Dead silence.
You could have heard a pin drop inside the bus.
Everyone's expressions froze on their faces, like a row of ridiculous statues.
Ryota Miyagi's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. He rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing. That red-haired monkey who feared neither heaven nor earth, who even dared to talk back to Captain Akagi, had actually... knelt before Shirakawa? And called him "Lord Shirakawa"?
What was going on? Had he been cursed?
Kiminobu Kogure's glasses slid completely off the bridge of his nose and hit the floor with a smack, but he did not even notice. His worldview, built over more than twenty years, felt as though it had been utterly shattered at that moment, then stomped into the ground and ground to dust.
Even Kaede Rukawa's open eye showed a rare flicker of astonishment. He looked at Sakuragi's textbook dogeza posture, then at Shirakawa's matter-of-fact expression, and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
What are those two idiots up to now?
Takenori Akagi, meanwhile, felt his temples throbbing as his blood pressure soared at an alarming rate. He could no longer put his current feelings into words. All he wanted was to throw Sakuragi, that idiot, straight out the bus window.
As for Haruko Akagi, one of the people involved, her mind had gone completely blank. She stared dumbly at the kneeling Sakuragi, then at the calm-faced Shirakawa, utterly unable to comprehend this surreal scene.
"Get up."
Shirakawa's indifferent voice broke the strange silence.
He seemed not to find anything unusual about what had happened. He merely waved his hand, as if shooing away a noisy fly.
"Yes! Lord Shirakawa!"
As if granted a pardon, Hanamichi Sakuragi sprang up from the floor with a kip-up, then swiftly returned to his seat. With both