Too Many Losing Heroines! - Volume 1 - Chapter 4.2

The next day was the last of the semester.

Amanatsu-sensei stood at the podium at the front of the class and raised her voice above the clamor of antsy first-years itching to start their vacation. “Everyone come up in seating order! Seating order, kids!”

Because any other order and her brain would short-circuit trying to place names to the faces of her own students.

I picked up my report card and opened it up. Not bad for my first high school semester. What concerned me more was the comments section.

“Very passionate and driven committee member,” it read.

Whoever that was, it wasn’t me, and I didn’t envy the someone who would have to show their parents the report card that read, “Has no friends. How are things at home?”

I plopped my chin in my hand and watched the rest of the class trip over themselves to compare grades. Yakishio, surprisingly not one of them, was face-down on her desk, clutching her head. Didn’t envy her either.

“Dang, not bad,” Hakamada said. He’d come over to sneak a peek at my card. “So Japanese and math are your specialties, huh?”

“I guess. Kinda whatever at the rest.”

“Math’s what got me. Summer school. Man, I so don’t wanna come to campus on vacation.”

“You don’t have any clubs?” That earned a couple of points with me.

“Nah, can’t join any. I do rock climbing on my own time.”

Points: revoked. What maniac went out of their way to do extracurriculars outside of school? Just like that, all the goodwill we’d built came crashing down.

“Hit me up sometime. We should do karaoke,” he said, heading back to Himemiya’s desk.

He was good. Knew just the right amount of courtesy to make it impossible to hate him. No wonder they called people like him social butterflies. Granted, he very much lacked the grace.

My eyes wandered to Yanami. She and her friends were arguing over who had to share what grades for which subjects. Same old Yanami.

“All right, all right,” Amanatsu-sensei called out when the buzz was beginning to die. “The sooner you get settled, the sooner summer break can start.”

That put out the last of the lingering conversations. She waited for everyone to get back to their seats.

“Now, a word before you go scampering off.” She coughed with as much effect as her tiny presence could muster. Wasn’t often she tried to genuinely act serious. “However you choose to spend the next forty days, I ask that you do it with purpose. They’ll fly before you know it, and all of a sudden it’ll have been two years and you’re up to your ears in college entrance exams.”

For once, she was making some sense. The class waited for her to continue with bated breath.

Her tone dropped. “I hear you thinking to yourselves, ‘Oh, it must be so nice being a teacher and getting all that time off.’” She slammed her fist into the podium. The impact said more than words could. “Well you’d be wrong! We are service workers! We don’t get time off! Who do you think teaches summer school? Sets up classes for the interns? Prepares the new lesson plans? Attends the meetings? The study halls? Chaperones the club trips? Manages the paperwork?” Still deeper silence gripped the classroom. “Watch me make my friggin’ VTuber debut next semester. I’m gonna wreck your data plans!” I made a mental note to look into flip phones. “Do you people even know how it feels to take one measly day off for Obon, only to be ostracized for it?! And before you say, ‘Oh, just take it at a different time of year,’ what do you think holidays are for?! Any other day, and now you’re public enemy number one for having the nerve to make more work for your coworkers!”

She was losing the plot real fast. We had no business hearing any of this.

“Point being, be on your best behavior! I’ve got a lot riding on a class reunion this Obon, so don’t you go acting a fool or getting so squirrelly that I have to waste my PTO cleaning your mess! Legs shut!”

What was even happening right now? We were just a bunch of poor teenagers, at the mercy of this tiny woman’s rage. The silence hung heavier with every ragged breath she took.

When she was done panting, Amanatsu-sensei thwacked her attendance roster against the podium. “Anyway. Consider all that a bit of advice from your friendly neighborhood senpai. Now go on! You’re on summer break now!”

***

The semester was officially over. I checked my watch. Just before noon.

I’d escaped the chaos of the classroom and come to the usual fire escape at the old annex. Summer clouds drifted overhead. The fields were empty, even the sports clubs taking a little respite from their practice. I played with a milk box in my hands. Force of habit had me grab one from a vending machine on the way here.

What now?

My Twin Sister Left to Be an Adventurer, Then Came Back a Demon Gyaru had just come out with a new volume. Maybe I’d grab that, then spend some alone time at the family restaurant.

“O-oh. You’re here.” Komari dropped her bag with a thud. I expected her this time. It was too nice a day out not to make use of it.

“Not going home?” I asked.

“K-killing some time first.” She produced a roll—leftover from yesterday, no doubt.

I handed her my milk. “Here. Haven’t had any.”

“Y-you don’t have to…” Desire twinkled in her eyes. “I-is that…the extra rich kind? Isn’t that ten yen extra?”

This stray knew her stuff.

“Splurged a little. It’s the last day of school.”

“O-okay, but I still feel bad.” She offered a handful of one- and ten-yen coins.

“Don’t need any of that. Just take it.”

“But th-that guy took your money yesterday, didn’t he?”

“I was not mugged,” I said.

“Th-then what did he take?” Desire twinkled in her eyes. Again. She would find no material here.

“Neither my heart nor my chastity, so chill.”

That might have been half a lie. At least in regards to my heart.

Komari caught my moment of weakness and snatched it. She smiled up at me in a way I didn’t think she could. “I knew ­s-something was going on! Wh-when did it start? I want all the details!” Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks took on a rosy tint. Why was she being cute all of a sudden? And why was this what triggered it?

“There’s no ‘it,’ so I’ve got nothing to tell. Eat your bread.”

She made a nasty giggle. “Wh-why eat food when I’m already e-eating this up?”

I shouldn’t have given her any fuel whatsoever. I considered sending her over to Tsukinoki-senpai so she could straighten her out, but my gut told me she’d do anything but.

“Wow, I’ve never been here before!” A bright and somewhat head-empty voice came from below. “The breeze is so nice.” Yakishio ascended the stairs, saw us, and then whipped back around. “B-bad news, Yana-chan! I think they’re having a moment!”

A moment of what? I thought sarcastically. But not for long. I was more interested in the name she’d called.

“Eh, it’s Nukumizu-kun. What could we possibly be interrupting?” she said (quite rudely).

“Yanami-san?” I said as she came up. “Why are you here?”

“Do I need a reason? I’m the one who found this place first.” Yanami stepped onto the landing. Her pout quickly changed to a leer. “Unless we were interrupting.”

“Yeah, right. I’m the third wheel if anything.”

“Hey now, us lonely singles gotta stick together,” she teased.

Yakishio looked between us, then lit up. “Ohmigosh, Nukkun, you too? It’s totally spreading! Is it happening?!”

She picked the weirdest things to get all hyper about. As someone else might say, that was her problem right there.

“So why’d you guys come over here anyway?” I asked. “Like, actually.”

“I had a bit of time before I met up with the track team, so I was having Yana-chan show me to her super-secret base,” Yakishio said, leaning concerningly far off the railing.

Yanami stood next to me. Not too close, not too far. An awkward middle. “Hey, does the lit club do anything over the summer?”

“Uhhh, not sure,” I said. “Tsukinoki-senpai mentioned maybe getting together sometime.”

Yakishio balanced her stomach against the rail so her feet floated off the ground and stuck her arms out. “Definitely lemme know! We could maybe go cicada hunting. That’s summery.”

More like noisy.

What kind of literature club was this? We’d just gotten back from an overnight beach trip and they already wanted more. Extroverts. Sitting in a dark room typing out manuscripts sounded more fitting for a lit club to me.

Yanami watched Yakishio’s legs flail and took a half step closer to me. “Hey, so, the trip was fun, yeah? Looking forward to the next one.”

“If people are even comfortable with me around anymore now that Tsukinoki-senpai and the only other guy are an item,” I said.

“Oh, for the love of…” She rolled her eyes. “The trip was fun because we all went. That includes you, doofus.”

I looked away and to the side. “Well, yeah I…I guess. But hey.”

“Hm?”

“It’s nothing, just… Never mind. Forget it. I’ll tell you later.”

Komari eyed us closely. She and I shared a short moment, then she tugged at Yakishio’s shirt.

“What’s up?” Yakishio asked.

Komari instinctively reached for her phone. “U-um…” But she quickly put it back, hanging her head. “I was a l-little interested in running. I wanted to ask if you could t-teach me. Form and stuff.”

Yakishio’s eyes went wide as saucers. She grinned even wider and took her hand. “You bet I can!” she cried out. Komari meeped in response. “We’ll get your hundred-meter below twelve seconds in no time!”

“I-I was actually thinking more long-distance?”

“Don’t you worry! I’ve thought it all through! I call it the Yakishio Method!”

“The…Yakishio Method?” Komari’s cheek twitched nervously. That didn’t sound good.

“The idea’s that long distance is really just a bunch of sprints back-to-back! If you can run a hundred meters, you just have to do that fifteen times and that’s fifteen-hundred right there! Still working out the kinks, though.”

“C-can we maybe start with something easy? Like, ph-physical rehab level.”

“Okay, so the Yakishio Method Part Two. In that one, I’m working on proving that 1,500 meters will feel like a hundred if you literally just run for a full day nonstop. Let’s get you on the track!”

Yakishio hauled Komari off, who whispered upon passing me, “You owe me.”

She deserved a full liter of milk for that gambit.

Yanami watched them disappear down the stairs. “They’re such good friends.”

I didn’t argue. “They sure are.”

“It’s weird,” Yanami muttered.

“What is?”

She rested her elbows against the railing and looked at me. “I mean, think about it. I hardly knew who you or Komari-chan were not too long ago. I didn’t even know what club you guys were in until we went on that trip.” And yet she still came. “Writing’s actually pretty fun. I even picked up some books Komari-chan recommended me, and I liked those too. Made me realize how cool stories can be.”

Yanami gazed out at the students scurrying around campus, a little somberly. How nice that the written word could have such a profound and positive impact on—

“It’s so easy to forget all the hard crap in life when you’re reading. Nothing ever goes wrong for you on the page.”

Correction: not so positive.

“Um. Take care of your mental health, Yanami-san,” I said. “Maybe you can practice asceticism or fasting this summer.”

She held her hands up and waved them in fervent denial. “Hey, I’m not that far gone! And you can forget fasting. So don’t suggest it again. Ever.”

Ah, there she was. That was the Yanami I knew. I’d been somewhat worried that the Hakamada thing yesterday would leave things weird, but no. Far from it.

Now was my chance.

Yanami blinked at me. “Whatcha starin’ at?”

I put my hand to my chest and took a deep breath. “Yanami-san. I have something to ask you.”

“Huh,” she lazily replied. She blinked a few more times, then shot straight up. “Huh?! Wait, like, now?! Here?!”

“I don’t know when we’ll next have a moment to ourselves, so yeah.”

She fussed and messed with her hair. “Wh-what if we gave it a bit?! Think about this, Nukumizu-kun! There’s a time and place for—”

“I’ve done my thinking. And if I don’t say it here, now, I know I’ll regret it.”

Yanami flattened her hair, straightened her collar, adjusted her ribbons, flattened her skirt, and faced me. Seemed I’d gotten through to her.

She made a cute little cough. “W-well, uh, go on. I’ll hear you out. No promises, though.”

I took a deep breath and met her gaze directly. The nerves were on their way.

“Yanami-san. Will you…”

“Will I?” she parroted.

My throat closed up. I forced it back open, and with every ounce of courage I could muster, I took a step forward. She jumped.

“Will you be my friend?!”

“I’m sorry I’d rather just be frie—”

We spoke over each other.

And then crushing silence.

A bird flapped its wings, perching onto the rail. It chirped a sad song.

When she had finally recovered from her petrification, Yanami’s head fell to one side. “Your friend?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

Yanami put her arms on the railing and let out a big, heavy, and long sigh. “Oh,” she said, quieter than the bird’s wings as it took off.

Were we not on the same page? Something told me she needed a little more context.

“Because, like, you’ve already paid back all the money,” I explained. “So we can’t have lunch together anymore. I mean, okay, we’re classmates and clubmates, but if we’re, um, friends, if you say yes, then we can still…” I stopped rambling and making wild hand gestures. “Wait. Hold on.”

“I have been, thanks.”

“Did you just…reject me? Without even a confession?”

“Sure seems that way, bud.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Welcome to Losersville.”

“But how can I have lost at something I wasn’t even attempting? You’re the one who made it a whole big thing.”

Yanami’s jaw dropped. “Okay, no! You can not blame me for that! I’m not crazy for expecting what I expected, so the rejection still counts!”

“Relax, Yanami-san. You clearly don’t understand what an actual confession is.”

“Are you seriously Nukumizu-splaining romance to me?”

Technically, she was 0–1, and I was 0–0. Statistically speaking, I had authority on matters of love.

“First of all, there needs to be at least a two-to-three-year friendship already in place. That’s the stage where you get to know each other and figure out if you’re compatible. Then, and only then, do you seal the deal at a place of great emotional significance for the two of you.”

“You just described a proposal.” This was fair. “Wait, does that mean you’re proposing to me in three years? Should I go ahead and reject that ahead of time while I’m at it?”

“No. Do not pencil that into your calendar.” I couldn’t get anywhere with this girl. Relatedly, we’d almost bantered our way around the most important thing here. “Anyway, uh…”

“What?”

“Th-the friend thing.” My voice died partway through speaking. “Where are we with that?”

“There you go getting all mumbly again. Yes, we’re friends. We have been.”

“Wait, we have?”

“What the heck else would you call us?” Yanami put her elbows back on the railing and turned her head to me, a goofy grin on her lips.

“Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“That’s what gets me about you. That right there.”

“That right where?”

She didn’t answer. Only giggled.

I made my best attempt at a crooked smile to return hers with.

I didn’t regret the way I’d lived up to then. There was nothing wrong with being a loner. We all interacted with society and the people in it in our own ways.

There at our usual spot, though, I’d be lying if I said I disliked her company.

“Thank you, Yanami-san.”

The words came from my heart.

Yanami saw the smile on my face, not so crooked anymore, and reacted in surprise. She did smile back, though.

“You’re welcome.” She held her fist out. “To rejection, fellow loser.”

I bumped it, laughing. “Didn’t lose squat.”