I eat lunch with Sumire.
I take my bento box out of my bag, turn my chair around, and I am ready to go.
We use Sumire’s desk, so I don’t have to worry about bothering anyone.
The area around us is noisy and loud, but our seats are relatively quiet.
Actually, it is quiet as long as Sumire is being quiet.
Sumire has good manners when she eats.
She eats with a refined expression and uses her chopsticks gracefully. She makes almost no sound when she eats.
Believe it or not, she comes from a well-off family. I hear her grandfather runs a decent-sized company.
But she never brags about it at all. In fact, she seems to dislike being talked about like that.
My way of eating isn’t weird or messy, either. I think.
But compared to Sumire, I worry that maybe my eating habits look messy.
When I eat with Sumire, I try to hold my bowl with extra care.
But since I don’t do it usually, my movements feel stiff. I peek at her and copy her, wondering how she does it.
Actually, I have not had many meals with Sumire until now.
But now we are in the same class. Our seats are one in front of the other. Am I going to be shown this every day from now on? Sigh.
“Aoi-chan, here. Ahh.”
She holds out a cherry tomato she picked up with her chopsticks right in front of my face.
Okay, I take back what I said earlier. Her manners are terrible.
“It’s okay, you eat it.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Can you stop making other people clean up your leftovers?”
If she doesn’t like them, she should just tell them not to put them in her bento.
Maybe she can’t say that? I don’t really understand that part.
I put the cherry tomato from her chopsticks into my mouth.
A slight indirect kiss… well, we are not at a stage where that matters anymore. It has been like this for a long time.
“Aoi-chan, you aren’t a picky eater, are you? That is amazing.”
Was that a compliment?
Or was I being made fun of?
“Well then, you can have this, and this too~”
She gave me lots of egg rolls and fried chicken.
If I keep this up, I might not even need to make my own bento, just bringing rice would be enough.
“Hey, look at this? Isn’t this crazy~?”
By the way, the seat next to us has been a bit loud for a while. The boy next to Sumire seems quiet, but his friends who came over are the noisy type.
While showing a video or something on their smartphones, they keep glancing at us.
They don’t have the courage to talk to us directly, but they have this vibe like they want us to ask, “What is going on?” But I don’t care, and I have no intention of getting involved.
“What’s going on?”
Just as I was thinking that, Sumire completely took the bait.
She should have just ignored them.
“Oh, this video, last holiday…”
The male student started talking happily.
As I thought, it seems like they wanted to talk to… well, Sumire.
“Oh, is that so?”
“Crazy, right?”
“Yeah, super crazy.”
Sumire doesn’t refuse to talk to anyone at school. She isn’t just tapping on her phone by herself.
She talks to her classmates and they talk to her.
I mean, Sumire talks to boys normally like this too. Huh…
Like this, I am making all sorts of new discoveries.
Well, that is fine, but…
“Sumire-cchi, will you eat this?”
“I’ll eat it all!”
Before I knew it, she has become friends with the girls in class too.
It isn’t like cute girls get jealous of their own gender; she is just naturally well-liked. I think that is the case with her.
“Do you want some too, Kobe-san?”
“Oh, thanks…”
And surely, the people who get disliked are people like me who have flat reactions.
I mean, it is not that I am disliked, but it is “Sumire-cchi” for her, and a wall of “Kobe-san” for me.
“You two are such good friends again today, the class’s top duo.”
“Huh? What is that?”
“Some of the guys were whispering about it.”
Sumire is popular with the guys. I get that.
Me… I don’t know. In middle school, I had guys I didn’t even know confess to me. Does that mean I’m popular?
The way I am treated now is probably the phenomenon where you look cute by association when you are with a cute girl.
“You two live close to each other, right?”
And information spreads without me knowing.
That is definitely because Sumire talks about it whenever she wants.
I warned her before not to say unnecessary things, but she didn’t seem to really get it.
I am afraid that sooner or later, she will just blurt out, “We started dating.”
“You guys are childhood friends? That’s nice~~.”
“That is right. Isn’t it nice~~?”
Stop it, stop it.
Also, this girl who is strangely getting involved with Sumire seems a bit out of place.
Her hair is a bit light, and her skirt is short. She looks trendy. She seems to be handing out snacks everywhere, but she doesn’t seem to belong to any specific group.
“Wow. Is that so? I like that too. But that thing is…”
Sumire doesn’t try to brush her off, but keeps the conversation going herself. She doesn’t reject anyone who comes to her.
Because of that, the other girl won’t leave.
Ignoring their conversation, I put away my empty bento box and take out my smartphone.
I open my social media, and scroll through the screen for no reason.
“Sumire-cchi, isn’t your hair super smooth? Can I touch it?”
“That is fine, but don’t pull it out.”
“Why are you being so violent all of a sudden?”
I hear their happy laughter.
Listening to them like this, Sumire’s way of talking isn’t that different from when she is talking to me.
But isn’t that distance with someone she just met weird? She has been my childhood friend for a long time, and in Sumire’s head, we are currently dating.
“Sumire-cchi, are your boobs big? Can I touch them?”
“That is fine, but don’t pull them off.”
“That is too crazy.”
That girl is weird, but Sumire is something else too.
Before entering school, I thought I would have to take care of Sumire, but she seems unexpectedly used to this kind of “outgoing” or “girls’ school” vibe.
Well, that is fine, I guess.
“I am going to the restroom.”
Feeling like I didn’t belong, I said that to myself and stood up from my seat.