Chương 2: Service Club [ 2]
The teacher stopped before a completely unremarkable classroom. There
was nothing written on the nameplate by the door. I paused at that, thinking it
odd, and the teacher slid the door open with a rattle.
Desks and chairs were stacked up casually in one corner of the classroom.
Maybe it was being used for storage? The stack was the only thing
differentiating this room from all the others. There was nothing special about
it. It was extremely normal.
What made it feel so different, though, was that there was a girl there,
reading a book in the slanting rays of the setting sun.
The scene was so
picturesque that I imagined that even after the end of the world she would
still be sitting there, just like that.
The moment I saw her, my body and mind both froze. I was entranced.
When the girl noticed she had visitors, she bookmarked her paperback and
looked up. "Ms. Hiratsuka. I thought I asked you to knock before entering."
Flawless visage. Flowing black hair. Even wearing the same uniform as
all the faceless girls in my class, she looked completely different.
"Even if I knock, you never reply."
"You come in without giving me time to." She cast the teacher a
dissatisfied glance. "And who's this addled-looking boy?" Her chilly gaze
flicked toward me.
I knew this girl. Class 2-J, Yukino Yukinoshita.
Of course, all I knew was her name and face. I'd never spoken with her. I
can't help it. It was a rare occasion for me to speak to anyone at this school.
Aside from the nine regular classes at Soubu High, there's also another
class called the International Curriculum. The International Curriculum is two
or three points higher than the regular classes on the bell curve and is
composed mostly of kids who've spent time abroad or are looking to go on
exchange.
Among that class full of standouts—or rather, people who just naturally
drew the attention of others—Yukino Yukinoshita was particularly
distinctive.
She was a straight-A student, always enshrined in the top rank on both
regular and aptitude tests. And what's more, she was always showered with
attention due to her uncommonly good looks. Basically, she was so pretty
you could even say she was the prettiest girl in school. She was famous here,
and everyone knew about her.
And then there's me. I'm so bland and ordinary, I don't even know if
anyone knows I exist. So there would be nothing to be offended about if she
didn't know me. But the word addled hurt a bit. Enough to make me start
escaping reality by remembering that candy from a long time ago with a
similar name. I haven't seen it in a while.
"This is Hikigaya. He wants to join the club." Prodded forward by Ms.
Hiratsuka, I bowed lightly. I assumed she wanted me to introduce myself or
something.
"I'm Hachiman Hikigaya from Class 2-F. Um…hey. What do you mean,
'join the club'?" Join what club? What club was this?
Ms. Hiratsuka opened her mouth in anticipation of my question. "Your
punishment will be to participate in this club's activities. I won't accept any
arguments, disagreements, objections, questions, or back talk. Cool your head
for a bit and think about what you did." She handed down my sentence with
the force of crashing waves, leaving me no room for protest.
" Well, then, I think you can tell by looking at him, but he's rotten to the core. That's why
he's always alone. He's such a pitiful soul."
You can tell just by looking?. I thought in my mind .
"If he learns how to be around people, I think he'll straighten himself out
a little. I'll leave him with you. My request is that you correct his twisted,
lonely character," the teacher said, turning back to Yukinoshita.
Yukinoshita opened her mouth, looking annoyed. "If that's the issue, I
think you should just knock some discipline into him. Kicking would also
work."
What a scary girl.
"If I could, I would, but these days they make a little bit of a fuss about
that. Physical violence isn't allowed." The way she said that, it was as if she
were saying that psychological violence was allowed.
"I refuse. Seeing those lewd eyes of his brimming with ulterior motives, I
feel a threat to my person." Yukinoshita straightened her collar (though it
hadn't really been out of place) and glared in my direction. I'm not even
looking at your overly modest chest. No, really, it's true, okay? Really, really.
I'm seriously not looking. It just happened to be in my field of vision and
caught my attention for an instant.
"Relax, Yukinoshita. His rotten eyes and shady character are precisely
what give him a good grasp of self-preservation and calculating risk versus return. He'll never do anything that would get him arrested. You can trust in
his mild, low-level creepiness."
"None of that was complimentary in the slightest," I protested. "You don't
mean all that, right? It's not about calculation of risk versus reward or self-
preservation. Why can't you just tell her that I have common sense?"
"A low-level creep… I see…"
"She's not even listening, and she's convinced!"
Perhaps Ms. Hiratsuka's persuasion had borne fruit, or perhaps my low-
level creepiness had won her trust. Either way, Yukinoshita communicated
her decision in a very undesirable manner. "Well, if it's a request from a
teacher, I can't just refuse… I will comply." She acquiesced as if the idea was
really unpleasant.
The teacher smiled in satisfaction. "I see! Then I'll let you take it from
here," she said, excusing herself briskly.
Then there was me, left behind, standing there.
Frankly, I would have been much more at ease if she had left me all alone.
My usual solitary environment calms my soul.
The tick, tick, tick sound of the
second hand of the clock seemed awfully slow and excessively loud.
Come on, come on, is this for real? Suddenly a rom-com development?
This is making me royally anxious here. I'm not complaining about this
situation as a premise, though.
Unintentionally, some bittersweet memories from my middle-school days
came back to me.
It was after school, and two students were alone together in a classroom.
A gentle breeze rippled the curtains, slanted sunlight flowing in, and there
was a boy who had worked up his courage to confess his love.
Even now i can remember her voice in every detail.
Can't we just be friends?
Oh man, what a crappy memory. And forget being friends—I'd never
even spoken to her after that. In the aftermath, I'd developed an impression
that friends are people who don't even talk to each other.
I guess what I'mtrying to say is, even if I were to end up alone with a beautiful girl, I'd never
be part of a rom-com.
But having endured such advanced training for this very situation, I'm not
falling into that trap again. Girls only ever show interest in hot guys (LOL)
and normies (LOL), and once they have, they engage in impure relations with said individuals.
In other words, they are my enemies.
I've gone to a lot of trouble to avoid ever feeling that way again. The
easiest way not to get involved in a rom-com plot is to make girls hate you.
Sometimes you must lose the battle to win the war. If you want to protect
your pride, you don't need people to like you!
And that's why instead of greeting her, I decided to threaten her with a
glare. I'll kill her with my wild-beast eyes! Grrrrr!
Yukinoshita looked at me like I was a piece of garbage. She narrowed her
large eyes and let out a cold sigh. And then, in a voice like the murmuring of
a clear stream, she spoke to me:
"Don't just stand there growling like some animal. Sit down."
"Uh–ah–okay. Sorry."
Whoa, what was that look in her eyes? Was she a wild beast? She'd
definitely killed five people, just like those animals that chomped on Tomoko
Matsushima. She even made me reflexively apologize. I didn't have to go so
far as to try to intimidate her. She already considered me an enemy. Terrified
to the core, I deposited myself in an empty chair.
Yukinoshita left it at that and, without showing any interest in me at all,
had at some point opened her paperback again. I heard the soft slide of a
turning page. She had a book cover on it, so I couldn't see what she was
reading but figured it was something literary. Like Salinger or Hemingway or
Tolstoy or something. That's the kind of impression I got from her.
Yukinoshita sat there like a princess, looking very much the top student
and also in no way less beautiful than her reputation purported. However, as
is usual with people of that race, Yukino Yukinoshita was an individual who
lived apart from the crowd. Living up to her name, she was the snow under
the snow. No matter how beautiful she was, she was untouchable and
unattainable: You could only fantasize about her beauty.
Frankly, it had never occurred to me that I would be able to get close to
her through an unfathomable series of events like this. If I bragged to friends
about this, they'd be envious for sure. Not that I had any friends to brag to.
So what was I supposed to do with this gorgeous princess before me?.
"What?" Perhaps in reaction to all my staring, Yukinoshita furrowed her
brows in displeasure and looked up at me.
"Oh, sorry. I was just wondering what's up here."
"What?"
"Well, I got dragged here with no real explanation," I replied
Instead of clicking her tongue at me, she showed her ill humor by
vigorously snapping her paperback shut. She glared at me as if she were
looking at an insect, gave a sigh of resignation, and spoke.
"Okay. Then let's play a game."
"A game?"
"Yes. A game to guess what club this is. Okay, so what club is this?"
Playing a game alone with a girl…
Now this was coming off as some kind of kinky setup, but Yukinoshita
radiated no aura of temptation. She was more like a honed knife, sharp
enough that if you lost, it might cost you your life. Where did that rom-com
atmosphere go? This is a gambling apocalypse!
The force emanating from her bested me, and I broke into a cold sweat,
casting my eyes around the classroom for clues. "There're no other club
members?"
"No." se replied
Could you still have a club without any members? I had serious doubts
about that.
Honestly, there were no hints. No, wait. If you were to look at it from
another angle, there were only hints. I'm not bragging or anything, but having
been almost entirely devoid of friends since I was little, I'm pretty damn
good at games you can play on your own.
I've got a fair amount of confidence in my skill with puzzle books,
riddles, and things of that nature.
I think I could win the All-Japan High
School Quiz Championship. Well, okay—I couldn't gather enough members
for a team, so I couldn't go to the event…but still.
There were a number of clues I'd managed to discern already. Assembling
my hypothesis based on that, the answer should have presented itself.
"A literature club?"
"Hmm? How did you come to that?" Yukinoshita replied with mild
interest.
"It wouldn't need a specialized room or any kind of equipment, and even
with only a few members, the club wouldn't be disbanded. In other words,
it's a club that doesn't need financial support. Furthermore, you were reading
a book. You were showing me the answer all along."
Perfect deduction, if I do say so myself. Even without some bespectacled
elementary school student to tell me, "Huh? Something's not right!" I could
figure out this sort of thing before breakfast.
Even Princess Yukino seemed impressed as she made a quiet mm-hmm
noise. "Wrong." Her laughter was brief and derisive. Ooh, that kind of got on
my nerves! Who'd called her a paragon of good conduct, a flawless
Superhuman? More like Demon Superhuman.
"Then what is it?" I asked, my voice tinged with irritation.
But Yukinoshita, seemingly unperturbed, announced that the game would
continue.
"I'll give you the biggest hint. Me being here, doing this, is a club
activity."
So she'd finally given me a hint. But that didn't give me any answers. In
the end, it only led me to back to my same conclusion—that this was an arts
and literature club.
No, wait. Wait, wait, calm down. Stay cool. Stay cool, Hachiman
Hikigaya.
She'd said, There are no club members aside from myself.
But the club still existed.
In other words, that had to mean that there were ghost members, right?
And so the punch line was that the ghost members were actual ghosts. And in
the end, it would be a setup for a rom-com between me and a beautiful ghost
girl.
"An occult research society!"
"I said it was a club."
"A-an occult research club!"
"Wrong. Haaa…ghosts? What nonsense. There's no such thing." The way
she said it wasn't even slightly cute. Not like Th-there's really no such thing
as ghosts! I-I'm not saying that just because I'm scared, okay! She
considered me with eyes that held me in the deepest and most sincere
contempt. Eyes that said, Go to hell, moron.
"I give in. I have no idea." How could I figure out something like this?Give me something easier! "Why's a raven screwing around with a writing desk?"
Anyway, that's not trivia; that's a riddle.
Tình trạng nguồn điện hàng tuần
-- Xếp hạng
Quyền lực 
-- Đá
Quyền lực