After having dinner with Sunohara in the dorm cafeteria,
I casually asked him about his plan.
But Sunohara merely gave a sinister grin.
"Morita. I get the feeling you’d try to stop me, so just look forward to it!"
In the end, I never got to hear what his plan was.
After washing up and changing clothes, I tidied my room a little.
Sitting on a cushion before the small table in the center of the room,
I looked once more at [The Dandelion Girl] in my hands.
I had only read a few pages in the library,
but I was already curious about what would happen next.
Sunohara’s plan was on my mind, too.
But
tonight, I was more curious about this book than that.
[Learning Lv.2]
Perhaps it was thanks to the skill’s effect,
but each sentence in the novel engraved itself deeply into my mind, letter by letter, and a sense of immersion began to fill the room.
It was certainly different from the feeling of reading books in the past.
The story of a girl with dandelion-colored hair
and the man who met her overlapped with Kotomi’s violet eyes from when I had met her in the library.
That night, [The Dandelion Girl] did not leave my hands easily.
...
The following morning.
"Hey, Morita! Hurry up! We’re going to be late!"
For some reason, Sunohara, who would normally still be asleep, had woken up early and was hurrying me along.
Still bewildered, I hurriedly got ready and left the dorm with him.
On the way to the school gate, we naturally joined up with Okazaki, who was walking toward us in the distance, and the three of us headed to school side by side.
Somehow, it felt like it had been a long time since I had gone to school with friends.
As we neared the main gate,
we began to see first-years everywhere, entering through the gates in crisp new uniforms with excited expressions.
Come to think of it, today was the entrance ceremony for the new students.
The moment Sunohara saw them, his eyes practically flipped over.
"Woohoo! First-years! There must be tons of cute girls too, right? This is incredible!"
Watching Sunohara look around eagerly,
Okazaki gave him a cold, disparaging look and drove the point home.
"Sunohara, I’ll say it again: you won’t get off with just the police station."
"Um... I think it would be better if you restrained yourself a little."
Agreeing with Okazaki, I cautiously added my own remark.
It was sincere advice, in its own way,
but Sunohara looked at me as though I had betrayed him.
"Morita! Even you?!"
Okazaki casually draped an arm over my shoulder and pressed Sunohara once more.
"He’s right. Behave yourself."
"Aagh! Do I truly have no one on my side?!"
With Sunohara’s cry as our background music,
we climbed the beautiful cherry blossom hill, a sight I could never grow tired of seeing.
Sunohara still walked with an excited expression, looking all around him.
Okazaki followed behind him with a sigh.
And I walked quietly between them.
When we finally made it to the top of the hill and reached the school gates,
we saw the welcome sign we had made for the new students.
"Okazaki, Sunohara. Look over there."
Glad to see it, I pointed toward it.
"We made that."
There stood the product of all our hammering, painting, and grunting while working on it with Kyo.
It was not professionally made, so it was a little crude and the lettering was crooked,
but the sign, clearly bearing the words “Welcome, New Students,” stood proudly as it greeted the first-years.
Okazaki’s eyes softened a little as he quietly looked at it.
Perhaps something had moved him; he let out a soft exclamation.
"Ah... nice."
Beside him, Sunohara folded his arms with a smug look on his face.
"Hmph, of course! Those first-years should know that their great upperclassmen went through all this trouble for them and be grateful for the rest of their lives!"
"All you did was knock over a sheet of plywood and hurt Morita, idiot."
"Agh! Okazaki! Even I’d forgotten about that! Did you really have to bring it up now?!"
Okazaki mercilessly drove home that weighty fact.
He had brought up how, during the sign-making, Sunohara had made the plywood fall over while acting up, and I had gotten hurt saving Kyo.
Sunohara’s face instantly turned bright red,
and as if guilt and embarrassment had flooded through his entire body, he clutched his head in both hands and groaned.
His unexpected reaction left me flustered instead, and I gave an awkward smile as I waved my hands.
"Hah... haha, it’s all right, Sunohara. I’m completely healed, so don’t worry about it."
Even as we bickered, the three of us kept our eyes on the welcome sign standing tall at the main gate for quite some time.
The sign had not begun as something made from entirely good intentions.
Still,
it held traces of our youth, left behind as we sweated and laughed together.
And those traces
quietly lit the way for the first-years beginning something new.
...
We passed through the main gate and entered the school building,
arriving at the shoe lockers to change into our indoor shoes.
We had planned to change our shoes together and head up to the classroom.
But after changing his shoes, Sunohara grabbed Okazaki by the back of the neck and gave me a sinister smile.
"Morita, you go on up first! We’ve got something to do. Heh heh heh."
"What...?"
I felt uneasy.
Were they going to put their plan into action now?
What if Kyo ended up seriously hurt?
Various thoughts flashed through my mind, and I could not make myself take a step.
In the end,
I looked back and forth between Sunohara and Okazaki, standing there caught in his grip, then cautiously asked,
"Um... Kyo isn’t going to get hurt or anything, right?"
At my serious concern,
Okazaki answered in Sunohara’s place with a long sigh.
"Don’t worry. He’s an idiot, but he has enough sense not to go that far."
"He knows his life would be in danger if he picked a fight with Kyo, too."
"Hey! Okazaki! What kind of way is that to put it?!"
"Shut up. Let’s go."
Okazaki started down the opposite hallway, practically dragging along the struggling Sunohara.
"Anyway, Morita! See you in the classroom later! Just wait for it!"
"..."
As I listened to Sunohara’s voice boldly calling out even while he was being pulled away,
I changed into my indoor shoes alone, still carrying an uneasiness that would not fade.
...Still, surely nothing serious would happen.
After I arrived in the classroom,
Okazaki and Sunohara came in sooner than I expected.
"Nothing happened, right?"
"Well, nothing major."
Even when I asked Okazaki as he headed for his seat in the back,
he only sighed and looked out the window.
"Heh heh heh... Morita. Just wait a little longer."
"You’ll soon get to see something really entertaining!"
"..."
Just as my worry for Kyo was growing beneath that ominous smile,
the classroom’s front door slid open with a rattle,
and Kyo strode into the classroom with imposing confidence.
"Morning, Class Rep!"
"Ah, good morning, everyone!"
Seeing Kyo exchange greetings with her classmates as usual,
she did not seem as though anything had happened to her.
Still, I noticed that she occasionally touched the pocket of her uniform.
Just as I was blankly staring at her, wondering if I had worried too much,
our eyes suddenly met.
"...?"
For only an instant,
Kyo’s gaze wavered. Then, as if nothing had happened, she turned away and continued speaking with her friends.
It bothered me a little,
but she seemed all right, which reassured me.
Yet entirely different reactions were coming from behind me as they watched her.
"Heh heh heh... I wonder, I wonder what will happen?"
"Ha. Sunohara, you’ve got terrible taste."
The more I heard their reactions,
the more I felt as though I was sinking deeper into a mystery.
Just as I was about to ask them about the plan again,
our homeroom teacher opened the classroom door and walked in.
"All right, you all know there’s an entrance ceremony today, right?"
"The second- and third-years need to be seated first, so let’s head to the gymnasium."
In the end, putting aside my questions about the plan for the moment,
I headed to the gymnasium for the entrance ceremony.
...
The entrance ceremony soon began.
Inside the gymnasium,
the principal began delivering a long, tedious address that seemed as though it would be exactly the same in any world and at any high school.
As if it were only natural, Sunohara, seated to my right, had already tilted his head over and fallen deeply asleep,
while Okazaki on my other side leaned far back in his chair with an indifferent expression, blankly staring ahead.
The tedious speech had been going on for quite some time.
Suddenly, I felt a piercing gaze from my left and subtly turned my head.
Kyo, seated a little distance away, was sneaking glances in this direction from the corner of her eye.
But... Okazaki was seated right beside me.
...Could it be?
Ryo had seemed to like Okazaki, too.
Was Okazaki more popular than I thought...?
I quietly called to him.
"Um, Okazaki."
"Yeah."
"I think Kyo is looking at you..."
Okazaki silently looked at me once.
"...You."
Okazaki started to say something, then shook his head.
"Never mind. Just ignore it."
"...?"
I was left with an inexplicable uneasy feeling,
but decided to focus on the first-year introductions that were about to begin.
After the entrance ceremony ended,
we returned to the classroom, and the morning classes passed as usual.
...
Lunchtime.
At last, the bell for the awaited lunch break rang.
But the moment it did,
Kyo, who would normally take her time looking after everyone around her, hurriedly opened the front door and left the classroom as though she had something extremely urgent to do.
"...?"
I tilted my head as I watched her hastily retreating back,
but before long, Sunohara and Okazaki led me toward the school store.
All the while we walked down the hallway, the uneasy feeling in my heart made me glance at Sunohara.
"Um... Sunohara, do you still not plan to tell me about it?"
"Heh heh heh, Morita! Stop worrying! Even if you don’t want to know, you’ll soon find out in vivid detail!"
"..."
Okazaki’s reaction,
and Sunohara’s attitude, were both strange.
I truly hoped it was nothing.
But the ominous feeling would not stop.
After pushing through the crowds as bustling as ever and buying bread,
I intended to return to the classroom.
But the moment we stepped out of the school store building, Sunohara tapped my shoulder and smiled wickedly.
"Morita! Wait in the classroom first! You’re about to have a very fun year!"
"...?"
What did his plan have to do with having a fun year?
Before I could even wonder about it, Okazaki sighed deeply and pushed me toward the classroom.
"Hah... Don’t pay too much attention to what that idiot says."
"You go on in first."
"Ah, okay..."
The two of them vanished into the crowd in an instant.
I paused, wondering whether I should follow them,
and at that very moment, as I stood there blankly holding my bag of bread alone—
───────────────
[Emergency Quest]
『A Girl’s Heart』
Protect the heart of a girl
who may be hurt by a prank.
Reward: ???
Failure: ???
───────────────
"..."
Seeing the quest’s contents,
I could not get the phrase saying Kyo might be emotionally hurt out of my mind.
I did not know where Sunohara and Okazaki had gone.
Even if I found them, I was not certain I would be able to stop them.
Still.
It was better than doing nothing and regretting it.
Clutching the bag of bread in my hand tightly,
I began to run wherever my feet took me.
...
Perhaps because my stamina was at 8, I did not tire easily even as I ran.
I began searching all around for a glimpse of Kyo’s silhouette or any trace of Okazaki and the others,
but finding people in such a large school was far from easy.
‘System, can’t you show me likely locations or something?’
It had given me a quest but had not even marked a target location.
It really was an unfriendly system.
[Suho’s request acknowledged.]
[Displaying estimated target locations.]
‘You could have done that from the start...’
I once again painfully realized that this world’s system showed only the bare minimum if I did nothing,
and that I had to think of and make a “request” myself for any of its more detailed convenience features.
‘Other webtoons and novels don’t make their systems seem this inconvenient...’
I wondered whether being a “special selection personnel” meant I had some sort of penalty or restriction placed on me.
While I was lost in thought, the text before my eyes rapidly updated.
[Marking target locations...]
[Locations are listed in order of likelihood.]
1. Old School Building Storage Room
2. Rooftop
3. Gym Storage Room
4. Central Courtyard
5. Empty Classroom.
"..."
"Five places?"
When was I supposed to search all of those?
"Hah. I’ll go to the storage room, the top priority, first."
Rather than agonizing over where to go, I decided to first check the location with the highest possibility.
...
In front of the old school building’s storage room,
I caught my increasingly ragged breath and timidly cracked open the door.
But unlike what I had expected, nothing but quiet silence filled the room.
"Am I already too late...?"
Thinking there might be a clue of some kind, I walked deeper into the storage room.
On an old green chalkboard was a short, unevenly written message.
『Something urgent came up, so please come to the rooftop.』
"..."
They called her to the storage room,
and now they were telling her to go to the rooftop?
The storage room.
The rooftop.
The other likely locations.
They were making her keep moving from place to place.
And the quest said “emotional hurt.”
"...Could it be?"
"A love letter...?"
I still did not really understand deep feelings like liking or loving someone.
To me, those were simply unfamiliar words.
But
making such pure feelings into a prank and a source of ridicule was clearly wrong.
Sometimes, more than physical wounds,
wounds carved deeply into the heart could become greater obstacles in a person’s life.
"...No."
"I don’t have time to think."
I immediately rushed out of the storage room and ran down the stairs.
But my destination was not the rooftop above.
I began sprinting at full speed toward the Central Courtyard in the middle of the school building.
[Query. This is not the direction of the rooftop.]
"I know."
I answered harshly in my mind as I ran.
‘Even if I go to the rooftop now, there’s a good chance they’ve already moved on to the next place.’
Given the timing, they were likely already at the rooftop.
Even if I went up now, I might miss them.
In that case, cutting off their route would be faster.
[The third-priority location is the Gym Storage Room.]
"The Central Courtyard comes before the gym storage room."
"It’s where the most people gather during lunch."
"If they want to pull a prank in front of people, that’s the more dangerous place."
More than anything, hurt suffered before many people tended to linger.
Emotional wounds could sometimes leave scars deeper than physical ones.
[Behavioral pattern analysis complete.]
[In emergency situations where others are prioritized,
a marked decrease in anxiety response has been observed.]
[Cognitive function restored to normal range.]
[Saving data...]
I ignored the system windows that kept appearing pointlessly as I ran.
I did not have the leeway to worry about a system analyzing my condition right now.
After drawing in a breath and rounding the final corner,
the bustling Central Courtyard finally appeared before me.
As I caught my breath, I quickly scanned my surroundings.
Among the students laughing and chatting as they enjoyed their lunch break, I could not yet see Kyo’s purple hair
or the conspicuous silhouettes of Okazaki and the others.
At least, it seemed the situation I had feared most had not happened yet.
"Have they not arrived yet...?"
Or had I completely misjudged things?
If they had not reached this place yet,
and the system’s order was their route,
then there was a strong chance they were heading here from the gym storage room right now.
Then there was no reason to linger here any longer.
"First, I’ll check the path leading from the Central Courtyard to the gym storage room."
Readjusting my grip on the bag of bread,
I ran through the courtyard toward the secluded hallway that led to the gym storage room.
I quickly passed through the somewhat deserted, dim hallway.
And just as the old gym storage building came into view ahead,
I saw a familiar silhouette open the storage room door and walk outside.
"..."
It was Kyo.
Perhaps because she had been moving from place to place with a love letter in hand, she looked utterly exhausted,
and she wore a profoundly empty, bitter expression, as though what she had hoped for had not come to pass.
Seeing her desolate appearance, the words “emotional hurt” from the quest window filled my mind.
Ah. Was I one step too late?
If only I had been a little earlier...
No, if I had tried harder from the start to learn about their plan and stop it.
The critics in my mind began speaking up again, one by one.
But
now was not the time to think like that.
"Kyo!"
Worried, I called her name in a voice much louder than usual without realizing it.
My voice rang loudly through the secluded hallway.
"...!"
Startled by my shout, Kyo swiftly turned her head to look this way.
In that instant,
Kyo’s violet eyes widened enormously as though she had been utterly shocked by something when she saw me.
Then,
her face reddened, and she began looking down.
I picked up my speed and stopped in front of Kyo.
Breathing hard, I barely managed to speak.
"Thank goodness..."
"I’m really glad, Kyo."
I sincerely meant that I was glad
she had not been hurt, that she was not caught up in the worst kind of prank and crying.
At those words, Kyo lowered her head, and her shoulders visibly jolted.
Had she really been hurt by something after all?
"Are you okay, Kyo?"
"Ah... ah, Morita..."
Kyo avoided my gaze with her face red.
"...You’re a little late."
"...Huh?"
Completely unlike her usual lively, charismatic self,
Kyo stammered and could not properly look at me.
That behavior
was nothing like the confident Kyo I knew.
She looked like someone who had suffered a deep shock and could not pull herself together.
...Had I been too late after all?
I still did not know what had happened to her.
But the Kyo before my eyes now
was clearly different from her usual self.
If only I had moved a little faster...
Guilt pressed heavily against a corner of my heart.
I looked straight into Kyo’s eyes and bowed my head sincerely.
"Kyo, I’m sorry."
"...Huh? M-Morita?"
"If only I’d been more proactive..."
It was a belated regret that I should have acted more proactively to stop the prank.
Kyo’s violet eyes shook violently as though an earthquake had struck.
In a voice nearly like a scream, she frantically waved both hands and cut me off.
"N-no! You’re plenty proactive already...!"
After saying that, Kyo hurriedly covered her mouth with both hands.
"...?"
Proactive...?
Was she talking about me running all the way here to stop the prank?
But I was still too late.
"I think I bear some responsibility for this, too."
"...What?"
Kyo’s hands slowly fell away from her mouth.
Countless emotions swept through her violet eyes in an instant.
I did not avert my gaze from hers.
I knew Sunohara was plotting something,
yet I had not been able to stop him in the end. I bore responsibility for that too.
If I had acted a little more proactively,
I might have been able to warn Kyo beforehand.
Though it was one of Sunohara’s tasteless pranks,
considering what he was normally like, even Sunohara himself probably had not expected to hurt someone this badly.
So I did not want her to hate my friends.
It would be easier on my heart if she blamed me instead, for knowing everything and still failing to stop them.
"So, Kyo, please..."
I was just about to tell her not to hate my friends and to blame me instead.
"W-wait! If you suddenly say something like that...!"
Kyo cut me off urgently, her face red as though it were about to burst.
Her voice was nearly a scream.
Clutching the front of her chest tightly with both hands, she looked up at me with an expression as though her heart might leap out.
"...?"
At her sudden interruption, I had no choice but to close my mouth again.
"R-responsibility...? And blaming you...? Why would I blame you, Morita?! And there’s no way I could hate you in the first place!"
Kyo shook her head fiercely, rambling like someone whose brain had overloaded.
Her reaction was far from what I had expected.
There was no way she would blame me. And no way she could hate me?
She was saying things I had not even brought up, so surely...
‘...Was she so shocked that her thoughts were confused?’
Sunohara’s prank must have been crueler than I had imagined.
Thinking that made me feel even more sorry for Kyo before my eyes.
"Kyo, you don’t have to force yourself to pretend you’re all right. I came here knowing that Sunohara pulled a prank."
The very moment I was about to comfort her by pointing out that cruel reality—
"...Huh?"
Kyo’s frantic movements abruptly froze like a stone statue.
The shy blush that had filled her face instantly turned into confusion.
Her violet eyes stared blankly at me.
"Sunohara... pulled a prank?"
The note she had carefully tucked away in her pocket rustled.
The excitement she had held only moments ago
began to waver for the first time.
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