Vol. 1 Chapter 3 – Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Just as expected from a school with several thousand students. Walking through the overly spacious grounds, by the time I reached my designated classroom, I felt like I’d finished a light stroll.

The building for first-year students, located on the north side of the campus, was divided into a practical training wing used for classes and a learning wing where classrooms for lectures were gathered. The practical training wing is mainly used by students in courses like Entertainment and Music, housing rooms for every conceivable purpose, from professional recording studios to dance lesson classrooms.

However, due to their specialized nature, students from the General and Advanced courses rarely use them. My classroom was on the first floor of the learning wing, used by General and Advanced course students. The very last room at the end of the hall. Class 1-1, the only Advanced Course class.

Scanning the seating chart posted on the classroom door, I found my name. First row from the window, second seat from the front. With the family name Aoi, I’d never not been assigned attendance number 1, but it seemed my legendary streak had come to an abrupt end. Realizing the high level of this school, I headed towards my seat, gazing at the many still-empty, brand-new desks.

Listening to the sound of water from the fountain in the large garden visible through the window, I closed my eyes until the first homeroom began.

After drifting for several tens of minutes in the threshold of unconsciousness just before sleep, I was forcibly pulled back by the chime signaling five minutes before the start of class. I lightly surveyed the classroom.

The seats were already filled, but perhaps because everyone was meeting for the first time, there was no conversation in the room. All I could hear was light small talk, the kind used to gauge the distance between oneself and the person in the next seat.

The student sitting in front of me, attendance number 1, Aida-san, seemed completely unfazed by the slightly tense atmosphere of the classroom. Her long black hair swayed in the spring breeze blowing through the window as she remained engrossed in a paperback wrapped in a dark brown book cover.

As I watched her without really watching, the front door opened, and a young female teacher dressed in a smart suit entered.

After listening to her brief self-introduction as our homeroom teacher, we were guided to the event hall where the entrance ceremony would take place. The hall, which looked like it could easily hold 2000 people, was apparently used for events like this, as well as for performances by Music Course students on the piano.

Following the homeroom teacher’s instructions, I sat down in a comfortable seat and waited for the ceremony to begin. As I marveled at the unfamiliar scale of the building, an elderly man who seemed to be the principal and two female students walked onto the stage.

I recognized one of the female students. After the principal gave a brief greeting, the familiar female student, Aida-san, was introduced as the representative of the new students. Her first name was apparently Yume. Aida-san’s calm voice, conveyed through the microphone, highlighted her intelligence.

Introduced next after Aida-san was Minase Nagisa-san, a new student in the Entertainment Course. She had apparently been active since she was a child actor and was currently working as a high school actress. I knew her name because she had co-starred with my father as a child actor several years ago, but judging from the cheers when the microphone was passed from Aida-san to Minase-san, she seemed to be quite popular.

The small mutter that escaped me, “Wow…”, was drowned out by Minase-san’s clear, articulate voice.

Stretching my body, stiff from sitting throughout the ceremony, I left the Class 1-1 classroom. A message had arrived on the smartphone app I’d checked earlier from Akari: {Meet me at the fountain!}

The garden fountain must have been visible even from the third floor where the Entertainment Course was located. Looping around from the shoe lockers, as the fountain came into view, I saw the face of my childhood friend from this morning, along with another female student talking cheerfully with her.

What should one do when a friend is talking to another friend you don’t know?

The answer is to wait. Stopping my steps towards the fountain, I was about to send a message saying I’d join them after her friend left, when my idiot childhood friend started shouting at the top of her lungs, “Yuuto~!!”

With gazes raining down on me, I couldn’t exactly make a dash for it, so I reluctantly approached the two of them.

“Yuuto! You’re late!” (Akari)
“Can’t be helped… Class 1 was the last to leave the hall…” (Yuuto)

Despite giving a valid reason, my childhood friend let out a dissatisfied “Jeez!” before immediately switching expressions and introducing me to the girl beside her, “Oh, this is the childhood friend I was telling you about, Yuuto!”

After I gave a light bow, she turned back to me and introduced her new friend, “And! This is Murai Hinata-chan, who I became friends with today! She’s also in the Entertainment Course and wants to be an actress!” (Akari)

“Um… Murai-san? Nice to meet you. I’m her childhood friend, for better or worse.” (Yuuto)
“Hinata-chan, be nice to him, okay? He’s probably sad because he hasn’t made any friends yet.” (Akari)
“…I’ll start making them tomorrow.” (Yuuto)
“So you really haven’t made any?” (Akari)

As I dealt with my childhood friend who was looking up at me mockingly, Murai-san’s mutter reached my ears.

“…Akari-chan, this isn’t what you told me.” (Hinata)
“Hmm? What isn’t?” (Akari)
“He’s handsome!” (Hinata)

Trembling and clenching her fists, she started getting angry in a peculiar way.

“Eh? Yeah, he is… Did something happen?” (Akari)
“Normally, if someone has a gloomy personality like you said and is studious enough to get into our school’s Advanced Course, you’d expect someone more plain and dark, right?! More like… wearing glasses or something!” (Hinata)

Watching her earnestly plead her case and voice her dissatisfaction, I somehow felt that the saying “birds of a feather flock together” was indeed correct. A weirdo had attracted another weirdo.

“I can’t stand handsome guys. That look on their faces like life is easy for them, I just hate it, hate it… Yuuto-san! You’re one of them!” (Hinata)
“I don’t think that at all, though…” (Yuuto)
“Lies! With a face like that, and being smart too, you must have girls fawning all over you! You’re the worst!” (Hinata)
“Sigh…” (Yuuto)
“Don’t you get it?! Look! Look at my face! I’m angry, okay!?” (Hinata)

Looking at her face as requested, her features, which were cute in their own right, not inferior to Akari’s, combined with her small stature—likely shorter than even a first-year middle schooler—made the wrinkles furrowed between her brows look like nothing more than the threatening posture of a small dog.

“Whoa! Don’t get so close! Handsome guys up close are poison!” (Hinata)

A sigh escaped me involuntarily at her constantly shifting statements.

“Akari, you found a good friend.” (Yuuto)

When I said this sarcastically, my equally strange childhood friend replied with a genuinely happy face, “Right?!”

I see. To a weirdo, even sarcasm sounds like a compliment.