Chapter 1
The first thought I had when I began my second year of high school was, “Hell yeah, I’m in the same class as Shirakawa-san now!”
She was incredibly cute. If you asked me, she was even more beautiful than those teen actresses you saw on TV.
Large striking eyes; long eyelashes; a straight nose with small nostrils; lovely, upturned lips. All the elements of her petite face were in perfect harmony with one another.
Her figure was gorgeous too, and people mistook her for a model from a distance. It was amazing, let me tell you. That said, she wasn’t super skinny like a real model—she had moderately voluptuous thighs under her short skirt, and her ample bosom peeked out of her blouse as she always had the top two or so buttons unfastened. Gyaru like her—girls adhering to a nonconformist, girly-glam Japanese fashion style—weren’t really my type, but even so, that long, dirty-blonde hair of hers in that loose, wavy style emphasized her sexiness in my eyes. It was something I didn’t get from other gyaru.
“If only I could go out with her...”
“If only I could go on a date with her...”
I think countless guys in my school fantasized about things like that. Some of them acted on their desires, seeing their place in the same class as her as a godsend and immediately starting to hang around her.
I, however, rigidly stuck to my ways. Going after her would be too pathetic for a guy like me, somebody she’d never even give the time of day. Shirakawa-san and I might have been in the same classroom, but there was an invisible wall between us thicker than an acrylic plate. A naturally occurring social distance, and one that would never shrink, no matter what.
With that in mind, I simply watched her from afar.
But then, without any warning, that day came.
It was just a few days after I ended up in the same class as her. We were in homeroom at the end of the school day when Shirakawa-san turned in a form that we’d all been given previously. If I remember correctly, it concerned a parent-teacher conference. We were supposed to turn it in the day before, and the students who’d forgotten to do so were getting summoned to the front of the classroom, one by one.
Since my name is Kashima Ryuto, and because our seats had been assigned in alphabetical order, mine was in the front row next to the teacher’s desk.
It happened when I followed Shirakawa-san with my eyes, for no particular reason, as she walked up from the back of the classroom with her form in hand.
“Shirakawa-san, you forgot to write your name,” the teacher said, gently giving the form back to her.
“Oh, you’re right,” she replied, noticing it herself. She then turned around, causing her short skirt to flutter.
And then I was caught off guard and couldn’t look away in time before she spoke to me.
“Hey, can I borrow your pencil for a sec?”
It felt like my heart was going to leap out of my throat.
“Oh! Uh, sure...” was all I could muster in reply. I removed a mechanical pencil from my pencil case and handed it to her. While my voice sounded weird, I just barely managed to keep my hands from shaking as I moved.
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