Today, I was just minding my own business as usual during one break time when some classmates approached me.

   ‘Bandou-kun, can you do something about those two already?’ one of them ask me.

   ‘Those two?’

   They point at Kazuki and Murata. Once again, they remained at their seat and didn’t go talk to each other like they always used to.

   ‘We have to start talking about the cultural festival soon. If those two still won’t talk to each other, we’ll be having lots of problems.’

   ‘Why me? One of you can go do something about it if you want to see them make up. I know I don’t, which is why I won’t.’

   ‘Come on, don’t say that! Tabata’s your childhood friend, right?’

   ‘Right. And he never had any trouble rubbing in the fact that he has a girlfriend while talking to me in a condescending tone. I’m so glad that I don’t have to put up with it anymore.’

   ‘But, you’re a member of the Love Consultation Club. Shouldn’t you be helping out couples in need?’

   ‘Look, my policy is staying out of other people’s affairs. If they really want help, they can come and talk to me themselves. As you may have noticed, there’s the word consultation in the club, not meddling.’

   ‘And you’re fine with them like this?’

   ‘You’re asking me that? Really? A single guy who had zero girlfriend ever since he was born?’

   They finally took the hint and left me alone. Bah. Screw cultural festivals. It’s just another event that couples exploit to have lovey-dovey dates while us single people have to look on with envy and hate. If I had my way, cultural festivals would be canceled and never return.

   You know what else should be canceled? Exams. They’re pointless, a waste of papers, and in most cases would make a student’s after-school life worse with the supplementary version of them. To make things worse, I can’t go to work despite constantly reassuring my boss Uekawa-san that I don’t have to study for my exams, so my salary is compromised.

   The only good thing that came out of it is that no clubs are allowed to function until exam period’s over, so I don’t have to see those sport club members living their youth to the fullest every time I pass them by.

   School ends in a flash. Just as my classmates are planning to go to the library or someone’s house to study, I’m going to head home and watch some anime. I bump into Nagano on the corridor, and she looks like a wreck. I try to ignore her, but she saw me and grab on to me like a parasite that haven’t been eating for months.

   ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what’s the matter?’ she asks me while sobbing.

   ‘No, I don’t think I will.’ I answer while pushing her away.

   ‘Exams is coming soon, and I’m doomed the way I am now!’

   ‘Well do something about it than clinging on to me like this!’

   ‘I can’t do it alone, and I don’t want to bother my friends!’

   ‘So you came to bother me instead? Buzz off, will you?’

   ‘Oh come on! You look like someone who studies alone anyway, so we can help each other out.’

   ‘Jokes on you. I don’t even study, even if exam’s coming soon.’

   ‘Wow. Your grades must be terrible.’

   ‘No kidding. I got a 23 during the last test.’

   ‘What? You did even worse than me! Oh no, what am I going to do? If my grades keep dropping, my parents will kill me!’

   She lowers down her had and begins to think up of a solution. She raises up her head after a few seconds.

   ‘I know! We’ll ask Suzu for help!’

   ‘Who?’

   ‘Our information broker.’

   ‘Oh, you mean the shut-in?’

   ‘That’s right. She’s extremely smart, so she could definitely teach us. Come on, let’s go!’

   ‘But-’

   Before I could finish my sentence, she has already drag me outside the school and to a place unknown. The place is kind of far, and we even have to ride trains to go there. We got off the train at Ikebukuro and walk another twenty minutes to the largest mansion I’ve ever seen. It has five storeys and has the same size as half a football field.

   An elderly butler who’s wearing expensive-looking suit came out and opens the gate for us to enter after Nagano rang the doorbell. Based on how casually Nagano spoke with him, I guess she comes here pretty often.

   ‘Is Suzu in?’ Nagano asks the butler after their small talk was over.

   ‘Yes. She’s holed up inside her room as usual.’ The butler answers.

   ‘Well, we’ll just go to her ourselves. Thank you again for letting us in, Serizawa-san.’

   The butler bows as low as he could. ‘I am always glad to be in service of ojou-sama’s friends.’

   I wanted to point out that I don’t even know who his ojou-sama is, but I decided to keep quiet in the end since I might complicate things.

   Nagano guides me to a series of long corridors where everywhere looked the same. I’m glad that she’s with me since I would definitely have gotten lost if I was all alone. Eventually, she walks up to a door and knocks on it.

   ‘Suzu, it’s me.’ she tells whoever that’s inside. ‘I’m coming in.’

   ‘Sure, go ahead~.’ I hear a laid-back voice coming from inside.

   Nagano hesitates before turning the door knob.

   ‘Hold on, are you naked again?’

   ‘Yup. Is there a problem?’

   ‘It kind of is, since I brought a guy with me this time. Can you wear something?’

   I hear some soft rustling noise of some clothes being moved. After a few seconds, the voice says to us, ‘You can come in now.’

   Nagano opens the door and walks in. I follow behind and close the door quietly. When I turn around, I gape in surprise as I’m inside the room easily three times bigger than my own. There’s a walk-in wardrobe, a king-size canopied bed, a plain old study table with books stacked on top, and lots of game consoles with just as many screens at the ends of the room.

   I though Nagano was exaggerating when she claimed that this Suzu is extememly smart, but I lost all doubts the moment I saw her uniforms that were hanging on the wall. She’s a student at Kiseki High School.

   This school is straight up an institute for geniuses. It’s combining middle school, high school, college and university into a single giant building just to nurture the literal best of the best. It’s acceptance rate is a whooping 3%, making it even lower than Harvard. Anyone who got in there is basically ready to get a good life with promises of high-paid jobs.

   The owner of the uniform is a pretty girl with long silver hair, blue eyes, and a pair of well-endowed breasts. She’s wearing a loose white shirt and a pair of white shorts. She’s sitting on her gamer’s chair and is staring at us with her sapphire eyes.

   ‘Welcome welcome, both of you~.’ she tells us in a laid-back voice.

   ‘Save us, Suzu!’ Nagano shouts in despair. ‘It’s almost time for our exam, but we don’t even know where to start!’

   She looks at me while tilting her head in confusion. ‘Even Bandou Takuya there?’

   I’m not even going to ask her how she knows my name. Based on the stuff Nagano showed me before, I bet she even knows how many scars I have on my body.

   ‘That’s right. He got a 23 on a subject during the last test. Can you believe it? Even my lowest is 29!’

   ‘And the highest is 45.’ the Suzu girl adds with an emotionless voice.

   ‘Hey, you didn’t have to say that out loud!’ Nagano shouts.

   The girl walks slowly to right in front of me and stops.

   ‘Hello there. I’m Yoshinaga Suzume, the same age as you. Nice to meet you.’

   ‘Um, hi. Are you helping out at the Koikana Shrine just like Nagano? I don’t remember seeing you there.’

   ‘Oh, that. I actually do. It’s just that I help out very occasionally.’

   ‘Merely three times in the entire last year is more than just occasionally.’ Nagano points out.

   ‘Let’s not sweat the small stuff, shall we? Let’s get down to business instead.’

   ‘Oh, right. There’s why we’re here in the first place.’

   Nagano sits down on the floor and rummages her bag for her notebooks. Yoshinaga sits down right next to her. I guess I’m supposed to do the same.

   ‘I don’t understand this, this, this, this and this!’ she complains to Yoshinaga.

   ‘Which is pretty much the whole thing.’

   I look at the parts that she was complaining. Wow, it’s a real miracle that she ever got into high school.

   Yoshinaga begins to explain all those parts to Nagano. Her explanations are all simple and easy to understand. She’s doing such a great job she could become a teacher.

   ‘...So, is this how you do this?’ Nagano asks while writing a scientific formula to try and answer a sample question that Yohinaga thought up on the spot.

   I snatch away her pencil and write down another set of formulas. ‘No no no, you do it like this. How did you even get the bright idea to use that formula? Yoshinaga just explained to you to use the one I did like two minutes ago.’

   Nagano looks at me in complete surprise. ‘You actually understood what she taught?’

   ‘Well, yeah. Heck, I already knew all these.’

   ‘But, you’re supposed to be stupid like me!’

   ‘Aiai, when he told you that he got a 23, he meant 23rd. As in the ranking.’ Yoshinaga clarifies for me.

   ‘23rd out of 272 students? And you dared to claim that you did badly?’

   ‘Hey, I did do badly. If it wasn’t some stupid mistake I did in Maths, I would have gotten 19th.’

   ‘What! You traitor!’

   ‘I didn’t betray anyone. I was trying to explain it to you when you dragged me here for no reason.’

   She growled really loudly then. It’s like she’s a rabid dog who’s about to bite me. In the end, she figured that it’s not worth the trouble and concentrates on her study instead. Which didn’t last long due to her short attention span and her low intelligence. She was so burned out she just curled up on the floor like a tired cat and slept.

   ‘Hey, you’ll catch a cold if you sleep on the floor like that.’ I begin. ‘Oh wait, I guess you won’t.’

   ‘Cause she’s an idiot?’ Yoshinaga asks.

   ‘Cause she’s an idiot.’ I confirm.

   The two of us give each other a high-five like we’re a couple of besties.

   ‘You guys do realize that I’m still awake right?’ Nagano asks loudly while still having her eyes closed.

   ‘We know. That’s why we’re saying it.’

   While Nagano is resting, Yoshinaga invites me to play some games with her. The things is, she owns so many consoles I don’t know which one to choose.

   ‘Let’s play this one then.’ she suggests after I told her about my indecisiveness.

   It’s a FPS shooting game where up to two players can co-op to kill zombies. I’m not really used to playing FPS games using consoles, so I keep on messing up. Yoshinaga, on the other hand, lands head shots after head shots like it’s the easiest things to do.

   ‘You’re really good at this.’ I compliment her after we cleared the final round.

   She shakes her head. ‘I’m not good at playing games. I’m just good at calculations. Majority of the things in this world move and work based on calculations. If you know how to solve the mathematical formulas for them, it’s a walk in the park.’

   Yup. She’s a student at Kiseki High alright.

   ‘But there’s just one thing I can’t calculate correctly no matter what.’ she continues.

   ‘Oh? What’s that?’

   ‘Love. The amount of it inside one person can increase and decrease in ways no scientist in this planet can ever calculate. I was always fascinated by it, which is why I begin to work part-time at Koikana Shrine.’

   ‘But you barely showed up.’

   ‘Again, don’t sweat the small stuff. Besides, it’s not like couples are born at the shrine right after they made their wish, so me being there is pretty much pointless.’

   ‘I see.’ I nod understandingly.

   ‘Don’t agree with her!’ Nagano shouts.

   ‘After I started high school I figured that I should at least make more efforts in working at the shrine. And then you made that wish.’

   ‘Are you going to berate me like she did?’ I ask while pointing my thumb at Nagano.

   ‘Nope. Too much trouble. Besides, I have hard time believing in all this wish hocus-pocus thing. It’s too unscientific.’

   ‘Is that what a shrine maiden should be saying?’

   ‘I, for one, believe that people are free to do and think whatever they want regardless of their background and living lifestyle. So I prefer to think that someone somewhere leaked an anti-couple gas or something.’

   ‘You know, I was always wondering how all of you found out about the with I made.’

   ‘It was nothing special, really. On that day, a voice told me that you made the wish. Just like that. Out of nowhere.’

   I blink. ‘And you still don’t believe in Gods and those who grant wishes and things?’

   ‘Nope. Not one bit.’

   ‘You know, not believing in unscientific things makes you a realistic person, but when you refuse to trust things even after given solid evidence, that just makes you someone who runs away from reality.’

   She shrugs. ‘Fair enough. Even so, I still want to believe in what I want to believe in. Science.’

   ‘That’s fair enough too, I guess.’

   Nagano was quiet the entire time we were having our discussion. She was either too tired to give further retorts, or she has fallen asleep.

   ‘Thanks for having this discussion with me.’ Yoshinaga says to me with a smile. ‘The others at the shrine are too simple-minded for it, and I don’t really get along with my classmates.’

   ‘No need for thanks. I had fun too talking with you.’

   It’s true. It’s kind of weird that someone I barely know and talk to is much easier to talk to than Kazuki or Masato who had been friends with me for over ten years, but I guess just because you know someone since forever it doesn’t mean that you’re close with them.

   ‘I’m getting kind of hungry. Do you want some snacks?’ she asks me after we’re done playing another round.

   ‘Sure.’

   She leaves the room to get something for all of us. It’s almost dinner time but I got a flexible meal schedule. I could just eat dinner at 9 or something. I’m not really sure about Nagano or Yoshinaga though.

   Yoshinaga soon comes back with some bags of crisps and some bottles of soft drinks. It kind of amazes me that a thin girl like her is able to carry all those things all by herself.

   ‘Choose your poison~.’ she tells me while laying the bags and the bottles on the floor.

   I choose a seaweed-flavored crisps and a bottle of lemon soda. Nagano finally wakes up from her sleep and takes a bag of salt-and-vinegar flavored crisps and a bottle of cola. Yoshinaga on the other hand chooses tomato flavored crisps and grape soda.

   ‘Shouldn’t you continue with your studies?’ I ask Nagano while opening up my bag of crisps.

   ‘Not now. I’m still taking a break.’

   ‘That’s one long break.’

   ‘I don’t care. I need this, alright? I’ll just have a sleepover here and try to cramp things.’

   I look at Yoshinaga who’s the host and the one who’ll be teaching Nagano. She just shrugs, so I guess that she’s fine with it.

   We eat and drink in peace for a while until Yoshinaga opens her mouth.

   ‘Say, Takkun.’ she begins.

   I pause my eating so that I can look at her.

   ‘Are you perhaps referring to me?’

   ‘That’s right. Your name is Bandou Takuya, so you’re Takkun~.’

   ‘Why the sudden nickname?’

   ‘I give one to those that I want to become closer with.’

   ‘Oh, whatever. So what is it?’

   ‘Do you think you could come to Kiseki tomorrow after school’s over?’

   ‘What for?’

   ‘See, there was a male student who was in a relationship-’

   I almost spit my drink out. ‘Hold on a second! Are you telling me that there were couples in that school? Kiseki High School?’

   ‘Well, yeah. It’s not like the school forbids romance between students. So you can also see couples there.’

   She pauses.

   ‘Or used to.’ she corrects herself. ‘Anyway, this guy heard that I was working at a shrine that grants love blessings, so he came up to me in the hopes that I could mend his relationship with his ex. I don’t even know where to start, so I was hoping that you could help me.’

   I shrug. ‘Sure. It’s not like I can work my part-time job anyway.’

   Now it’s Nagano’s turn to almost spit out her drink.

   ‘An immediate reply without any excuses whatsoever? Why is the way you treating me so different?’

   ‘Cause you tried to blackmail me?’

   She clams up quickly after I said that.

   ‘It’s decided then~. I’ll be waiting for you.’

   ‘Just don’t expect too much from me.’

   ‘No need to worry. Just coming over would have been a great help to me~.’

   In the end, Nagano did little study before I leave. Not that it matters to me.

   ‘Thanks for coming, Takkun~.’ Yoshinaga tells me before I exit her room. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow~.’

   ‘Yeah. See you Yoshinaga.’

   She puffs up her cheeks like a cute hamster. ‘You’re supposed to call me Suzu just like Aiai.’

   ‘But-’

   She’s jumping up and down in annoyance. ‘Call~me~Suzu~!’

   ‘Alright alright. Suzu. There. You happy now?’

   She stops puffing up her cheeks and smiles while nodding. ‘Indeed I am.’

   We even exchanged numbers, and she made sure that I register her name as Suzu before letting me go. Once I leave her room, I immediately bump into the old butler just now. I believe his name was Serizawa.

   ‘Would you like me to guide you to the exit?’ he asks me.

   ‘Yes please.’

   He nods. ‘Right this way, please.’

   We walk in total silence with me following him from behind before Serizawa-san speaks.

   ‘I must thank you for spending time with ojou-sama today.’ he tells me.

   ‘Um, not at all. I mean, I didn’t even know I was coming here, since Nagano dragged me against my own will.’

   ‘It matters not. i was quite surprised when ojou-sama got out of her room just to get some snacks when she always called me on the phone to get them for her.’

   Wow. Suzu’s one lazy girl.

   ‘She also looked much happier than the times when Nagano-san and the rest of ojou-sama’s colleagues at the shrine came over and visited. She must have really liked you as a friend.’

   ‘The thing is, we became friends like five minutes ago. I’m not even sure we can even call each other that.’

   ‘Did she gave you a nickname, sir?’

   ‘Huh? Oh. Yeah she did.’

   ‘Then you can rest assure that she definitely think of you as her friend.’

   I remember what Suzu said about giving nicknames to people that she wants to be close to.

   ‘Ojou-sama always had trouble making friends due to her supreme intellect and how shall I say this, unique personality. Her parents are almost never home since they have ten companies to take care of. As a result, ojou-sama has started to spent her free time like a shut-in. Which is why I was so happy to see her having more and more friends who would treat her like an equal.’

   Once we’re at the gate, Serizawa-san bows at me.

   ‘Please take care of ojou-sama.’ he tells me.

   ‘I will.’ I promise him.

   Nothing special happened on my way back. On the next day after school, I go to Kiseki High as I’ve promised Suzu.