“Ha ha. Enough about that. The tea you made is scrumptious, Michiru.”
“Hmph. Your obvious comments disappoint me, Nagahiro. I’m as disappointed as if you’d said, ‘This decision is not legally binding.’”
Leaving aside the fact that Fukuroi’s comment was surprisingly satirical, what was I supposed to think of this idyllic exchange between officialdom and the underworld? As I stood there dumbfounded, another voice called out to Fukuroi.
“He’s right, Michi! She’s an adorable girl. What are you doing telling a cute little thing like her that she looks gloomy? I almost went and proposed to her the second she walked in, like, Hey, wanna come live with me? Take a good look. That’s not India ink, that’s a Moronobu Hishikawa print. Right, cutie?”
This little speech was even more casual than Sakiguchi’s.
Actually, frivolous would be a better word for it.
Leaving aside the fact that he called the universally-feared Fukuroi “Michi,” where did he get off calling a gloomy character like me a “cute little thing”?
He sounded like he was taking my side, but at the same time I felt like I’d just been smoothly compared to an X-rated woodblock print, and anyway, I was hardly happy about being asked, “Right, cutie?” all buddy-buddy by this guy who was sprawled carelessly on top of the table.
Why not, you ask? Because the guy in question was Hyota Ashikaga from year 1, class A.
I don’t think there’s a girl in this school, or make that this city, or maybe even this prefecture, who’s “cuter” than him. His perfectly proportioned face isn’t just the face of an angel, it’s the face of the archangel who bosses around all the other angels, topped off by a full head of bouncy hair perfectly arranged in the latest style. So whatever compliment he gave me ended up sounding like a punchy bit of irony.
Or make that a kicky bit of irony.
The uniform he was wearing had been revamped even more drastically than the delinquent Fukuroi’s, with the pants practically turned into short-shorts in order to generously reveal those antelope-like legs of his that had made him the ace of the track team even though he was only a first-year.
Ever since he entered school this year looking like that, every girl who saw him stopped shortening her skirt and started wearing black stockings. That’s how legendary his bare legs were.
I’d made light of all those stories, figuring they were exaggerations, but now that I saw his bare legs in real life, I realized the rumors might not be entirely groundless.
Plus, I wear black stockings myself.
“You’re Mayumi Dojima, right? The second-year? I’m Hyota. Nice to meetcha, Doji. Tell me your LINE ID later, ’kay?”
Mr. Bare-Legs wasn’t just friendly, he was a little too familiar. For some reason he seemed to know my name, but if he also knew I was older than him, why was he so cavalier about giving me a nickname like “Doji”?
In a sense, he was even ruder than Fukuroi. I didn’t know what to say. I figured maybe I should just assume that since he was such an ace runner, he got close to people in a hurry, too.
Anyway, he could ask for my LINE ID all he wanted, but I didn’t even have a smartphone.
The fact is, my communication skills are so bad that it’s actually accurate to say I’m as gloomy as India ink. Hardly a minute had passed since I’d stepped into the art room, but my capacity for human interaction was already at its limit: one more word would have sent me into hysterics. Fortunately, the fourth person in the art room didn’t say anything about me.
Not only that, aside from a quick glance when I walked in, he hadn’t even looked at me.
He was the only one doing something appropriate to the room’s original purpose─running his paintbrush over a canvas on an easel set up in one corner.
His silence rescued my emotional state by a hair’s breadth─but being ignored was tough in its own way.
All the more so since he was the one doing the ignoring.
With all due respect to the other three─and granted, I didn’t know him personally─he was even more famous than the councilman, the bossman, or the angel-among-men.
Truly.
Sosaku Yubiwa, year 1, class A.
As you can probably guess from his last name, he’s the heir to the Yubiwa Foundation, the parent organization of our school─or rather, the Yubiwa Foundation is almost entirely run by this brilliant middle school student. At just twelve years old, he is for all intents and purposes the chairman of the foundation.
Put simply, he’s a child genius with both money and power.
The worst possible triangle of forces.
He’s not just a golden child, he’s the gold standard─and therefore, if he doesn’t like you, you’re done for.
Not just done for, destroyed.
The highest law that all students enrolled at Yubiwa Academy Middle School must obey is this: Worship the ground Sosaku Yubiwa walks on.
So when he ignored me, I became extremely worried that maybe I’d done something to offend him─although I was probably overreacting.
It wasn’t unusual for him to ignore everyone other than himself. Yubiwa never looked at anyone, and he never talked to anyone either, as if the masses were invisible to him.
No words, no interest. The iceman.
But here he was, the guy who never hung out with anyone, who wasn’t part of anyone’s clique because he was a one-man clique of his own, hanging out in the art room─though it would have been just as strange anywhere else, for that matter─with three other people. This was just too much.
Though if he was here, and his formidable fortune was behind it, then the bizarrely excessive décor in the room suddenly made sense. Still, seeing him here with the infamous delinquent, the most outstanding student in the history of the school, and the school idol who everyone treated like a princess was enough to make me question my own sanity and wonder if I was starting to see things.
That’s how cornered I felt.
Or maybe I really had fallen from the roof that time─and this was all a vision flashing before my eyes in the moment before my death.
The fact alone that these four eccentric individuals belonged to the same group was enough to practically make me faint, but to discover that on top of that they comprised the famous, or rather infamous, Pretty Boy Detective Club? Though at the same time, I found it somehow easy to believe.
Yeah, it all made sense now.
This was indeed a pretty boy detective club.
A part of me had sneered to think what overly-arrogant narcissists a group would have to be to make themselves over with such an over-the-top name, but it fit these four boys so perfectly it was almost painful.
If any other group of students had called themselves that I might have been able to tease them for it, but with these four, I couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t just their outward appearance, either─the way they talked and acted deserved that overblown name, too.
But that actually made me more bewildered, not less.
Why would they do it?
What had motivated these four to affiliate themselves with the Pretty Boy Detective Club, rumored as it was to be the source of all problems at our school─
“Well, since the president himself brought the client here, I won’t complain,” Fukuroi remarked, withdrawing his previous objections and interrupting my thoughts.
“True indeed. Shall we start by hearing the motion from the president?”
“Yeah! Pre-si-dent, pre-si-dent!”
Sakiguchi and Mr. Bare-Legs followed Fukuroi’s lead. The taciturn Yubiwa still didn’t say anything, but he did stop moving his brush, and this time swiveled his entire body in our direction.
“Ah ha ha ha!”
While I stood there in a daze, the person in question, the one who had brought me to the art room, laughed loudly under their respectful gazes, so different from the ones they had turned on me a few moments earlier. Then he grabbed my hand willy-nilly─and shook it as ardently as if he were hugging me.
“Once again, allow me to say how pleased I am to meet you, my dear Mayumi Dojima! I am none other than the beautiful president of the Pretty Boy Detective Club, Manabu Sotoin!”
So proclaimed the headman who commanded the bossman, the councilman, the chairman, and the angel-among-men.
Until that day, I’d never heard his name nor even laid eyes on him.
He was a pretty boy about whom I knew nothing at all.