The autumn afternoon sun cast long shadows across the shopping district of Kamigoe City as Momo Ayase stood before her boyfriend—or rather, her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend—with barely contained fury radiating from every fiber of her being.
"Are you seriously asking me this right now?" Momo's voice carried a dangerous edge that would've warned off anyone with a functioning survival instinct.
Her boyfriend, a lanky teen with bleached hair and an expression that screamed entitlement, crossed his arms defensively. "I'm just saying, if you're not gonna put out, you should at least pay for our dates. It's only fair, right?"
Momo's eye twitched. The audacity. The sheer, unmitigated audacity of this boy.
"Fair?" she repeated, her voice dropping to a deadly calm. "You think it's fair that I should either sleep with you or become your personal ATM?"
"Well, yeah," he said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. "I mean, what else are you good for? Plus, I know this love hotel that—"
The roundhouse kick came so fast he barely saw it. Momo's leg swept through the air in a perfect arc, her school uniform skirt flaring as she spun. The kick would've connected beautifully with his smug face if he hadn't stumbled backward at the last second, landing hard on his backside.
"We're done," Momo declared, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "Don't ever talk to me again, you piece of trash."
She turned on her heel and walked away, auburn hair swinging behind her like a battle standard. Behind her, her ex-boyfriend scrambled to his feet, shouting obscenities that she ignored with the practiced ease of someone who had already written him out of her life story.
Later that afternoon, Momo sat slumped against a wall in the school hallway, her two friends hovering nearby with expressions that wavered between concern and exasperation.
"I just don't get it," said Miko, a petite girl with twin braids, as she sipped from a juice carton. "Why were you even dating that loser?"
Momo stared at the ceiling, her face a mask of dejection. "He looked like Ken Takakura."
Muko, the other friend, exchanged a bewildered glance with Miko. "Who?"
"Ken Takakura!" Momo repeated, as if this explained everything. "The actor! He's super masculine and cool and..." She trailed off, realizing how stupid it sounded out loud.
"You dated someone just because they looked like an old actor?" Miko asked incredulously.
"When you say it like that, it sounds bad," Momo muttered, sliding further down the wall.
"That's because it IS bad, Momo!"
Before Momo could defend her questionable life choices, raised voices from a nearby classroom caught her attention. She glanced through the open door and saw a scene that made her forget her own misery for a moment.
Three boys stood around a desk, throwing wadded-up paper balls at a thin, bespectacled student who sat hunched over a book, trying his best to ignore them. The boy had messy black hair and thick-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down his nose. He looked like he wanted to disappear into his chair.
One of the bullies—a stocky kid with a cruel grin—reached for something heavier. Momo watched as he began wrapping a large magnet in paper, clearly intending to do real damage.
Something in Momo snapped.
She was already having a terrible day. Her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—had turned out to be human garbage. She was emotionally drained and looking for any excuse to punch something. These idiots picking on some random nerd? That would do nicely.
