CH 1

Kujou Shizuki’s Depletion!

This happened on July 20th, on a regular Tuesday afternoon. Rushed by the party-goer normies most likely, the rainy season passed all too quickly from our country Japan, as the sky was now blue without a cloud in sight. The sunlight forced me to narrow my eyes, and the heat was strong enough that you could make fried eggs on a car’s hood. Every single channel warned about dehydration today. Even the north-east reached temperatures of 30° today, and all uniforms were half-sleeves now. The cicadas were chirping loud enough to annoy you, and similar to that were the normies in class, getting excited at their summer plans.

Heh, worthless. Go to the ocean, have a BBQ, as long as you’re not spending your days in a cool and comfortable room, you are definitely all losers in life. However, reality makes us, the loners, the losers of summer break…This doesn’t make any sense. Well, whatever. The sweat on my back and forehead even helped me realize that summer has arrived, as I arrived in front of the peculiar future support club after pondering if I should skip today. Slowly, I opened the door—

“Shizuki-kun~” “Shizupai~”

—I quickly closed the door again. Yup, didn’t see anything. I pressed down the door so that it couldn’t be opened, but the noise from inside…

“What’s wrong, Shizuki-kun?” Akizuki came from the stairs.

“It’s Boys’ Day, so I’m going home.”

“What exactly might that be?”

“For example…Um…Right! I just had a sudden urge to build a gunpla, or to order random stuff from Amazon, going to the batting center, swinging a sword in the pouring rain. Also, it makes me want to imagine that my grandfather was some powerful sorcerer, and that I have that potential sleeping inside of me. So, terrorists are suddenly attacking the school, and these powers are activating. Finally, it ends up in a battle wrapping up the entire world, as my friend and I venture out into space for the final battle…Basically, it’s a day where grown men return to being young boys.”

“Did you ever even have a best friend?”

“In my previous life. Which also exists in my fantasies.”

“Well, I understand it. Sometimes when it’s late at night, you’d want to practice your kamehameha, your bao zakeruga1, your dragon slave2, or even your starburst stream. Everybody goes through that when they’re a child.

“Not a genkidama, huh?”

“Nobody would support me.”

“Alright, should we head home?”

“Yes, let’s.”

With that conversation over, I tried to quickly move away from that room, when suddenly…hands appeared from the door! Rattle rattle rattle !

“Shizuki-kun! I’m not letting you escape!” “Caught you, Shizupai~!”

Kasuga grabbed my right arm, Aramiya captured my left arm, not letting me go!? These guys…I know that it’s normal for normies to have excessive skinship, but you shouldn’t press your breasts onto a male student like this! Also, curse myself for distinguishing between Kasuga’s soft and warm ones, as well as Aramiya’s more voluptuous ones! As a loner, I need to be more calm about this! Also, Akizuki is glaring at me with tears in her eyes, but why…At the same time, Kasuga sure seemed happy to be clinging to me like this…and Aramiya is grinning…

“Alright, I won’t run, so let me go.”

That’s a lie. As soon as they’re letting go, I’m speeding outta here.

“Okay~ Sure. But, if you dare run away, you have to marry me~”

“Remi won’t be as selfish, so you’ll have to take her virginity instead!”

““……””

Akizuki and I went silent in shock. Damn it, I failed my escape.

“Haaaa…I get that Kasuga is really adamant on this, but you should treasure yourself a bit more, Aramiya.”

“Wanting to have sex with the boy you’re interested in is pretty normal, no?”

“You damn party-goer…! You’d probably start panicking the second things were about to happen, right?”

“O-Of course not! Probably…” Aramiya protested, but she was already blushing then and there.

“So, what do you want?”

“Shizuki-kun, do you remember what we told you after we got back from the field trip?”

“It’s already been a month, so my mind is a bit hazy…I think it was something along the lines of ‘Since Shizuki-kun enjoys his time alone the most, we should let him go home early after classes!’, right?”

“Close, close. In fact, we said that we’d definitely win at the miss-con, and then confess to you. Both me and Remi-chan, that is.”

“Liar! How is that close!?”

“And today, both me and Remi-chan applied for the miss-con!”

“Shizupai, you better vote for Remi, okay? She’ll let you touch her breasts if you do.”

“You’ll be voting for me, right? If you do, then…I’ll tell you how much I love you, and hug you all day~”

Those two are now looking up at me…Why are their eyes brimming with expectations…They’re like small puppies hoping to get snacks from their owner.

****

The following day, during the last homeroom of the day…

“That being the case! We from class 2-1 decided that we’re doing a Snow White stage play during the culture festival!”

““““Wohooooo!””””

The king of normies, and ace of the soccer club, Ooba, stood at the teacher’s desk, announcing this, to which Koide from the baseball club, Nakao from the tennis club, Takaishi from the basketball club, and Asaka from the light music club raised cheers. So did Kasuga, as well as those Mai and Eri girls, and the other three from the Kasuga group. Finally, the rest of the normies scattered across the class as well…Ahh, what a ruckus. Our program for the culture festival, huh…With no motivation, there’s no interest in it. I’d rather read or do something on my smartphone.

“Alright, next we have to decide on the roles!”

After Ooba’s introduction, the girl called Mai wrote ‘Snow White’ ‘Prince’ ‘7 Dwarves’ ‘Mother’ ‘Step-mother’ ‘Voice actor for the magic mirror’ on the blackboard.

“Sooo, it’s Hina for Snow White, and Masamune for the prince, yeah?”

“There’s not really any other choice there~”

Mai or whatever her name was decided already without voting, and that Eri girl threw in a voice of support. But, who…even is Masamune? Ah, is that supposed to be Ooba?

“Yay! Great stuff, Ooba! That’s the lead role!”

“You got the most lines! Good for you!”

Eh…Koide, Takaishi, I’m pretty sure that Snow White is the lead role…Honestly, the ‘Prince’ has even less script to work with than the ‘Step-mother’…

“No, wait a second! I have another person in mind for the role of the prince!”

Huh, so there’s boys who would swim against the stream. Must be Nakao or Asaka, I guess?

“Ah, are you talking about Master?” Nakao asked.

“Who’s this master?” That Eri girl asked.

“He’s got insane amounts of experience under his belt, usually just hiding his strength, known as the shadow normie!”

“Souji, who are you talking about?” Even after listening to Asaka’s explanation, Mai or whatever didn’t seem to be able to follow.

Well, I don’t have the slightest clue either. It’d be so easy to just drop the name there. Also, that person must be amazing, receiving such high evaluation from Nakao and Asaka, to the point they would disagree with Ooba and the girls. I never knew someone like that existed……Hm? Master? I feel like I heard that before…and not in a manga, but in reality.

“There’s only one guy in class 2-1 with an abundance of experience, and a girlfriend at his side!” Koide said.

“He’s the ultimate ruler that even we can’t help but call him Master!” Takakishi joined in.

“According to him, sleeping next to his girlfriend is pretty much a daily occurrence!” Nakao followed up, rarely enough.

“When looking into it, he already has a girlfriend, but there’s a junior who’s fallen for his charm already!” Asaka was oddly excited, probably being pulled along with the mood.

“That’s right! He’s our trusted friend, and advisor who will give us advice whenever!” Finally, Ooba joined in.

Then, the five of them, all-together…

“““““Love Master Kujou Shizuki!”””””

“……Ah.”

““““Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?””””

~~~! I remember now…! During the field trip, Ooba said ‘Let me call you master’, right! Not to mention that I technically gave consent to that! Also, stop that! Don’t look at me, everyone! I just want to spend my days in tranquility! I’m not used to getting attention from all these people!

“Yes! Yes! I also think that Shizuki-kun would be a good prince!” Kasuga raised her hand, but…why does she look so confident…

“What do you think, Eri? Making Kujou-kun the prince?” Mai asked Eri.

“Kujou-kun, could you line up next to Masamune?” Eri told me.

Seriously…I should stand in front of everyone? You’re just going to compare me to Ooba, no? But, I couldn’t say no, so I was pushed by the gazes of everyone, moving to the front.

“Kujou-kun is a bit taller, huh. Also, are you not eating much? You’re so slim.” Mai said.

“Kujou-kun’s skin is so white. It’s a plus right now, but aren’t you staying at home too much?” Eri added.

“The prince is supposed to be more calm and collected than social, right? He’d be better than Ooba then.” Nakao argued.

“At least better than the comedic duo of Koide and Takaishi.” Asaka grinned.

“What’d you say!?” “I lost against Kujou!?” Koide and Takaishi complained.

“How do I say this, you’re actually pretty handsome, Kujou.”

“How about it, Shizuki-kun!?”

“No, um, well…”

I don’t know how to respond…How can I get out of…Wait, on the blackboard, it says that everybody has to fulfill one role…

“Ooba-san.”

“We said no to polite language, right?”

“Urk…O-Ooba…The role of the prince will be based on the Grimm’s fairy tale, right?”

“Hm? Yeah, most likely.”

What to do…The Prince doesn’t have many appearances in the play. There’s not many lines to remember either. That would mean I won’t have to use as much time when practicing. In other words, if I put up with the embarrassment this once, I can get through this culture festival without using up much of my free time, instead of being forced to help with background work and tools, which usually takes a lot longer. One of those two choices I’ll have to take.

The number of roles may be limited, but when it comes to the costumes or script, usually every student would have to participate in some way or another. That brings up the question, which bothers me more? Being embarrassed, or losing that much of my free time? Yeah, I don’t like either of those. Then, which choice would save me from the gazes of contempt from my classmates. Usually, I don’t care what other people think, but if I get denied right after standing in front of them, I personally would start to feel uncomfortable…As a loner, it’s hard to say no once we’re in the spotlight.

Plus, if I don’t want to stand out, taking the role of the prince would be a severe contradiction, but if everybody knew that some random guy like me played the prince, not many people would probably bother with coming to watch us. The only problem is the kiss scene…No, there’s no way we’d actually do that in a staged play!

“…A-Alright. If you’re all okay with it, then I’ll do it.”

“““““Wohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”””””

I know what this is—Peer pressure. Please, can’t somebody help me to get out of this mess?

****

The following day was the 22nd of July, with club activities about to start…I headed for the clubroom, anticipating Kasuga and Aramiya to be present already, and right as I went up the stairs…

“Secretary!” A voice called out to me from behind.

Turning around, there stood Chisaka-senpai.

“Don’t wanna.”

“Don’t come with me for a moment, please!”

“I just said I didn’t want to, right?!”

“Hm? I mean, you said this in regards to not coming with me, yes?”

“Ehhh…”

“Come on, hurry hurry!”

With that being decided, I was dragged to the back of the gym hall…Well, there’s a reason I actually listened to this obediently. In terms of normie ranking, it’s Kasuga, then Aramiya, followed by Chisaka-senpai. And, judging from the voices, I could tell that Kasuga and Aramiya were in the club room. I do feel bad for Chisaka-senpai, but I’ll use it as a reason to not attend club activities today.

“So, Secretary, there’s something I’d like to tale you.”

“Something you’d like to tell me, huh…”

Following that, Chisaka-senpai seemed reluctant to say out loud what she wanted to say, her small body shaking left and right…Normally, I’m bad at meeting eyes with other people, and she’d be good at talking, but for some reason…Hm? Wait a second? She called me over here…to the back of the gym hall? Right before summer break? …Eh!?

“Secretary!”

“Y-Yes, what is it…” I screamed like a small animal who happened to run into a human for the first time.

However, Chisaka-senpai knew nothing of my feelings, simply opening her mouth as she made up her mind.

“I’d like to make the school festival successful!”

“……What? You want to make the culture festival a success?”

“Agreed!”

“No, um…well, I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but as long as you get all students together in the gym hall after the festival, and the committee goes ‘Thanks for everyone’s help!’, it’s pretty much a success, right?”

“That won’t do! This year’s school festival’s motto is ‘ALL People – ALL Enjoy’, so for the three days we have to make the number of attendees reach at least ten thousand!”

“So you basically need 3334 visitors on a daily basis…Why exactly?”

“The executive chairman of the school festival tried to go all out, and told the teacher a celebratory speech!”

Chisaka-senpai puffed out her chest like a small child. Basically, she was saying that ‘Um, um! The president of the culture festival execution committee went all out, and told the teachers about their plans! Ehehe~’, or something like that.

“I see, so who’s that committee president?”

“Me!”

“Huh…”

I walked towards Chisaka-senpai, grabbing both her cheeks.

“Fueh? S-Shizuki-san? Um…aren’t you and Kasuga-san…”

“There”

“Fwaaaah! Fwofh! Fwhy fwheehs fwurf!”

I think she’s saying ‘Stop! My cheeks hurt!’, or something like that. Still, her cheeks sure are soft, huh. Almost like a small child. Well, I’ll just stop around here, I wouldn’t want her to hate me for real.

“Um, Chisaka-senpai, why did you promise something you wouldn’t be able to uphold?”

“W-Well…” Chisaka-senpai started tearing up.

“I mean, we have eight classes in one year, each class filled with roughly 40 people, so we have around 960 people at this school. If all these 960 people visited all three days of the festival, you have 2880 people. That alone is one fourth of the 10,000 people, so it should be achievable. However, you came to ask me for help, and it’s seen as common sense for the students to attend school, especially during a culture festival. In other words…”

“…Urk, just as you said, we can roughly calculate the number of attendees, but our students were already regarded as participants, thus not counting towards those numbers…”

In other words, subtracting 960 from 10,000 is 9040, and all those people had to come from the outside, huh.

“That’s about 3010 per day. If it was a love concert, an actual festival, or comiket, this would be an easy feat, but we’re talking about a normal high school’s culture festival, so that sounds infeasible if you ask me.”

“Urk…H-Help meee…”

“Why not just decline?”

“Well, as with Aramiya-san before, now it’s pretty much my turn to have the secretary help me, so it can’t be helped…”

“Ehhh…why are normies shameless?”

Also, what after this? That’s obvious, no need to talk about it. I really should try and think of some method of getting away from their grasp, but the techniques they were using were pretty much hard to get out of anyway. Once you’re retrained like that, there’s no way out. Yeah, I really get it, I’m just weak against assertive and strong-willed girls.

****

The following day right after that, the 23rd of July, a Friday—No club activities today! As they planned, no need to appear at the club!

“Okay, I have to take the Senseki line, so if I were to be on my way home with my boyfriend, this is where we’d have to split up, huh?”

“I gotta go down the Senzan line, so assuming my girlfriend was with me right now, I’d probably tell her to be careful on her way home, and that we’ll see each other tomorrow.”

“If my boyfriend was with me right now, I’d tell him thanks, and that I like him, that I really like him, that I absolutely love him, that I love him more than anybody else in this world, that I hope we can become adults soon so that we can get married, and that I want a lot a lot of children, as well as see you tomorrow…I guess?”

“…Urk…”

We were doing the same nonsense as always, but as this has continued over the past two months, we gathered a lot of attention at the Sendai station we currently stood at.

“Nyaha! Yukimu-senpai, wazzat?”

“That’s a specialist of Sendai station. They’re like an endangered species, so don’t get too close to them, okay?”

There, a girl with similar-colored twintails like Kasuga, wearing cat-ears, tilted her head in confusion, whereas a girl with similar hair color to Chisaka-senpai, but with a model-like body, answered. By the way, both of them were wearing the sailor uniforms of Kozurushinden High. As for the other people…

“Akane-chan, the fairies of the Capital of Trees3 is back.”

“Rio, you can’t get in their way okay? They’re currently living in their own world. They’re isolated from our reality.”

A person called Rio whose gender was almost hard to decipher glanced at us, when the other woman called Akane, with a red side-tail warned her. Ahhh…I don’t want to call myself and Kasuga celebrities, but a lot of people keep watching us…No, it’s probably because of ‘that confession’ and ‘that kiss’, which all happened here at Sendai as well right after Golden Week. Alright, we both should head over to the train tracks now…

In front of the Senzan line’s ticket gate, Kasuga and I had to split up for good since the Senseki line was the furthest back, and I then headed down the stairs, waiting for my train, when…Wait? Isn’t that Akizuki over there? Since she’s been together with Kasuga during kindergarten, grade school, middle school, and high school, she should be taking the Senseki line…I mean, she probably had some business elsewhere, if I had to guess. However, she got off at the same station as I did…walked the same way…had a bad feeling, and shook off Akizuki….and then arrived in front of my home, when…

“Welcome back, Kujou-kun.”

“Why are you here…?”

“You took a detour, right? Of course I would be here earlier than you.”

“No! That’s not what I wanted to ask!”

“?” Akizuki tilted her head in a cute fashion, seeming like she really couldn’t understand what I was talking about.

“Well, whatever…Let’s head inside, I’ll turn on the A/C…”

“Okay, sorry for the intrusion.”

“………Alright, I really don’t want to have you enter my place even if you’re a fellow loner, so although I feel bad for a girl in this heat, can we talk about what you want right here?”

“I have a favor to ask of you, Kujou-kun.”

“Yeah, right, I figured as much. It’ll save me time to just agree and help out, so just tell me what’s going on.”

“…I want a friend.”

……………What?

“…Hold on a second.” I said, and massaged my eyebrow. “You want a friend?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Even though you’re a loner?”

“Yes, even though I’m a loner.”

“You want friends?”

“From the bottom of my heart, yes.”

Damn liar…She probably doesn’t think of friends as more than automatic speakers. It’s in a grey zone, but Aramiya and Chisaka-senpai at least one-sidedly think of us as friends. Even so, as long as it’s not necessary, I’m fully intent on ignoring them. However, Akizuki…the person who loves freedom as much as me, hates restrictions, loves silence, and looks down on noisy people…now wants friends? The earth might get destroyed because of a meteor tomorrow…

“Can I ask one thing? Just who do you want to be friends with?”

Hearing my question, Akizuki’s blood-red lips slowly opened, and she showed a beautiful breathtaking smile.

“Chisaka Haruka-san. I want to be friends with her.”