The Fourth Period Is Modern Chinese (Continued)

So then, what exactly were we?

DB Extra: Third Year High School Arc New 2 Illustration

DB Extra: Third Year High School Arc New 3 Interlude: That Was the Her Only She Knew.

Web translation reposted from Baidu Tieba

Image source: @Labmemo

Translation: @MOR-MAU

That nostalgic atmosphere had returned to the Service Club room.

It was that stifling, hollow, bone-chilling air I had felt somewhere, sometime before.

It was the kind of time we had experienced many times over the past year, like a vortex of gravity.

The day after he and she had gone out to eat, after school.

The fragrance of black tea drifted softly through the Service Club room in place of words. Though the steam was warm and sweet-smelling, only faint sighs echoed within it.

In the suffocating silence, I first glanced to my right, then to my left. In my line of sight were chairs that somehow seemed a little farther apart than they had been yesterday.

Sitting in those chairs were him and her.

She, quietly reading, kept lowering her head.

Normally, she always sat with her back perfectly straight, her posture so beautiful it could make one stare in fascination. But today, her shoulders were slightly drooped. Every time she finished a page, she quietly looked away, ran her fingertips along the rim of her teacup, and gazed at the surface as though searching for something.

He, reading with a furrowed brow, looked distracted.

Normally, he would curl up, prop his cheek on one hand, bounce his leg rhythmically, and bury himself in a book. But today, he held the book slightly farther away like an old man and repeatedly raised his head to stare at the ceiling.

There was neither conversation nor eye contact between them.

Still, she would occasionally glance at