The weekend before summer vacation, Sendou thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of a corpse pose. He really did lie in bed for two whole days, basically sleeping, getting up to eat, crawling back under the covers, and reading novels and manga over and over again, though he had to endure a little torment from his childhood friend at night.
"This is what life is all about!"
The final exams were on Monday, which meant tomorrow. At that moment, Sendou was like a pet dog, rubbing his head wildly against the blanket. If one had to describe the image, it was like a pet dog lying in its owner's arms and forcefully burrowing its head into them.
Except Sendou was just treating his own head like a drill and burrowing randomly into the blanket.
This was also Sendou's little secret. No one knew about it—oh, except one person.
It was completely different from how he appeared in front of others: calm, steady, decisive, gentle, with a slightly sly side and a bit of a tsundere streak.
At times like this, Sendou seemed childish. Yes, only in his behavior, childish like a kindergarten kid.
It was even a little cute. This was another facet of his personality that had existed in his previous life. Even after turning twenty-five back then, some people still called him cute, though they could never explain exactly what was cute about him.
He was always so calm and steady, as though he had been born incapable of being rattled by anything.
Strangers had called him aloof more than once. People who knew him said he had all the traits mentioned above, plus a slightly goofy side, and that he became incredibly chatty whenever the topic interested him.
"Ding!!!"
"Trouble's here again!"
At this hour, no one but Fumino would send him a LINE message.
She was a genius at the humanities, but she was even worse at science than Sawamura. If Sendou had not kept helping her, she probably would still have been hopelessly stuck on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
After all, when she was in elementary school, she had once proudly shown him a workbook full of two-digit addition and subtraction problems, like she was asking for praise! And she had even gotten some of them wrong.
Sendou had nearly collapsed back then, but his personality would never allow him to say anything harsh to a little girl. He had merely said, "Not bad!"
That made her previously sullen face bloom into a smile.
One had to know that even before Sendou gained his current genius-level mind in his previous life—
he had never taken any tutoring classes as a child, yet the moment he learned addition and subtraction, he could mentally calculate any such problem without making a mistake.
Still, Sendou later felt fortunate that he had encouraged Fumino that time. His sly side depended on the person; he could not possibly act that way toward a child.
Because when she had shown off those problems, Fumino's mother had just passed away. She had wanted to prove that she could learn math too. Before that, she had shown the same workbook to her father, only to be treated roughly.
After that incident, Fumino rarely interacted with her father. (Read the original work for the reason! I won't explain it here, or this chapter would be over.)
Instead, she became even more attached to Sendou. In his eyes, to the young Fumino, Sendou's presence felt as though he had taken on a father's role.
So when Sendou moved away later, Fumino was the saddest of all.
However, they had nearly every means of contacting each other. Most of them had been added by Fumino using Sendou's phone, such as LINE and his phone contacts. From then on, they kept up the habit of talking every day. As for astronomy, Fumino had made up her mind about it after learning about the future school admissions process, though she was often discouraged by people around her. Sendou was probably the only one who supported her.
"Get up already, I'm here to ask for help."
"Training wore me out today, so keep it short!"
"With your personality, how could you possibly still train obediently before an exam?
You probably told your teammates days ago that you needed to prepare for exams and suspended practice, right?
Now get up!"
"We have exams tomorrow, and you're still taking up my time. That's too much, you know!"
"What nonsense are you talking about? Are you the kind of person who reviews before an exam? You must be sleeping at a time like this, right? Or... smirks Get up already ∏_∏!"
"Okay, okay, I get it. Go on! Didn't I mail you all of this year's notes before?
Why do you still have questions? Honestly." Sendou immediately surrendered after that pause. Fumino knew about this habit of his mainly because they had been so close as children. She had once entered Sendou's room without even knocking and caught him red-handed. At the time, Sendou had been sprawled on the bed like a puppy, and things had gotten extremely awkward. Although Sendou had talked his way out of it with his silver tongue, afterward...
"Do you have a complaint? smiles"
"No!" Sendou rolled his eyes furiously as he typed.
"Then let's begin!..."
"Ah!!!" Sendou got up yawning early the next morning. Fumino had kept him up far too late last night. At the same time, he was figuring out how to get some dirt on her.
"Akila, stop dawdling over there. You'll be late!"
"Ah... y-yes~!" Still yawning, Sendou heard his grandmother urging him and forcibly turned the middle of his yawn into a response.
"Ah, what a pain. An exam is something I can finish in fifteen minutes, so why do I have to get up this early?" Sendou complained as he walked toward the dining table.
"Stop grumbling and eat. And here's today's bento. You're the one who says you're hungry all day long."
"Nani? Nani?" Sendou asked as he looked at the enormous bento box.
"The moment food is mentioned, you perk right up. There are fried shrimp and fried chicken in there. You can never get enough of that stuff, can you? How about eating some vegetables once in a while?"
"Humans are carnivores, and eating that stuff just makes you hungry too easily!" Sendou said as he wolfed down the breakfast on the table.
This was probably a side effect of his powerful body: massive energy consumption!
"I'm off!" Sendou finished breakfast quickly, got on his bike, and headed out.
The school was obviously so close, yet he still insisted on riding there. His terminal laziness was beyond saving.
"Good morning!"
"Oh, good morning! By the way, Wakaba, how's that idiot doing? Is he going to get another single-digit score?"
"Probably! Eijun is always like this."
"Don't worry about it. Our school doesn't arrange makeup exams. Otherwise, that guy would really be in deep trouble."
"Yeah, honestly!"
"Putting that aside, did your mother agree to let you go to Tokyo with us?"
"Of course. My mother said that if it was with you all, she'd feel at ease."
"Oh, that's good. But there might, maybe, perhaps be one more person coming along!"
"Hmm?"
"Um, she's my childhood friend. I need to tutor her in math, so you won't feel so awkward, and, um, lonely!...
She's kind of a Natural Airhead! She's a little better than that idiot, I guess! She's just spaced out sometimes!" Seeing that Wakaba had no reaction, Sendou decisively skipped over that awkward explanation and went straight to describing Fumino's personality.
"Mm! Having another girl would be nice too. Then I'd have someone to keep me company!"
"Right, right, exactly!"
"Then I'll head back to my seat first!" Without realizing it, the two had already reached the classroom door, so they each returned to their own seats.
My head hurts a little again today, but it won't affect me. After I finish typing, I'll go to sleep in a while. Good night, everyone! Oh, and please send recommendation votes and add this to your favorites.
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