The following day, I stood up from the bed as always, I washed myself as always, I changed into my uniform as always and then went downstairs to eat breakfast like always. 

My family used to gather at the table for breakfast and dinner and talk about various things that I didn’t care about in the slightest, and while the latter usually worked out, the former did not. 

When I reached the living room – my father had already eaten his serving of breakfast and left for work, my mother was busy doing something in the kitchen and she also had to leave for work soon, and the only person sitting at the table was my sister – which was fiddling with her phone with a grin on her face. 

“Good morning”, I said casually as always. 

On the table, there was already a bowl of rice with natto waiting for me. My mother usually liked preparing western meals, like scrambled eggs or sandwiches, so it was quite surprising for me. 

When I sat at the table, there was no reaction whatsoever from the person sitting next to me, my sister, as she kept looking at her phone with apparently a social media app open. I didn’t care about it, all I had to do is finish breakfast and I would be out. 

And that’s what I did. Having finished eating, I walked to the front door, put my shoes on and left the house. I picked up my bike that was standing aside and rode off. 

As I was getting closer to the school, I passed by more people. Some of them were boys, others girls, some walked alone, others in groups. The road to school was really simple, because I didn’t have to make a single turn and it was mostly flat, until the final part which got slightly uphill. 

I felt a pleasant heat on my body as I kept moving forwards, finally reaching the intersection at which everyone turned in one direction, making the road densely crowded so I had to slow down and pay more attention. 

Since the same thing happened yesterday, I wasn’t really surprised, but I once again noticed that blonde hair amongst the crowd coming from my right. She looked exactly the same like last time, looking slightly down with headphones on her head. Before I knew it, I lost sight of her because I turned my head to look at the road before me. 

Proceeding forward, I had a thought, what was she listening to? I wasn’t even able to guess – I still didn’t know her well enough. Before I knew it, I reached the school building, parked my bike aside and went inside. That was how my another, maybe a bit more interesting than usual day began. 

•

A few hours had passed and the bell rang, it was time for lunch break. When the teacher left the classroom, numerous sounds of chairs rubbing against the floor and people starting to talk to each other resounded. Not minding it, I brought out my lunch from the bag and placed it on my desk. 

Suddenly, I learned that there actually was a person approaching me as I heard a call for my name from my right. 

“Takao!” 

I knew that voice... no, even if I actually didn’t know that voice, I would have known who was the person shouting it. After all, there was only one person calling me Takao in that school, and that was my friend, Yamaguchi. He was slightly shorter than me, and had more friends than me. Recently, he had been hanging out with them more often, because it’d been a while since he actually came to me at lunch break even though I hadn’t been leaving the classroom. In general, he was dumb and so different from me that I couldn’t understand why he kept talking to me. 

Either way, he used an empty chair to sit across me even though I was trying to ignore him and eat lunch. 

“Student council president”, he said all of a sudden, without any context. 

“What, you got in trouble or something?” I asked him pretending to be indifferent, in a quiet tone. 

“Wrong.” 

Who the student council president was and what were they doing wasn’t something I cared about in the slightest, but I could hear oncoming excitement in his voice... which probably meant that it turned out to be a girl, he had an accident with her and was about to brag about it. 

“I’m not interested then.” 

“No, it’s not what you think! I-I want to become the student council president in high school!” 

He said as if it was something embarrassing, but it was definitely unexpected. What caused him to have such an idea? 

“Alright, so what.” 

“So what, I thought that you would tell me what you think about it!” his voice became agitated. 

What did I think about it was that it was a dumb idea, but maybe he was able to make it in the second or third grade if he really wanted to. Either way, why did he want to become a student council president in the first place? It came with a lot of responsibilities which would only reduce his free time. Maybe he thought that would make him look cool and girls would fall for him, like often presented in anime meant for girls? That had to be it. 

“Uh, I think that you need better grades. A student council president should be a role model”, even though I was sure most of them were doing shady things after hours, “And if you think that will make girls fall for you then you shouldn’t become one.” 

“Th-that’s not true! I want to be...” he paused for a longer time as he looked aside so I was confused whether he was going to continue. 

“To be?” 

“I don’t want to make girls fall for me. I only want to work with a cute vice president next to me!” 

But there was no rule stating that the vice president had to be a girl. Did the president have the right to choose his assistant? I wasn’t sure, maybe it depended on school. 

“Even assuming that the vice president would turn out to be a girl that wouldn’t hate you, you would be overloaded with work so you wouldn’t have time to enjoy her presence by your side.” 

A moment of silence followed before he said in a silent, dejected voice as he began standing up slowly: 

“Y-you’re right...” 

I looked at his figure standing weakly with his back to me. I knew that he actually hadn’t been thinking about it seriously so I didn’t feel guilty for destroying his “dreams”. 

“Then, I’ll become a club president!” 

His mood seemed to have come back as he proceeded towards the front door. Being a club president definitely brought less responsibilities, but why he thought that it would make girls fall for him was something I could only guess. 

Having been left alone, I continued digging into the lunch. His talk just now made me think a little about what was I actually going to do in high school. I wasn’t sure about which particular school to choose, but this didn’t really matter because I wasn’t aiming high – the most important factor for me was the location. My grades were pretty good, so I didn’t have to worry about exams as much as others... 

What I was actually worried about was what would happen on the first day. Since nobody would know each other, it would be a great chance to make new friends, but seeing how things had been in the past, I shouldn’t hope for someone to talk to me out of their own concern, but I would have to do it myself. That was a pretty huge issue, because I had never been good at talking to people I didn’t know. I could also ignore that and spend three more years alone, which wasn’t that bad of a perspective since I had already been doing it for over eight... no, that’s not right.  

Maybe I didn’t consider Yamaguchi a proper friend, but he was a person I talked to, or an acquaintance, and come to think of it he helped me a few times. If I didn’t make a single friend, there wouldn’t be anyone to help me in hard times which were likely to come and I would have to deal with them on my own. 

In the end, it was better to have at least a person you could talk to occasionally, no matter how much of a loner you were. 

I could also choose the school my sister was in, which was pretty strict and I would rather avoid it for that reason, but at least I would be certain to have one person I could talk to for one year if I found myself in a really bad situation, and who knows, maybe she would help me meet someone. No, choosing a school I didn’t like at all just because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make friends was a dumb idea. 

Which meant that the only thing I could do was to overcome my fears and try to make friends with someone on the first day... probably the fact that nobody would know each other would help me a little. And who knows, maybe an unmarried teacher upon seeing a negative letter reflecting on my days at school would put me in one room with a beautiful, smart and cold girl. 

Or maybe I would somehow end up in one school with that blonde girl I had recently met; not that I knew her, but that would probably help me... I just wondered if she was going to keep wearing that eyepatch and pretending to be some higher being in high school. 

No way, right? 

•

The moment I had been looking forward to finally happened – the final bell finally rang and I was free to leave the classroom. It was quite a fatiguing day, but most importantly Friday, which meant that I didn’t have to wake up so early tomorrow. That said, what was I going to do after I got home wasn’t much different from the usual... ah, I forgot that I had to finish the show she had recommended me. It was pretty good, so I was going to have a pleasant afternoon. 

Speaking of which, when I finally reached the shoe racks and had been patiently waiting in line, I didn’t notice that blonde girl anywhere. It seemed that she had listened to my advice and decided to wait in her classroom for a few more minutes. 

Having left the building, my body immediately got engulfed in the heat, but at the same time cooled down by a pleasant wind coming from the front. As always, I headed for the parking and picked up my bike. Then, I was supposed to wait for that girl... but I wasn’t completely sure about it. She didn’t seem to have anything against it, but what if she actually had and was too timid to tell me about it? 

I was in a sort of fortunate position, because it was always easier to stay passive than to take action, and it was the former that would lead me to meeting her. The groups of people leaving the building I had been watching closely were getting thinner and thinner. I kept staring at the entrance, seeing people I knew barely or not at all, with a feeling of uneasiness in my heart. I decided to pull out my phone to check the current time, and it’d been five minutes since the bell rang. 

Five minutes, that would mean that I should see her any moment. I averted my gaze a little not to look so conspicuous because it was likely to give her a wrong idea, and looked around me. Our school complex was a little bit larger than it should for its considerably small number of students. There were three noticeable buildings. The largest was the three-story main building. Behind it there was a large court where most of the PE class took place in the summer, but also on some warmer days in spring and autumn. A bit smaller in width but of the same height club building was located on its right. Unlike the main building, it was quite dated and had a triangular, tiled roof. Behind it there was a small, but surprisingly dense forest. On the opposite was the gymnasium, which had been renovated recently and was used not only by our school, but also some local communities. Our school didn’t have a swimming pool. In front of the main building there was also an outdoors basketball court, a few benches, and the bicycle parking I was currently standing at. 

I probably wasn’t in any position to say that, but overall, it gave off quite a country feeling. 

When I looked at the screen of my phone, I learned that almost ten minutes had passed, and there wasn’t a sight of her yet. She came to school for sure since I had spotted her in the morning – there was a possibility that she had left it earlier for some reason, though. She also might have taken my advice too deep and intended to wait for a bit longer than five minutes. When I thought about it, I shouldn’t have told her that, or at least include that sentence I had ultimately decided to delete – that I was going to wait for her. 

On the other hand, she could have been asked by a teacher for something. It shouldn’t take her more than twenty minutes, which meant that was how long I was going to wait. 

There was no one leaving the building anymore, and I could see some sports clubs assembling already, but that girl still hadn’t appeared. I thought, what if I decided to go home right now? Would she be disappointed? We had left school together only once, yet I was assuming that we were going to do it every day... wasn’t it a bit naïve of me? 

That was when I heard a sound of the door opening. I looked there promptly only to see a figure of an unfamiliar boy. He only glanced at me with a cold glare and continued forwards. He wasn’t the person I was waiting for. 

I spent already fifteen minutes waiting which might have been pointless, but it wasn’t like I had anything interesting to do after I returned home. I set a limit of twenty minutes for her. There was one thing that bothered me with things like that, which was what if she returned twenty-one minutes later? In such situation, she would see my back driving away which would be quite an unfortunate situation. On the contrary, she might have long since left the school and I wouldn’t meet her even if I waited for two hours. 

As I kept staring at my phone screen, I thought about asking her by sending her a message since I had means to do that, although that still appeared humiliating for me. 

“...” I sighed as I looked up at the empty schoolyard. 

It was all pointless, I began convincing myself. I must have looked like an idiot to every person that saw me there, and even if she finally left the building, she would think of me as a moron too. Who knows, maybe she was doing it deliberately so I left her alone… it was quite a harsh way to do that, though. 

When the twenty minutes mark passed, I was prepared to hop on the bike and drive away as quickly as possible so that the twenty-one minutes situation wouldn’t happen. I realized that I lost twenty minutes of precious time in vain and was disappointed with myself, but also slightly with her... 

I couldn’t leave. There was a power that prevented me from doing so. Even if I had to wait for an entire hour, I would do that. The weather was pretty pleasant after all. I had a feeling that she would appear before my eyes in the end. When I came there almost an hour after school, she was still there. She hadn’t told me the reason for that, but maybe it was part of her pretended character. It wasn’t impossible since she didn’t mind inconveniencing herself by that, for example she used only one of her eyes even though the other one was most likely alright. 

I set the bike by the wall and sat on the sandy ground. Wiping away sweat off my brow, I looked at the screen which indicated that 25 minutes had passed. I yawned inadvertently and quite loudly, but there wasn’t anyone in vicinity to hear that... or so I thought, because I was startled when I saw a pair of fine legs clad in black knee highs standing in a fair distance from me. 

When I raised my head up, I caught glimpse of the person I had been waiting all this time for. She had a seemingly indifferent expression on her face, or rather she hardly displayed any emotions – there were some traces of boredom and weariness. That one eye of hers looked at me with disregard. 

“Ah...” 

I shouldn’t have been there for 25 minutes. She was able to realize that she was the sole reason for I had been sitting on that ground even though I should have been sitting on my chair in my room already. 

“...” 

I heard likely her attempt to say something, after which she proceeded walking toward the exit gate at her usual, quick pace I found difficult to keep up with. Was that a signal for me to follow her? Either way, I stood up and walked up to her leading my bike with me. 

“Err... the show you recommended me yesterday, it’s quite good.” 

After I said it reluctantly, a silence followed. She didn’t even slow down slightly. Was she mad at me because I waited for her that long? Was that her way of telling me to leave her alone? 

“but of course.” 

Her serene voice that responded me all of a sudden was unusually broken and dejected. That made me think that it wasn’t my fault, but she was having a bad day for some reason... but I had no way of knowing if it was the truth. 

For that reason, I couldn’t say anything more and continued advancing, without even trying to speak up. Before I knew it, we reached the intersection where we were supposed to part. Like yesterday, she stopped in the middle of it and proceeded to say in a low voice as she stared at the gray walkway: 

“You don’t have...” 

She suddenly stopped mid-sentence leaving me confused, and I stood still before she continued after five seconds had passed: 

“nevermind. Sorry.” 

Having said that, she strolled off in her usual direction at her quick pace. I looked mindlessly at her figure gradually decreasing as she proceeded on the empty street. Was that all after I had waited 25 minutes? It wasn’t like I was blaming her; I was sure that she had her own reasons. 

Having come to, I hopped onto my bike and drove home. I did think about sending her a message a few times later that day, but ended up holding back worrying that she wouldn’t respond. I finished the show that day, and my sister didn’t laugh at me today because she returned later likely because she had been hanging out with her friends, and I hadn’t been watching it anymore by then.