Kai fearfully entered the classroom doors and found his hopes were immediately dashed. The person he so desperately hoped would be tardy was instead staring him right in the eye. With her target now in sight, Reina Fujisawa welcomed Kai with a faked smile and invited him to “come over here, would you?”
Yep, she’s here, lamented Kai as he dragged himself over. If he didn’t go now, he’d pay for it dearly later. Jun could have given him some confidence if she were here, but that lifeline was already snapped. He was now resigned to his fate.
Reina was by the window near the front row, where she always spent her time between classes. She gracefully gossipped with two of the class’s particularly popular girls as they waited at her sides like lackeys. One of them was a subject of that morning’s conversation, Momoko Mihara.
“Mooornin’, Ash!” said Momoko in a voice too sweet to mean anything but mischief. “My, you sure look peachy today!”
“You should get your eyes checked.” Kai had a hard time taking that compliment seriously when he was shaking in his boots over the decidedly not-peachy look Reina’s eyes were throwing his way.
“But your face looks kinda dead inside today, which is just the Ash I know!”
“Faces don’t change based on your health.”
“Ahhh, that’s right! Say, how ’bout I show you a good clinic where you can get some plastic surgery done?”
“Is it too late for you to reincarnate into a less shitty person?”
See? Annoying, right?
The other lackey who was currently holding back her laughter at this exchange was Shirayuki Saitou.
“Hah, I never get enough of you jokesters,” she said as she melodramatically held her gut. Maybe people were just like that when they had American moms. Shirayuki herself was the tallest girl in the class and an untamed beauty with blazing red hair.
“Don’t lump me in with Mihara...”
“Gahah, never change, Ash.”
Kai was now being treated like an endangered species. Maybe he was; Momoko’s looks were a ten out of ten, so no matter how annoying she got, typical guys probably wouldn’t do much more than blush or lose their nerve. Maybe the rarity was just seeing Momoko’s reaction after someone returned the venom she spat in kind.
Sucks for you, but I, Kai Nakamura, have become immune to cute girls thanks to the help of Jun and Kotobuki! You’ll need something more than skin-deep to catch me slipping!
Kai allowed himself the honor of a smug smile. Until...
“Good morning, Ashie boy.”
Reina dropped her greeting like a final boss and Kai froze, his confidence quickly giving way to cowardice.
“G-Good morning, Ms. Reina,” he responded, barely managing to say it back in a shaky voice.
The tension in the air suddenly thickened. Even Momoko and Shirayuki’s looks made it clear that playtime was over.
Reina’s scary enough as is, thought Kai nervously, and now I gotta have you two against me?!
“Ash, buddy,” said Shirayuki. “No hard feelings, but there ain’t nothin’ lamer than a dude who starts getting full of himself.”
Shirayuki was just about Kai’s height, so she laid an arm on his shoulder with no trouble. But rather than feeling the joy of having a cute girl right in his face, he felt the anxiety of a predator cutting off his escape route.
“I-I don’t think anything’s gone to my head, though?” Kai managed to string together a defense while being as white as a sheet, but Momoko made it clear what crime he was being charged with.
“It’s not ‘Ms. Reina’ to you, now is it? It’s Fujisawa, ain’t it? I bet you’ve got no idea how magnanimous I am to let you call me by my first name, do ya?”
Ah, so that’s the issue, thought Kai. He could accept that they’d be displeased by his disrespect of Her Majesty. But in that case, Kai truly was innocent. He was about to argue back, but Reina beat him to it.
“Worry not,” she assured them, clearly unbothered. “He’s not out of line. I asked him to call me ‘Reina.’”
It was true. There was actually a time when her opinion of him had hit rock bottom, where she looked him in the eye and said, “A man like you doesn’t deserve Jun. I refuse to accept you.”
But soon after that, Reina apologized and suggested they make amends. He didn’t quite understand why since he’d just got done getting his ass beaten by Matsuda’s gang of popular dudes, but it did happen. And when Reina suggested they actually be friends, she told Kai that he could address her by her first name.
Momoko and Shirayuki, who knew absolutely none of this, looked at Reina with their eyes bulging in disbelief. Was this such a big deal?
On second thought, maybe it is, figured Kai. Reina’s group might have been a collection of normies, but it was well-known how guarded they were around boys. And Reina was the most untouchable of them all; the fake smile she gave others erected a wall that was both charming and chilling. Kai assumed she was joking when she said that using her first name was a privilege, but it seemed like there was more truth to that than he first believed.
“Incidentally, I don’t believe the ‘Ms.’ part is necessary.”
“Er, it just sounds more natural to me this way...”
Kai humbled himself before the venerable words of the queen. She was a yakuza’s woman, after all. A super high school level partner in crime.
“Ashie boy, are you certain that something incredibly rude isn’t running through your mind?”
“Absolutely positively not! Also, you can totally drop the ‘boy’ part any time you’d like!”
“Perhaps. Maybe when you grow into someone a bit more reliable, I’ll consider you a man and do so. But for now, Ashie ‘boy’ feels more natural to me.”
“How’re you calling me rude when you’re literally treating me like a kid?!”
Kai dropped all restraint in his outburst. After watching their comedy routine, Shirayuki and Momoko seemed to regret their prior presumptions.
“Dang, Ash, you really are buds with Reina. Hella my bad ’bout earlier, but you can call me ‘Yuki’ if it makes ya feel better!”
“And I, Momoko, am totes cool with ‘Momoko’!”
“Look, I’m cool as long as you’re not at my throat,” said Kai. Of course, he welcomed casual relationships, so he chose to take their suggestions as a net positive. “But if you really want me to feel better, you could try calling me ‘Kai’ instead of ‘Ash.’”
“Ya see, Ash, this here’s a term of endearment.”
“Endearment, dearie!”
Kai didn’t know about Yuki, but Momoko was definitely lying.
Oh well, I’ll take it, he thought. The tension had faded and everyone was on the same page. Maybe Reina was actually kind of nice and not someone to be terrified of? She even had a gentle smile on her face as she continued the conversation.
“Incidentally, Ashie boy, do you remember what I told you yesterday?”
“Oh yeah, you wanted to talk about something at school, right?”
Kai wondered what the subject could possibly be. I could’ve sworn she was gonna grill me about going on that date with Kotobuki, he thought.
But hey, the mood was so friendly, right? It couldn’t be. He was just jumping to conclusions, right? Kai waited for Reina to answer without a care in the world. Reina, still grinning from ear to ear, did so.
“Of course. I’d like to talk about how you ditched Jun to go on a date with that little homewrecker.”
Ah. Of course it was that. Don’t sucker punch me like this! It’s bad for my heart!
“Depending on your answer, you may have hell to pay.”
Kai’s previously carefree expression was now frozen that way. Meanwhile, Reina kept her icy smile as she gave him a condition that made his blood run cold. The tension thickened once again as even Shirayuki and Momoko glared at him in righteous anger over their friend.
“You should be thanking me, Ashie boy. I consider us friends, which is why I’m willing to lend an ear to your excuse.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Incidentally, will your excuse wrap up quickly, or will it take a while?”
“It...uh, will probably take a while.”
“Very well,” accepted Reina. Her model-in-training smile could make anyone swoon, but that sinister tone of hers could extinguish the flame of a centuries-long romance.
“After school. Behind the gym.”
“...Yes ma’am.”
A third shiver ran down Kai’s spine.