Chapter Text
“I will pass this test for sure!!” I heard someone mutter. I thought the same but I'm slightly nervous, not because of the exam (of my weakest subject) i have to resit, but because i'm in the same room as my rival…hirukawa haruki…..again.
I first saw him near a shop, petting a stray cat, then we locked eyes and gave me a friendly expression and thought that he is a bit strange, but bowed to him and walked away.
I saw him again, but this time I made sure to not interact or make contact because he was in the neighbourhood smoking with some people who are about 2 years older.
Then I saw his name pop up in the top 5 of our cohorts grade list and thought he isn’t so bad after all, so why does he do such bad things? However there's a notice for resits on our subjects. My name next to literature and English and /his/ name next to maths, which is such a shock because math isn’t that difficult…
And so we officially met during resits, he tried to be friendly to me but he is my rival so I just politely bowed and brushed past him to get inside the exam room, so I can get the test over with and never see him again… or so i thought and here we are in our 2nd resits.
¾ into the test I had to do a creative writing story where I have to include multiple povs, so I looked around the room for inspiration, then my eyes landed to /him/ and somehow I got curious of his life, why he is the way he is and what does he thinks of me, as his rival of course, is he being friendly to throw me off or does he want something from me? I caught myself pondering and staring at him for too long, hopefully he didn’t see me staring at him, it would be troublesome if he questioned me.
[a few days later - Thurs]
the results from the resits have been released… i failed again. So did he.
“Well I guess we have to resit next week.” /why is he being friendly with me?/ At that moment a teacher came up and advised us to help each other but we both agreed to think about it. I cannot give in to my rival!
“yo Minase!” “hi minase” my friends who have been with me since our junior-high days greeted me with a excitement and a bit of a worrying tone.
“did you fail again?
“apparently so.”
“do you want me to hire a personal tutor?”
“I’ll think about it, i got some material at home to help me improve and got some notes from class that could help me.”
“ok. By the way, did /he/ also fail?” “mmh”
“I heard that he does bad things outside of school. scary right?”
“I saw.” “do you think he can kill someone?”
/that’s a bit extreme./ “i suppose”
“that’s enough of that let’s focus on studying for this lesson”
“what lesson is this?”
“chemistry.”
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That day I stayed up to review the material and improve my creative writing skills for 3 consecutive days in a row and had a late nighter the day before the 3rd resit. But alas all that effort was wasted because we failed again. Why are our failures synchronised even though we are rivals??
“well i suppose we have to give in to the advice our teacher gave us.” he said with a sarcastic chuckle, i just nodded back in defeat.
“can I go to your house? my mom is taking care of her child at home and she’s so loud,”
“sure.”
“meet you near the entrance after school?” I nodded back. And so he left to hang out with his ’friend’ or whatever.