Yata took action on just once. He had thought of nothing but of what had happened.
“Hey, what is this?!”
He asked the three members of the Yata-team the following day and shoved his PDA at them.
When the three saw the screen they acted shocked and shamelessly asked in return: “Eh, what is this? Isn’t that kinda rude?”
“Don’t play dumb! Did you think I wouldn’t figure out anything? This is «jungle»’s group message!”
Last night Yata had tested out many things with the installed app and vaguely understood how to use it. However, the problem was that the moment he had received the messages Yata had just installed the app and had yet to do the user registration. Of course he had also not joined the group set up by his friends yet. Despite this, Yata’s PDA had received the messages.
“If there’s something you want to say to me, don’t talk about it behind my back like this, it’s better if you say it properly!”
“……when we say something you’ll get angry”
“I can’t hear you! I told you to say it properly!”
Because the reb.u.t.tal had been whispered, Yata immediately yelled and his friends cringed.
“Ah……”
Even though he had told himself since yesterday night that he would not yell and calmly listen to the conversation, in the end he ha carelessly yelled anyway.
It was right before morning cla.s.s, the time their cla.s.smates were one by one coming to school. While everybody said a cheerful “Good morning—” as they walked into the cla.s.sroom, Yata breathed in the air by the window, let his gaze wander and slowly placed his bag on his desk. Fushimi’s seat was still not occupied.
Taking a step back, Yata breathed in deeply “I won’t get angry…….. If there is anything bothering you about me, say it directly. Because I’ll listen.”
The three close to the window looked at each others faces and seemingly unintentionally burst simultaneously into laughter.
“You’ll listen……..shouldn’t you be saying "Please tell me”, Yata-kun?“
"Ah!? Try saying that one more time!”
Yelling after all, Yata grabbed the friend who had said that by his collar and punched him with his fist. The friend let out a pitiful whimper and the two other boys got ready to run away. From the surrounding cla.s.smates who were watching also came a small shriek. The friend covered his head in desperation and turned away his face. Yata was not very tall, but he was holding up his friend who had fallen down by his collar.
Even though I didn’t want to fight……..Yata looked down on his friend with disdainful eyes. Although they made an idiot out of somebody and laughed in their messages, when they’re punched they’re already half crying or what.
“A-and also about the thing with the cheating, you made yourself do something for us and jumped on the lie, in the end, you didn’t want to be left out, right, Yata-kun?”
“I covered for you, didn’t I!”
“You wanted to cover for us, right? You wanted our grat.i.tude, right?”
“Wha…..?!”
The words Fushimi had said yesterday became heavy in his mind.
“If you want grat.i.tude, then ask somebody else.”
Even with n.o.body telling him, he remembered it in this moment. It is not like I want grat.i.tude. Abandoning his friends and pretending as if he didn’t know anything, for Yata that was an impossible thing to do.
Because friends stick together.
I am the top of the Yata-team and they are my friends I must protect……
“S-Stop putting on airs as the self-declared leader. Don’t you understand that it’s annoying? n.o.body said we want to be your friends, the Yata-team is lame, a-and even though we want to do and play other things, you always force us to play weird games with you.”
The friend talked on with a nervous and thin voice. Tears gathered in his eyes while his face stiffened with fear, an impression like this………Yata knew a face like this all too well. The face of a bullied kid, expressing resistance to a bully with little hope. It had been an often seen sight in elementary school. Yata had always been on the side to knock the bullies down. Yata certainly had acted wrongly, however he hated weak people getting bullied, since the bullies looked down on others.
So when had he gone over to that side———-while he didn’t understand it himself, Yata felt like the world that surrounded him had been turned upside down and dizziness befell him.
†
He lumbered through the middle of his cla.s.smate’s gazes, hiding the hurt in his face, and left the cla.s.sroom. The instant after, all strength rapidly left his body. Homeroom had already started but he did not feel like going back to the cla.s.s room. Where should I go…….he couldn’t think of a place to go by himself, but the place his legs headed towards was the boys’ toilet. He locked the door of a stall and sat down on the western-styled toilet bowl. He leaned his back on the the tank, looked up to the ceiling and did nothing for a while.
Of all the things, tears started to well up. A nauseating, sharp smell reached his nose. It was the time where the students were already in the cla.s.s rooms, so the toilet was quiet. From somewhere came the sound of water flowing in trickles. After a few minutes his nose got used to the bad smell, if only a little.
However, he wondered how one got used to things. Strangely the toilet was a place where you’d go to think about things. Was it because there was nothing else to see than the wall in front of one’s eyes, or because there was nothing else to do than to take a s.h.i.t, or maybe it was the fault of the nearly always flickering fluorescent light causing a gloominess.
I don’t know what things had been said about me behind my back, but I dragged along my friends and wanted a feeling of admiration from them and I showed off, aren’t I totally embarra.s.sing? If there’d be a hole I’d want to crawl into it. Surely it has to be a good hole, so that I can try to ram my head between my thighs. d.a.m.n! This has just become extreme pitying.
Yata limply lifted the back of his head from the tank. He wondered a bit if it would have been better if he still did not know anything.
If I had not seen that message exchange. Then from tomorrow on maybe I’d still be in those guys’ middle……
“Hm….?”
By chance he had noticed a light being reflected onto the ceiling. Different from the white of the fluorescent light, it was a weak tinged blue light flickering while changing its shape.
Next door…….? When had they come in….?
At the top of the wall parting the stalls there was a roughly 30 centimeter big gap. It seemed like the light was reflected onto the ceiling from the stall next door.
I can’t hear a thing so what the h.e.l.l is he doing?
The toilet was a place you go to to take a dump and Yata questioned his own peeking into the other stall.
In order to not make a noise, he got onto the toilet bowl with his school slippers. He grabbed the upper part of the wall with his hands and, standing on his tip toes, tried to secretly peek into the neighboring stall. Since it was the boys’ toilet it wasn’t really a bad thing and Yata did not hesitate. Well, if in this moment the a.s.s would be fully exposed he’d be sorry, but Yata looked down on a person who sat on the lid of the toilet bowl properly wearing his pants with a slightly hunched thin back and slender shoulders.
“Fushimi? What are you doing?” Yata said without thinking about it first.
The slender shoulders jumped up in surprise. The one who pulled out the earphone from one side and looked up to Yata was indeed Fushimi.