“…This is the time, huh.”
A blaring alarm woke me up, and I slowly hauled myself out of bed. I am not a morning person, so the time around getting up is genuinely the most depressing part of my day.
I fixed my hair, swapped my pajamas for the uniform, headed for the dining room, and started in on the breakfast left waiting on the table.
At the same time I opened my mobile game app, claimed the daily login bonus, and ran a few dungeons. Burning through the stamina that had refilled overnight is my morning routine.
The reason I usually only just barely make it to school on time is precisely this — but since I don’t have any friends to chat with even if I got there early, no harm done.
Dad, Mom, and Mio had already left for work and school respectively, so at this hour I was the only one left.
“Oh, swimsuit gacha again this year. Summer break really is around the corner, huh.”
After the dungeon run, the in-game announcements reminded me summer break was approaching. The normies are about to have a wonderful summer; for a loner like me, it’ll feel like an unusually long weekend.
Last summer pretty much was an unusually long weekend — almost nothing summer-vacation-y happened. About the only highlights were the Bon-week family trip to my grandma’s place in Kurashiki, Okayama, and the local summer festival Mio dragged me to.
Of course I’d love to have a beach-and-mountains-with-friends, fireworks-festival-with-girlfriend kind of summer too. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of thing loners get.
The kind of Instagram-glittering summers people post about are an exclusively upper-caste privilege — the kind enjoyed by Reona and Riona.
“This summer’s probably going to be a carbon copy of last summer — me doing my homework while reading LNs and farming gacha.”
In the middle of my negativity spiral, a key turned in the lock at the entryway. Did Mio forget something and come back?
But if it was Mio, wouldn’t she have texted me to bring it to her? While I was puzzling that out, the dining-room door opened and Reona and Riona walked in.
“Morning, Ryouya.”
“Came to pick you up.”
“Hold on — why do you have a key to my house?!”
“Your mom gave us a spare yesterday before we left.”
“Mm-hmm. We said we wanted to come pick you up in the morning, and she said go right ahead.”
”…Mom, sweetheart, please don’t hand house keys to people you’ve met a couple of times.”
I couldn’t tell whether Mom was gullible or Reona and Riona were terrifyingly persuasive, but either way, the two of them were now free to come and go from my house at will.
The three of us walked to school together. Naturally I couldn’t say “let’s go in separately, you walking me here is going to make me stand out” after they’d literally come to pick me up.
“Honest question — you guys really did show up at the perfect moment. Couple minutes later and I’d have already been out the door.”
”…Woman’s intuition, I guess?”
“Yeah, just luck…”
The two of them wore very faintly awkward expressions for a split second, then went quiet, then answered. I caught the off-ness — but I was sleepy enough that I didn’t dig.
“Ryouya, where’d you rank in the last midterm?”
“Ugh, it’s kind of embarrassing to say.”
“I told you mine yesterday, so it’s only fair, Ryouya-kun.”
After putting Reona on the spot yesterday, not answering would’ve been straight-up unfair. Resigned, I muttered as quietly as I could:
”…Around one hundred eighty.”
“Hmm. You give off a serious, hardworking vibe, Ryouya-kun, so your actual ranking is kind of surprising.”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t want to say it.”
I get this reaction a lot. People take one look at me and assume “diligent type,” and then their faces do this very specific thing when they hear the real numbers.
To be fair, Amaki High is a fairly high-tier school, so my national-mock-exam deviation has never dropped below fifty. But in-school, the curve is brutal.
“It’s fine. I’m here with Ryouya.”
“Mm. With Riona on your side you can aim for top of the year.”
“That’s reassuring.”
By the time we’d finished that conversation the school gates were in sight. Plenty of other students were on the same walk in, and — exactly as expected — they were all staring.
The cause was obvious: Reona and Riona. The looks of why the hell is that guy walking with them were everywhere, and my comfort level had bottomed out.
”…Sorry, I’m gonna lose this if I don’t sprint to the bathroom — I’ll catch up.”
I cracked. I muttered something one-sided, tore off toward the shoe lockers at full speed, and killed time in the bathroom until the first-period bell.