"Keisuke!!" Chiaki fluttered up to me, along with pretty much the rest of the class, when they noticed me coming back, clutching my left arm in pain. "Are you okay? We saw it happen from here; are you sure you're fine?"
"I'm fine, Chiaki," I said, and I plopped down on the chair, and started rummaging through the first-aid kit. "Probably just pulled a muscle, it's nothing serious."
"No, it is!" she pouted. She looks so adorable when she pouts. "Your presence is necessary for us to win! You carried Hirata-kun on one hand for almost 10 seconds! You're insane!"
After berating me for a while, she snatched the first-aid kit from my hand and started going through it herself. "Here, show me your hand."
With that, she started wrapping a bandage around my hand.
"Wait, it's not broken," I said. "You're worrying too much. It'll be fine if I let it be."
"Stop trying to act all tough and just give me your hand."
I reluctantly agreed. I wasn't going to argue with Chiaki. I had no chance of winning.
"I noticed something odd going on in the field," Chiaki murmured to me in a low voice. "I noticed Hirata-kun grabbing the headband many times, but he was unable to pull it off. Only when he was literally in front of Ryuuen during the last seconds of the game, did he manage to yank off the band."
"I have a feeling Ryuuen had oiled his headband. Of course, I cannot report it to the school," I added, when Chiaki looked at me like she was to burst. "He'll play it down by saying that he had oiled his hair, and that it had probably got onto the headband. Everything was planned out."
"So you're not going to do anything ABOUT it?" she said, as she forcefully tied the bandage harder. I winced.
"Ouch. Go easy on me. I'm a frail man."
"Oh yeah?"
"Ouch!"
"Oh no, did I hurt you? I'm so SORRY!" She yanked on the bandage again.
"Oh god, stop!" I said, as I freed myself from the grip of the scary woman. "You'll screw it up even more than it is now!" Chiaki looked at me with a smug expression, and resumed to stare back at the competition.
"Takeyama-kun." Horikita approached me from the sidelines, and I could see Chiaki eyeing Horikita warily, like some sort of feral cat.
She walked up to me, stood by my side, and then in the next instant, punched me on the bandage. I grimaced my face, but the pain was probably evident from my expression.
"Hey, Horikita-san!" Chiaki immediately came to my rescue. "Why are you hitting him?! I didn't hit him that hard!"
"It's payback for stepping on my foot when I came back from the race," Horikita said indifferently. "Will you able to continue to take part?"
"Now that you've assaulted me, probably no."
"..... sorry. That must have hurt." Horikita apologized to me. A trace of a smile formed on my face. Horikita really was beginning to understand the value of human relations.
"You're such a tsundere."
"That is quite the repulsive piece of vocabulary," she snapped back. "Maybe I should have hit you harder."
"That's exactly what a tsundere would say."
"..... forget it." And the black haired beauty disappeared from my sight. She readied herself for the girl's cavalry battle.
"Horikita, they'll target you."
She stopped in her tracks and turned around to look at me. "What do you mean?"
"Ryuuen has ordered Class C to gang up on the main leaders of Class D. In other words, you, when it comes to the girls. Try to play offensive. There's no point in playing back. Attack as much as possible, get as many points as possible, and fall."
Horikita pondered over my thoughts a bit, and then gave me a crisp nod. She headed out into the field.
"Ne ne, Kei-chan?" Chiaki playfully nicknamed me. "Something goin' on between the 2 of you? You're the only one Horikita-san even talks to in the class, other than Ayanokoji-kun. And that last walk you went on with her during the practice sessions? For reconnaissance or whatever? Every single girl in our class lost their shit."
"Really? But there's nothing going on between us," I replied.
"You always keep up that act. You know that you're really popular among the girls in our year, right? Your rank on the ikemen chart jumped up after that really cool pose you pulled off at the Gymnasium, against Class A," said Chiaki. "You're like, 2nd or 3rd now."
"Wait, so these lists update real-time?"
"Uh-huh! You completely underestimate the underground network of the girls in the grade, Kei-chan. I'll give you a heads-up — someone's gonna confess to you after the Festival."
Wait, confess to me?
My first high-school confession.
I hope it's a pretty girl..... no wait, a second year maybe?..... wait, do the senior chicks really dig me?..... a first year?.....
"Earth to Kei-chan," Chiaki tapped my head. "What, you're thinking about the confession?"
"Who is it?"
"Haw, you think I'm gonna tell you that? You're not even supposed to know about this, but I've made an exception for you. So, is it a yes or a no?"
"Wait, how can I say that without even meeting the girl?"
"Hmm? So you have absolutely no idea who it is?" she looked at me with suspicious eyes.
"I have no clue. At least give me the class she is from."
"I have no idea."
".....?"
Chiaki sighed. "That's not how it works with the girls. We've got a huge group chat literally dedicated to the ikemen chart. It has pretty much all the girls in our grade. And we're all anonymous."
"Anonymous? Why?"
"Tch. You're actually pretty dumb when it comes to romance and girly stuff, aren't you? Girls are not allowed to know who is confessing to who on a group chat, or who voted for whom. Things get ugly really fast among us females, you see."
"So someone just wrote on the group chat, 'I'll be confessing to Takeyama-kun after the festival'?" I tried to confirm.
"Yup! That's basically it. And then everyone in the group went nuts after she sent that message, and now the whole group is talking about how they'll be confessing to you back-to-back."
"You're kidding me," I stretched back on my chair. "I'm not ready for that kind of stuff."
"Has anyone ever confessed to you before?" she asked me. "Have you ever had a girlfriend in middle school?"
"I've had several confessions before," I said truthfully. "But no, I've never been in a relationship."
"Wait, you rejected all of them!?" Chiaki exclaimed from her seat.
"Yeah. I didn't even know who they were. And from the ones I did know, I didn't really gel well along with them. I wasn't really a social person back in middle school."
"Aww. Hey, Kei-chan," Chiaki moved closer to me, until our bodies were almost touching. "If there was one person in the entire school who you would date, who would that person be?"
"That's such a lame question."
"Come on! Answer it for me!" she wailed. "I wanna know!"
"I don't even know that many people. It's hard to just pick out someone."
"You're such a spoilsport! Mean~~"
"Oh yeah? Then how about you tell me who you voted for in the ikemen chart? Or who would you like to go out with in the school?"
There was a sudden sound of a mechanical breakdown — screws unscrewing themselves, gears falling apart. Chiaki's face was completely red, and her brain (?) wasn't functioning (?). Did I ask a bad question?
"Y-you're not supposed to a-ask such questions t-to girls!" she came up with a lame excuse, trying to cover for a reason I was yet to comprehend.
"So girls can ask guys unsettling questions, but guys can't ask the girls? Damn, that's plain discrimination."
"It's just h-how it is," Chiaki straightened her back in anticipation of our conversation. "So, who is it? I'm really curious, you know?"
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"You."
"!?"
If there is a color that is darker than red, and can appear on a person's face, then that was the color on Chiaki's face right now. She stared at me with wide eyes, and she started..... drooling?
"Chiaki..... ?"
"Yeah, YEAH!" she suddenly snapped out of her trance, and wiped her mouth on her handkerchief. "That..... was u-unexpected."
"Was it so unexpected?" I replied exasperatedly. "I would choose you over any other girl, any day."
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(The Sports Festival; Matsushita, Chiaki POV):
STOPPPPPPP!
MY HEART IS GOING DOKI-DOKI!!!!!!!
No, Chiaki, calm down. Calm down! He would obviously choose you over any other girl. It's because I'm his best friend! It's not like I'm happy that he chose me over anyone else in this school or that I was secretly hoping that he would tell my name and then confess to me in the middle of the festival or kiss me or anything.....
AHHHHHHH! This wasn't fair! This is not fair at all!
How can he say such embarrassing things with such a straight face? If he was any other person I would have definitely taken that as a confession! No, anyone else in my position would have taken that as a confession!
But he's not interested in girls, right? He's made it very clear..... he doesn't show any sort of closeness with any girl, and he doesn't even care about it in the slightest. I obviously cannot tell him that I voted for him in the ikemen chart!
And now that I think about it, someone is going to confess to Kei-chan after the festival.....
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What should I do?
What if he says yes to her?
He won't, right?
He's not the type to say yes to anyone. He's already told me that he's never had a girlfriend, and that he would date me out of all the girls in this school.....
Date me out of all the girls in the school.....
Date me out of all the girls.....
Date me.....
Date..... me.....
*Chiaki.exe has stopped responding*
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A/N's:
This chapter was hella fun to write.
Thank you for reading, and cheers. Please vote for the chapter!
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