Vol 2 Chapter 1 (1/2)
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My world is the coolest
Rokuasa, in Kita
Ward of Kyoto, has a total of three dining halls Of the three,
the Zonshi+nkan Chika Dining Hall (lovingly abbreviated to
“Zonchi”) was thought to be the most lively This was
probably because it had an extensive ht
next door to the co-op bookstore
That day, since I had no class during second period, I went
straight to the Zonshi+nkan Chika after first period I’d had no
breakfast that —I’d accidentally overslept by a whole
hour—so I thought I rab an early lunch
“Man, it’s empty at this hour Risky business,” I mumbled
tothe phrase
“risky business” correctly I picked up a tray
Nohat to eat?
I’m no foodie, so usually I just eat whatever without much
of a fuss Be it spicy or sweet, I say bring it on But lately
things had been just a little different
It was only a o that I’d spent a hell of a week in a
place where I’d been served three gourmet meals a day
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Now, as an aftereffect, ue was still stuck in Snootyville
It had been a wholehad made me
say, “Wow, this is good” Every ti, it
always felt like soredient
was lacking
It wasn’t enough of a proble called a problem,
but I sure was sick of feeling that way As far as solutions,
I had already thought of two
The first was fairly simple: Just eat tasty food
“Can’t hope for that to happen in a school dining hall”
But that first suggestion was impossible to follow Not, anyway,
without heading back to that strange, isolated little island
I won’t say I was totally against the idea, but I certainly
had my reservations
“So that’s no good”
Yes, I was talking to myself
This left one other possible arm
tactic It was the “beat the child who doesn’t listen” tactic
Most proble or
taking
I made my way to the donburi corner and placed an order
“Excuse e kimchee bowl, please No rice”
The lunch lady gave me a quizzical expression and said,
“That’s just kimchee, son,” but she dished it out all the same
As if it were nothing, she plopped it in front of
an adree of professionalism
A big, heaping, mountainous bowl of kimchee I doubt
there was a single tongue in this world tough enough to chow
all that down and still preserve its sense of taste I nodded
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with satisfaction, placed the bowl on my tray, and settled the
bill
The dining hall was so empty that I could hardly decide
where to sit In another hour, the place would be filled up
with students who had cut out of second period early I was
never a fan of crowds, so I considered myself under a time
limit I took a seat in the corner
“Down the hatch,” I muttered, and took the first bite
This Was Awful
I really had to eat a whole bowl of this stuff? Wasn’t this
as commonly known as suicidal behavior? What cruel
fate had brought me to this pass? What had I done?
“Is this divine retribution?”
I guess they also say reap what you sow
From then on, I wielded my chopsticks in silence If I kept
on talking toI was a
weirdo And besides, it’s poor table manners to talk while
you’re eating
And then, just as I hit one
nuue up, I didn’t knohat the
hell I was doing, or, for that matter, who I was, or what the
ho meant, and even what the word meant meant
“Yo”
She sat in the chair across from me
“Pull that tray back a little, will you?” she said Then she
pushed my tray toward me and placed her own tray in the
newly opened space Her tray was laden with a plate of
spaghetti carbonara, some tuna-and-kelp salad, and a bonus
fruit dessert for a grand total of three courses
Oh, how bourgeois
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I looked tohall was
empty as ever You could practically call it deserted So why
had she decided to eat her spaghetti directly across from me?
Probably some kind of dare
“Oh my God, what is that?! It’s all kimchee!” she exclaimed
at the shocking sight of my lunch “Wow! You’re
eating a whole entire bowl of kimchee!”
She ide-eyed, her hands up in the air like she was doing
a banzai cheer Maybe that hat she was doing, or maybe
she was surrendering There was also the possibility that she
was just Muslim Any of these was fine by me, but in reality,
she was probably just surprised
Her shoulder-length hair had a reddish tint and was done
up in a sort of bob Her clothes were nothing out of the
ordinary They were ultra-plain, following the style of so
much of the Rokumeikan student body All of a sudden, when
she sat down, she seemed much shorter—but then I realized
ht had come from her extra-tall London
boots
She had a young face, so I couldn’t tell if she was my senior
or a peer Judging by her demeanor alone, it would have
see
that I was a freshman, that was pretty much impossible
“Hey Y’know, if you don’t respond, I’ll get lonely and
stuff” She stared ateyes
“Right,” I finally said “Who are you?”
I was pretty sure this was our first encounter But I’d
learned one thing in the past month: This weird little pocket
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of space known as a “university” had an unusually large
nuenuine These
strange people would strike up conversations with you like
you had been their close friend for the past ten years—even if
you had never seen theuy like me
who’s bad at even re personal encounters, this made
things difficult from time to time
And surely this girl was another one of those types Fearing
the hassle of having to deal with a club invitation or,
worse, so, I went ahead and posed the above
question
Doing so launched her into an over-the-top shocked pose
”Hwa?!” she said “Oh ot? You’ve
forgotten? You freaking forgot?! Ikkun, that’s so cold!”
Huh
Judging from her reaction, it seemed this was not our first
encounter
“Ohhh I aht?
Yeah, nothing, I guess You’ve just got a bad memory after all,
right? Well, ain” She flashed
both hands at rin “I’m Aoii
Mikoko!”
This ht prove to be a painful encounter
Whether it was our first encounter or not, this was, to be
sure, my first impression of Aoii Mikoko
Her story was simple Mikoko-chan and I were classmates
Not only e taking the same core subjects, but ere
also in the sae class We had met face-to-
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face a nuroup for the
class training camp before Golden Week We had even been
paired up before in English class
“Manfrom this conversation alone, I must seem like a
total nut for not re you”
“I think you are a total nut!” She laughed lightheartedly
To be able to laugh so cheerfully after someone had entirely
forgotten her existence took a special kind of vacuousness I
figured she was probably a pretty nice girl after all
“Norot me
like that Or rather, I’d be pissed But that’s just how you are,
right? Like, you don’t forget the stuff that’s really important,
but you forget normal stuff,” she said
“Well, I can’t argue with that”
She was exactly right One tiotten if I
was right- or left-handed, and found myself in quite a bind
when I actually tried to sit down and have a meal To top it all
off, when all was said and done, I turned out to be ambidextrous
”Okay, and what’s happening with you?” I asked “Why
aren’t you in class?”
“Class? Well, the thing about that is”
For soot
the feeling that “abnor
To be honest, even though I’d seen her before, I still could not
remember what she was like normally But either way, it was
hard to be put off by this sirl
“I’ hooky”
“Fresho to class,” I said
“Aw, co What was it
again? Oh, yeah, my economics class It’s just a nonstop
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streaon And it’s like a math class I’m a humanities
person! And you’re skipping class too!”
“I don’t have a class right now”
“Really?”
“Yep Fridays I only have a first period and a fifth period”
She flung her hands wildly in the air again “Doesn’t that kind
of suck? That’s like six hours of boredom”
“Boredo”
“Hht boredom was practically the definition of
‘a bad thing’ Different strokes, I guess” She began winding
the spaghetti around her fork as she spoke Unable to successfully
get it all on the utensil, it soon became a matter of
trial and error I reckoned it would be awhile before the food
actually reached her mouth Before I knew it, she had put the
fork down and switched to chopsticks So much for stick-toitiveness
“Say” I said
“Hm? What-what?”
”There are tons of open seats”
“Yeah, for real I think this place will fill up pretty soon,
though,” she said
“But it’s eht?”
“You said it So with that?”
“I wanna eat alone, so let’snow, honey,” I
wanted to say But then I saw her smile—a vulnerable smile
that showed she couldn’t possibly have iined she was
about to be completely rejected—even I had to take pity
“Nahit’s nothing”
“Have me the pouty lips
“Ah, but I guess if you weren’t weird, you wouldn’t be you
Weirdness is like your identity, right?”
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I couldn’t help but feel like I was being inadvertently
insulted But then again, it wasn’t as bad as completely
forgetting so with for
a whole month So I swept the notion aside and switched my
focus back to the kimchee
“Ikkun, you’re a kimchee fan?”
“Nah, not particularly”
“But that’s a ton of kimchee Not even Koreans eat that
”
“Well, I have my reasons,” I said as I crammed some
kimchee into my mouth More than half of it still remained in
ones, but still”
“Reasons?”
“Try to figure it out yourself first”
“Huh? Oh, rightokay” Mikoko-chan crossed her arms
and began to conte
what circu an entire
bowl of kimchee wasn’t exactly easy After just a few
, she let her arms drop back down
apathetically She really was quick to throw in the towel
“Oh, yeah, by the way, I had a question for you I thought
this was a good opportunity to ask you May I?”
“Uh, sure”
Wasn’t the phrase “a good opportunity” usually used for
so that came up by chance? As far as I knew, Mikokochan
had come here and sat down in front of me of her own
volition
Or maybe that was beside the point
She earing the same smile when she posed her
question “Ikkun, you kno you didn’t come to school
for a while in the beginning of April? Why was that?”
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“Uh” My chopsticks stoppedThe bits of kimchee
they held plopped back into the bowl “Uh, well”
I must have had a troubled look on my face, because
Mikoko-chan was quick to start waving her hands around
frantically and say, “Oh, if it’s hard to talk about it, don’t
worry I was just wondering, that’s all It’s like, Unsolved Mysteries
Featuring Mikoko-chan”
“No, it’s not hard to talk about It’s a simple story, really
I was just on a vacation For about a week”
“Vacation?” She blinked at me like a little forest animal
Her expressions were also easy to read It made it easy for me
to talk to her—she was a great listener
“Vacation? Where’d you go?” she asked again
“Out to some deserted island in the Sea of japan, kind of
by accident”
“By accident?”
“Yeah A big accident Anyway, that’s how I got myself
into this ki situation”
She scratched her head, which was probably a natural response
But I am a fundamentally lazy person, so I couldn’t
be bothered to explain all the details Or rather, just how the
hell would I?
“Anyway, just a vacation Nothing particularly deep”
“Huh You don’t say”
“What did you think it was?”
“Oh, nothing” She blushed a bit “I just thought maybe,
uh, like you hurt yourself somehow and had an extended
stay at the hospital or so”
How and why such an idea would occur to her was a mystery
to ain, for someone to suddenly take a
week off just after entering a university, there weren’t really
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any other plausible explanations that came to mind At the
very least, it was a more likely explanation than “I was just on
a vacation”
“I see Sort of like a delayed graduation trip”
“Yeah, soet a reservation, so
it ended up eating into April,” I said with a shrug, but of
course the real facts were totally different The very idea that I
had “graduated fro I hadn’t
experienced since elementary school I’d certainly never been
on a “graduation trip” But all of the circu
what had happened would have required a pointlessly
long explanation, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing
I wanted to talk about at length anyway, so I just ith
her interpretation
“Have a sort of half-convinced expression
“So did you go alone?”
“Yeah”
“Gotcha” And then, just like that, the cheerful smile was
back It was as if all confusion had been cleared It was like she
really didn’t put on any façades She was so straightforward
with her emotions that I almost envied her
Well
Not really
“So, Mikoko-chanWhy are you really here?”
“Huh?”
“You have so
you caht here when there’s a whole roomful
of empty chairs”
“Huh” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze a bit,
down to ot
so specific to say to you?”
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“Huh?” This time it was my turn to scratch my head
She continued talking in the meantime ”I meanam I
bothering you? I just saw you when I alking by, so I
thought ether”
“Ah, gotcha”
So she’d just wanted someone to eat with I was the type
who preferred doing personal things, like eating, alone, but
there were plenty of people who viewed mealtime and talk
time as one and the same Surely Mikoko-chan was one of
the unexpectedly decided to skip class, she
couldn’t find a friend to eat with, so she went ahead and
struck up a conversation with the first acquaintance she
happened to see—me
“Well, if that’s all it is, it’s fine by me,” I assured her
“Thanks That’s a relief I don’t knohat I would’ve
done if you had said no”
“You don’t?”
“H
to hold the edges of her tray in both hands Then she
twisted her wrists in a sudden cracking motion “Like that”
“I see” Even if she was just joking, I was a little relieved
I had refrained fro no I wouldn’t have put
such a reaction past her, in reality Someone who expressed
happiness so freely er just as freely
“Well, I guess I’ as you just want to
talk,” I said
”Thanks”
“So what are we talking about?”
“Oh, umm”
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As I pro
her chopsticks together She was probably trying to think of a
topic
I otten who she was, but surely in the past
rasp the surface
of my personality So just what kind of topic would she
broach within
common sense, that I used to think soccer was baseball played
with your feet? I was strangely interested to find out, as if I
atching it happen to someone else
She clapped her hands as if she had suddenly thought of
soone crazy?” she said
“Huh? In ay?”
“I meaner, you know, the prowler Even you must
know about it”
Even me
EvenExcept that it
happened that I had no idea who the hell “the prowler” was
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot! Of course I know!” An
angry outburst like that would have been fairly justified, but
”Shut up! How the hell am I supposed to knohat that is,
stupid?!” just didn’t have the sa of validity to it
“H, Ikkun?” she asked
“Ah, nothing What’s ‘the prowler’?”
Obviously I wasn’t looking for the dictionary definition,
one who prowls She gawked at me in amazement
”You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke? Ikkun, it’s been all
over the news There’s no way you could have missed this
if you live in Kyoto”
“There’s no TV in et the paper
either”
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”What about the Internet?”
“Oh, I don’t have a computer Don’t really use the ones on
campus much either”
”Ohalmost
impressed in a way “Is it some sort of ethical policy?”
“Maybe it is, in a sense How do I put itI don’t like
having possessions”
“Cooool! You’re like an ancient philosopher! Wow!” She
clapped her hands with joy I seriously doubted I would have
gotten the same reaction if she kneas actually for a
practical—and completely lame—reason: My room was just
too small
I mean, newspapers take up a lot of space
“When you say ‘if you live in Kyoto,’ do you mean this
‘prowler’ thing is going on here?”
“Yeah, that’s right It’ssplash ‘Panic in
the Old Capital!’ Some places have even called off field trips”
“Wowtoo bad for them”
“Six people have beenon
right now! With no known suspects!” She had become all riled
up, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice “He stabs
theuts all around and
stuff! Freaky, huh?”
“”
Let’s set aside the fact that ere in the middle of
eating After all, I was partly responsible for the fact that the
conversation had veered in this direction But what did it say
of this girl that she was able to discuss the murder of others
with such absolute glee?
It’s scary how detached people can become
“Six people, huh? Is that a lot?”
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“Yeah it’s a lot! It’s a hell of a lot!” She almost sounded
boastful in a way, as if she were the one doing the killing
“Maybe not overseas, but serial killings are rare in japan! It’s
become quite a sensation, you know”
“Huh So that’s why there are patrol cars circling around all
over the place”
“Yeah There are people from the mobile police force in
shi+nkyôgoku Makes me think of the Gion Festival” She
chuckled to herself for some reason
“Wow, go figure I didn’t know anything about this”
As I nodded along with her explanation, somehow I knew
Kunagisa would definitely get a kick out of this Kunagisa, for
those new to isa Tomo,
one of isa
Toineering
professional shut-in of the mysterious variety, with
blue hair and a passionate interest in collecting information on
just these types of incidents
Unlike me, she wasn’t constantly in the dark about what
was going on in the world In fact, she was essentially an
infor expert, and she was probably already
well aware of this prowler case without
about it In fact, she was probably already taking action
“So when did it start?”
“Around the beginning of May, ht
Why?”
“Oh, I was just asking”
I put the last piece of kiue,
or rather the entire inside of my mouth, was completely
ranted or say
”this tastes bad” again If you thought about it, the fact that a
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single bowl of kimchee could so easily destroy all my principles
didn’t say much for my taste buds Or maybe it was more
of a stomach issue
“Well, I’ain sometime” I put down my
chopsticks and began to get up from my seat
”Ah! Hold on! Hold on, will you?! Where are you going?!”
Mikoko scrambled to stop me “Wait a minute, Ikkun!”
“What do you ’? I’m finished
eating so I figured maybe I’d drop by the bookstore”
”I’m not done!” I took a look at her tray Indeed, more than
half of her food was left
”But I am”
”Don’t make me sad Stay with me till I’m finished”
“Why should I have to do a pointless thing like that?”is
exactly the kind of thing I’h to say I’m
o-with-the-flow type
“Okay I’
urgent to do, and it wasn’t like I was full yet, either
I figured I ht as well eat some real food while I was
there “Wait a ”
I approached the register from the opposite direction
(which was against the rules) and took a look at the menu on
the wall, pondering whether I should order the beef bowl
Geez, it was
else was the way to go
“Kiain?” the lady at the counter interrupted
lightheartedly as I was trying to decide
“Yes”
Oops
I had up and said it
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“No use crying over spilt milk” Or wait, was this more of a
“hindsight-is-always-twenty-twenty situation”?
A few dozen seconds later, I received another heaping
bowl of kiave me a little
extra) and sat back down in front of Mikoko-chan
”What the hell? A with
so here?” she said
“Don’t worry about it So e talking about?”
“Hot”
“Gotcha Well, then you want to talk about class?”
She shook her head firmly
“Why? There were soet in first
period today, so I was thinking o over it
together It’s a required class for freshmen, so you must have
gone, right? If you ask me, the professor’s inability to explain
things properly is to blame, but what do you think?”
“What do I think?’ I think that there isn’t a boy alive who
brings up soirl when there isn’t even a
test co up!”
I was only kidding, but she seemed seriously put off by it
“What’s the ?”
“nobody likes studying”
“That sounds debatable to ,
why did you go to college?”
“Ah, that’s a forbidden question If you ask that, it’s all
over I ht?”
It seemed I had inadvertently touched a soft spot, and she
suddenly seemed a bit melancholy Come to think of it, it
seemed to me that someone had once said japanese universities
weren’t a place for people anted to study, and
that college was just a ti society
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“Heh, that’s one way to put it”
“Do you like studying?” she said
I shrugged
Of course not
In fact, I hated it
“But it’s not bad for killing time Or as an escape from
reality, rather”
“Usually studying is the reality” She gave a heavy sigh
Then, as if shi+fting her focus back to her meal, she picked at
her salad for a while in silence
He salad, and a dessert
really a nore of twenty?
I didn’t know anybody fit to use as a standard for comparison—everyone
I kneas either incredibly finicky, ridiculously
gluttonous, or always fasting or so—so I had no
standards for judg as Mikoko-chan was neither
too slim nor the opposite, perhaps it was, at the very
least, an appropriate portion for her
“U at me like that,”
she said
”Oh, sorry”
”S’okay”
She resuan
lookingfashi+on Really, she had
been peeping up at me every so often the whole time, but
now she had suddenly beco eyes
atshe wanted to tell me
And indeed, that proved to be an accurate speculation
As if she had at last ,
she placed her chopsticks doithout finishi+ng her dessert
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She gave a bit of a playful smile as she leaned her body
forward, bringing her face close to mine
”So, Ikkun,” she said
“Yeah?”
“The truth is, I may or may not have a favor to ask you”
”You don’t”
“I do” She leaned back again in her seat “Are you the kind
of guy who ht be free tomorrow?”
“If you define free as not having any plans, then I sup-pose
I’m more apt to say yes than no”
“Yeah, kind of hard to follow you”
“That’s just how I am,” I responded as I chewed my kimchee
“To put it more simply—I’m a free dude”
“Really? You’re free? Oh, good!” She pressed her hands
together in front of her chest with a look of true joy To cause
so plans
on a Saturday seemed a bit much
More iood I had the distinct
feeling I was about to get dragged into so
“I see, I see, so if I’ood happens to you,
huh? One hand washes the other It’s also kind of like the
food chain A nificent circuit, if you will,” I said
She wasn’t even listening ”Yeah So anyway, if you’re free
toether!”
Her hands still pressed together, she tilted them to the side