"Ha ha ha ha! God, you're so dumb. You're hilarious, man!"
Ike chatted loudly with Yamauchi during second-period math. It'd been
three weeks since the entrance ceremony. In that time, Ike and Yamauchi,
along with Sudou, had collectively come to be known as "The Idiot Trio."
"Hey, hey, do you want to go do karaoke?"
"Yeah, let's go!"
A group of girls nearby were making plans for after class.
"I was really worried for a while, but it looks like everyone's opened
up to each other quickly."
"Ayanokouji-kun, haven't you made quite a few friends?" asked
Horikita, copying what was written on the blackboard into her notebook.
"Somewhat, I suppose."
Although I was anxious at first, I'd gotten to know Sudou from our
encounter at the convenience store, and I'd bonded with Ike and Yamauchi
through the incident at the pool. Sometimes we ate lunch together. Even
though I was far from having a best friend, before I knew it, I could say that I
had some friends. Human relationships are rather mysterious, so I couldn't
pinpoint the precise moment we became friends.
"Sup?" Halfway through class, Sudou crashed through the door and
barged into the classroom. He slumped in his seat with a yawn, clearly not
caring how late he was.
"Oh, hey, Sudou. Wanna get lunch later?" Ike called out to Sudou from
across the room.
The math teacher continued the lesson without even really paying
attention. Normally, the teacher would have flicked a piece of chalk at him,
but perhaps out of some feeling of laissez faire, all of the teachers tolerated
that kind of behavior. Even when it came to poor language, being late to
class, or dozing off, no one cared. While at first our class had acted more reserved, now everyone was far too flippant. Of course, there were a few
students like Horikita who studied diligently.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, indicating that I'd received a
message. It was from the guys' group chat that I was a part of. It looked like
they'd decided to eat lunch in the dining hall.
"Hey, Horikita. Do you want to have lunch with me?" I asked.
"I will have to decline. Your group is rather unrefined, anyway."
"I can't deny that."
When guys were alone, all they talked about were girls and dirty jokes.
Who's cute, who's going out with who, how far they've gone, etc. Adding a
girl into the group would probably have been a bad idea.
"Whoa. Seriously, he has a girlfriend? Awesome."
Based on Ike's conversation, it sounded like Hirata was dating
Karuizawa. Watching Karuizawa from afar, I saw that she was gazing
lovingly at him from across the room. As for my own impression of
Karuizawa, well, she was certainly cute. But she had this atmosphere around
her that it made difficult for uncertain people to approach her. In other words,
she seemed like one of those intensely "girly"-type girls. In junior high, she'd
probably pounced on pretty boys like Hirata. These were my own
uncharitable assumptions, but I probably wasn't far off.
Oops. I had pretty mean-spirited opinions about her, although, not
really to the extent that it would be considered defamation. I apologized to
Karuizawa in my head.
"I hate that look on your face."
Horikita glared icily at me. She must have read my sleazy inner
thoughts. How fast did you need to move to become a couple right after
starting school? I was agonizing over just making friends. If I'd gone up to
Horikita and asked, "Would you go out with me?" she definitely would've
smacked me. At any rate, if I were to get a girlfriend, I'd prefer a kinder,
more ladylike girl.