Because of this, Naomi never set foot in other classes. Even a handful of people glancing in his direction was more than he could bear. The very thought of an entire classroom looking at him made him want to run screaming for the hills.
It was kind of pathetic, yes. He was probably the single weakest, most fragile person out of all two hundred fifty first-year students in his school.
But there were also people on the opposite end of the spectrum: unusually powerful exceptions. The ones who had both self-confidence and respect from others, for example. Or people who could find their own way through anything that life threw at them.
While pretending to read a paperback at his desk, Naomi glanced repeatedly across the room. He was so worried about not being noticed that he could only manage to look for about two seconds at a time. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop, either.
Three girls were chatting at the center of the classroom. Two of them were from Naomi’s class, but the girl sitting in between them was from the next room over. She was constantly smiling or bursting into laughter, and the air around her seemed to fill with sparkles whenever it happened.
She was Kadenokouji Misuzu, the “idol” Naomi had first spotted at the library committee. Over the course of that single meeting, she’d somehow captured the hearts of multiple boys her own age, along with several older guys. She was a force to be reckoned with. It was hard to believe she was the same age as Naomi.
Of course, the girl herself probably didn’t have any interest in the school’s hierarchy as Naomi saw it. She probably didn’t even know it existed. That was part of what made her so fearsome.
It didn’t matter whether a real princess was strong or fragile—her presence was all that was required. Just by being in the room, she made everyone else in it happy. Anyone standing in her way would smile and yield the path to her. She could walk right into any classroom she wanted without a second thought. Everyone was actually happy to see her!
Hidden behind his paperback, Naomi continued to observe this strange phenomenon. Misuzu was smiling again, her face emitting magical beams of sunshine in all directions.
Man, thought Naomi. I kind of wish I was observing her instead…
“Kadenon! Let’s get back to our classroom!” another girl called from the doorway. Misuzu nodded and rose to her feet.
“Gotta go! See you at lunch, okay?”
With a little wave to her friends, she left the classroom at a trot. Once she was gone, Naomi could finally see all the way over to the other side of the room.
In one of the seats next to the window, a girl was quietly reading a book. There was a cover on it, but it looked like a novel.
She was doing the exact same thing as Naomi, in other words. But Naomi didn’t feel the comparison was fair to her. She was reading in a fundamentally different way.
“Pass! Pass!”
A sudden shout made Naomi flinch. A group of boys were tossing a bag of gym clothes around the room as a makeshift basketball.
“Come on, cut it ooout!” someone shouted, their tone only half serious.
Naomi looked back down at his book, wishing he could hide behind it. Those guys were the same age as him. So why did they seem so intimidating?
“Hey!”
“Crap!”
Naomi looked up. Somebody had messed up and sent the bag flying off course. It zipped across the room, passing between the girl at the window and her book; it hit the glass loudly and fell to the floor.
The classroom was suddenly dead silent. Everyone was thinking the same thing: This isn’t good.
The bag hadn’t hit her, but it easily could have. The boys had clearly gone too far. Everyone, including Naomi, waited anxiously for the girl’s reaction.
Flip.
She’d turned to the next page in her book.
Everyone else in the room blinked simultaneously. Nobody actually spoke, but the word “whoa” was definitely running through their minds.
The culprit who’d hurled the bag received a sharp elbow to the side and promptly ducked his head in apology. “Sorry ’bout that…”
Ichigyou Ruri kept right on reading her book as if nothing had happened.
After observing her for an entire day, Naomi discovered that his fellow library committee member, Ichigyou Ruri, was a very formidable person in many ways.
First of all, her face was formidable.
That word could mean more than one thing, of course. Some people might be described as formidably beautiful. But Naomi wasn’t entirely sure whether that applied in this case. He thought she had a pretty face, but not one that stood out to him as his type. She certainly couldn’t be called cute.
Ruri had a very composed face. She didn’t smile, and her default expression was cold and calm—almost angry, really. Most of the people in their grade would laugh at pretty much anything, even if it wasn’t funny, but Ruri’s face suggested that she didn’t do much laughing at all. She looked like the kind of person who would sit stone-faced through an entire comedy routine out of pure stubbornness.
At lunchtime, Ruri headed to the school store.
She was relatively tall compared to someone like Kadenokouji Misuzu, granted, but Naomi had still been impressed to see her push right through the crowd without flinching or hesitating. Reaching the front of the pack while plenty of fish sandwiches and yakisoba breads were still available, she’d immediately called out, “I’d like four twisty breads, please.”
Apparently, she was a fan of those things.
After buying her lunch and returning to the classroom, Ruri found her seat occupied by a girl who was chattering cheerfully with a group of friends.
“So yeah, you know what Yukawa-senpai told me next? Seriously, he—”
“That’s my seat,” Ruri interrupted.
Naomi cringed a little. Her timing was terrible. It was like she wasn’t even trying to be nice.
The group of girls apologized and moved across the classroom. Ichigyou Ruri, looking totally unperturbed, promptly sat down and resumed her reading while working on her twisty breads.
After school, Ruri was on duty at the checkout desk of the library. The majority of the job was loaning out books and processing returns, but there usually weren’t that many people using the library on any given day, so they usually had lots of free time on their hands.
Unsurprisingly, she used that time to read her book.
After engrossing herself in it for a while, a sudden frown appeared on Ruri’s face. Her default expression was already vaguely hostile, but now she was clearly displeased. Naomi was reminded of a scowling juvenile delinquent from a manga he’d once read.
Ruri began flipping backward through her book. After finding something or other in the first few pages, she returned to the page she’d been reading and grimaced once again. She didn’t even notice that someone was now standing by the desk, hoping to borrow a book. And the poor guy was too intimidated to speak up.
Naomi, who’d been watching from the hallway, quietly expressed his thoughts—which were probably shared by anyone else who’d witnessed this.
“Yikes…”
At that point, something smacked into the back of his head. Turning around, he found the three-legged bird flapping in the air behind him.
“Kaw!”
With that brief cry, the bird flapped down to land on the hallway floor. Then, it turned around and walked off at a steady trot. Naomi tagged along behind it.
As he followed the chubby little animal, Naomi studied it curiously from behind. From what he’d found on the internet, a bird like this was apparently called a yatagarasu. He felt like he’d seen a depiction of one on an informational sign at some shrine before, although he couldn’t remember which. In any case, it was supposedly a very special kind of crow.