The afternoon, exactly two days before U.A.’s entrance exam.
The calculation switch in my frontal lobe, which had been glaring at the ceiling while I lay spread-eagled on my bed, finally started issuing an overheating warning.
I’m seriously dying of curiosity here.
I might possess a genius brain, perhaps the only one in human history capable of solving complicated tensor equations or Maxwell’s equations in 0.1 seconds, but I simply could not derive an answer for the psychology of the blue-haired fairy who turned red as a beet every time our eyes met and then bolted into thin air.
This damn unsolved problem had been chewing up over ninety percent of my brain’s memory capacity. At this rate, even a minor error in my physics-calculation trajectory on the day of the entrance exam could throw my perfect top-ranking acceptance plan into disarray.
Any further passive observation is a waste of processing power. I’m breaking through head-on.
That evening, as dusk began to settle heavily over the city, on the first-floor lobby of the Ryukyu Hero Agency.
Nejire, ready to leave work with her bag slung over her shoulder, cautiously walked out into the lobby. The exact instant her eyes met mine as I waited on the sofa—
"...Ah!"
Once again, Nejire’s pale face turned bright red in just 0.1 seconds. Without giving me even a chance to speak, she shot out the door like an arrow.
"Y-Yujin, see you tomorrooow—!!"
Golden waves scattered from her feet as her blue silhouette fled beyond the alleyway, running through midair as if stepping on solid ground.
"Ha. She really is going to keep this up to the bitter end..."
I pulled my thumb from my pocket and flicked it lightly.
The 3x3 Cube orbiting fifteen centimeters above my left shoulder rotated with a tick, spitting out crackling blue-white light. The black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe exhaled a frigid chill as it instantly seized the three-dimensional coordinate system of the alley Nejire was taking home.
• Predicted target route: Residential back alley in the opposite direction.
• Consecutive spatial-compression [Fold Step] jumps.
Fsssh—
"...Haa, haa. If I’ve made it this far, he couldn’t have followed me..."
As Nejire rounded the alley corner, catching her breath and about to relax, space-time warped like a sheet of paper directly in the middle of her vision.
—!
"Upperclassman. I know Tokyo’s coordinate system three or four times better than you do."
"...Eek?!"
I emerged from the darkness, my now 178-centimeter frame blocking off her escape route.
Before Nejire could retreat in surprise, I strode forward, planted my right hand against the cold concrete wall beside her ear—
Bang—!!
—and slammed it down hard.
A wall slam at the perfect angle, so to speak.
The physical distance between us vanished in an instant. Trapped between the wall and my chest amid a faintly sweet fragrance, Nejire widened her blue eyes and gulped for breath as though hiccuping.
I pushed my rimless glasses up the bridge of my nose with my index finger, then looked straight down at her flushed face from beneath cool, sharp eyes.
"The senior staff at the agency keep spouting nonsense about how the way they address me is going to change soon, while you run away in terror every time you see me like you’ve just spotted a Villain."
When our eyes met at close range, I asked in a low voice, as though whispering in her ear.
"Do you want to watch an examinee with two days left before his test die when his frontal lobe overheats? Why the hell do you keep running away whenever you see me?"
Completely trapped between the wall and my chest, Nejire trembled as her blue eyes darted around, unable to decide where to look.
None of her usual uninhibited energy remained. From her snow-white cheeks to the tips of her ears, she was red as a beet, her lips merely fumbling soundlessly.
"Th-there’s... um..."
Mumble...
Mutter...
A murmur quieter than a mosquito’s buzz.
I tapped my fingers against the concrete wall and narrowed my eyes, leaning my upper body another half-handspan closer.
"I can’t hear a word, you know? Don’t mumble like your brain cells have a bug. Turn up the decibels and say it properly."
At my coolly pressing gaze, Nejire sucked in a sharp breath. Finally, she squeezed her eyes shut and, her face seeming ready to burst, began blurting it all out.
"I-I mean...! Ever since that day, whenever I see your face, Yujin...! I honestly don’t know why it happens either! My face keeps getting hot and red, my heart goes thump-thump-thump like crazy, and my chest feels all tingly and weird... so I ran away!!"
Nejire’s cry was a jumble of frustration and embarrassment.
The instant I heard her list those symptoms, the physiological calculation circuits in my frontal lobe produced the most logical diagnosis in 0.1 seconds.
As I made the 3x3 Cube floating above my left shoulder rotate with a tick, tick, I let out a serious yet incredulous dry laugh.
"...Isn’t that an arrhythmia or some kind of autonomic nervous system disorder? You were attacked by a Villain, so it sounds like the shock caused an acute cardiovascular condition. You shouldn’t be standing around here—you need to get to a general hospital’s emergency room immediately."
"...What?!"
Nejire’s tightly shut eyes flew open as though they might pop out of their sockets.
For a moment, the air in the alley froze. Then confusion, betrayal, and utter disbelief spread across her pale face in turn. At last, the blue-haired fairy pounded her chest in exasperation and shrieked.
"Arrhythmia?! A disease?! Heeey—!! I practically spelled it all out for you, so how can you not get it, you idiot?!"
"No, if your heart is beating abnormally and you’re having facial flushing, then it’s obviously a circulatory-system issue! What else would it be?!"
The moment I was about to protest in sheer disbelief—
Nejire clenched both fists, veins standing out as golden waves scattered from her feet. Right in front of my nose—
Screeech—!!
—she screamed loud enough to tear apart the entire alley.
"I’m confessing that I like you, Yujin—!!"
In that instant.
The black inverted-cross piercing on my left earlobe froze with a cold jolt, and even the internal gears of the 3x3 Cube orbiting above my shoulder came to a clunking stop.
The supercomputer circuits of my genius frontal lobe, which had bent every law of physics in the world however it pleased, displayed a perfect blue screen and shut down at once in response to a single word I had never encountered before.
"...You like me?"
That bombshell declaration struck my brainstem head-on, sending the defense mechanisms in my frontal lobe into a panicked malfunction.
Not tensor equations or Maxwell’s equations, but the unknown variable called a confession. As my entire nervous system spewed crimson error codes, my thumb flicked reflexively.
• Coordinate system: My bedroom at the Tokyo family home.
• Local spatial compression [Fold Step], maximum output.
Fsssh—
"Huh?!"
Leaving behind the alley’s cold air and Nejire’s face, red enough to burst, I folded space-time and ran for it.
Thud.
I tumbled onto my bed in my familiar room. The 3x3 Cube orbiting above my left shoulder was spinning madly with tick, tick, tick, and the black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe was exhaling a freezing chill, but the inside of my skull was boiling like a furnace.
"...I must be insane. Seriously."
Lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, I scrubbed both hands roughly over my face.
For one minute, I swallowed deep breaths and ran the algorithms in my brain. But no matter how much of a genius armored in self-admiration and shamelessness I was, there was no way to logically justify what I had just done.
No matter how startled I was... a girl confessed with her face bright red, and I teleported away from the spot. That’s just fucking garbage behavior as a human being.
That was neither the poise of a cool guy nor the composure of a genius. It was simply the worst possible escape, an apex display of pathetic cowardice.
"Ha... fuck, I’m dying of embarrassment."
I sprang up like a coiled spring.
I had not even performed a major physics calculation requiring me to push the cooling device in my earlobe to its limits, yet my head was so overheated that the tips of my ears and the back of my neck had turned bright red. I fanned myself with my hand to cool down.
Then I flicked my thumb again.
• Target coordinates: That alley from moments ago.
Whoosh—!
With rippling spatial distortion, the dim alley reappeared around me.
"..."
Below the wall, Nejire sat curled up, her blue hair hanging loose.
She had buried her face deep between her knees, her slender shoulders heaving as she sniffled. The person she had confessed to had vanished like smoke right before her eyes, so naturally she looked overcome by the misery and shock of believing she had been rejected and abandoned.
"...Sniff... Yujin, idiot..."
The moment I looked down at her like that, a corner of my brainstem tingled painfully.
I pulled my hand from my slacks pocket and roughly tousled my hair. Then I quietly approached the crying blue-haired fairy, dropped to one knee at her eye level, and sat down.
"...Nejire."
At my low, subdued voice, Nejire raised her tear-soaked blue eyes sharply.
My cheeks still burning red, I threw off my glasses and met her gaze directly with my sharp eyes, refusing to look away as I spoke softly.
"Even if I’m so busy running nothing but brain cells that my social awareness is zero... I can’t become the absolute bastard who runs away after being confessed to."
With a self-deprecating laugh, I laid my hand gently over the back of Nejire’s trembling white hand.
"I’m sorry I ran because I was startled. So... don’t cry."
"Stop calling me that already—!!"
Nejire screamed through her tears. She smacked away the hand I had placed over hers, then began thumping my chest with her slender little fists.
"What do you mean, ‘upperclassman’?! You teleported away the moment I confessed, and now you come back...! You tore my heart to pieces, so why did you come back, you horrible jerk?!"
The golden wave energy rippling from her feet made the alley walls tremble.
The physical impact felt no stronger than cotton swabs, but the calculation circuits of my frontal lobe descended into utterly uncontrollable chaos.
All right, Yujin. Put every brain cell to work.
The simulation algorithms in my brain began splitting tens of thousands of branches at nanosecond intervals to resolve the situation.
• [Scenario 1]: "I’m sorry. Let’s remain good upperclassman and underclassman."
= Killed by a direct hit from a wave blast.
• [Scenario 2]: "Please give me time to think about it."
= Aunt hits me with Dragon Breath; spinal fracture.
• [Scenario 3]: "I like you too."
= Too predictable and not cool. The pride of Tokyo’s top-tier cold-hearted handsome man cannot permit it.
• [Scenario 4]: Change the subject to U.A. High’s entrance-exam physics mechanics formulas.
= Induces homicidal urges.
What the hell was I supposed to say to dry this boisterous blue-haired fairy’s tears while preserving my style?
Tens of thousands of calculation results burst forth one after another, and just as the black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe was about to begin crackling with heat—
...Ah, my head’s going to explode.
I tossed the complicated calculus and tensor equations straight into the trash.
There was only one physical solution: the most intuitive, the least wasteful of brain cells, and the sole method capable of forcibly silencing every act of speech within physical range.
Tap.
I caught Nejire’s small wrists as they struck my chest and gently pressed them against the wall.
"...Huh?"
In the brief opening the instant Nejire widened her blue eyes in surprise—
I closed the distance at once and, without hesitation, pressed my lips over her red, damp, trembling lips, as if sealing her mouth shut.
"...Mmph?!"
At the same time, the 3x3 Cube floating above my left shoulder froze with a tick, and the noise of the alley was abruptly cut off.
The sensation of slipping between her tightly closed lips and tangling together.
From deep inside the brainstem that had twisted every law of physics, an intensely unfamiliar and burning thrill poured down like a waterfall.
...Wait, was this really the best option? I think the calculation result came out a little strange...
In one corner of my mind, question marks slowly arose over whether this was truly a rational judgment an intellect worthy of U.A.’s top entrance-exam score would make.
But the faint sweet fragrance stinging my nose, Nejire’s white arms trembling in surprise before gradually and carefully curling around the back of my neck—
And the hot temperature of saliva tangling thickly at the tips of our tongues shut down the defense-calculation switch in my frontal lobe completely.
Ha... screw it. Whatever.
To hell with upperclassman and seniority.
In a corner of the alley steeped in darkness, I took her lips a little deeper between mine, and we began sharing the blue-haired fairy’s breath more and more deeply.
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