Volume 2 Episode 01

The first midterm exam of my third year was a complete disaster.

I hate studying, but when a test is coming up, I at least open my textbook and make some effort to memorize formulas or historical dates. But this time, I couldn’t even do that, and it didn’t help at all.

As a result, my grades—which were never particularly great but never particularly bad either—took a nosedive.

And it’s all because of Sendai-san.

Because of what happened before the test, nothing went right. I’m sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, letting out a small sigh.

It’s June, and with the switch to summer uniforms, Sendai-san—now in lighter clothing—sits beside me with a calm expression, flipping through a magazine. Her usual spot was supposed to be on the bed. I don’t know if it’s because of the kiss, but she seems a bit too comfortable.

I glance down at the manga I’d left open but hadn’t been reading and close it immediately. My eyes shift to the magazine Sendai-san is reading as she flips another page. The cover is littered with shallow phrases like “how to look cute” or “boost your likability.” It looks like the same kind of magazine she bought when I handed her 5,000 yen after she forgot her wallet at the bookstore.

Her expression doesn’t change as she turns another page.

“It’s only awkward at first,” she had said.

That’s what Sendai-san told me, but even though this is the first time I’ve invited her over since that kiss in May, she doesn’t seem to feel any awkwardness at all.

I don’t get it.

Ever since the kiss, Sendai-san—who’s no longer just a friend—has become something even more incomprehensible. I put the manga back on the shelf and grab a new book.

—I shouldn’t have invited her.

Nothing bad happened today, but I still called Sendai-san over to my place. I gave her 5,000 yen to “buy” her after-school time. That’s how it’s always been, and today was no different. I didn’t want her to think I stopped inviting her because of the kiss, and I thought I could face her with a casual expression, pretending it was no big deal. But I’m already starting to regret it.

What happened in May is still affecting me in June.

And yet, Sendai-san, with her blouse unbuttoned twice at the top and her tie loosened as always, is the same old Sendai-san, unchanged from before the kiss.

“Do you like these kinds of magazines, Miyagi?”

She’s flipping through the pages at a pace that makes it unclear whether she’s reading or just skimming, and she looks up to ask me.

“I don’t.”

“You’ve been staring at it, so I thought you might be into this stuff.”

“I wasn’t staring, and I’m not interested in those magazines.”

Her light tone and slightly upturned lips tell me she’s teasing, so I respond curtly.

“I’m not really into them either,” she says.

“Then why do you buy and read them?”

“Exactly. I’m deliberately buying magazines I don’t even like.”

She says it flatly and closes the magazine.

I understand now that she’s not reading it with any real interest, but she doesn’t explain why she buys magazines she doesn’t care for. Still, I can guess based on her friend group. The flashy catchphrases on the cover are exactly the kind of thing Ibaraki-san would love. 

Being a people-pleaser must be exhausting.

I think I’d feel a bit calmer if she showed that people-pleasing side in front of me, but I don’t need that version of Sendai-san in this room. If she were like that, I probably wouldn’t have kept inviting her here for so long.

“By the way, Miyagi, how’d you do on the test?”

Sendai-san asks while sipping barley tea. I don’t want to admit it wasn’t good. I really don’t want to say it, especially since she might guess why I did so poorly.

“Average. You?”

“Same, average. What was the average score? You got your score sheet back, right?”

I did get it back, but the “midterm score sheet” isn’t something I want to look at or think about.

“Why do I have to tell you? If you want to know, tell me yours first.”

“Fine, grab my bag. My score sheet’s in there. It’s easier to just look, right?”

As she says this, Sendai-san touches my arm.

With the switch from transitional to summer uniforms, her blouse is now short-sleeved. There’s no fabric to block her hand, so the warmth of her touch reaches my skin directly. My body nearly freezes, even though I know she’s just telling me to grab her bag, which is nearby. How ridiculous.

I let out a small breath and push her hand away.

“I don’t need to see it. I already know you got good grades.”

“They weren’t good. Average.”

“Your ‘average’ is probably better than mine.”

“Not true. Just grab my bag.”

She taps my arm lightly. I bet she doesn’t even care about the test scores. She’s just having fun trying to make me look because I said I wouldn’t.

That’s the kind of thing she does.

I snatch the magazine from her lap and toss it toward her bag.

“Go get it.”

I say coldly, looking at her. If she wants her bag, she can pick up the magazine and grab it while she’s at it.

“Yes, yes, an order, right?”

Sendai-san, who never listens when I tell her to only say “yes” once, stands up with a “here we go” and picks up just the magazine. I thought she’d hand it to me, but instead, she sits back down in her spot, flips through the pages, and shows me a picture of a girl with loosely curled hair.

“You should try this hairstyle.”

It’s cute, but I don’t think it’d suit me.

“I could do it for you,” she says.

As she reaches out, memories flood back. Before the kiss, she touched my hair.

Softly, gently.

And then her hand touched my cheek—

“No thanks,” I say, dodging her hand before it can touch my hair, cutting off the memory.

“It’d look good on you.”

“It’s not about whether it’d look good or not.”

I don’t know if her action was deliberate or unconscious, but Sendai-san feels overly familiar today. That’s why I think she’s mean.

Even when we kissed, she was mean.

She deliberately made me order her to do it.

I don’t think she hates me, and I don’t think she was teasing me, but I still don’t understand why she was so insistent on making me give the order. The one thing that’s clear is that Sendai-san is playing with me. I don’t dislike the version of her in this room, who doesn’t wear the mask she does at school, and I did want to touch her too, but this kind of thing is so irritating.

I turn to face her.

Her slightly brown hair, light enough to avoid the teachers’ scrutiny, catches my eye. Her ear peeks out from her half-up hairstyle.

“You don’t wear earrings, do you? You seem like you would.”

Sendai-san isn’t flashy, but it wouldn’t be surprising if she did. Ibaraki-san, who’s always with her, wears earrings and often gets scolded by the teachers.

“I don’t want to get on the teachers’ bad side. Do you, Miyagi?”

“Nope.”

I answer shortly, then tug on her earlobe, which wouldn’t look out of place with a piercing. She looks surprised for a moment. I slide my finger behind her ear.

“That tickles,” she says in a flat voice.

“Don’t move.”

Today, I’m not letting her make me give orders. I’m going to do what I want, how I want. I slowly slide my finger along the base of her ear, and she grabs my wrist.

“I said it tickles.”

Her words don’t sound like a rejection of my touch, but she forcefully pulls my hand away from her ear.

“I told you not to move. Didn’t you hear me?”

It’s not a request—it’s an order. And I’m sure she knows that.

“It’s not a big deal to touch your ear. What, is this a weak spot or something?”

I reach out again and tug on her earlobe.

“Ow, Miyagi, you’re pulling too hard.”

She frowns but doesn’t move, even though she’s clearly not happy about it. I slide my finger from her earlobe to behind her ear again. When I touch the base of her ear, her shoulder twitches slightly. Her expression shows she’s not exactly thrilled, but she doesn’t grab my wrist like before.

“Don’t just do what I tell you like that.”

Seeing her quietly obey makes me feel relieved. This is my room, I shouldn't feel the nervous unease of being in someone else’s space.

I'm the One Giving Orders—Not Sendai-san

Our relationship feels like it’s back to how it should be, and my restless heart calms down. I trace the outline of her ear with my finger. As I slide it into her ear, her face remains stiffly displeased, like it’s carved in plaster, but she pulls away as if trying to escape.

“Hey,” she says in a low voice, but I keep tickling the inside of her ear. She raises her hand but lowers it again. She’s still following my order not to move, and I continue to toy with her ear. It’s amusing to see Sendai-san, who’s so composed at school, silently enduring this with a grumpy expression.

What’s not fun for her is probably fun for me, and what’s not fun for me is probably fun for her. It’s obvious without even thinking about it—we’re complete opposites, with no common ground.

It’s only natural that I can’t understand her, even if she acts like nothing happened in May now that it’s June. I can’t possibly know what someone like Sendai-san, who’s always basking in the sunlight, is thinking.

I slide my finger from the base of her ear to her neck. She flinches and lets out a stifled sound.

“You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?” she says, grabbing my arm as if she can’t take it anymore.

“It is fun. You can resist if you can.”

“Cut it out already.”

Her eyes are openly defiant.

“Nope.”

I brush off her words with a single syllable, shake off her hand, and tug her ear to pull her closer.

“That hurts, Miyagi.”

I’m sure it does. I pulled hard on purpose, so her reaction is exactly right. Satisfied, I close the distance even more. She’s as close as she was when we kissed. My heart thumps, mistakenly thinking I have feelings for her.

I pretend not to notice my quickening heartbeat and bring my lips to her ear. A sweet scent tickles my nose. It’s the same smell as the one on my pillow from the day she took over my bed—not a bad smell at all.

What shampoo does she use?

A question I’ve wondered about before briefly distracts me as I touch her ear with the tip of my tongue.

“I said it tickles!”

She pushes my shoulder, but she’s still mindful of my order not to move, so there’s no real force behind it. I lightly graze the cartilage with my teeth, and she overreacts, her body trembling dramatically.

“Don’t bite! The order’s done, okay?”

She doesn’t sound angry, but her voice is lower than usual.

“No way.”

“It’s not ‘no way.’ Stop it.”

“Sen—”

I whisper close to her ear, cutting her off. Then, I correct myself.

“Hazuki, you’re being loud.”

In this room, Sendai-san once called me “Shiori” by my first name. This is just payback—a casual way of addressing her, with no deeper meaning. Our relationship is bound by a single contract—nothing more, nothing less. That’s been the rule since the first day I handed her 5,000 yen, and her visits here are limited. At most, it’ll last until graduation. No longer.

There’s no reason for it to continue beyond that. In a relationship with a clear endpoint, calling each other by first names isn’t anything special. I press my lips to the soft spot just below her ear.

Sendai-san’s hand brushes my back for a moment before pulling away. When my tongue grazes her smooth skin, she lets out a quiet breath. It’s such a faint sound I almost miss it, but it lingers in my ears, mixing with the sound of my own heartbeat. To escape it, I slide my tongue behind her ear.

“Miyagi, that’s gross,” she says.

Her voice is the same as always, but her breathing seems a little uneven. My heart is racing faster than a brisk walk. I know I shouldn’t go any further. But I let myself get carried away by the quickening pulse I’m pretending not to notice. Leaning my weight onto Sendai-san, I push her down. Her back hits the floor with surprising ease. I move to bite her ear, but she presses hard against my collarbone.

“Anything more is against the rules.”

No sex. That’s probably what she means by breaking the rules, but this isn’t like that.

“It’s not against the rules,” I say, pulling my face back to protest.

Sendai-san pushes me aside and sits up.

“It’s close enough to count,” she says.

“What, did it feel good?” I tease.

She touches her ear as if wiping it clean, then stands up with an exasperated look, gazing down at me.

“Are you an idiot? I’m saying don’t push me down.”

Her foot unceremoniously kicks my thigh.

“Hey, Miyagi,” she calls, lying on my bed.

“What?”

“You can call me Hazuki from now on.”

“I’m not calling you that again.”

I lean against the bed as I answer, and she hits me on the head with a pillow. It doesn’t really hurt, but I dramatically say, “Ow.” No apology comes. Instead, she hits me with the pillow again.

“You’re so boring, Miyagi,” she mutters, her voice genuinely sounding bored.

✧✧✧✧✧✧

The blackboard is filled with world history, and Mr. Takahashi—Dora-Hashi*, as we call him—is wearing blue again today. His voice drones on about the rise and fall of nations I couldn’t care less about, passing right through me. Nothing ever goes the way I want.

[T/N- Doraemon Reference]

In the end, even when I give Sendai-san orders, she’s only rattled for a fleeting moment. By the end, I’m the one left feeling like smoke drifting aimlessly, uncertain and unsteady.This isn’t the outcome I want. I flip a page in my textbook.

Sendai-san’s breathing.

Her sweet scent.

The softness of her earlobe and the feel of her cartilage.

And the faint flush on her cheeks.

All I can think about is yesterday. The memories I can’t tuck away keep piling up, and most of my thoughts are consumed by Sendai-san.

This is ridiculous. We’ve done things like this before. I’ve left hickeys on her, bitten her neck. What I did yesterday wasn’t much different. And yet, the memory lingers, growing sharper.

Lately, it’s always like this.

Whenever Sendai-san’s involved, nothing good comes of it. What started as a whim feels like it’s grown heavier, her presence weighing on me more than it should. I pull an eraser from my pencil case—the one I forgot to give Sendai-san back, the one she forcibly returned to me in the music prep room. It shows no signs of use.

She didn’t need to go out of her way to return something like this. If she hadn’t come to my classroom to call me out that day, our relationship probably would’ve ended. There wouldn’t have been a kiss.

“Look this way instead of spacing out,” Dora-Hashi’s voice snaps, and I look up. But he’s scolding the boy in the second row from the front, throwing him some unnecessarily tough question.

Good thing it wasn’t me.

I’ve dodged Dora-Hashi’s usual habit of taking out his frustration on students. I pull another eraser from my pencil case and erase words on my notebook that don’t need erasing. A piece of world history vanishes, and the lesson’s content is lost.

The answer to his mean-spirited question never comes. I rewrite the notes from the blackboard and tuck the eraser Sendai-san returned back into my pencil case. The final class of the day continues with Dora-Hashi’s occasional outbursts, but I escape being his target.

“The weather forecast is always wrong on days like this. I was hoping they’d cancel sports festival practice,” Maika says with a disappointed tone as homeroom ends.

I get how she feels.

The sports festival is coming up, so it can’t be helped, but after-school events like this aren’t exactly welcome.

“I thought it’d be canceled too. Group practice is such a drag,” I reply with a sigh, glancing out the window.

The morning news said to bring an umbrella, but the sky is just cloudy—no rain.

“Why do we have to do this after school? They should just cancel classes for it,” Ami says, staring at the rainless sky while rattling off complaints about the sports festival practice. She ends with, “I just want to go home.”

Some people look forward to the sports festival, but the three of us aren’t among them.

“Well, complaining won’t cancel it, so let’s go before we get in trouble,” Maika says with a resigned tone. I nod in agreement, grab my gym clothes, and stand up. Reluctantly, the three of us leave the classroom and head to the changing room. In the hallway, Ami keeps muttering, “I don’t want to do this,” and Maika keeps agreeing.

No matter what we say, the weather forecast stays wrong, and we head out to the field. With so many people gathered for the group practice, the usually spacious field feels cramped. Even so, I spot Sendai-san without even trying.

We haven’t lined up yet.

But since everyone’s vaguely grouped by grade and class, it’s no surprise that she, from the class next to mine, catches my eye. Inevitably, I also see Ibaraki-san standing beside her, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

Sendai-san stands out, but Ibaraki-san stands out even more. Her blatantly brown hair and disheveled gym clothes.

With ear piercings and manicured nails, she acts like she owns the school. Her friends, aside from Sendai-san, are similar—like they’re from another world. But watching Ibaraki-san cheerfully talk to some boys, I think she and Sendai-san don’t really match.

I don’t get why they’re together.

When I only saw them from a distance, I thought they were alike, but not anymore. Sendai-san doesn’t seem like she’d share Ibaraki-san’s tastes.

“Shiori, what’re you zoning out for?” Maika says, tapping my shoulder, and I push Sendai-san out of my sight.

“Huh? Just hoping this ends soon.”

“It hasn’t even started yet. Oh, look, Ibaraki-san’s here. I thought she’d skip something like this,” Maika says, her gaze landing where mine just was.

“Probably worried about her transcript,” Ami says lightly.

“Bit late for that,” Maika replies.

“Better than not caring at all,” Ami counters.

“Oh, right, Shiori. Anything going on with Sendai-san?” Maika shifts her gaze from Ibaraki-san to Sendai-san, her voice brimming with curiosity. Ami grabs my arm, adding, “Yeah, I want to hear about that!”

When Sendai-san came to our classroom to call me out, it was a shock to Maika and Ami. Since then, they’ve brought her up a lot. In short, the fact that Sendai-san went out of her way to call me out has made her an object of their fascination.

I gave them a vague reason at the time, but even now, months later, they still ask about her, so they probably aren’t satisfied with my explanation. Their faces scream they’re fishing for something juicy. I let out a small sigh.

“What do you mean, ‘anything’?”

“You know, something!” Maika says, like it’s obvious.

“There’s no ‘something.’”

“Yeah, I guess,” Maika says, affirming my words, but it makes my heart feel just a little heavy.

Only a little, though.

Not a big deal.

“They should just do the sports festival without all this prep,” Maika grumbles, crouching down. I reply, “They should cancel it even if it’s not raining,” and glance at Sendai-san again.

She’s laughing with Ibaraki-san about something.

Of course, she doesn’t look my way.

Since becoming a third-year, I’ve been grappling with these strange, unplaceable feelings toward Sendai-san. One moment, they’re crawling along slowly; the next, they’re racing so fast they could get pulled over for speeding. My rationality is tossed around, useless.

I should probably let go of these feelings, Sendai-san and all. Otherwise, things will get messy. I know that. I know, but I also want to keep giving her orders.

Make her listen, make her obey, make her submit.

—How stupid.

I slowly look up at the sky. The day I gave Sendai-san 5,000 yen at the bookstore was this kind of half-hearted weather too. That was after the final exams, early July, so it hasn’t quite been a year.

What was I doing this time last year?

I try to remember, but my memories from before meeting Sendai-san are hazy.

“Line up!” a voice calls.

Lost in thought, I get poked in the back by Maika.

At least I remember last year’s sports festival was boring.

That’s the one thing that stuck.