It was 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. As Kei was preparing to leave his house, the phone in his pocket started ringing. When he took the phone out, it read…
'INCOMING CALL: Saki Chihaya'
Kei answered the phone call to ask her what she had called him for. In fact, he already knew what she was going to ask him. Every Saturday, it became a sort of ritual for Chihaya to somehow call him and ask him out which he would refuse each time. On this particular day of the week, Kei would refuse any invitations from everyone including Mai. That is to say, he didn't receive many invitations like this since he didn't make it a habit of giving his contact information to just anyone after all.
"What is it?"
"Keiii-chiinnn~ Let's go shopping today!"
"Haah… Why do you keep asking me out every Saturday even though you know I would refuse every time?" Kei let out a sigh.
"Heheh~ You can't really blame a girl for trying, can you?"
"In any case, I have to turn down your invitation."
Before Chihaya could make any more significant arguments, he had already hung up the call. As it was a ritual for Chihaya to call him every Saturday, he had his own plans every Saturday. As he left his apartment and walked past Mai's apartment to get to the elevator, Mai was seemingly peeking out of her apartment as if she was waiting for Kei to leave his apartment.
As Kei went into the elevator, Mai emerged from her apartment, dressed in a hoodie and shorts with a sling bag on her waist and began following Kei. As their apartment complex had two elevators available, Mai entered the other elevator to go down to the ground floor as well. Mai found it curious that Kei would refuse her invitations or visits every Saturday without fail even when they had no school assignments or part-time work to do. Hence, she decided to give in to her curiosity and followed him to find out what he does on his Saturdays.
She kept a certain distance between herself and Kei before finding herself being led to their nearest train station. There, she observed as Kei hopped onto a train and decided to also enter the train but in a different carriage. However, she found herself landed into the problem of a miscalculation that she forgot to factor into her plans. Whenever she would go out by herself, she would always find herself largely the center of attention due to her looks. Sure enough, the moment she got onto the train, an older male who looks like a college student decided to approach her to try and talk to her.
"Well, hello there. It's nice to meet you. What is your name?"
As the person spoke, Mai decided to ignore him. However, as with the many people who had approached her in the past, it was hard to get rid of the person as he kept on trying to talk to her.
"Come on, I'm just trying to make a friend. How about it? Can we exchange phone numbers?"
"Gross…" Mai accidentally spoke her mind.
"Now, young miss. It is highly inappropriate to call someone you don't know gross; don't you think so?" The person spoke loudly out of a sudden.
This was a rather popular tactic strangers use to prey on the guilt of their victims. Especially on timid looking girls like Mai. As he started speaking loudly, he started attracting the attention of the other passengers of the train. This caused Mai to worry about being found out by Kei. Just then, a familiar voice spoke out to the person.
"And I think that it's inappropriate for a total stranger to be asking for the phone number of someone they had just met."
When Mai looked up, she found her classmate Chihaya staring at the college boy as she was also speaking relatively loudly. As soon as she started speaking about what he did, the person started walking away in embarrassment of his failed attempt.
"Are you okay?" Chihaya spoke up.
"Mm… Thank you very much." Mai said as she looked over to see if Kei had noticed. Luckily for her, Kei was wearing earphones to drown out the noise from the surroundings.
"Creeps like him are everywhere these days, so you need to know how to get rid of them."
"Thank you for the advice…"
"By the way, I realise we've never really interacted much even though we're classmates, have we?"
"I guess…"
"Wanna hang out with us?"
"Umm…"
Chihaya noticed that Mai was distracted and was staring at something. When she followed her gaze, she was shocked to find Kei sitting at the other end of the next train carriage.
"Chihayaaa~ I finally found a seat for us…? What's wrong? Ara, what's Kei doing here?" A silver-haired girl emerged from the crowd of people.
The girl in question was none other than Azusa who had followed their gazes to find Kei sitting in the same train. As she was about to walk over to greet him, Chihaya and Mai instantly grabbed her by the hands and her mouth to keep her from doing so.
"Change of plans, Azusa. Let's follow Kei instead!" An enthusiastic Chihaya spoke.
"Ehhh? Doesn't that kind of infringes his privacy?"
"It's fine! We can just say that it was a coincidence that we met up with him wherever we bump into him. Besides, Mai here was probably doing the same thing." Chihaya smirked at Mai who couldn't meet her gaze.
"Mouu~ I won't take responsibility if we get caught, okay?"
As the three of them agreed that they will tail Kei to wherever he was going, they waited for another 10 minutes before noticing Kei finally standing up. He was dressed in a dark hoodie with navy blue jeans. He was trying not to attract any attention from other people and didn't have any intentions of interacting with anyone. Hence, the earphones.
When he got off the train, so did the three girls. The station they got off on was Shibuya Station, known for its shopping and entertainment district. When they got off the train, the three of them could only speculate as to what Kei was doing there.
"Ehh? I didn't take Kei as someone who would be interested in the shopping district." Chihaya said as they followed him through the shopping district.
However, they were puzzled to find that Kei did not enter any stores. The further into the shopping district they got, the more crowded it became. Trying to get through the huge crowd, Mai was separated from the group and was now alone. The huge crowd started to affect Mai as she was not used to handling or navigating through large crowds.
'Mouu~ If he would be more honest then I wouldn't have to do this.' Mai thought to herself.
When she finally reached the end of the crowd, Chihaya and Azusa were nowhere to be seen. As she looked around, she finally spotted the dark coloured hoodie that Kei was wearing and started tailing him again without Azusa and Chihaya. After another 10-minute walk, Kei finally entered a building. When Mai looked at the building in front of her, she was left with even more questions than she had when she started following Kei.
'What is he doing at a hospital?'