Chapter 424: What Were They Doing In The Grove?
Chapter 424: What Were They Doing In The Grove?
They…
What on earth were they doing in that grove?!
All sorts of shocking images instantly popped into her head.
Too-too ridiculous!
How could they do that kind of thing at school?
School was a place for learning!
Just as Yuigahama, flushed red and her thoughts in a jumbled mess, was at a complete loss, Nanami and Miura proved far more direct. One had a dark expression, the other glared angrily – they were already striding purposefully into the grove.
“You can’t!”
“What are you doing?!”
Their voices arrived before they did.
The fierce, accusatory shouts nearly scared the two people inside right out of their wits.
“Huh?”
Hearing Miura’s voice, Himekoji instinctively stood up, ready to make a quick escape.
He’d angered the Queen terribly in the bathroom earlier; she was a real handful when she got mad, so he figured it was best to avoid her for a couple of days.
But immediately after that, he heard Nanami’s voice too. The impulse to bolt vanished immediately, replaced by utter confusion as he turned his head back –
“We weren’t doing anything? What’s wrong?”
Himekoji was genuinely puzzled.
What were Miura and Nanami doing together?
And how come their tones and expressions were so weirdly similar? Almost like…
Like they were catching cheating partners?
The phrase uncontrollably popped into his mind.
He was almost immediately amused by his own bizarre train of thought.
Catching cheating partners?
Catching who cheating?
What cheating was there to catch?
…
“Weren’t doing anything? If you weren’t doing anything, why were you two… l-linked… Huh?!”
Nanami, naturally worked up and ready to level accusations, had fully expected to walk right into some disgusting, depraved, perverted crime scene.
Without thinking, she thrust her finger accusingly straight at Himekoji and Eriri, those vile suspects who had dared to taste forbidden fruit in the sacred halls of learning.
However, her words choked off mid-sentence as her eyes took in the scene before her.
Wait!
Where’s the crime scene?
Had it been tidied up already?
Was Himekoji that ridiculously fast?
Disbelieving, Nanami stared hard. She saw Himekoji and Eriri standing directly in her line of sight, clothes perfectly tidy, expressions completely normal.
No matter how she looked at it, they utterly failed to seem like people who had just done that thing…
No!
That wasn’t right!
She almost fell for it!
Doing that thing didn’t necessarily mean messy clothes, did it?
Heck, sometimes they didn’t even need to take anything off!
Yes, that was it!
Then she looked at their faces again. Eriri’s especially – flushed an abnormal bright red, breathing uneven and ragged, a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead – wasn’t that exactly how someone looked after strenuous exercise?
Thinking this way, all the pieces instantly fell into place.
The only slightly puzzling detail in the entire matter was the issue of Himekoji’s… performance time.
Too fast for a normal guy…
Though, to be honest, Nanami wasn’t entirely sure what was normal for a guy…
She knew a little from whispered conversations among girls.
But no matter what, it couldn’t be that quick!
They’d only just seen Himekoji and Eriri enter the grove, hadn’t they?
They’d followed straight after without a second’s delay!
Yet here they were, and the two seemed… finished?
Even their clothes were fixed back perfectly. If Nanami hadn’t been paying extremely close attention, Himekoji really would have gotten away with it.
Which meant Himekoji hadn’t just done that, he was actively trying to cover it up?
A crime on top of a crime! Multiply it by a thousand! A crime punishable by death! Utterly unforgivable!
“You said ‘linked together’… Oh, you mean this?”
Himekoji, oblivious to the terrifying scenarios Nanami’s brain was concocting, pointed unconsciously to the earplugs he was wearing.
One set of earphones, two wires – one leading to Himekoji, the other to Eriri…
The headphones weren’t that great; faint strains of melodious music could just barely be heard leaking out.
“Huh? This? That’s not…”
Nanami had finally put the picture together, only to have Himekoji’s action throw her thoughts into disarray again.
Headphones? Linked together?
“Is there something wrong with your brain?”
Miura, ever blunt, voiced what Nanami was too baffled to say.
They were just listening to music using a single pair of headphones? Sharing something? That hardly counted as “linked together.” What kind of hole did your brain need to make that leap?
…
“You…”
The words you’re the ones with something wrong with your brains were on the tip of Eriri’s tongue. Being intruded upon in the middle of her… moment inevitably annoyed her.
But she swallowed the retort.
Because this was school.
Eriri hadn’t entirely forgotten her school persona yet –
The outstandingly beautiful, incredibly kind, and immensely popular ace of the Art Club.
A sort of idol’s burden.
And among those traits, the “incredibly kind” part was obviously the hardest to pull off consistently.
She kept reminding herself constantly just to barely meet the standard.
Times like now were a good example…
Eriri felt really annoyed because her fun moment got ruined, but she couldn’t show that anger.
For Eriri, who was always used to putting all her feelings straight on her face around Himekoji, it felt really awkward.
So, she forcibly changed the words that almost slipped out—
“You…”
“Did you all come to enjoy the cool too?”
That strange expression where the smile didn’t reach her eyes—it was only thanks to Eriri’s great looks that she managed to pull it off. At first glance, Nanami and the others didn’t notice a thing.
“Enjoy the cool? So Akito and Riri were just chilling here?” asked Nanami.
Yuigahama, who had lagged a step behind Nanami and Miura, finally chimed in at that point.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Nanami answered.
Himekoji nodded naturally.
“Riri?” said Yuigahama.
But at that, Eriri’s face turned even weirder…
No one had ever called her that before.
So, what was up with this person…
Did she just give me a nickname on her own?
If Eriri hadn’t listened carefully, she might have thought it was that lousy writer making typos or skipping words again.
…
Over on Nanami’s side, she sneered at Himekoji’s excuse about “enjoying the cool.”
Enjoy the cool?
Said cool turned them all sweaty?
No one would believe that!
“Uh… ‘It’s too deep’… What was that?”
Nanami repeated the embarrassing thing she’d just overheard.
But for no clear reason, as she talked, her once sure tone suddenly faded, and her cheeks went hot and red.
She felt like saying stuff like that herself…
Was kind of weird?
“Huh? You think so too? I told you Eriri’s ear thingy is too shallow,” said Himekoji.
Himekoji didn’t overthink it.
After Nanami mentioned it, he helped fix Eriri’s headphone placement again.
It was totally automatic. Only after doing it did he suddenly get that it seemed a bit flirty, so he quickly stopped. Feeling awkward but curious, he snuck a peek at Nanami.
But Nanami didn’t seem to care about that at all. Her mouth hung open a little in shock and disbelief.
“W-Wait! So when you said ‘way too deep,’ that was about… the headphones?”
“Huh?”
At first, Himekoji didn’t get it because he hadn’t thought that way.
It only hit him after several seconds of staring blankly.
He was instantly speechless.
“No, seriously, what were you imagining?”
Himekoji shook his head, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
At that, Nanami went red in the face, stumbling over her words. She knew she was deeply embarrassed—maybe she’d gotten it wrong…
But—
“Then what about ‘touched the thin skin’?”
“The eardrum…”
Himekoji explained while rolling his eyes.
“How could you even touch that?!”
“Yeah, touching an eardrum does sound way over the top. Anyway, Eriri said it, so ask her,” said Himekoji.
He pushed it off cleanly.
“No way! Impossible! You’re lying! How do you explain your faces? All red! Covered in sweat! And your breathing isn’t right!” shouted Nanami.
If he didn’t explain everything completely, Nanami would never believe him!
She wasn’t that easy to trick.
“Well, what about your face? Could you be… Or just check out Miura and Yuigahama’s faces…”
Himekoji was lost for words and felt like chuckling, unable to hold back.
“We all just finished PE class, and we ran around, right?”
“Huh? Huh?! Eh!!”
The facts she’d been so sure of started crumbling away bit by bit. That feeling made Nanami nearly question everything.
“Hey, Nanami, what exactly fills that little brain of yours all day, huh?”
Teasing Nanami like this felt fun, so Himekoji couldn’t resist joking.
“Eek! I don’t need to hear that from a pervert!”
Nanami felt both shame and anger, so her Kansai dialect naturally popped out again.
Then, beet-red, she covered her cheeks and spun around to run off…
It was a big misunderstanding, as if she’d wrongly accused them of cheating.
After that, Miura and Yuigahama didn’t feel like sticking around either. They waved goodbye in a hurry and turned to chase after Nanami.
Back in the little woods, under the cool, patchy shadows, only Himekoji and Eriri were left in an instant.
“So…”
Eriri stared at where Nanami had run away, seeming like she wanted to say something.
She yanked off her headphones and held them in her hand tightly, like she was uneasy.
It was all because the music suddenly felt too loud, making it impossible for her to settle down.
“What’s up?” asked Himekoji.
He could sense Eriri was acting oddly but spoke with confusion.
He could feel it but couldn’t read her thoughts.
“That girl…”
“Oh, you mean Nanami?”
Eriri might be bad at remembering names?
Himekoji thought that to himself.
Because Eriri still struggled with recalling even Hayama’s name reliably.
“You and her?”
“She’s my classmate, you already knew that, right?”
“But the way you look at her… doesn’t seem like it’s just classmates…”
“What else could it possibly be?”
Himekoji laughed.
Like he was looking at someone he liked.
Eriri didn’t end up saying that thought.
Maybe she didn’t dare.
She just lowered her head silently and put her headphones back on.
Then, Himekoji also handed over his own piece of headphones to Eriri.
“Go ahead, listen.”
“Mm,” Eriri agreed.
Eriri cranked the volume to full blast.
Now only Eriri was the one listening.
Himekoji sat beside her, humming a tune happily.
Suddenly, she realized the music from the headphones felt just like how she liked Himekoji.
Even though for her, it was deafening and all-consuming, the guy sitting next to her was still absorbed in his own little hummed melody.
Had they gotten closer?
Or moved farther apart?
…