Part 1
As it seemed, I wasn’t the only guy who got excited for Valentine’s Day.
The moment I walked into Class C, I was surrounded by an unusual atmosphere.
Many of the boys were standing, gathered in one place.
That day was the culmination of one year’s excitement, after all.
As it happens with Christmas, it is the highlight point for romantic events for boys and girls, alike.
“Oh, there you are Ayanokouji. You, too, come here for a moment.”
I was called by Sudou, so I approached his group.
“Did you get any chocolate?”
“Eh?”
Sudou asked me, with a slightly tense expression on his face.
“To translate it literally, have you received any chocolate from Horikita? That’s what he means”
Ike added while smirking.
“Don’t talk unecessary nonsense, you idiot. It’s nothing like that.”
His eyes were serious while saying that.
What was that? His glare full of demonic fierceness, demanding for an answer.
“I did not get anything from her. Besides, there’s no chance she would give me anything like that.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah”
Sudou nodded his head a couple of times and then he freed me of his stern gaze.
“Well I can understand why Ken is so flustered, after all, that Ayanokouji is a beast”
While saying that, Ike drew with his hand the shape of a plastic bottle in the air.
“…. Ayanokouji, you bastard, don’t assume you’ve won just because of that, understood?”
“No, not at all…”
Since the training camp, I would face occasionally that kind of interrogation, which had become annoying.
“How about you, Kanji? Are things still going good with Shinohara?”
“Eh? What? Why are you bringing up Shinohara, now?”
“Just stop trying to hide it and be honest already. Everybody knows, anyway.”
“E-everybody knows… D-do you all know about it, already?”
For some reason he was asking me to give him answer.
I had already understood the flow of the conversation, so i nodded lightly.
“Ugh!”
Ike’s face turned red.
“See? Even a quiet unsociable person like Ayanokouji knows about it. So, tell us, did you get anything from her?”
Maybe it was because of Shinohara, who seemed not to be very popular within the class, but I did not notice any sign of envy in anyone’s voices.
A bad friend like Yamauchi might have expressed his resentment about it, but Yamauchi was nowhere to be seen.
“I didn’t receive anything…”
“You and I, are in the same position then.”
As an act of sympathy, Sudou rested his hand on Ike’s shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter. I got chocolates from Kushida-chan, after all.”
As he was telling us that, Ike proudly showed us a box of chocolates tied with a pink ribbon.
“You are happily saying that, but didn’t all the guys get something from her? She gave me chocolate too.”
“Thank you very much, but this is the ultimate obligation chocolate”
I was surprised to hear that Kushida gave chocolates to every single first-year male student.
It made me wonder how she managed to do it.
Though, for Kushida, I suppose, it wasn’t a weird thing to do.
At any rate, the enthusiasm of the boys was conveyed all over the place.
This kind of childish behavior felt like the reason why none of them could get closer to girls, but there was nothing that could be done about that.
It was inevitable that it would turn out this way for a class like ours with barely any experience with romance.
Getting something or getting nothing. It all depends on how you handle yourself.
And that is not something that can be changed hastily.
