Chapter 5

After class, Kagiura went straight back to the dorm, where he studied until dinner. When the meal was over, he went back to hitting the books all evening except for when he went to bathe. It wasn’t a sustainable cycle for him. Sleep loomed. When he would stop to stretch in the middle of his work because his whole body felt stiff, Hirano would help him, and it was at those moments that he considered just going to sleep. If he asked, Hirano might even let him use his knees as a pillow. He wasn’t sure when it had started, but Hirano already woke him up anyway. There had been complaints from nearby rooms about Kagiura’s blaring alarm clock, but despite that, Hirano didn’t simply give Kagiura a kick in the butt and send him on his way. He actually got up early himself and urged Kagiura gently out of bed. It spoke to how kind he could be. Kagiura was one of four siblings, including one older sister, one older brother, and one younger sister, so he knew from experience that older brothers weren’t usually this nice to their younger siblings—and that being an older brother didn’t necessarily mean you would feel helpful enough to wake up a younger sibling. Even if siblings were close, they might not be that generous, but it left him thinking that he and Hirano felt closer than family. Special treatment… Kagiura thought he was starting to understand—really feel—what Hanzawa had said about Hirano’s attitude toward him. He’d never had someone care as much about him as Hirano did, and he wasn’t sure anyone else would care like that in the future. The real problem, he thought, was that there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to help Hirano in return. In order for two people to become special to each other, it couldn’t be just one of them receiving all the caring. Kagiura couldn’t spend all his time unloading on Hirano. But even if he told Hirano to lean on him if he needed anything, at the moment, it would sound like a joke. Hirano was so much more open-minded and tolerant, it seemed hard to believe there was only a year’s difference between them. How long would it take Kagiura to become someone a person like Hirano could and would naturally rely on if he needed something? Anxiety churned in Kagiura’s gut. Taiga Hirano was unmistakably attractive, and it was obvious how much the younger members of his committee admired him. Kagiura hardly intended to insist that Hirano should be “his” upperclassman and his alone, but he did envy those who knew Hirano in ways he didn’t. “Hey, you’re zoning out again. C’mon, this is last year’s test. You could work on the problems from this unit, but since it all comes from the textbook, once you know what you’re likely to see, you should focus on the stuff that seems most likely to come up.” Kagiura opened his eyes—he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them, hadn’t realized that his consciousness had scattered to the four winds—to find a sheaf of already-graded tests being slapped down on his desk. The scores were good. Blindingly good. But of course… “Right…” Seeing Hirano’s full name there alongside the designation of his first-year class was something new to Kagiura, and the novelty of it dispelled a bit of his drowsiness. Based on the student numbers determined by alphabetical order of students’ family names, Hirano had been listed somewhere among the second half of the class. Their fingers brushed as Hirano passed the papers to Kagiura, and Kagiura felt a faint warmth from the other man’s hand. It was enough to make him notice that Hirano must be sleepy, too. He glanced up and saw that Hirano’s eyes indeed looked a bit bleary. Was he yawning? He should tell Hirano to go ahead and hit the sack. Never mind him. Hirano never left things until the last minute. Even during midterms, he’d never been stuck at his desk right up until lights-out. “Hey, sorry if I’m misreading this, but… You sort of copy your notes at random, don’t you, Kagi?” Hirano said. Kagiura was the picture of health, and his heart was sound, yet it hurt when Hirano landed such a precise blow. “Well… Yeah, sometimes, I guess.” “How much of the time?” “Er… Uh, seventy, maybe eighty percent?” “Oh, c’mon!” Hirano must have been looking at the notebooks spread open on the desk. Kagiura could never be entirely sure how much he’d missed when he woke up in class, so he left arbitrarily sized blank spaces with the intention of copying from Niibashi afterward. When the notes he’d missed were too long for the space he’d saved, he just omitted the parts that didn’t fit. “Yeah, I know… I have some systems. Like, I try to mark stuff in my notes when I don’t quite understand it. But in math class especially, I tend to write formulas in weird places, or I can’t get the figures to come out quite right. I’ve gotta admit, it’s not easy to study from.” Kagiura felt the blood drain from his face; he knew how ridiculous he must have sounded. How could he not feel disheartened when it was pointed out so bluntly that the studying he’d been trying to do, in his own way, was essentially pointless? He’d hoped that by getting to at least fifty-fifty on stuff he understood versus stuff he didn’t, he might stand a chance of getting a passing grade even if he wasn’t exactly exceptional, but now… “Is it that bad?” he asked. “Yeah, probably. I mean, it doesn’t look like even last year’s test is making a lot of sense to you. You don’t get the problems, do you?” “No…” “Argh. It’s like… You know. I mean, I’m kind of guessing here, but the stuff on old tests, that’s, like, what they hope to teach you, right? I mean, a lot of the time. So it should tell you what’s important. Forget the application problems for now. Focus on basics first.” Kagiura could only bow his head and agree. Hirano gave him a reassuring pat. Kagiura almost felt like his pet. He leaned his head over toward Hirano, who snapped, “Don’t sleep in your chair.” But that remark was shortly followed by another yawn. Kagiura grinned.