After class that day, I was getting ready to head to the art room as usual when the cell phone in the pocket of my slacks rang.
Coming to school in a boy’s uniform had already earned me more attention from my classmates than the old me could ever have imagined, and now that ring was threatening to make me even more conspicuous. I answered, a shiver running down my spine.
“Ms. Dojima. You are being called to service as a member of the Pretty Boy Detective Club─please set aside any other plans you may have and report to the art room immediately,” came the unilateral command from the other end.
Even over the phone, the vice president’s beautiful voice lost none of its power to make me stand instantly to attention─but before I could reply, the line went dead.
This wasn’t due to poor etiquette on the part of Nagahiro Sakiguchi, known to the outside world as the popular president of the student council, but rather to the fact that I was so unfamiliar with my phone that I accidentally hung up on him.
Then, to make matters worse, I tried to use it like a walkie-talkie─I don’t know how to redial, over.
I’m not sure how to put this.
Even though I’m a modern middle school kid, I lived a long time without a cell phone in order to protect my “overly good eyesight.” Recently, however, one thing led to another and I ended up joining the Pretty Boy Detective Club, at which point I couldn’t go phoneless anymore.
After all, weird as we may be, we’re still a detective club.
A group, a team.
Which wouldn’t work if we couldn’t get in touch with each other in emergencies─and I suppose it’s an unwritten rule that members should be reachable the rest of the time, too, emergency or no.
Well, the dos and don’ts of the Pretty Boy Detective Club tend to be pretty idiosyncratic, but anyway, when Sakiguchi found out that I didn’t have a digital device, his response was, “Hehe. Don’t worry, just leave it all to me.”
When he gave me his word in that oh-so-persuasive voice of his─the voice that has earned him the nickname Nagahiro the Orator, he of the beautiful voice─I found myself unable to press him for more details. But later, when I saw the item he’d provided for me, I felt like he’d hit me right where it hurts.
Right in my blind spot─the blind spot of my overly good eyes.
The reason I’d avoided using cell phones, and especially smartphones, in the past was that the light emitted by LCD screens is too strong for my sensitive eyes. On the flip side, using a cell phone that doesn’t have an LCD screen poses no problem whatsoever.
So he gave me a kiddy phone.
Also known as a “safe phone”─one of those mobile devices that are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, can’t send texts, can only place calls to preset numbers, and basically don’t have screens. Yup, no way this thing was going to affect my eyes.
In fact, it’s so simple you could use it with your eyes closed─simpler even than a flip phone. You can’t do much besides talk on it, though that actually makes it kind of a fitting phone for a detective.
Incidentally, since it was furnished by the club, they’re covering the bills─and considering that the five numbers I can call all belong to the other members, not to mention the fact that one of those members is a rich kid with a bottomless savings account, I decided to accept their generosity.
As a long-time resident of the land of discommunication, I was pretty happy to have a phone, even if it was essentially a toy. But when I got calls like this summoning me to HQ with no concern whatsoever for my plans or opinions, I also felt like I’d had a dog collar put around my neck.
How do I put this?
When I was a kid, I thought that when communication systems got more advanced and everyone had computers, we’d all be able to live more independently, but now the future is here and it turns out we’re more interconnected than ever.
Overconnected, you might say.
I guess human beings will never escape our communal nature, no matter how hard we try. With that sudden flash of insight, I hurriedly gathered my things to head home.
Home?
That’s right, home.
When the last bell of the day rang, I’d been eager as could be to head to the art room, but now that I’d been “called up,” I decided not to go─to the contrary, I made up my mind to rush back to the safety of home as quickly as possible, like I was fleeing a looming natural disaster.
Unfortunately, someone must have sussed out my operating principle (“If you’re not invited, go anyway, but if you are, immediately decide you don’t want to”), because when I got to the school gate, I found a sentry waiting there for me.
Kiboshed by the boshman. Er, bossman.
That would be Michiru Fukuroi, another member of the Pretty Boy Detective Club─if the universally loved councilman Sakiguchi was Yubiwa Academy’s official representative, then the universally feared delinquent Fukuroi was its shadow representative.
Astonishingly, this king of the underworld spread his arms wide to block the likes of little old me.
“What the hell d’you think you’re doing, Dojima? You call yourself Mayumi the Seer, but you look the other way when the president orders a meeting? Shit, I saw this coming a mile off!” he finished, glaring at me belligerently. Boy is he terrifying.
I definitely don’t recall accepting Mayumi the Seer as my nickname, but this didn’t seem like the right moment to raise that point.
Incidentally, we call him Michiru the Epicure, he of the beautiful palate.
Yes, you read that right, a rule-breaker who loves to cook.
Although “a cook who loves to break rules” might be more accurate.
Hang on, though, this order came from the president?
It was the vice president who had called me─but this went all the way to the top?
In that case, I wanted to go even less.
“Come on, get your ass in gear and come to the art room. You keep grumbling and I’ll see to it you never work in showbusiness again.”
“Uh, I don’t think I belong in that world in the first place…”
The delinquent─who, despite being the very embodiment of the rebellious male middle school student, is meekly obedient to the leader and the leader alone─made a move to grab me by the collar.
Not so fast, buddy!
By snatching the glasses off my face, I honed my eyesight to a razor’s edge and managed to dodge his grasp─then I made a break for it.
“You little shit! You’re pretty sprightly for such a gloomy kid…”
Call me gloomy all you want─I’m free!
Why don’t you skulk back to the school and look at your perfect face in the mirror!
But the next instant, the curtain fell on my little escape attempt─because no sooner had I given the delinquent the slip than something sideswiped me, hard.
“Oof!”
I thought for a moment that I’d been hit by a car (what a way to go, hit by a car while fleeing a beautiful boy), but as it turned out, it was neither a car nor a rugby player that flattened me─it was the first-year ace of the track team.
Otherwise known as Hyota the Adonis, he of the beautiful legs.
Another member of the Pretty Boy Detective Club─who had apparently been hiding behind a tree.
The fact that two members had been mobilized to capture a nobody like me spoke to the urgency of the president’s summons.
“Ah ha ha. Nice try, Doji. You may have good eyes, but you’ll never escape a boy who’s faster than the speed of light!” chirped Mr. Bare-Legs as he pressed me into the asphalt─that’s my secret name for him, by the way, since he’s redone his uniform even more drastically than the delinquent by turning the slacks into short shorts. Even if the speed of light thing was an exaggeration, he was right that good eyes aren’t going to help anyone run away from fast legs.
It was all over. Now that Mr. Bare-Legs was pinning me down with his bare legs, all I could do was steel myself for what lay ahead.
If I kept resisting, who knows where Mr. Bare-Legs might try to cop a feel in the confusion─just because I dress as a boy doesn’t mean I’ve thrown my feminine virtue to the wind.
“Dammit, Dojima, stop making this so hard on us. We’ve gotta hurry.”
The delinquent pulled me to my feet.
Like he was pulling up a carrot.
I suppose being sandwiched between the bare legs of Hyota the Adonis and handled like a vegetable by Michiru the Epicure was something of an honor, but it still felt plain old humiliating.
“Oh, but if this is such an urgent matter, you should definitely feel free to go ahead and get started without me…”
“Stop acting like this has nothing to do with you. I bet you’re one of those people who says, ‘Everyone’s always glued to their phones these days. I never see anyone reading on the train anymore!’ If you’d just get out a book yourself, then there’d at least be one!” Accompanied by this dose of his usual somewhat overblown satire, the delinquent began dragging me back toward the school building.
To tell the truth, I probably could have found a window of opportunity to run away now that Mr. Bare-Legs had freed me from his bare legs, but the delinquent followed up his scathing satire by saying, “You sure as hell don’t act like you’re part of the team,” and suddenly I didn’t want to run anymore.
He wasn’t treating me like part of a meal, he was treating me like part of the team.
Like I was one of them.
That was something I’d been even more starved for than a cell phone all these long years─Michiru the Epicure really did have a knack for serving up exactly what a person needed.