Chapter 2

Once Hirano had put away the dorm’s shared vacuum cleaner and come back to the room, he realized that cleaning the floor only made it more obvious how dirty the desks and shelves were. He could try a feather duster, but it wouldn’t do much against pencil marks. Where could he find something to wipe with? “Kagiura, you got a rag over there?” Hirano asked, and the underclassman obligingly poked his head out. “Sure. It’s pretty dirty, though. Let me clean it first. Hang on.” He must’ve been polishing hard over there, because the rag he held up was practically black with dirt. It had been brand-new a few minutes ago! “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a quick wipe,” Hirano said. “I do worry about it!” Kagiura said, going to wash the rag. Hirano couldn’t help but admire how meticulous he was. Almost before they knew it, they had been roommates for a month. For Hirano, it was his second year living in the dormitory. For Kagiura, who was fresh out of middle school, everything was new, but nothing seemed too difficult for him, and the days passed easily. Many of the dorm’s students went home during Golden Week, near the start of summer, and Hirano and Kagiura were no exceptions. When they got back on the last day of break, they spent their time cleaning the room together. That was when it occurred to Hirano that although they’d tried to keep things fairly clean, he hadn’t given the room a thorough scrub down since the start of the school year, back in April. Hirano had been allowed to stay in the same room he’d occupied in his first year, but with someone new moving in, he’d naturally wanted to make sure the place was extra clean. When the school alerted him that Kagiura would be moving in on the second of April, the day after Hirano got back to the dorm, he had become even more determined to prepare. There was just one thing he was worried about. Hirano was not the best communicator. He was fine once you got used to him, but it took a while for him to open up to new people, and he realized his appearance and behavior could scare people off. He brought it up with Hanzawa, who knew how he was, and asked for advice on how to get along with this new underclassman. Hanzawa acknowledged that calling the new guy by a nickname might be more than Hirano could manage, and they agreed “Kagiura” was probably enough. That was well and good, but it still didn’t relieve Hirano’s nerves. Besides, “Kagiura” was sort of hard to say. Why couldn’t my roommate’s name be easier to say? Hirano wondered. Yet he still hesitated to call Kagiura something shorter. By tradition, the single-occupancy rooms for the seniors were typically vacated by the middle of March, so the young man who’d been living with Hirano the previous year, and who was a year ahead of him in school, had already moved on to fashion himself a temple of study in his new room. So it was that Hirano got to spend a good while in what amounted to his own private room, and he was able to get completely ready when it came time once more to live with someone else. The result was that he had slept poorly—and the result of that was oversleeping right until Kagiura appeared at the door. Forget waking early—Hirano had never been a morning person, period. Still, he’d always been able to get out of bed on time when he had a promise to keep or an appointment, so he was appalled that the one time he failed to wake up was when his new roommate was coming. Way to make a good impression on the new guy, huh? So much for all the advice. Still, the “new guy,” Kagiura, was easy to read, and it was clear he thought the world of Hirano and took to him quickly. He didn’t seem like much of an early riser, yet he diligently went to morning practice each day; and although he had to be dealing with more rules than he’d ever had to juggle in his life, he never complained. The other second-years on the basketball team said Kagiura was someone they’d had their eye on while he was still in middle school and that he worked twice as hard as anyone else. He was also, it seemed, not great at studying. Just the other day, he’d spotted Hirano somewhere on campus with another upperclassman, Sasaki, and when Hirano got home, Kagiura had asked him, “Who was that you were with?” “Ahhh, he’s having a tough time in class, so I was showing him my notes,” Hirano replied. Kagiura looked taken aback and said, “Well, I’m having a tough time, too.” His expression was so anxious that Hirano started to feel like he was catching his roommate’s nerves. “You getting the notes down all right?” he asked. High school teachers tended to erase what they’d written on the blackboard awfully fast—too fast if you were trying to keep up with a subject you struggled with. Understandably, Kagiura was having some issues. He didn’t quite look at Hirano as he said, “I get my friend to show me his notes when I have trouble keeping up.” Hirano hadn’t felt like he was scolding Kagiura, but apparently in trying to get a complete picture of the situation, he’d started to sound like he was lecturing. “That’s cool. Well, keep at it. Just try not to fall asleep in class, huh?” He’d meant that last remark as a joke, but Kagiura nodded earnestly. Hirano felt like it was one of the oddest reactions he’d ever seen. High school wasn’t part of the compulsory educational system. At this point, exam results determined your academic ranking. If Kagiura was feeling confident, then fine—but the first real hurdle would be the midterm exams in the middle of May. With the sports festival right at the end of the month, Kagiura’s schedule would be relentless, and the scope of the midterms was so specific that in your first year, it was hard to set yourself apart with your grades. Or at least, it should have been. There was a reason Hirano felt he couldn’t ignore Kagiura’s strange reaction. There was someone quite close to him who slept in class and sometimes even played hooky. Shuumei Sasaki was his name, and he was a regular offender when it came to coming to class late. In fact, he’d missed the beginning of class again today. They’d spent all last year as classmates, and Hirano knew from experience that Sasaki rarely managed to take down all the notes. Hirano had lent Sasaki his notes more than once after Sasaki had begged him for help, but the next week there would be homework, and Sasaki’s would be full of mistakes. It was enough to make Hirano wonder what Sasaki was copying when he borrowed those notes. And wouldn’t you know it—they were classmates again this year. Sasaki dyed his hair a flashy brown color and had covered himself in piercings (not that Hirano was one to talk). No matter how you put it, he was a man who stood out. He was handsome, but he had a nasty look in his eyes—he acted like everything was too much trouble, and during special events, he didn’t even try to hide how disinterested he was, often staring off into space. As classmates went, it was hard to get close to him. When a guy so tall acted so cold, people found it intimidating—but at the same time, he wasn’t quite as bad an apple as he looked. In spite of the tough-guy attitude, Hirano had heard him remark, “I don’t like to fight. I’m no good at it.” If he had to guess, Hirano would have said Sasaki found high school boring. It wasn’t exactly that the guy had no interests—Hirano sometimes saw him talking animatedly with his friends about music, but that was about it. When Hirano got to school, he was, as usual, accosted by Sasaki, who had, as usual, missed first period. “Hirano, show me your notes from English class,” he said. Normally, Hirano would have just handed them over, but he’d been thinking, and today he decided to bargain. “All right, but you have to show me your math notes,” he said. Hirano never needed to copy anyone’s notes if he hadn’t actually been absent from a class, so he wasn’t sure how Kagiura would cope—but he did know that Sasaki, who virtually never took notes, was good at math. Well, good in comparison to his other subjects, but in any case, he seemed to know how to go about learning arithmetic. Maybe Hirano could pick up some pointers for when he helped Kagiura. “Huh? Yeah, sure, I guess. But why? You gonna copy my answers to the homework?” “In your dreams, moron. My roommate’s trying to figure this stuff out. Thought maybe I could learn something about how to teach him.” Math was third period. For all his academic troubles, Sasaki never left his books behind; he always had the textbook and the notes for his upcoming classes. The guy never forgot his things. Hirano opened the notes Sasaki held out to him and sighed. It was more or less what he’d expected—a bunch of context-free scribbles. How did Sasaki even use his own notes? He hadn’t copied what the teacher had written so much as he’d scrawled down a formula in large print, beside which there was some number that he’d circled. It felt a bit like an abridged version of what must have been on the blackboard, but Hirano couldn’t tell what the number represented. The rest of the notes seemed to be furiously worked problems. There wasn’t a single line of explanation or any examples. What even was this? “What’s this circled number?” Hirano asked. “Oh, that. That’s the textbook page number.” “Oh… Great.” “The explanation and the examples are all in the book. Why would I bother copying them when I can just look there?” Hirano had to admit there was a certain logic to the way Sasaki had chosen to be lazy. He thought back on Kagiura’s notebook but realized that other than trouble taking notes and challenges with study generally, he and Sasaki had almost nothing in common. The moment Kagiura got to something he didn’t understand, his hand stopped moving, so there were these big blank spaces in his notebook, but Sasaki simply didn’t write down the things he did understand. While Hirano stood there pondering, Sasaki gave him a perplexed look. “You seem really, like, serious about this.” “No more than usual.” How could he just ignore an underclassman suffering right in the same room? At least Kagiura wasn’t acting as if he felt beaten by his difficulties. He was struggling with material that was suddenly much harder than he was used to, but with his earnestness and dedication, there was still every chance he could turn things around. “Wish you’d take my study problems that seriously.” “All last year, you never seemed like you wanted to get any better.” “Ha-ha. Fair enough, Hirano—but it doesn’t matter how serious you are. If your precious little underclassman sucks at studying, then he’s not gonna get any better.” “Kagiura’s not like that,” Hirano snapped. Kagiura was serious and dedicated. Hirano thrust the notebook back at Sasaki. Sasaki’s mouth was hanging open slightly, as if he was stunned by Hirano’s reaction, but Hirano didn’t know why he would be.