Chapter 1

A new series has started.

Please look forward to it.

---

It was when they were young.

"Hey, Hayato, we'll always be friends, right?"

"Yeah, we'll always be friends, Haruki!"

The sunflowers blooming in the yard, the empty soda bottle, the chirping of cicadas.

On that late summer evening in the countryside, they made a small promise.

A trivial ritual of intertwining pinkies, a pledge of reunion in the face of an inevitable parting.

It was already seven years ago.

---

"Huge..."

Fujishima Hayato stood in front of the high school, suddenly remembering those days.

The school he transferred to after moving was much larger and cleaner than the one in the countryside, almost making his eyes spin. He couldn't help but drift into nostalgic thoughts to escape reality.

He couldn't just be overwhelmed, so he pulled himself together and headed to the staff room. It seemed that the troublesome procedures were already completed, and he was led to the classroom by his homeroom teacher. The sign on the door read 1-A.

The moment he entered, curious gazes pierced him, making him tense.

"I'm Fujishima Hayato. I come from a place called Tsunonose, where you might run into monkeys, deer, and boars on the road."

His self-deprecating introduction didn't get a huge reaction, but it did elicit a few chuckles. It was a good start for his first day as a transfer student, and Hayato let out a sigh of relief. Moving from the countryside to the city, especially in the middle of June, had left him with a lingering sense of unease.

But he was also excited.

He had moved to the same city as Nijō Haruki, with whom he had made a promise when they were young. There was the hope of a reunion.

"Your seat... let's see, there's an empty seat next to Nijō."

"Nijō—huh?"

"Yes."

A girl raised her hand, indicating that this was her seat.

She was a very beautiful girl.

With large, round eyes and long, well-maintained hair braided on both sides. Her smile, directed at him, was as lovely as a blooming bud. She had a gentle and refined appearance, fitting the term "Yamato Nadeshiko."

Hayato was taken aback by such a beautiful girl, whom he rarely saw in the countryside, but he also remembered the face of his old friend, thinking, "Ah, this girl has the same last name as him."

(That guy, always so full of himself, probably went up to her and said, "We have the same last name, it's fate!" and got rejected.)

The thought made him chuckle, and a laugh escaped his throat.

"Nice to meet you, Nijō-san."

Her reaction to Hayato's response was a moment of surprise, but she quickly replied with a mischievous, friendly smile.

"Nice to meet you, Fujishima-kun."

Hayato felt a sense of nostalgia as he looked at her smiling face.

---

Wait, why did I feel nostalgic?

He tilted his head, but the surroundings didn't give him time to think.

"Hey, Fujishima-kun, is what you said in your introduction true?"

"How rural is it... really?"

"How did you end up coming here from such a place?"

As soon as the short homeroom period ended, he was surrounded by classmates, bombarded with questions.

"Yeah, I transferred because my dad got a sudden job transfer. The place we lived before was so remote that there were only four buses a day, and there were more livestock than people... Honestly, I've never been surrounded by so many people other than chickens and sheep, so I'm a bit surprised."

He shrugged and said this, and laughter spread through the room, "What's that?" "Really?" "That's hilarious."

The reaction was positive, and the classmates seemed to find him approachable, so the questions kept coming.

"Did you have a girlfriend there?"

"Finding someone of the same age was hard enough, let alone a girlfriend."

"What about friends? What did you do for fun?"

"Mostly I was alone or helping in the fields... Oh, there was one person. A really close friend. We jumped into the river from a bridge together, climbed trees in the mountains and fell... Ah, more like a mischievous monkey or some kind of demon—"

He talked about his memories with Haruki.

Mostly, they were memories of being dragged around and getting into trouble. They weren't the best, but they were certainly fun.

Snap—

"Huh?"

"..."

For some reason, as he spoke, a sound of something breaking came from the next seat.

Everyone turned to look.

The source of the sound was Nijō-san, who had a broken mechanical pencil in her hand.

She looked surprised as well.

The clear and refined beauty with the broken pencil.

It was understandable that everyone's attention shifted from the questions to this strange situation.

"Nijō-san?"

"Why did that happen...?"

"Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"

"A, ahaha. I'm fine, it seems this one was defective."

She was flustered and quickly tried to cover it up, directing a question at Hayato. Her face had a hint of reproach.

"To call someone a close friend in such a way..."

"Hehe, that's because he's a close friend."

"...Oh, really?"

Hayato responded, thinking about Haruki.

And she turned her face away, as if to say, "Pfft."

---

The situation left everyone puzzled, and the questions about his past were momentarily forgotten.