’t have any objections to this, so he followed her in and ordered a donut and a coffee. They chose a table with two seats and sat directly across from one another. The nervousness in the air was palpable—Koyuki was fidgeting in her seat and staring blankly at her donut. Since it didn’t look like she would be picking it up any time soon, Naoya opted to make the first move.
He raised his hand in a conciliatory gesture and asked, “Is it all right if I eat first?”
Koyuki nodded, staying silent.
With her permission, Naoya reached for his donut. He was very much a growing boy and had a voracious appetite to match. Right in the middle of devouring his delicious snack, a faint voice spoke up.
“Um.”
“Hm?” he asked.
“You seem to be... really good... at reading people...” Koyuki mumbled. She monitored Naoya’s face closely through upturned eyes. “Do you actually know what I’m going to say before I say it?”
“Yeah. Of course,” Naoya responded as he finished up his donut and wiped the sugar from his fingers with a napkin. “But I can also tell that you want to say it yourself. So I’m waiting.”
“How do you...? You can’t really read minds, can you?!”
“Nothing impressive like that. It’s like you said earlier—I’m just kinda good at reading people.”
“‘Kinda,’ huh? Well, whatever,” Koyuki frowned, obviously unsatisfied with the explanation. She paused for a long moment, then sighed before bowing her head deeply. “As for yesterday... Thank you. I’m serious—you saved me.”
“You’re welcome.” Naoya accepted her words of gratitude.
Koyuki appeared somewhat relieved, as though she’d gotten something important off her chest. Finally, she began to nibble on her donut. “Y-You’re weird... You make me feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he replied.
“Hmph. I can see that,” Koyuki snorted as her perfect lips curled into a mocking grin. “I hope you realize what an honor it is for a weirdo like you to get to eat with me.”
“Oh yeah, I do. Don’t worry. It makes me happy that you’re happy to be here.”
“I’m not happy to be here! No one said anything about that!”
Koyuki’s face once again became dyed a deep shade of red, which was only deepened when she realized that her shouting was attracting the attention of the other customers in the store. To this, she quickly withdrew into herself and turned a reproachful eye onto Naoya, who was quietly sipping his coffee.
“What is up with you?” she grumbled. “I didn’t even say anything like that...”
“I mean, it’s really easy to tell what you’re thinking,” he answered. It was pretty much a walk in the park for him—small details, like her intonation when she spoke, the movements of her eyes, her habit of fixing her hair, all clearly revealed what she was thinking. Even if she tried to hide it, she was like an open book to him.
“Really? I don’t know if I believe you...” Koyuki said hesitantly.
She spent a few seconds examining Naoya intently before an evil smile once again rose to her lips. She retrieved a one hundred yen coin from her purse and held it in her hands, but she hid it from Naoya such that he couldn’t see which one it was in. She then thrust her hands out at Naoya and asked, “Okay, test time. Which hand is the coin in?”
“It’s on your lap, right?”
“Correct,” Koyuki said faintly after a long pause. She opened both her hands; as expected, there was nothing there. Koyuki plucked the coin from her lap and stared at Naoya like she was looking at an exotic animal.
“You really are good,” she marveled. “Oh yeah, so about that so-called ‘scout’ from yesterday. Are you a detective or something?”
“A teen detective? What is this, an anime? I’m just your average high-school student,” Naoya replied incredulously.
“Your ‘average high-school student’ can’t do the things that you can,” Koyuki pointed out as she gave Naoya a dubious look.
Naoya shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I do hear that a lot, yeah. People ask me if I have special skills and stuff all the time.”
“Well, yeah, of course they would. What kind of training did you go through to be able to do this kind of thing?”
“Nothing in particular, really,” he replied with a shrug and a lopsided smile. He wasn’t really lying or hiding anything. He had never done anything in particular specifically to read people; he had just had a unique set of circumstances that led him to realize he had a knack for it.
“When I was little, my mom was sick. Really sick. I mean, constantly bedridden levels of sick,” he explained.
“Huh?” Koyuki gulped, apparently taken by surprise at the direction the conversation had taken.
Naoya ignored her and continued. It must have been around the time he was six years old—his mother had suddenly collapsed one day and was hospitalized as a result. She had been hooked up to ventilators and pipes of all kinds, virtually chained to her bed and unresponsive. Naoya had visited her every day and did everything he could to look after her. He would stare intently at her face to discern what she needed. Eventually, he was able to tell what she wanted just by looking.
“Well, I was still a kid, so I couldn’t really do anything major to help her. But by doing that over and over, I guess I learned how to read people based on visual cues,” he concluded.