Vol 1 Chapter 2.1 (1/2)

Mission 2

“Kuahh….. ‘m tired”

While yawning, Yata pulled his slippers out of the shoe rack and glanced into it for a second time. Something was sticking in one of the slippers. It looked like a piece of paper folded four times. “What’s that, a written challenge? Wonderful, they’ll get their a.s.ses handed to them again.”

Boasting to n.o.body in particular, his voice had gotten excited.

On the edge of the folded paper there was a decorative pink ribbon visible. H- hey, hey, isn’t something like this put into the shoe rack something that only exists in manga nowadays……?

Yata promptly looked around. Students were walking here and there while sleepily exchanging greetings, but there was n.o.body who looked in his direction.

He opened the slip of paper by holding it’s edges with two fingers. On paper with a fancy pattern was a short paragraph written in roundish letters. This definitely didn’t look like a written challenge.

Yata Misaki-sama

Couldn’t we go watch the night view together today?

Aya

N-…..no way, is this really that thing this thing could be!? Yata’s heartbeat rose and the moment he jerked he loudly crashed into the shoe rack on the opposite side. Yata hurriedly shoved the letter into his pocket because people who were startled by the sound had turned around.

He ran through the hall while paying attention to his surroundings, looking like he had just drawn a lot of money from the bank. The moment he had leapt into the cla.s.sroom he grabbed the door and stopped sharply. He immediately entered through the front door, let his bag fall on the desk in the front of the first row closest to the corridor and sat down backwards on the chair. Although this was not Yata’s seat, Fus.h.i.+mi’s was the second one from the front in this row. Fus.h.i.+mi who was resting his chin on his hand, using his PDA with a bored look on his face lifted his eyes slightly. Yata cleared his throat.

“Ah, Fus.h.i.+mi. There’s something I’d like to show you.”

With this overdone preface he pushed the letter against Fus.h.i.+mi’s stomach. The letter crumpled while doing this and when Yata noticed he felt a bit remorse.

“Don’t give me garbage.”

“It’s not garbage! It was stuffed in my shoe box.”

“Ah. A letter of misfortune.”

“N-no! If you look at it you’ll see, it’s a lov-”

He had started to talk with a loud voice but abruptly choked down that word. He put his elbows on the desk and when he brought his face close to Fus.h.i.+mi, Fus.h.i.+mi frowned and took the letter out of Yata’s hands.

“It’s a lo-love letter, no matter how you look at it…”

When Yata tried to say it his stomach fluttered and made him twist, and Fus.h.i.+mi looked at him with a cold glare, opened the letter in front of his torso and skimmed over it from left to right.

”Who’s Aya?”

“Keep your voice down! She isn’t in our cla.s.s so she should be in a different one.”

“Hhn.” Because Fus.h.i.+mi carelessly put the letter on the desk Yata hurriedly took it in his custody. “Don’t let it just lie there!”

Hanayama, the actual owner of the seat Yata remained sitting on had a look on his face as if he was about to say something to make Yata leave. When Yata stared at him with defiant eyes Hanayama looked away and approached the seat the former friends of the Yata-team were gathered at.

“So, what should I do? Should I go?”

When Yata returned to their conversation and asked a bit fidgety, Fus.h.i.+mi who was already working with his PDA again with an I-don’t-care expression reacted in an unusually surprised way and raised his eyes.

“Ha? You’re the one they invited, why’re you asking me?”

“Because I haven’t really ever gone out with a girl and I wouldn’t really know what to do.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“So you wouldn’t go, Fus.h.i.+mi?”

“There’s no way I’d go.”

Declared Fus.h.i.+mi sharply and returned his eyes to his PDA. The hard light reflected on his gla.s.ses emphasized the cold impression he gave. Yata stared at Fus.h.i.+mi’s pale forehead with a disgruntled face for a bit but then he crumbled the letter into a ball and shoved it into his pocket.

“Then I won’t go.”

“Why. What if you’d go? Weren’t you in high spirits just now.”

“I-I wasn’t? A-and it’s not like I actually wanted a love letter? And sometimes hanging out with guys is more interesting than with girls?”

“Though you don’t have anybody to hang out with.”

“Y-” you hang out with me, don’t you…… Yata scowled with an unsatisfied feeling but he was aware that Fus.h.i.+mi put a limit on such words, and as if to efface what Yata was about to say Fus.h.i.+mi didn’t look up from his PDA.

†

Even though he said this, Yata couldn’t help but have the letter’s sender on his mind and because he had n.o.body to talk about it he was fidgety all day long. School however ended without a sign of the sender getting in contact with him. If Yata would be honest he’d admit that he was disappointed after all. Maybe he had just been made fun of, he wondered…….

This week’s cleaning duty was to clean the entrance. When Yata was pretending to play ice hockey with the broom while cleaning the concrete in the most careless way possible, he spotted Fus.h.i.+mi’s person carrying his school bag on his shoulder and on his ways home.

“Ah, Fus.h.i.+mi, wait a sec! Let’s go home together. I’m done in a minute. No, thirty seconds. Hey, let’s go someplace on the way. I’ll show you my old town, s.h.i.+zume City.”

While swinging the broom sloppily from left to right in a way that totally didn’t give of the impression of cleaning, Yata approached Fus.h.i.+mi who was changing into his shoes in front of the shoe rack. He swore he didn’t do it on purpose but Yata sent Fus.h.i.+mi’s shoes that were right next to him flying with the broom, and from Fus.h.i.+mi who was squatting down rose an irked aura. Because he had made him angry again Yata drew back his head. “Uah, sorry…..”

“Micha~kibyun”

When he thought he heard the voice of a high-tension girl who sounded like she’d make a heart with her hands sway over from behind his back, he was grabbed by something soft.

“Uwaaaaah!”

With a shout Yata pushed away the girl and grabbed onto Fus.h.i.+mi without thinking.

“Ukyu”, uttered the girl in a sweet voice.

“So- sorr….uwaaahh-”

Because she had fallen down on her b.u.t.t Yata could see under her skirt and his apology got interrupted by another shout.

“Ah, even if you saw it that’s, like, okay. Because I’m wearing hot pants. See.”

With that the girl, while still on the floor, lifted her skirt and showed what was under it. From short pants that bulged out like a pumpkin’s shape were her slender thighs visible. For Yata to see under a skirt was enough already and if it was underwear or hot pants didn’t make a difference. He yelled for a third time and hid behind Fus.h.i.+mi’s back.

“Annoying…” Tedious, Fus.h.i.+mi shoved him back but while Yata continued to let out a shriek, he grabbed onto Fus.h.i.+mi’s elbow as if to s.h.i.+eld himself.

„Michakibyu~n’s, like, naive, right?“

When the girl hopped once and rose to her feet, long bunny-like ears swayed with her. Thinking about it they were decorations that resembled bunny ears attached to the rucksack on her back. Because for the time being her panties weren’t visible anymore Yata appeared timidly from behind Fus.h.i.+mi.

“I’m, like, sorry that I’m late. I was in the school infirmary the whole day so I, like, wasn’t able to meet you.”

Despite having been in the infirmary she looked like she was bursting with energy. Even with girls in his cla.s.s Yata was rather on the short site and that frustrated him everyday (From now on his plan was to welcome the growth spurt and quickly grow taller!) but this girl was even in Yata’s eyes much shorter. The image of her with her hair tied to pigtails and the straps of her pink checked backpack in both hands certainly made her look like a child, and despite wearing Himuka middle school’s uniform she could pa.s.s off as an elementary school student with no problem. The girl saluted cheerfully and introduced herself.

“I’m, like, Oogai Aya.”

Wasn’t her way of talking kinda weird?, thought Yata but more important than complaining about this girl’s speech pattern was to mention that he did not know her.

”Oogai…..”

he didn’t know if it was to match her name, but the decorative bow on her hair ties looked exactly like sh.e.l.ls. (1)

“…Aya”

the same name like the letter’s sender.

“Have you, like, seen the letter?”