At the beginning of school after the summer vacation, Yabusaka came to visit me in the classroom with an unchanged appearance, while the atmosphere of my classmates had changed slightly.
“Hey Souji, I’ve been calling you a lot, what happened to your phone?”
“I broke it during summer vacation.”
“Eh?”
“I was texting in the bathtub and my hand slipped and it got submerged.”
“If you’re going to use it in the bath, make sure you put it in a Ziploc!”
“No, I took a bath in the middle of texting, but I was just going to leave it nearby. I was so anxious to hear the reply to a text that I reached into the changing room.”
“Oh, okay. Don’t bother explaining, just get a new one. It’s inconvenient.”
“I can’t afford it until I get paid. I’m poor unlike you, you know.”
“You can pay by installments, right?”
“I can’t afford it until I get paid from my part-time job. It’s cheaper to buy it with full payment…”
“Ahh! That’s enough, you idiot!”
“What do you want?”
“Well, I told a girl in another class that I was your friend…”
“Oh, good. It was for a stupid thing.”
“Don’t say that with a smile!”
The truth is, I don’t have many friends, so I don’t really need a smartphone. I rarely go online and I don’t play app games. I just had it with me regularly and hardly used it.
The problem was Hiria-chan.
It’s not like we were fighting, so I’m sure everything will be fine. But I wanted to let her know that my phone is out of service.
I left a note on the bookshelf in the back of the second library, telling her that my phone was broken, but she either didn’t show up or she couldn’t find it, so there was no sign of her reading it. I went to check on it a few times.
The second library was dimly lit when the weather was bad.
I didn’t think it was necessary to turn on the lights. So I just went in and hurried to check my notes, and kicked something at my feet.
I heard a rustling sound and checked my feet.
It was a bag of cookies in the shape of the alphabet.
Because I kicked it away, I couldn’t tell the order of the letters, and because I crushed one of them with my foot, the shape was broken and it became even more difficult to recognize the letters.
Even so, I was able to rearrange some of them closer to their original position and arrived at a word that I thought might be this one.
“DAISU”.
Soybean!
(TN: DAISU means Soybean in Japanese)
This was definitely from Hiria-chan. A message from a natto lover. I thought I had skipped over a few of them, but now that they were in writing, I was sure they were all correct.
Maybe she’s eating natto and doing well. She still didn’t seem to have noticed my note, but I felt a little relieved. Maybe there was no need to panic.
Then, I was flattered by the cookies.
I couldn’t eat them because they became useless, but it was such a waste that I couldn’t eat them.
I should at least meet her and say thank you.
But I couldn’t go to the second library every time because I was surrounded by girls, and even when I did, she was not there.
Besides, sometimes I would go there during lunch break and come back to find Saionji-san working with Masuda-sensei on a bookmark for the principal’s birthday party, which made me feel bad and made it even harder to go.
I had to help out at home after school, so I didn’t have time to wait around for her to come. If I could just get in touch with her, I could invite her to meet with me though.
Even though we were working on the class committee together, Saionji-san wasn’t in good spirits, so I didn’t really talk to her.
I guess she hadn’t gotten in touch with the person she liked. I didn’t bother to ask any questions when she didn’t say anything about it.
We were not that close, just less tense than we used to be. She was still as godlike as ever, so I couldn’t make eye contact with her, nor could I talk to her casually.
When I went home to help in the store, my mother suddenly asked me how Hiria-chan was.
“E-eh? How do you know about Hiria-chan?”
“…Is your head alright? Of course I know about Yuria-chan because I’ve met her.”
“Eh Yuria …-chan? … oh, you mean …Saionji-san. …She’s got a lot going on, but she seems to be in good health.”
I’ve started to mishear Yuria-chan as Hiria-chan. It’s a serious condition. In addition to that, whenever the word “Hi Ria” is mentioned on TV, it makes me go rigid. I haven’t seen her yet, but my brain is flooded with her.
(TN: Hi Ria – means unreal apparently. FYI)
I wanted to contact you as soon as possible. I could have done it a little earlier if I had used my savings, but my parents said they would buy it for me as a birthday present, so I held out for a little longer.
＊
Yabusaka came to visit me during break time.
When he comes to me, it’s usually for something trivial. Even so, it’s easier than nodding and shaking like a Peko-chan doll to the girls.
When I left the classroom, I was taken to a window in the hallway.
Yabusaka had an oddly pompous expression on his face and whispered to me quietly.
“Hey, Souji, what did you do to Yuria-san? People are talking about how you were talking to her.”
Saionji-san and I talked…? Yes, we did.
“Saionji-san and I had a brief encounter during the summer vacation, and I’m not sure if we’re friends or not, but we’re not on bad terms anymore.”
“There’s a rumor that she was crying.”
“Eh, ah. I have nothing to do with that at all, but… I lightly gave her some advice…”
Yabusaka shook his head in overreaction, with a look of exasperation on his face.
“You know, there are some bad rumors circulating about Yuria-san!”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“According to them, she’s a bad woman who plays with pure-hearted Sakura-kun!. Even though you’re such a useless fellow that you should even pay her as thanks for treating you like that!”
“Th-that is… why though? It was Saionji-san who was crying. Then…”
“There’s a lot of drama there! The machinations of a woman in love and all that!”
Yabusaka holds up his index finger and gives it a small shake from side to side as he makes a strong argument. Then he let out a breath like he was making fun of me.
“Well, your fans are probably making up their own imaginations… In addition, strangely you also seem clean… You are not a character who plays around with girls in the eyes of others.”
I see. Maybe they all know that I’m not the kind of person who plays with people, that I don’t have that kind of skill.
As Yabusaka said, I’m such a simpleton that I’d turn into a stupid in shock if I were to be toyed by someone like that.
By the way, I’m not clean at all. But I think I’m unconsciously trying to act like I am. I want to hide my dirty mind as much as possible.
“Yuria-san, on the other hand, has 68 boyfriends, right?”
“Is the boyfriend count still going up? She told me that she doesn’t have even one.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Yeah, because the person herself said that…”
“Even though she’s that cute? How is that possible? Think about it in terms of common sense. Besides, she’s got some magic in her.”
When someone says that, I also sort of feel that way. Saionji-san is that cute. But,
“I don’t really care if Saionji-san has zero boyfriends or 68, to be honest…”
Either way, it has nothing to do with me, and it won’t change the way I look at her. Either way, she’s a person above the clouds.
There’s no such thing as toying with her or being toyed by her. It’s a mystery to me why people around me are gossiping about her and trying to attach her to me just because we talked for a while.
At the beginning of school after the summer vacation, Yabusaka came to visit me in the classroom with an unchanged appearance, while the atmosphere of my classmates had changed slightly.
“Hey Souji, I’ve been calling you a lot, what happened to your phone?”
“I broke it during summer vacation.”
“Eh?”
“I was texting in the bathtub and my hand slipped and it got submerged.”
“If you’re going to use it in the bath, make sure you put it in a Ziploc!”
“No, I took a bath in the middle of texting, but I was just going to leave it nearby. I was so anxious to hear the reply to a text that I reached into the changing room.”
“Oh, okay. Don’t bother explaining, just get a new one. It’s inconvenient.”
“I can’t afford it until I get paid. I’m poor unlike you, you know.”
“You can pay by installments, right?”
“I can’t afford it until I get paid from my part-time job. It’s cheaper to buy it with full payment…”
“Ahh! That’s enough, you idiot!”
“What do you want?”
“Well, I told a girl in another class that I was your friend…”
“Oh, good. It was for a stupid thing.”
“Don’t say that with a smile!”
The truth is, I don’t have many friends, so I don’t really need a smartphone. I rarely go online and I don’t play app games. I just had it with me regularly and hardly used it.
The problem was Hiria-chan.
It’s not like we were fighting, so I’m sure everything will be fine. But I wanted to let her know that my phone is out of service.
I left a note on the bookshelf in the back of the second library, telling her that my phone was broken, but she either didn’t show up or she couldn’t find it, so there was no sign of her reading it. I went to check on it a few times.
The second library was dimly lit when the weather was bad.
I didn’t think it was necessary to turn on the lights. So I just went in and hurried to check my notes, and kicked something at my feet.
I heard a rustling sound and checked my feet.
It was a bag of cookies in the shape of the alphabet.
Because I kicked it away, I couldn’t tell the order of the letters, and because I crushed one of them with my foot, the shape was broken and it became even more difficult to recognize the letters.
Even so, I was able to rearrange some of them closer to their original position and arrived at a word that I thought might be this one.
“DAISU”.
Soybean!
(TN: DAISU means Soybean in Japanese)
This was definitely from Hiria-chan. A message from a natto lover. I thought I had skipped over a few of them, but now that they were in writing, I was sure they were all correct.
Maybe she’s eating natto and doing well. She still didn’t seem to have noticed my note, but I felt a little relieved. Maybe there was no need to panic.
Then, I was flattered by the cookies.
I couldn’t eat them because they became useless, but it was such a waste that I couldn’t eat them.
I should at least meet her and say thank you.
But I couldn’t go to the second library every time because I was surrounded by girls, and even when I did, she was not there.
Besides, sometimes I would go there during lunch break and come back to find Saionji-san working with Masuda-sensei on a bookmark for the principal’s birthday party, which made me feel bad and made it even harder to go.
I had to help out at home after school, so I didn’t have time to wait around for her to come. If I could just get in touch with her, I could invite her to meet with me though.
Even though we were working on the class committee together, Saionji-san wasn’t in good spirits, so I didn’t really talk to her.
I guess she hadn’t gotten in touch with the person she liked. I didn’t bother to ask any questions when she didn’t say anything about it.
We were not that close, just less tense than we used to be. She was still as godlike as ever, so I couldn’t make eye contact with her, nor could I talk to her casually.
When I went home to help in the store, my mother suddenly asked me how Hiria-chan was.
“E-eh? How do you know about Hiria-chan?”
“…Is your head alright? Of course I know about Yuria-chan because I’ve met her.”
“Eh Yuria …-chan? … oh, you mean …Saionji-san. …She’s got a lot going on, but she seems to be in good health.”
I’ve started to mishear Yuria-chan as Hiria-chan. It’s a serious condition. In addition to that, whenever the word “Hi Ria” is mentioned on TV, it makes me go rigid. I haven’t seen her yet, but my brain is flooded with her.
(TN: Hi Ria – means unreal apparently. FYI)
I wanted to contact you as soon as possible. I could have done it a little earlier if I had used my savings, but my parents said they would buy it for me as a birthday present, so I held out for a little longer.
＊
Yabusaka came to visit me during break time.
When he comes to me, it’s usually for something trivial. Even so, it’s easier than nodding and shaking like a Peko-chan doll to the girls.
When I left the classroom, I was taken to a window in the hallway.
Yabusaka had an oddly pompous expression on his face and whispered to me quietly.
“Hey, Souji, what did you do to Yuria-san? People are talking about how you were talking to her.”
Saionji-san and I talked…? Yes, we did.
“Saionji-san and I had a brief encounter during the summer vacation, and I’m not sure if we’re friends or not, but we’re not on bad terms anymore.”
“There’s a rumor that she was crying.”
“Eh, ah. I have nothing to do with that at all, but… I lightly gave her some advice…”
Yabusaka shook his head in overreaction, with a look of exasperation on his face.
“You know, there are some bad rumors circulating about Yuria-san!”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“According to them, she’s a bad woman who plays with pure-hearted Sakura-kun!. Even though you’re such a useless fellow that you should even pay her as thanks for treating you like that!”
“Th-that is… why though? It was Saionji-san who was crying. Then…”
“There’s a lot of drama there! The machinations of a woman in love and all that!”
Yabusaka holds up his index finger and gives it a small shake from side to side as he makes a strong argument. Then he let out a breath like he was making fun of me.
“Well, your fans are probably making up their own imaginations… In addition, strangely you also seem clean… You are not a character who plays around with girls in the eyes of others.”
I see. Maybe they all know that I’m not the kind of person who plays with people, that I don’t have that kind of skill.
As Yabusaka said, I’m such a simpleton that I’d turn into a stupid in shock if I were to be toyed by someone like that.
By the way, I’m not clean at all. But I think I’m unconsciously trying to act like I am. I want to hide my dirty mind as much as possible.
“Yuria-san, on the other hand, has 68 boyfriends, right?”
“Is the boyfriend count still going up? She told me that she doesn’t have even one.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Yeah, because the person herself said that…”
“Even though she’s that cute? How is that possible? Think about it in terms of common sense. Besides, she’s got some magic in her.”
When someone says that, I also sort of feel that way. Saionji-san is that cute. But,
“I don’t really care if Saionji-san has zero boyfriends or 68, to be honest…”
Either way, it has nothing to do with me, and it won’t change the way I look at her. Either way, she’s a person above the clouds.
There’s no such thing as toying with her or being toyed by her. It’s a mystery to me why people around me are gossiping about her and trying to attach her to me just because we talked for a while.
