Bab 33: Finding culprit
He was a rather handsome guy. So much so, I wouldn't know how to
describe him other than handsome. His hair was styled into wavy points.
Some sort of stylish frames fitted his trendy glasses, and the eyes behind
them were direct. When they met mine, he grinned. Unwittingly, I returned a
forced smile. He was so good-looking that I instinctively recognized my own
inferiority.
"Sorry for coming at this hour. I wanted to ask for your help." He set his
Umbro shoulder bag on the floor and asked, "Is here fine?" as if it were the
most natural thing in the world, before proceeding to pull out a chair in front
of Yukinoshita. Every single gesture just made him look that much more
attractive. "I just haven't been able to slip away from practice. Club time is
canceled for a week before exams, so they wanted to make sure we got
through every drill today. Sorry."
I guess that was what it meant to be needed. If I were to bail on club early,
not only would no one stop me, no one would even notice me leave.
Seriously, am I a ninja or what?
Though he said he'd been busy with practice, I didn't smell a whiff of
sweat on him. Quite the contrary, a refreshing citrus scent wafted off him.
"Enough with the humblebragging." Yukinoshita's words were like a
smack in his cheerful face. For some reason, she seemed slightly brusquer
than usual. "You came here because you want something. Is that right,
Hayato Hayama?"
Though Yukinoshita's tone was icy, Hayato Hayama's smile didn't falter.
"Oh, that's right. This is the Service Club, right? Miss Hiratsuka told me that
if I needed help with any problems, I should come here." When he spoke, for some reason, a refreshing breeze blew in from the window. Did he have
mystical wind powers or what? "Sorry for coming so late. If Yui and the rest
of you have plans after this, I can come another time."
In response to his remark, Yuigahama smirked in her shallow, familiar
way. Apparently, her defaults for interacting with the upper caste were not so
easily abandoned:
"O-oh, no, you don't have to do that! You are the soon-to-be captain of
the soccer team, after all. You couldn't help running late."
Yuigahama was probably the only one who felt that way, though.
Yukinoshita looked tense, and Zaimokuza silently attempting to project an air
both stern and tough.
"Hey, sorry to you, too, Zaimokuza."
"Eugh?! P-pfagh, uh, er, I-I'm done here now, um, I was just leaving…"
The hostile vibe Zaimokuza had been attempting to emit dispersed the instant
Hayama addressed him. Zaimokuza went so far the other way, he actually
started acting like he was the one somehow in the wrong. Koff, koff, koff.
"Hachiman! Farewell!" Zaimokuza split before the words were even out of
this mouth. He seemed unusually giddy for a guy running away, though.
Zaimokuza, I understand that feeling so well it hurts. I don't really know
why, but when dregs like us run into members of the elite, we shrivel up. We
step aside for them in the hallways, and if one of them were to deign to talk
to us, we'd have about an 80 percent stutter rate. You'd think that this would
make us even more resentful and jealous of them, but that's isn't the case.
We're actually a little happy if one of them even remembers our names.
A guy like Hayama knew my name—knew me. This recognition restored
my sense of dignity.
"…and Hikitani, too. Sorry for coming so late."
"…No, it's fine." Mine was the only name he got wrong! Hey, my dignity
was still gone. "Anyway, didn't you come here for a reason?" I wasn't
unconsciously trying to hurry this along because I resented him for getting
my name wrong or anything… Honest! I was deeply interested in Hayama's
problems. I was honestly just baffled as to what sort of problems a person on
the very highest rung of this school's social ladder might have. This was in
no way motivated by a desire to discover his weaknesses or use that
information for blackmail. I possessed none of those base feelings, none
whatsoever.
"Oh yeah, about that," Hayama said, abruptly pulling out his phone. He
swiftly clacked away at the keys, opening up the e-mail window, and showed
it to me.
Yukinoshita and Yuigahama leaned in for a peek from either side. Having
three people in front of a palm-sized screen was crowded and smelled too
nice and made me feel uncomfortable. I let the two of them take my place,
and Yuigahama quietly exclaimed, "Oh…"
"What is it?" I asked, and Yuigahama withdrew her own phone and
showed it to me. There was a message on it identical to Hayama's.
The e-mail was what you might call anonymous defamation. And it
wasn't just one. Every time Yuigahama's finger moved, a litany of similar,
hateful messages scrolled down the screen. All of them were probably sock
accounts, as there were slanderous and defamatory messages from multiple
senders. It was stuff like Tobe is in a street gang in Inage and was targeting
kids from Nishi High at an arcade. Or Yamato is a filthy, three-timing SOB.
Or Ooka was deliberately playing dirty at a practice match with another
school to take down their star player. Basically stuff like that. There were
tons and tons, and none of them could be verified. Though the majority came
from socks, some were forwarded from people who appeared to be
classmates.
"Hey, what the…?"
Yuigahama nodded silently. "I told you before, didn't I? About the stuff
that's going around in our class."
"A chain e-mail, hmm?" Yukinoshita, who had been silent until then,
spoke.
A chain e-mail, as the name suggests, circulates around and around like a
chain. Usually, they come with directions at the end like Please forward this
to five people. They're a lot like the 'chain letters' of yore, those old analog
letters that read, If you don't send this letter to five people within three days,
you will be met with great misfortune. You can think of chain e-mail as the
digital iterations.
Looking at the message again, Hayama grimaced. "Ever since this started
going around, things have been feeling nasty in class. It makes me angry
seeing bad things written about my friends, too." Hayama was as vexed by
this anonymous villain asYuigahama had earlier.
There is nothing more terrifying than covert bile. If someone gets up in your face talking smack, you can punch them or insult them back to vent.
There's also the option of holding on doggedly to your resentful feelings
toward that person and sublimating that stress into something else. Those
sorts of dark emotions are endowed with lots of energy you can channel into
something positive. But when you don't have an enemy to make the recipient
of all your hatred, jealousy, and thirst for vengeance, it all just feels vague
and unclear.
"I want to put a stop to it, you know? This kind of thing just isn't nice,"
said Hayama asserted, cheerfully adding, "Oh, but I don't mean I want to
bust whoever's doing it. I want to find a way to resolve this peacefully. Do
you think you can help me?"
There it was. He'd just invoked his ultimate move: the Zone.
Let me explain. The Zone is a character skill that only true normies have,
and its most prominent characteristic is how it sets everything up to go just
right. Unlike regular normies (LOL) who expose their stupidity with little
thought and waste all their time on shallow and idle amusements, true
normies are fulfilled by real life in a real way. Because of that, they don't
look down on anyone; in fact, they're kind to those whom others look down
upon. The standard for telling these two apart is Are they nice to Hachiman
Hikigaya? I think Hayama is pretty nice. I mean, he'll actually talk to me—
though he gets my name wrong.
Basically, I guess you could call the Zone a unique air that nice,
charismatic people have. To put it kindly, Hayama was nice and considerate.
To put it normally, he was useless and full of flippant smiles. Put meanly, he
was a cowardly piece of crap. I did think he was a good guy, though.
Confronted by Hayama's special powers, Yukinoshita seemed to ponder
for a moment before opening her mouth. "In other words, you want us to
come up with a plan to deal with this situation?"
"Yeah, well, that's the idea."
"Then we have to find the culprit."
"Okay, good…huh?! Wait, why do we have to do that?" Hayama had
clearly not been paying attention to where the conversation was going. For an
instant, he looked stunned, but he immediately composed himself as he
calmly asked Yukinoshita to elaborate.
In contrast to Hayama, Yukinoshita's expression was glacial as she slowly
began speaking, carefully selecting her is the worst sort of human behavior: the kind that tramples human dignity.
They spread their slander and libel purely for the sake of hurting others while
concealing their own identities. The most vicious part is that those who
spread this malice are not necessarily malicious themselves. Curiosity and
sometimes even good intentions lead them to disseminate it further, and the
web of malice expands. If you want it stopped, you must tear it up by the
roots. Nothing less will have any effect. Source: me."
"So you're speaking from personal experience, huh?" I wished
Yukinoshita would stop exposing her own personal minefields like that. Her
tone was placid, but I could practically see dark flames wavering at her back.
It felt like the kind of scene that deserved ominous sound effects.
"What on earth is so fun about propagating content that denigrates others?
I don't see how it benefited Sagawa or Shimoda in any way."
"So you even figured out who did it." Yuigahama managed a stiff,
awkward smile. This is exactly why making enemies of high-spec people is
scary.
"Your school must have been pretty cutting edge, then," I said. "There
wasn't any of that at my school."
"You just think that because no one asked you for your e-mail,"
Yukinoshita' jabbed.
"What?! Hey! You jerk! I was just maintaining confidentiality! Haven't
you ever heard of the Act on the Protection of Personal Information?!"
"That's a novel way to interpret the law." Rolling her eyes, Yukinoshita
swished back the hair on her shoulders. words.
But that was probably the reason I'd never been caught up in that sort of
chain e-mail imbroglio. Nobody would ever ask me for my e-mail address.
This is the difference between Yukinoshita and me. She gets exposed to all
this pernicious stuff, but I'm not worthy of even that. If something like that
were to happen to me, not only would I never find the culprit, I'd probably
just go home and moan to myself while soaking my pillow with tears.
"At any rate, anyone who would engage in such disgraceful behavior
should certainly be led to ruin. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and
hostility in response to hostility is my philosophy."
Yuigahama perked up. Apparently, she recognized the saying from
somewhere or other. "Oh! We learned that today in world history! That's the
Magna Carta, right?"
"It's the Code of Hammurabi," Yukinoshita smoothly replied before
turning to Hayama again. "I will search for the guilty party. I believe a few
choice words will be sufficient to stop them in their tracks. What happens
after that I will leave to your discretion. Is that fine with you?"
"Yeah, that's okay," Hayama said, as if resigned.
I was actually on the same page as Yukinoshita on this. This prick had
deliberately used a bunch of different accounts to send that e-mail, which
meant they were deliberately concealing their identity for fear of exposure. If
they were dragged into the open, they'd probably stop. Basically, finding the
transgressor would be the fastest way to fix this.
Yukinoshita stared hard at the cell phone Yuigahama had left on the desk,
applying her hand to her chin in her pseudo-Thinker pose. "When were the e-
mails first sent?"
"The end of last week. Right, Yui?" Hayama sought verification from
Yuigahama, who nodded.
Wait a second… So Hayama calls Yuigahama by her first name, huh? I
feel like…guys who are higher up in the school pecking order naturally take
to using girls' first names. I'd stammer and choke for sure. Though I had to
respect him a little for being able to pull off something that embarrassing
while still looking cool, I was also kind of…annoyed. Damn you—are you an
American or what?!
"So they suddenly started around the end of last week, hmm?" mused
Yukinoshita. "Yuigahama, Hayama, what happened in class around then?"
"I don't think there was anything in particular," said Hayama Yeah…it was the same as usual, right?" Yuigahama and Hayama
exchanged puzzled looks.
"I might as well ask you, too, Hikigaya. What about you?"
"What do you mean 'might as well'?" I was in the same class as them!
Well, I did see things from a different perspective than they would have, so
there were probably some things only I would have noticed. Around the end
of last week, huh…? In other words, it was something recent. I tried to think
of things that'd happened recently…recently…but nothing quite came to
mind. I guess if you considered stuff from yesterday, that's when I called
Totsuka by his first name for the first time, but that was about it.
Finding the courage
to call you Saika, I found
you were very cute.
So yesterday is now the
Anniversary of You.
Now that I thought about it, why had I been talking to Totsuka again? As
the thought crossed my mind, I suddenly remembered. "There was that one
thing yesterday… Everybody was talking about forming groups for the
workplace tour." Yup, Totsuka's cuteness had come out of that conversation.
This realization set something off in Yuigahama's brain. "Ack! That's it!
It's because we're splitting into groups!"
"Huh? That's why?"
"Huh? That's why?"
Look at that, we were comment clones! Hayama grinned and said "jinx"
or something or other I couldn't care less about.
All I could say was "Y-yeah…"
But if Hayama and I are clones, that means I'm also a fetching normie.
QED. Or not.
Hayama fixed his attention on Yuigahama, and she tittered as she
elaborated. "Well…because dividing into groups for a big field trip like this
affects your relationships afterward. Some people get really anxious about
it…" Yuigahama's expression turned dark, and Hayama and Yukinoshita
looked at her as if confused.
It probably wasn't something Hayama had ever had to deal with, and as
Yukinoshita didn't care about that stuff, she likely wouldn't get it. But I
understood.
This was Yuigahama, the girl who was always worried about what other people thought of her, the girl who'd survived the complicated
and mysterious web that was human relationships, so her words carried
weight.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone