"...Why am I here?" I hear the voice of a girl I don't know during lunch time. Turning to my side, I see two girls approaching me.
"Come on, Yuki! I'm just asking you to meet someone!" Andou says as she drags the other girl towards me.
"Hey, Ayanokouji! This here is Yuki Himeno! Isn't she a beauty?" Andou says while holding the other girl in place near me while said girl looks uncomfortable.
"...Yes, she's adorable."
"Am I being appraised now?" Himeno mumbles.
"Sure are, Yuki! Anyway, this is Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, and he's pretty cool!" Himeno glances at me for a second, before turning back.
"...So what am I doing here?"
"I'm making you two friends! You've been looking kind of down lately so I thought I'd introduce you to someone. Since I know you don't want to befriend most of the people in our class, I picked someone outside it."
"Ugh, come on. Not this again." Himeno rolls her eyes. Someone in Class B who is not friendly, what a rare sight.
"Hear me out, Ayanokouji's pretty quiet and easy to talk to. Plus, he kinda looks like me, so he might be easier for you to talk to!" Now that I take a look, Andou does have the same hair color as me. Andou turns to address me this time.
"Ayanokouji, you know how most of the people in Class B are really good at getting along with everybody? Well, Yuki here is the complete opposite."
"It's true. I only talk to two people in my class. Everyone sucks. I want to die." Himeno states. How exactly am I supposed to respond to that?
"That's... nice. I can kind of relate to not liking your classmates." I am in Class D after all.
"So you also wake up in the morning and struggle to get out of bed, eventually resigning yourself to yet another miserable day of misery and...misery?" Is this girl like this all the time?
"Maybe not to that extent, but yes."
"Then I don't mind talking to you every now and then. You might be the only one that understands me in this god-forsaken school." Well... that's good I guess?
"Sure, count me in."
"I will begin to write our double suicide note right away."
"...I am suddenly regretting this." I didn't realize this was what I was signing up for when talking to Himeno.
"Jeez, I wanted you to get along, but this is not what I expected." Andou comments.
"It seems we have just met, and we are already going to die together." I joke.
"No, we are all going to die alone." Himeno continues.
"...Somehow I feel like you guys have eerily good chemistry. Well I'll leave you two to it, I need to do some other stuff anyway." Andou quickly says her goodbyes before leaving me and Himeno alone.
"...So, this is a bit akward. Does she do this often?" I ask Himeno. She lets out a sigh before replying.
"Not just her, almost everyone in my class tries to befriend me, or introduce me to other people. Unfortunately, unlike them I'm not excited when I'm surrounded by other people I don't know. Oh, you seem pretty cool though. So we can be friends if you want. Or not, I don't really care."
"I am hurt that you say you don't care about our friendship."
"You're right, I'm a pretty bad friend. I should get better at hiding my opinions, but hiding things just takes so much effort." She looks me directly in the eyes, trying to get a read on me.
"I'm sure you have plenty of stuff you wish you could just tell everybody, right? Stuff that eats away at you, changes your perspective, or keeps you awake at night. Something that can ruin your life, even. Do you have anything like that? Or would even admitting that is too much of a secret for you to give away?"
If anything, I have too many secrets. However, I don't think there's anything I'm tired of concealing. In fact, it would be more tiring for me to reveal all of my secrets and experiences that I've hidden away.
Himeno seems different, apparently. That's fine. I can't imagine any secret of hers would be the same as mine anyway.
"I'm not sure how to answer that." I finally reply.
"It was mostly rhetorical, you don't need to answer anything." A short moment of silence.
"...You're different than what I expected." I finally say.
"How so?"
"I thought you were an outcast who was just feeling lonely without knowing anyone. However, that's not the case is it?" She scoffs a bit at my notion.
"Something like that would be so much simpler. Instead I just put on my uniform, and mislead everyone about the person I really am. But like I was saying, keeping secrets is tiring. You have no idea how many secrets us teenage girls have. Frankly, I hate it."
"...Why are you telling me this? Where is this coming from?" I question her.
"What do you mean?"
"You're suddenly opening up to me even though we barely know each other."
"Oh, I get it. Yeah, I guess it must be pretty weird for you to hear all that. At the end of the day, I'm not stupid. I know that I need all kinds of people and all kinds of things, despite me actively avoiding them. In fact, I would say I'm higher maintenance than most other people. But right now..." She pauses for a second.
"...Right now I just want someone else I can talk to. I can't guarantee you'll like me. But you know what, for some strange reason... It's harder for me to build walls around myself with you." The conversation dies down after that.
Me and Himeno wait in silence until lunch is over. We say a short goodbye, and we go our seperate ways.