Mai looks at me while taking out her earphones, "Thank you."

I give her a look of disbelief.

She responds with, "Did you think that I would get mad at you and tell you to mind your own business?"

"Only half of me thought that, the other half of me thought that you would keep on ignoring me as you have been since the morning. But neither of those halves expected a thank you. So, kudos to you, I guess."

"I'll just make do with thinking that."

I just gave her an unimpressed look.

"You didn't have to do that for me you know. I'm used to that stuff." She says changing the topic.

"I shouldn't have had to stand up for you. You should've done that yourself. Even if you're used to it, this kind of stuff wears you down until you finally can't take it anymore and fall into depression. You're a part of the industry, I'm sure you know how many artists are regularly taking anti-depressants."

"Wears me down, huh? I guess you're right."

She gets a phone call and takes out her phone. I see the cute bunny case on her phone and can't hold back a smile. But the name on the caller ID stops me from making a remark. I know that she's sensitive about this topic. She ignores the call and puts the phone back in her pocket.

By then the train arrives and we get on it in silence. We find a two-seater and sit together.

After a while, I finally bring up my most anticipated question. "About yesterday..."

"I thought I told you to forget about that."

"And I remember not agreeing to that. I don't even think I can ever forget the look of that sexy wild bunny. It's burned into my brain." And that got a real reaction out of her.

"Hey! I hope you didn't do anything weird while thinking about me." She says flustered.

She cools down and says, "Not that It would bother me if a classmate had sexual fantasies about me." She says trying to act as if that flustered girl just now wasn't her.

I just give her a little smirk that said, 'Oh really?'

She decides to change the topic.

"Hey! Masashi-kun."

"What's up?"

"I saw some stuff about you. About how you're friends with a delinquent who sent three students to a hospital. They say you're even more unhinged." She says opening her phone and showing me the thread talking about me and Sakuta.

"Well hot damn. I'm flattered that you took such an interest in me. But no those rumors aren't true if that's what you're asking." I tell her with a smile.

"I figured that they weren't true but that's not what I'm asking. Doesn't it bother you that people are posting such stuff about you?"

"The lion doesn't bother itself with the opinions of the sheep," I say to her with an inward chuckle.

"I'm serious." She looks at me and says.

"I'm also serious. Their opinions don't matter to me. I'll tell you a little story about something that happened last month when you hadn't joined yet.

"There was this girl who confessed to me. You know her kind, shallow, doesn't really care about anything but my looks, and just wants to brag about me to her socials hoping to increase her followers.

"I refused. Told her to fuck off and not waste my time. As expected, she got mad, said she'll ruin my life, yadda, yadda. Like I give a damn.

"The next day the school has these rumors about me warning people to stay away from me and all. At the end of the day, she decided that it would be a good idea to corner me in an alley with the jock she keeps on the hook and his lackeys wanting to beat me up.

"Not the best idea for her and the jock. I beat them up and forced them to confess on video. She said she'll never bother me again and ended the story.

"There was no real backlash for me other than some leftover rumors online. I think you saw today that no one really causes any problems for me and they're still friendly to me.

"I stood up for myself and came out all the better after it."

"I don't believe you can beat up four people on your own." She says eying my bicep.

I just smirked at her and moved on, "What I'm saying is that other people's opinions don't really matter to me. They can do whatever they want and it won't have any effect on me. I have two very good friends who would call me and ask me about what's going on in such a situation, instead of believing whatever and ignoring me."

"Two, huh? That sounds like a lot."

"Quality over quantity baby. Two friends are plenty when you consider them friends for life. How many people from high school am I really going to remember in 5 years?"

"Friends for life, huh? That doesn't sound too bad when I think about it."

"By the way, what's your take on the rumors?"

"It's obvious to anyone who puts any actual thought into it. Some of this stuff is absurd. One of these threads is literally about you being a vampire. It baffles me to think people could believe this stuff." Is that a snicker I hear? Damn, so she does laugh.

"Right. and I don't think that stuff online should bother anyone anyway. People just hide behind anonymous masks and talk shit about anything and everything. That's how the internet works. You should know, I'm sure you have far more people talking shit about you on the internet."

"You're right," she says, deep in thought about something.

"Teenagers have a very strict social flow going on and they really don't like someone coming up and disrupting that flow. No matter how much they preach about wanting change, they will resist it when it actually happens."

"I don't blame them, they themselves don't know that they are creating this kind of flow. I on the other hand like to consider myself like a little boat in that flowing river. I go wherever I want to go. It's easy to just go with the flow but if I need to, I have the option to do my own thing."

While I'm yapping about teenager social norms, I see that she's a little distracted. She's looking at the poster of a movie on the opposite wall. She has this longing look on her face that maybe she doesn't even realize she has this look on her face.

After a while, she turns away from it, deep in thought, with a look of melancholy on her face. I give her some time.

"Now it's your turn to spill the beans"

"I made my showbiz debut when I was six. I got picked to play a lead role in a soap opera. I was all over TV, in movies, and in commercials. I've lived most of my life in the public eye."

"Yeah, a day when you don't see Sakurajima Mai on TV is a sad day and pretty unlikely too."

"It was fun at first but things gradually got worse and worse. I was the character I played than myself to other people. I started closing myself off from people. I started hoping that people would just forget about me or I could go to a place where no one knew anything about me.

" I think someone took that all too literally. The first time I realized something amiss was on the first day of Golden Week. I'd gone to the aquarium on a whim."

"Alone?"

"Yeah, you got a problem with that?"

"Woah, you don't have to get all defensive on me. I was just asking. If anything I admire you for this. Not many people have the nerves to really do things alone."

She looks at me with a tiny smile on her face, "I realized that people were bumping into me and not even realizing it and I wasn't getting any attention. I might sound narcissistic but no one paying attention to me was weird but I brushed it off as them being too focused on the fishes.

"But after that, I stopped by a cafe and greeted the clerk. I received no response. I tried again, only to get no response again. Then someone walked in and the clerk greeted them like normal.

"I freaked out and just went home after that. By the time I got to Fujisawa, everyone could see me as usual."

By the time her story was over, we were getting off at our train station and were at the area with lockers, she wanted to pick something up.

"So you decided to do the most attention-seeking thing you could think of and started walking around wearing a bunny suit?"

"I've been going around to see if this happens in other places too. Anyone would stare if they saw a girl wearing this, right?" She said showing me the bag with the outfit in her hand that she took out of the locker.

"And you didn't think that they might try to do something more than that?" I ask her, a little angry.

"You don't need to worry about that or get in my way." She gets defensive all of a sudden and walks away before I could reply.

I follow her to the cream bun lady and see her ask for a cream bun. Alas, all she's met with is silence. The lady ignores her as if she can't hear anything. I see her getting a little agitated and asking for it again, only to fail.

I walk up and ask for two cream buns from the lady. She hands them to me with a classic, "Have a nice day, Masashi-san." She knows my name since I'm here basically every day.

I hand one of them to a downtrodden Mai and eat the other one myself.

We start walking together out of the station.