Sousei Takarai wanted to become a normal high school student like everyone else.
“Hey, Sousei, you’re kinda…”
Sousei was washing his hands while Yukisada Hayashi was drying off one sink over.
They had gone to the bathroom with some other kids from their class during a break. After finishing their business, they ended up standing next to each other, washing their hands. It should have been the sort of normal, unremarkable thing that any regular high school student would do.
“…odd, aren’t ya?” Yukisada finished with a chuckle.
Sousei cocked his head in confusion as he tried to figure out what Yukisada meant. “…Am I?”
Yukisada turned the faucet off with a mystified look on his face.
“Huh? Don’t tell me you didn’t realize.”
“Uhhhh, well…” Sousei automatically gave a vague answer.
Self-awareness… I guess if I had to say, the answer’d be yes. But, man, this really came out of nowhere.
Sousei had been doing his best to act as normally as possible. At school especially.
“Okay, so when you say ‘odd,’ what do you actually mean?”
Yukisada gave an immediate answer to Sousei’s question. “Your hands.”
“…Say what?”
“You always take a superlong time. Washing your hands, I mean.”
Sousei was in the middle of scrubbing between his fingers and lathering up.
“…Hmm. Do I? Is it really that long?”
“Yes, you take ages.” Yukisada chuckled. “There aren’t many guys who wash their hands so thoroughly. You wash them like a doctor. Or a surgeon about to go into the OR or something.”
“Nah, a surgeon’s gotta be…” Sousei muttered something along the lines of “an exaggeration” as he hastily finished up and took his handkerchief out.
Now that you mention it, everyone else doesn’t spend much time washing. Or rather, they do a pretty sloppy job. At least, that’s how it feels to me… But I guess doing it that way is more normal. Hmm. I should be more careful…
Yukisada chuckled to himself a bit. “You’re also really diligent about the way you dry off.”
“…Huh, really…?”
Sousei finished drying his hands to about 65 percent of what he’d normally be satisfied with and put his handkerchief away.
Argh. Not dry enough. This is gonna bother me…
But if normal high school students didn’t dry their hands that much, then there wasn’t much he could do.
I’ll just have to put up with it…
Sousei let out a sigh.
Yukisada laughed again. This classmate who Sousei could probably call a friend never roared with laughter, but he did laugh quite often. And he was able to laugh in different ways.
“By the way, Sousei—”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What?” Sousei responded without thinking.
“A girlfriend,” Yukisada repeated. “Do you have one?”
“…Have?” To Sousei, those words sounded like a foreign language. “…Girlfriend?”
Of course, it was a standard word that was common in daily conversation. But did Yukisada mean a girl friend or a girlfriend? Was he asking Sousei if he was friends with any girls, or did he want to know if Sousei was dating a girl? Sousei was pretty sure that Yukisada was asking if he had a relationship. A lover.
Sousei and Yukisada had been in the same class since their first year of high school, but they’d hardly ever talked about this sort of thing before. In fact, it had never come up in conversation. Not even once. So why was Yukisada suddenly asking?
There was a girl called Asumi Shiramori in Class 2-2 with Sousei and Yukisada. Asumi was tall for a girl at five foot seven. She was slim and well proportioned, her body about seven or eight times the height of her head, which many considered to be the ideal build for a model. According to what Sousei had heard, either her grandfather or grandmother was a foreigner, which would explain why Asumi’s skin, hair, and eyes were a lighter hue than most Japanese people.
Incidentally, Sousei was also five-seven, more or less. He didn’t have any notable features. His eyes, nose, and mouth weren’t especially big or small, and his jaw was neither especially square nor pointy. For normal high school student Sousei Takarai, who had average grades and mediocre looks, it felt like there was a big gap between him and Asumi Shiramori. A huge gap. They practically lived on different planets. Despite that, Sousei had taken an interest in Asumi. It wasn’t just a passing fancy. It also wasn’t because she had a peculiar appearance or because she was particularly good-looking.
It was her gaze that caught his attention. Asumi, who had been in the same class since the start of their second year of high school, always seemed to be glancing at Sousei.
…Is it just me? It could be a misunderstanding. Or just my imagination… Maybe…
That was what he thought at first. However, all the signs seemed to indicate otherwise. It soon became clear that Asumi studied Sousei with unnaturally high frequency.
Could it be—?
With time, Sousei grew more and more confident in his hunch.
They do say you can’t judge a book by its cover… Is it possible Shiramori…comes from a similar background…?
While he was at school, or more specifically, at least while he was at school, Sousei wanted to be a regular student like everyone else. Although he didn’t have many friends, he did have people like Yukisada Hayashi in his life. He went to class every day. He sometimes enjoyed school events. Sousei considered these things priceless.
So it wasn’t exactly accurate to say that he had taken an interest in Asumi. Sousei was suspicious of her. He was on guard.
And apparently, Asumi and Yukisada had ended up on the same train home recently.
“I was there by myself, and so was she. I had my earphones in, listening to music. Oh, I guess that doesn’t really matter, huh?”
Correct. That didn’t matter.
“Asumi said, ‘Hayashi, you’re close with Takarai, right?’ and I told her that we’re sort of friends.”
Sort of friends…
Sousei’s chest tightened slightly.
Sort of…? We’re sort of friends…? Yeah, sure, makes sense…
Sousei only ever saw Yukisada at school. They had each other added on LINE, and they texted once or twice. But for Sousei, this was the closest he could get to anyone. More than that, like hanging out after school, was too much for him.
“And then,” Yukisada continued smoothly, “Asumi asked me, ‘Does Sousei have a girlfriend?’”
“Hmm…” Sousei blinked twice and then opened his eyes wide. “…Wait, what?”
“So I said, ‘Now that you mention it, I’m not sure.’ I thought about it, but then I realized I also had no idea.”
“Ahhh…” Sousei felt like he was going to burst out laughing. It wasn’t particularly funny or strange, but something about all this made him chuckle.