Work Text:
Akihiko Nirei sat at his desk with his fingers interlaced beneath his chin, the look he kept sending toward his close friend full of tangled, conflicting emotions.
Because lately, Haruka Sakura—the first-year class captain of Furin High’s Tamon Unit—had been acting noticeably strange.
Not strange in the sense that he looked like he might be plotting something terrible, or planning to drag trouble straight into Furin like certain upperclassmen in the past. A guy like Sakura, whose days revolved around fighting and food, obviously wouldn’t have the time to sit around devising anything that underhanded.
No.
In Nirei’s eyes, it was a different kind of strange.
A kind that felt… much more worrying than that.
Morning at Furin High, the all-boys school, was as lively as ever.
Class 1-1 buzzed with noise: bright, overlapping conversation, the sounds of mobile games blaring from someone’s phone, even the grunts of two boys arm-wrestling in the corner of the room.
Everything was perfectly normal.
And yet, to Nirei, there was one person who seemed somehow cut off from all of it—like he had drifted out of the atmosphere around him and into a world of his own.
Nirei frowned and narrowed his eyes, staring at someone seated only a few desks away.
Sakura Haruka.
The strongest member of Class 1-1, captain of the Tamon Unit, owner of that striking two-toned hair and mismatched eyes, one of Furin’s key fighters.
At this hour, Sakura was usually one of two things: either talking to Nirei, or sitting silently in his seat, sweeping those heterochromatic eyes around the classroom while the rest of the time drifted by.
But now?
Now he was planted stiffly in place, head bowed over the electronic device in his hands, painstakingly typing with one finger at a time.
And ever since he had taken his phone out, a visible flush had spread over both cheeks.
Nirei looked at him with a complicated feeling in his chest.
…He couldn’t deny that just watching Sakura peck at the keyboard that slowly was making him anxious on Sakura’s behalf.
Curiosity getting the better of him, Nirei scooted his chair closer and leaned in until he was practically within breathing distance of the boy so lost in his own world.
Then, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, as if he were sharing a secret, he asked,
“U-um… Sakura-san? Who are you texting? Do you want me to help?”
“W-WAAAH—!!”
The shout that exploded out of Sakura echoed through the room.
Startled out of his mind, Sakura jerked so hard he nearly toppled backwards out of his chair, and the phone in his hand went flying clean over his head on instinct.
He whipped around, face blazing red with shock and anger, one hand clutching at his chest while the other pointed accusingly at the source of the offense.
“N-Nirei! Don’t sneak up on people like that, damn it!”
The more Nirei looked at him, the more he resembled an agitated two-colored cat whose fur had puffed up from being teased too much.
“Ah! I’m sorry!” Nirei bowed his head immediately, thoroughly used to that reaction by now. “I just thought you might’ve needed help…”
Then he suddenly remembered the thing Sakura had sent flying moments ago and lifted his head again.
“Oh right—your phone! I’ll go get it for you!”
Without waiting for permission, the overly curious vice-captain hurried past the still-malfunctioning Sakura toward the back of the classroom. His amber eyes swept across the floor until they landed on the target lying motionless where it had fallen.
He crouched down, picked the phone up, dusted it off, and turned it over in his hands to check whether it had survived the flight.
To his immense relief, the poor rectangular device still seemed to be intact.
Just as he was about to stand and return it to its owner, his traitorous eyes happened to catch the contact name still open on the screen.
Nirei froze.
Then read it again, letter by letter.
…Suo?
“—That’s enough!!”
“Ah—!?”
Before his nosiness could carry him any further, the phone vanished from his hands with a speed too fast for his eyes to follow.
When he turned, Sakura was right there, breathing hard and red-faced as though he had sprinted across the room. He was gripping the phone so tightly Nirei found himself genuinely worried it might crack.
“Sakura-san, that name—”
“It’s nothing! Just forget it!”
The sharp shout made Nirei jolt so hard the rest of his sentence died in his throat.
In the end, all he could do was blink and stare as Sakura turned on his heel and stomped away.
—and because Sakura had said it that firmly, Nirei could only swallow down his curiosity for the time being.
…After all, he wasn’t exactly eager to have his class captain explode at him again.
“Sakura-chan’s been spacing out a lot lately, huh?”
Kiryu, the vice-captain with cotton-candy-colored hair, spoke up one evening, resting his cheek on one hand as he looked toward the owner of the name in question—who was once again staring absently out the window.
Nirei stopped writing in his usual secret notebook, pen hovering midair, and turned at the sound of Kiryu’s voice.
The center of the conversation was still sitting at his desk as usual, but his two-toned head was turned toward the window, gaze distant, as though fixed on something far away.
Nirei watched him in silence for a moment before replying softly,
“…That’s true. He couldn’t focus in class earlier either.”
—or rather, if he was being honest, Nirei had noticed this change for quite some time now.
He didn’t know exactly when it had started, but everything had become a lot harder to ignore after the day he accidentally saw the screen of Sakura’s phone.
At first, he had assumed that incident must have been the reason.
But aside from Sakura becoming noticeably more possessive of his phone, Nirei hadn’t actually seen any evidence that he was upset about it.
Still, after that day, Sakura—normally alert all the time—had started drifting off more often. Sometimes he’d stare out the window during class. Other times, people had to call his name twice before he came back to himself.
Nirei had tried retracing events in his mind, searching for something—anything—that might explain why his friend seemed so distracted these days.
But no matter how hard he looked, he came up empty every time.
Worry spread through him all over again.
Tsugeura, sitting beside them, noticed the gloomy atmosphere and leaned into the conversation.
“Hm? Maybe Sakura-kun just hasn’t been sleeping enough?”
Nirei frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that. If anything… he actually looks better than usual.”
And there was that faint scent, too…
Something soft and warm, like flowers or tea leaves—familiar and strangely comforting.
Yet no matter how many times Nirei flipped through his precious notebook of secrets, there wasn’t a single line anywhere suggesting that someone like Sakura even knew how to use perfume.
Kiryu, the one who had started the topic, simply shrugged and turned his attention back to the game on his phone.
“Maybe he misses his girlfriend.”
Unfortunately, that comment seemed to fall on utterly unreceptive ears.
Tsugeura smacked one fist into his open palm, face lighting up as if inspiration had struck.
“Or maybe something happened at home!”
That only made Nirei more worried. His brows drew even tighter together, and the atmosphere around him dimmed further.
“Sakura-san… I hope he’s not pushing himself again…”
Kiryu raised an eyebrow at that and looked over at Sakura as if confirming something for himself before turning back again.
“Nope. That is one hundred percent the face of someone in love.”
Still, no one listened.
This time Nirei spoke with newfound determination.
“The more I think about it, the more worried I get. I have to do my best too—to support Sakura-san!”
“Oh! Times like this, maybe helping him find his own sense of aesthetic could help him through it!”
Tsugeura nodded vigorously, enthusiastically agreeing.
“I’m telling you, it’s because he misses his girlfriend…”
Kiryu’s voice grew quieter and quieter.
“Tsugeura-san, let’s help lighten Sakura-san’s burden together!”
Nirei turned toward the sturdier boy beside him, his eyes shining with fierce resolve.
This time, he was definitely going to help ease Sakura’s burden!
“Osu! Got it!”
Tsugeura accepted at full volume, just as fired up as Nirei was.
Only after the excitement settled a little did Nirei seem to remember Kiryu had been saying something too. He turned back apologetically.
“U-um… Kiryu-san, were you saying something just now?”
Kiryu was still sitting in the same pose, chin in hand. His emerald eyes met Nirei’s for a brief moment.
Then he looked away.
“Mm. Nope.”
Nirei blinked.
For some reason, he felt like Kiryu had just given him an oddly pitying look.
“?”
“You guys can go on ahead. I’ve got something to take care of.”
Sakura’s flat voice came out of nowhere the moment they stepped beyond the school gates, as though he had prepared those words in advance before even leaving campus.
Nirei stopped walking.
His feet came to a halt on the road they usually took toward Pothos—Sakura’s number one favorite restaurant, where they almost always ended up eating together in the evenings.
He blinked once. Then again, repeating the words in his head to make sure he had heard right.
“Huh? You’re not coming to Pothos with us first?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll go another day.”
Sakura answered with a shrug, as if turning down something as sacred as omurice wasn’t a big deal at all.
Then he pulled his phone from his pocket.
His face suddenly went still, like he had just seen something unexpected. His fingers flew across the keyboard for a few quick taps before he slipped the phone away again as though nothing had happened.
Nirei could only stare at the flush on his face in bafflement, questions multiplying in his head.
“Then… take care on your way home, okay?”
“You too.”
Sakura nodded once, then turned and started off in the opposite direction.
Nirei stood there watching that retreating back until it disappeared from sight, a strange feeling curling in his chest.
And what surprised him even more—
was that the path Sakura had taken wasn’t his usual route home at all.
…For some reason, Nirei had a very strong feeling that this so-called errand wasn’t anything ordinary.
“Y-You brought a bento, Sakura-san!?”
“Whaaaat!?”
The entire class shouted in unison.
Every head whipped toward the source of the commotion like they had just heard the world was ending in the middle of a perfectly normal lunch break.
“Nirei! You—!!”
Sakura’s face turned bright red as he spun toward the boy beside him with a murderous glare, snatching up the bento box in front of him and hugging it protectively to his chest as though it were contraband.
Naturally, that suspicious behavior only drew the others in harder. The rest of the class crowded around his desk in an instant like worker ants descending on food, overlapping voices piling on top of each other in their eagerness to know.
“What is that, Sakura? A real bento!?”
“You usually just bring bread or rice balls! What happened today?”
“Don’t tell me you made it yourself? No, wait, the most you can manage is instant ramen, right? So who made it for you?”
“Takanashi, says the guy who gets lunch made by his girlfriend every day.”
“S-shut up!”
Sakura, assaulted by question after question, could only hunch lower and lower in his seat, face crimson, eyebrow twitching with every new comment flung at him.
The barrage of entirely innocent curiosity continued until, finally, the last thread of Sakura’s patience seemed to snap.
He shot upright and shouted loud enough to shake the room, still red all over.
“Get lost, all of you—!!”
The second the roar left his mouth, everyone scattered in all directions without an ounce of guilt, laughing the whole way as if they had just escaped the eye of a storm.
“Aah! The class captain’s mad!” someone yelled as they ran, the words fading with their footsteps.
By the time the chaos died down again, Sakura’s desk had returned to being occupied by just him and Nirei.
“Tch. Seriously, what a bunch of nosy idiots.”
The class captain dropped back into his chair. The troublesome bento box was set down on the desk with noticeably more care than usual.
Nirei scratched his cheek and let out an awkward little laugh.
“Well, you know how Anzai-san and the others are. please don’t take it too personally.”
At that, Sakura only puffed his lips out and muttered under his breath,
“It’s not like I’m taking it personally… What’s the big deal if I bring a bento one day?”
Nirei laughed dryly and glanced at the mysterious box, still carefully shut.
Even without seeing the contents, the outside alone made it obvious how carefully it had been prepared.
It was just the right size for a pair of hands, in soft pastel colors, and the faint scent of sweet omelet and stir-fried vegetables drifted out as if inviting someone to taste it.
No matter how he looked at it, it didn’t resemble something a person living alone would throw together for themselves in a hurry.
Especially not someone like Sakura.
Nirei carefully arranged his next sentence in his head, searching for wording that wouldn’t provoke another outburst.
“Well… everyone knows you live alone, Sakura-san. So when a super cute bento that clearly doesn’t look homemade by you suddenly appears, of course people are going to be shocked.”
The moment those words landed, the two-colored cat immediately jerked his head up, eyes widening, cheeks burning hotter.
“I-I just wanted a change of pace, that’s all!”
Sakura shot back in a voice too high to sound innocent. Then he opened the bento and hurriedly started eating, as if refusing to lift his head might somehow let him escape Nirei’s questioning gaze.
Seeing that lunch had begun in earnest without him, Nirei could only swallow down his curiosity and start on his own meal too.
Everything proceeded in relative peace—
right until a suspicious pair of chopsticks suddenly poked into Sakura’s lunch.
“Lemme try just one bi—”
It was Anzai, sneaking in from nowhere with chopsticks in hand.
“Get away from it!”
A fresh wave of shouting broke out as Sakura smacked Anzai’s hand with his own chopsticks with absolutely no mercy, making the other boy yelp and stumble backward laughing.
A small laugh slipped out of Nirei at the sight.
The curiosity in his chest softened, somehow, into warmth.
Their daily town patrol had been going smoothly when Sakura suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“I need to stop by this shop first.”
He said it so abruptly that when Nirei turned, he found Sakura standing still, head tilted to the side as though something had caught and held his attention.
Curious, Nirei followed the direction of those mismatched eyes.
The object of Sakura’s interest turned out to be a small gift shop-slash-bakery, decorated in a warm, cozy style that felt like a spring morning.
It was exactly the kind of store where, if anyone from class happened to see Sakura inside, they would almost certainly stop, back up, and look again just to make sure.
The chime above the door rang, drawing Nirei back just in time to see Sakura push it open and step inside.
“Huh? Sakura-san, what are you buying? Want me to come help?”
Nirei asked brightly, trying to edge past him and peer in.
Sakura only flicked a shoulder to say it wasn’t necessary, then disappeared into the shop without waiting for a response.
And so Nirei could do nothing but stand obediently outside, glancing between the inside of the store and the people passing on the street. Beside him, Kiryu stood there too, thoroughly occupied with the phone in his hands.
It wasn’t long before the door opened again.
Sakura stepped out carrying a plain paper bag.
Nirei practically bounced.
His eyes locked onto the mysterious bag with barely concealed curiosity.
“Sakura-san, what’s that?”
“Tea cake.”
Nirei’s eyes flew wide, his expression lighting up as though he had just discovered a shocking new piece of data.
“What!? You like tea cake, Sakura-san!? I had no idea!”
His beloved notebook was out in a flash. He flipped through the pages, then looked back up at Sakura with a shining, determined expression and pen at the ready.
“What flavor do you usually like? How often do you eat it? Since when?”
The nosy vice-captain fidgeted where he stood like a puppy discovering a brand-new toy, while the two-colored cat in front of him went stiffer and redder by the second.
Finally, apparently unable to withstand that level of intense concern over someone else’s business any longer, Sakura raised his voice far louder than necessary.
“Forget it already! Let’s go finish the patrol!”
The questions were cut off then and there, and with Sakura already marching away at top speed, Nirei could only let out a deeply regretful little sound.
“A-aw… Sakura-san…”
“…Nire-chan.”
Before he could take off after him, Kiryu’s voice came from behind, making Nirei stop short.
When he turned back, Kiryu’s green eyes were fixed on him with an expression that seemed to hold all kinds of emotions at once.
“You really are…” Kiryu said slowly, “I don’t know if I should call you innocent or what.”
Nirei tilted his head, not entirely sure what he meant.
So in the end, he simply gave a sheepish little laugh and ran after Sakura, who had already gotten quite a bit ahead.
…and if Nirei wasn’t imagining it, there had definitely been a trace of exasperation in Kiryu’s eyes.
One morning, Takanashi walked straight up to Sakura looking like he was doing his absolute best not to tease him.
“Sakura… are you wearing a hair clip?”
The boy in question turned, one differently colored eyebrow lifting in confusion. “Huh? What hair clip?”
“Right there. On the back of your head.”
As Takanashi pointed toward the spot in question—a place it wouldn’t have been strange at all for Sakura not to notice—Sakura immediately threw a hand up to his hair, suddenly looking as though something had just clicked in his mind.
“H-Huh—?”
His fingers brushed against the thin accessory, and he yanked it out in a rush, face flushing instantly.
“That idiot did it again!”
“Oho?” Takanashi arched an eyebrow, voice stretching with obvious suspicion. “What’s this, Sakura? Your girlfriend?”
“M-Mind your own business!”
Sakura whirled on him, shouting, before shoving the sweet pink clip—decorated with tiny beads in the shape of a troublesome little two-colored cat—into his pocket with flustered haste.
From his own seat across the room, Nirei watched the exchange with growing concern, his pen tightening unconsciously in his hand.
“Sakura-san really has been acting strange…” he murmured to himself, gaze full of worry. “Could someone be forcing him into something…?”
And so all he could do was lower his head and put his pen back to paper, renewing his solemn vow that he absolutely had to help Sakura somehow!
Even if Sugishita happened to lift his head from his nap just long enough to stare at him with infinite exhaustion before slumping back onto the desk again—
Nirei still didn’t care.
When trying to find answers on his own got him nowhere, Nirei chose another route.
A very smart, very safe one.
—Consulting someone close to the situation.
“Sakura?”
Kotoha repeated the name, pausing in the middle of drying a clean plate and looking up at Nirei, who sat at the counter with obvious concern on his face.
Nirei nodded and tried to piece his observations together.
“Lately he’s been… strange, somehow. He spaces out a lot, and his eating habits seem different too. And there are all these random things that suddenly keep showing up in his bag for no reason…”
He paused, did not mention the mysterious blush that appeared almost every time Sakura looked at something on his phone.
“…I just really hope he’s not forcing himself through something all alone again.”
Kotoha stopped with a glass halfway to the shelf, surprise flickering across her face at the genuine worry in his tone.
“Hm? Since when? He seems pretty normal to me.”
“About two weeks ago,” Nirei answered, lowering his head.
“Huh—oh.”
Kotoha blinked.
“Nirei… don’t tell me you still don’t know that he’s—oop.”
Nirei looked up from his glass of water when she suddenly cut herself off.
Kotoha now stood there with one hand on her hip, face turned away, her other hand lifted to cover her mouth as though she had almost said something she shouldn’t have.
“…Kotoha-san?”
“It’s nothing. Hurry up and finish your food, okay?”
She smoothed it over by sliding a freshly reheated plate in front of him. Her eyes were warm with amusement and fondness—
but she didn’t say anything more.
Some nameless gang started causing trouble in the shopping district, and naturally the patrol group led by their hot-blooded class captain was the first to arrive.
Sakura charged in without hesitation, tearing through strangers like a storm. Kiryu followed with effortless grace, and Takanashi and the others jumped into the fray without delay, backing up the class’s two strongest fighters.
Nirei stayed in a safe position, shielding a small boy who had accidentally gotten trapped in the middle of the chaos.
Only when the shattered pieces of a baseball bat and the sounds of labored breathing finally began to settle did it become clear that the only ones still standing were Bofurin’s fighters, surrounded by unconscious bodies scattered across the pavement.
But this time, Nirei’s attention—usually overwhelmed by all the chaos around him—was pulled toward one particular figure standing in the middle of the street.
Sakura.
Normally, Sakura fought like a storm, launching himself at the enemy without a second thought and knocking opponents down through sheer speed and ferocity.
But this time… There was something calmer in his eyes.
The way he moved—there was the faintest pause before each punch, each dodge. It was as though he was actually stopping to think for a split second instead of throwing himself in recklessly the way he always used to.
Nirei stared without realizing it, his chest tightening with a strange mixture of surprise and relief.
After the fight, Sakura let out a long exhale and looked down at his own hand, where small scrapes had started to bead with blood, as though he had only just now registered the pain.
He frowned and muttered under his breath,
“…Tch. She’s definitely gonna nag me again.”
Then he turned toward Nirei, who had come hurrying over, and asked,
“Nirei, do you have a Band-Aid?”
“Huh? A Band-Aid? I keep some for emergencies—wait, are you hurt?”
Nirei’s hands flew to his pockets as he searched frantically for the item in question, only for his gaze to land fully on Sakura’s injured hand.
His face went pale.
“S-Sakura-san! You’re bleeding!”
“It’s nothing.”
Sakura answered flatly, turning his hand this way and that to inspect the small wound before shrugging it off.
“If I just cover it so the cut doesn’t show, that’s enough, right?”
Nirei nearly screamed.
“Sakura-san! You need to clean it first!”
Not far away, Takanashi stood catching his breath beside Kiryu, who remained deeply focused on the phone in his hands, almost as if he had no desire whatsoever to look up and witness… whatever was happening with the other vice-captain.
Nirei, halfway between pleading and forcibly dragging him, practically hauled Sakura over to wash the wound properly, while Sakura complained the whole time that it wasn’t necessary.
A small swirl of chaos formed around the two of them.
Takanashi glanced over at the scene with a complicated look, mentally filing it away as another piece of the Tamon Unit’s future.
“…This kinda reminds me of what I was like when I first started dating…”
The words slipped out of him in a helpless murmur.
Kiryu glanced over, eyes exhausted beyond measure.
“That’s exactly what everyone sees, Takanashi-chan.”
He paused, then turned those green eyes back toward Nirei, who was carefully washing Sakura’s hand with all the delicacy in the world.
“…Everyone except Nire-chan.”
There had been one time during patrol when Sakura suddenly came to a dead stop for no apparent reason.
When Nirei turned back, he found Sakura staring fixedly at a jewelry shop.
Not a food shop. Not a sweets shop. Not even a men’s goods store.
Instead, the display out front glittered with ornaments and accessories—pretty bracelets, elegant earrings, decorative things that looked much more suited to being bought as gifts for someone.
The items had been arranged with obvious care, from simple, modern pieces to extravagant ones ornate enough to look like they had stepped out of a historical drama.
But the object that seemed to catch Sakura’s attention wasn’t any of the plain, understated accessories that might suit his personality.
It was a pair of Chinese-style earrings with long flowing tassels.
“Sakura-san, are you interested?”
When Nirei asked, he got the same answer as always:
a curt denial accompanied by ears turning red.
Back then, Sakura had brushed it off and stomped right past him.
But the very next day, Nirei happened to spot a small paper bag with that shop’s logo peeking out of Sakura’s bag.
He saw Sakura sneaking glances at it whenever he thought no one was looking. Saw him reach into his bag and touch it absentmindedly, almost as if checking to make sure it was still there.
And Takanashi—
Nirei had seen him send Sakura a knowing sort of look. The kind shared between fellow conspirators.
But even setting aside Nirei’s notebook—or common sense, for that matter—anyone would know that someone like Sakura and fancy jewelry were two things that did not go together in the slightest.
—and because Nirei valued his life, he wisely chose not to say anything.
The day after that, the paper bag had vanished from Sakura’s possession.
And Sakura, for some reason, seemed to be in an unusually good mood.
Nirei scribbled all of it down in his notebook.
One evening, Nirei came down from the school building alone.
Just a little while earlier, Sakura had suddenly turned to him, said, “I forgot something,” and taken off running back upstairs without paying the slightest attention to Nirei shouting after him.
Cool air hit Nirei’s face the moment he stepped outside. The sound of the dismissal bell and the chatter of students filled the grounds.
He started walking, planning to wait for the forgetful culprit by the front gate.
And then his steps slowed.
His amber eyes widened at the sight in front of him.
Standing in front of the school gates, surrounded by the dark green uniforms of Furin—
was a girl.
A girl.
In front of an all-boys school.
She wore the pristine white uniform of a prestigious all-girls high school, complete with a deep red ribbon that stood out vividly against it. One hand gripped the strap of her schoolbag. Her visible ruby-red eye—since the other was hidden beneath a medical eyepatch—was calmly fixed on the gate, as if she were waiting for someone.
Her long reddish-brown hair fell to the middle of her back, swaying in the wind.
And most importantly, the long Chinese-style tassel earrings she wore looked elegant, almost antique—as though they had been handed down through generations.
The sight of them made Nirei immediately think back to that jewelry shop.
She looked peaceful. Beautiful. At ease.
Entirely out of place against the atmosphere of a school infamous as a den of delinquents.
Nirei panicked.
He looked left and right, flustered. No one nearby seemed to know her. Thoughts crashed through his head in a flood.
A girl?? In front of their school?? Is she waiting for someone?? But what if she isn’t?? A girl?? In front of Furin?? What if some gang is nearby—this is way too dangerous, this is a school full of thug delinquents!
(—conveniently forgetting that he, too, was one of those thug delinquents.)
And so, out of pure worry, Nirei bowed slightly and hurried over, speaking in a voice soft enough not to scare her.
“U-um… are you waiting for someone? Or are you lost? I can walk you there if you want.”
At his voice, the girl turned.
The golden silk tassels of her earrings swayed with the motion. She blinked once, as though only just noticing him, and then offered a gentle, polite smile.
“Thank you, but it’s alright. I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”
“Waiting for… your boyfriend?”
Nirei repeated the words in astonishment, glancing around before looking back at her.
“Around here?”
The girl laughed softly, amused.
“At this school, actually. This is Furin High, right?”
Nirei blinked.
“U-uh… your boyfriend goes here?”
Before he could ask anything else, a set of familiar footsteps came stomping up from behind him.
When he turned, Sakura was walking out toward the gate with his usual relaxed, vaguely annoyed air, a small bag in hand that was presumably whatever he had gone back for.
“Sakura-san—!”
But before Nirei could finish, the girl beside him leaned slightly past him and brightened at once.
“Ah, Haruka-kun.”
She called out with a radiant smile, her visible eye sparkling like a little cat who had just spotted its owner returning home.
The moment the words Haruka-kun reached him, Sakura stopped dead.
He lifted his face, eyes moving blankly between Nirei and the girl before widening so suddenly he looked like a satellite dish springing open, red rushing up his neck to flood his whole face.
—Nirei could almost hear the sound of Sakura’s brain engine exploding in real time.
“S-S-S-Suo!?”
Sakura burst out, sounding like he had inhaled wrong. He jabbed a finger accusingly toward her, face still blazing. “What the hell are you doing coming all the way here!? I could’ve picked you up at your school!”
Suo only hummed in response, entirely unbothered by Sakura’s flustered state, her smile growing even softer.
“My school lets out before yours does. And I wanted to see Haruka-kun’s school at least once.”
“This is a school for delinquents, y’know! It’s not a place for someone like you to be wandering around!”
Sakura barked the words out —forgetting, once again, that he himself was one of the delinquents in question.
“So you were worried about me, Haruka-kun? That’s cute.”
Suo smiled lightly, eye growing gentler by the second.
“But if something happened, you’d protect me anyway.”
“I-I mean… of course I would…”
.
.
.
Nirei, apparently forgotten by the couple standing in front of him, remained frozen in place with both eyes and mouth wide open, staring between them like a machine on the verge of breaking down.
Inside his head, all the pieces began slotting together.
Sakura’s strange behavior.
The objects that had started appearing out of nowhere.
And going all the way back—
the name Suo he had seen on Sakura’s phone that day.
Nirei gaped.
He looked at Sakura.
Then at Sakura’s girlfriend— Suo.
And then—
“S-S-S-S-Sakura-san has a girlfriend!?!?!!!”