The following afternoon, the dismissal bell rang out right on schedule as always.
Hikigaya’s movements in packing up his bag, however, were a bit quicker than usual.
He practically left the classroom on the very tail of the bell.
Subconsciously, he wanted to avoid Yuigahama’s highly probable invitation to “walk together” and head to the Service Club alone.
It wasn’t that he disliked it, just…
he needed a little space to digest this recent, overly “eventful” daily life.
He strolled unhurriedly to the special-purpose building and arrived at that familiar Service Club door.
Unlike usual, total silence reigned within.
He knocked on the door out of habit and waited a few seconds.
No cool, clear “Come in” from Yukinoshita came from inside.
After a moment’s hesitation, Hikigaya gently pushed the door open.
Inside the clubroom, the afternoon sunlight flowed quietly, illuminating the dust motes suspended in the air with sharp clarity.
And there, at her spot by the window, Yukinoshita Yukino was not sitting upright reading as she usually did.
Instead, she was…
slumped over the desk, fast asleep.
She had her head resting on her folded arms, tilted to the side.
Her long, jet-black hair spilled like a waterfall across the desk and her shoulders, veiling part of her face.
The sunlight traced the lines of her long lashes and the bridge of her elegant nose.
The usual cool sharpness she carried in her waking hours had dissolved entirely in sleep, leaving only a rare, utterly unguarded tranquility.
Hikigaya’s gaze fell upon the thick manuscript spread open beside her hand—none other than Zaimokuza Yoshiteru’s “monumental work,” comparable in heft to a brick.
The margins of the manuscript were densely packed with notes in neat, graceful handwriting.
Different colored pens had been used, apparently to mark various issues: setting contradictions, grammatical errors, logical inconsistencies…
meticulously detailed to an almost appalling degree.
His gaze drifted back to Yukinoshita’s face.
He could clearly see the faint, bruise-like shadows beneath her lower lashes, starkly contrasting with her fair skin.
‘This girl…
did she stay up all night reading this?’ A feeling difficult to put into words stirred in Hikigaya’s heart.
Going to such lengths for a “novel” of Zaimokuza’s caliber?
Just then, a distant image surfaced in his mind, beyond his control—a classroom on some elementary school afternoon.
The sunlight had been just as warm and lazy then.
That little girl with the long, straight black hair, always sitting alone in the corner reading books meant for adults, would occasionally, just like this, succumb to drowsiness and doze off slumped over her desk.
Back then, he too had seemed to steal a few glances at her…
A very faint smile—so faint even he himself didn’t notice it—appeared at the corner of his lips, like a tiny ripple spreading from a pebble dropped into a lake.
It surfaced briefly, then quickly vanished.
He softened his footsteps, walked to his own seat, and set down his bag.
After a moment of hesitation, he slipped off his somewhat oversized boys’ uniform jacket.
His movements carried a gentleness and care he wasn’t even aware of, as if afraid of disturbing some fragile dream.
With the utmost caution, he gently draped the jacket—still carrying his body heat—over Yukinoshita’s shoulders, covering her somewhat thin back.
Having done all this, as if he had just completed some monumental yet secretive task, he quickly returned to his seat.
He picked up a book and pretended to read it intently.
Only the faintly burning tips of his ears betrayed his inner disquiet.
The clubroom was left with only the sound of sunlight flowing and the barely audible breathing of two people—one fast asleep, the other pretending to read.
This tranquility did not last long.
“Yukinon!
Hikki!
I’m here—!”
Accompanied by a voice so full of energy it seemed capable of dispelling any gloom, the Service Club door was shoved open with a whoosh.
Yuigahama Yui burst in like a cheerful little bird, bouncing with every step.
This sudden noise and shout instantly shattered the quiet within the room.
Yukinoshita, slumped over the desk, felt her long lashes flutter a few times.
She opened her eyes, disoriented.
Her ice-blue eyes still carried the hazy moisture of having just woken.
She instinctively started to straighten up, only to feel something sliding off her shoulders.
She looked down.
It was a dark blue boys’ uniform jacket.
Yukinoshita froze for a brief moment.
Then, as if realizing something, she abruptly lifted her head.
Her gaze instantly locked onto Hikigaya across from her—sitting rigidly upright, eyes darting evasively, ears flushed red.
Their eyes met briefly across the space between them.
Hikigaya cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly, avoiding her probing gaze.
His eyes fell upon the manuscript beside her hand.
In a tone that he tried to make sound as casual as possible—but which couldn’t quite conceal a thread of awkward concern—he spoke.
“Next time…
even if it’s for a request, don’t push yourself this hard.
Take care of yourself.”
Yukinoshita looked at him—at the way he had clearly done something thoughtful yet was trying so hard to act indifferent—and felt the lingering faint scent of him on the jacket.
An uncontrollable blush surfaced on her fair cheeks.
She quickly picked up the jacket that had slipped off and handed it back to Hikigaya with movements that were just slightly rushed.
Her voice was a shade lower than usual, carrying a faint, barely perceptible embarrassment.
“…Mm.
Got it.”
Yuigahama, still standing at the door, watched the subtle atmosphere flowing between these two, and took in the rare blush on Yukinoshita’s face along with the faint dark circles under her eyes.
Curious, she leaned in closer.
“Yukinon, you don’t look so good!
And you’ve got dark circles!
Did you not sleep well last night?”
Yukinoshita seized upon this to redirect attention away from the jacket incident just now.
She rubbed her still-throbbing temples, her tone recovering some of its usual composure but still betraying a trace of fatigue.
“It’s nothing.
I merely stayed up a bit late reading the client’s novel.”
“Ah!
The novel!” As if reminded of something important, Yuigahama clapped her hands together with a smack, her face showing a mixture of sudden realization and awkwardness.
“Right, right!
Zaimokuza-kun’s novel!
Ahaha…
ahaha…”
She let out a few dry laughs, her eyes beginning to dart around.
Hikigaya watched this display and flipped his dead-fish eyes upward with practiced precision, delivering a pinpoint jab.
“Yuigahama, that reaction…
don’t tell me you completely forgot about it and haven’t read a single word?”
“I-It’s not like I haven’t read any of it at all!” Yuigahama protested hurriedly, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, though her voice grew smaller and smaller.
“I…
I read…
um…
the very beginning…
a tiny bit?” The more she spoke, the more guilty she sounded.
In the end, she could only cover it up with even louder laughter.
“Ahahaha…
no worries, no worries!
I’ll read it right now!
Immediately!”
So saying, as if to prove her resolve, she dashed over to her seat, pulled that weighty “brick” out of her bag, drew a deep breath as though about to face some monumental challenge, and then, with a face full of grim determination, opened to the first page.
Hikigaya looked at Yuigahama’s “marching-to-certain-death” expression, then at Yukinoshita beside him—exhausted yet still maintaining her elegant posture, faint shadows beneath her eyes—and then thought of that still-unopened “source of psychological contamination” sitting in his own bag.
His heart filled with complex emotion.
‘The daily life of this Service Club…
really is increasingly bizarre…’ He thought silently, though his gaze, unconsciously, drifted once more toward the sky outside the window, dyed golden by the setting sun.
In the clubroom, for a time, only the rustling sound of Yuigahama turning pages remained—along with the occasional, forcefully suppressed gasp upon encountering some particularly outrageous setting.
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