Chapter Eleven: Angel Satan / Chapter Twelve: Fantasies of High School Romance

"Th-then let's go over together, too. We have free time after this, and I really want to play in the water."

Ah, I'd failed.

Watching Ichinose run off, I narrowed my eyes.

I didn't have to worry about her telling anyone about this, but women really were terrifying creatures.

Chapter Eleven: Angel Satan

Forty.

For a classroom measuring ten by six by three and a half, forty students left far too much space. Of course, that wasn't what I was particularly concerned about. What had caught my attention was that all four classes had exactly the same number of students.

Odd and even numbers were a perfect balance.

When everyone's abilities were evenly matched, and you set aside differences in teamwork, even numbers always seemed more reasonable psychologically—and made for a better team, too. By far.

So, if we had the strength and a good background, we shouldn't let anyone fall behind. We didn't know whether they might have a useful ability later on.

Well, at the very least, we'd need to find someone with similar abilities to replace them...

"I'll leave the rest of the work to you, Raku."

Okabe gave my heavy shoulder a hearty slap, then left with Shiratori and Takashima, arms slung over each other's shoulders.

I'd been used as a tool.

A major cleanup. We didn't need to worry about classroom cleanliness every day, so our class's hygiene committee had decided to assign four students to clean the entire classroom after school every Friday. I didn't know if it qualified as a major cleanup, but that was what we called it for now.

I had no idea what kind of system the hygiene committee used to assign people, but I suspected their mood played a big part. I had some complaints about this arrangement. Maybe if they'd done it differently, I wouldn't have ended up paired with Okabe.

There were two other things I wasn't happy about. What kind of thing mattered to a high schooler's life, exactly? Clearly, they'd lied to me. Even so, I thought they should at least find someone to replace me.

I glanced at the two girls in the classroom. The last point was a conventional rule made up by some unknown man: girls only had to do easy work like wiping the blackboard and sweeping, while boys had to do the dirty work, like fetching water, mopping, and taking out the trash. Looking at it now, it seemed there was no place for fairness in this society.

I picked up the bucket and headed for the bathroom. When I returned, I found the classroom empty.

They'd already finished... They'd taken care of everything in the five minutes it took me to go there and back. This was why I said the girls' work was far too easy. And did you have no sympathy at all? Wouldn't a normal person offer to help when they saw a student doing chores all alone?!

I breathed out a filthy sigh into the fresh air scented by the plants.

With no complaints, I grabbed the mop and scrubbed the floor.

Little by little, the crimson sunset spread golden light across the distance. I finished all the work just then, too.

...Or so I thought.

"So taking out the trash counts as boys' work, too, huh?"

I stared at the tightly knotted black garbage bag by the door with an expression that showed my heart had died.

With my spirit exhausted, I sat down on a desk near the door and took in the campus at that time of day. The sunlight outside slanted lower, its color growing more and more fiery. The sunset shone on the desk in front of me, and the textbook resting on it slowly faded in color.

Peaceful.

The distant calls of birds and animals heading home, the absence of footsteps and the breathing sounds of people walking across the floor.

In short, it was quiet here. Setting aside the sense of distance created by the transparent glass walls, the greenery outside looked like a gift from nature, and my place was the center of this world.

Unfortunately, this was still the human realm. As long as the black plastic bag in front of me didn't immediately disappear, that feeling wouldn't last.

When all was said and done, I was still standing outside the world, looking in.

I gave up my lingering thoughts, picked up the garbage bag, and turned to leave.

The entire school had become a ghost town. I really was too slow.

Tsk, but this was the kind of everyday life I wanted, wasn't it?

I was still marveling at the strangeness of life when I suddenly noticed a figure by the iron railing beside the river.

Was that... Kushida?

On the first day of school, Kushida, who was incredibly sociable, had seen me buying household supplies with Ichinose and taken the initiative to greet me. We'd exchanged contact information, and she was the second girl whose number I had saved in my phone. But her account had since fallen silent.

Kushida seemed to have forgotten I existed, too. She hadn't reached out to greet me, and I didn't know what I could talk to her about. So, yeah, that was that.

It definitely wasn't because I lacked the courage.

She stood there without saying a word. To avoid letting her notice me too soon, I chose to tread quietly and act as if I hadn't seen her, passing silently behind her. Then I stopped behind a tree among the greenery.

Should I say hello? But the air around her felt a little... off. Maybe she'd lost her way in life. If so, I ought to comfort her, right?

So what should I say?

'Yo, Kushida.' Or 'What are you doing here?' Or 'Good evening.' It was probably late enough to count as evening, wasn't it?

"Ah—this is so annoying!"

A low growl, like a beast's, suddenly sounded in my ears, filled with anger and disgust. The unexpected sonic attack made me instinctively hide.

"Ah—she's driving me crazy! That woman is so annoying!"

The scene reminded me of descriptions I'd read about Western witches casting spells, cursing someone to be alone for the rest of their life and things like that. It would've felt even more real if the river beside her had turned a vivid green.

"Why is that woman at this school? She thinks she's so smart, so she just stands around acting all high and mighty. Why would a bitch like her get into this school?!"

"Ah—she's so damn annoying! Why doesn't that girl just die?!"

"Thud, thud, thud—!"

Kushida kept unleashing her pent-up frustration on the world. The iron railing groaned under the force, its complaints echoing through its hollow, cylindrical frame.

How terrifying!

Setting aside whatever "offense" the "woman" Kushida was talking about had committed, it was hard to imagine that the gentle girl who'd spoken to me not long ago had this side to her.

My instincts told me that if she caught me, things would go very badly.

But there were hardly any obstacles I could use to hide behind. I could only hope she wouldn't walk straight through the greenery when she left. As long as she didn't do that, she wouldn't find me. I wasn't going to make some rookie mistake, like snapping a branch and making noise.

"Ah—die, die, die!"

"J-just—go—die—already!"

"Thud—"

The iron railing gave one final, heavy groan. Kushida slowly let out a breath, then picked up her shoulder bag and straightened it.

"Mm, I do feel much better now." Her voice, sweet and utterly unlike the one from before, suddenly sounded in my ears. For a moment, I couldn't tell whether the Kushida in front of me was an angel or a demon.

"Okay, let's head back." Kushida hummed a song in her sweet voice and left, her wine-red figure disappearing without a backward glance.

I changed places and waited there a little longer after making sure she was gone. What kind of past had she lived through to show that side of herself just now?

Or rather,

What was she enduring, day after day?

I told you women really were terrifying creatures.

Chapter Twelve: Fantasies of High School Romance

Have you ever experienced the anxiety of being randomly called on by a teacher at school? Have you ever felt the thrill of going to the bathroom whenever you wanted, without asking the teacher's permission? Have you ever felt proud of chatting with the students around you without a care in the world?

As an ordinary student, I hadn't experienced any of those things.

But I could do them whenever I wanted, for the sake of those feelings.

It wasn't that we students were especially unruly. It was that the teachers' behavior in class gave me the impression that I could get away with it. Given the way things were now, I thought the movies I'd watched before were a joke—and a satire, too.

Open-style teaching, self-directed classes.

It wasn't that the teachers didn't care; it was because there was no need to. Once I understood that, I didn't dare do anything improper under the watchful eye of the cameras.

Although the teachers could see the whole room from the podium, most of the time they only watched the center of the classroom. So I was grateful for my gloomy little corner and the image I'd cultivated as an energy-saving type. Since the start of the school year, no one had spoken to me or asked me to pass notes.

Of course, I was grateful to my front-seat neighbor and my classmate beside me, too.

Ichinose and Kanzaki.

The arrangement made me feel, for a moment, as if I'd received God's blessing.

That was something I'd longed for. In truth, even if that damn god existed, I wouldn't get any special favor. I had nothing left in me but sin. Perhaps only the so-called devil would take my side.

But would the devil approve of me?

Nothing I'd done could be called good, and I knew full well I wasn't a good person. If saving someone's life counted as a good deed, then killing someone was evil. So what did that make me?

"Ding, ding, ding-ding—"

The bell rang, and I released the pen in my hand, yawned, and stretched. I followed the best study plan schools usually promoted: focus completely in class, then balance work and rest afterward. So taking a break was very important.

Well, sleep was important for keeping my energy up, too.

All kinds of sounds filled the classroom: talk about new video games, people spending eighty thousand on a game console, a café coming out with a new menu, and so on. I played the role of listener well, silently keeping up with the latest news. As for joining in, I hadn't calculated the energy cost of walking over to the group, so I decided against it.

"I heard there's already a couple in our class."

"Really? That was fast."

"You sound so indifferent. You can't even be bothered to manage your tone?"

"I'm managing it just fine. Can't you tell?"

"No. You're as lazy as a pig."

"Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me?"

"I'm just telling it like it is."

As I bickered with Kanzaki, I instinctively looked around.

"Who are the two you're talking about?"

"I don't know. I just heard some guys mention it."

"...You heard? So you don't know, either."

"I've barely used it, but I happened to catch a glimpse yesterday... Didn't you see?"

"If you're going to look, then look properly. What do you mean, 'catch a glimpse'..."

"You're in no position to say that. You don't even know about this, which means you didn't even take a peek."

"Um, ahem. I usually use the class group chat..."

"An incredibly clumsy change of subject."

"I just don't check it often... Do you plan on dating in high school?"

"Me?" Kanzaki shook his head. "I haven't thought about it. Romance doesn't feel real to us yet. Dating in high school is basically just looking for emotional support under intense pressure. It isn't true love. At most, it's a crush."

"You've really thought about it."

"You can tell just by looking at the boys in our class. Don't they look like monkeys in heat at the zoo? I'm part of that group, too, but I have to admit it."

"..."

That was so objective. What a cutting assessment.

"What about you—oh, sorry, I've offended you. It's not like you could ever get a girlfriend. If the rest of us are monkeys in heat, you've probably already been neutered."

"Hey, hey, stop with the weird comparisons! At least give me a little credit when it comes to this!"

"No. There's no way. With the way you think, you'd definitely say, 'Forget it, having a girlfriend sounds like too much trouble.'"

"I still have some fantasies about girls, at least."

"That's nothing to brag about. Every normal boy thinks that way. The most I can do is congratulate you for still being human and not a salted fish."

"..."

"Admit it. This is your limit."

"No, this isn't my limit." I managed to say something in my defense for once, though I didn't sound very confident.

"Then what? Are you planning to get a girlfriend?"

"..."

Couldn't you at least give me a little face...?