— — — — — —
Tokyo was noisy, restless, and its weather was just as temperamental.
By the time Oikawa arrived at the shinkansen station, a light drizzle had already started falling from the sky.
He stepped into Tokyo Station. And after squeezing through the packed crowds, he finally spotted students wearing Sobu High uniforms.
"Oikawa-kun!"
A voice called out to him from the crowd.
"Over here, over here!"
Following the voice, Oikawa walked over.
The first thing he saw was Yui standing beside Kawasaki. Kawasaki gave him a once-over before her gaze stopped on the scarf around his neck.
It was a farewell gift from Utaha Kasumigaoka.
She hadn't knitted it herself, but she had personally wrapped it around him.
Kawasaki frowned slightly. For some reason, seeing it made her feel inexplicably annoyed.
"Oikawa-kun, yesterday you said in the group chat that you had something to do. What were you doing?"
The moment Yui asked that, Kawasaki quietly perked up her ears too. She wanted to know where Oikawa had gone — or more importantly, who he'd gone to see.
Last night, everyone had planned to travel together. But Oikawa had declined, saying he needed to meet a friend.
A female friend?
Looking at the scarf around his neck, that thought suddenly surfaced in Kawasaki's mind.
Oikawa smiled, "A friend I haven't seen in a long time. Since I happened to be in Tokyo, we met up for a bit."
"A middle school classmate? A girl? Was she pretty?"
Yui looked fully prepared to interrogate him to the bitter end, scooting closer as she fired question after question at him.
"What are you, the world's biggest asking machine?"
Rolling his eyes, Oikawa pressed a finger against her forehead and pushed her away.
"If you've got that much energy, maybe worry about your test scores instead. Didn't you rank nineteenth out of thirty-one people in our class last exam?"
He deliberately steered the conversation away with the excuse of grades. The more you talked, the easier it was to slip up.
"Nineteenth is perfectly respectable!" Yui puffed up angrily. "Sobu High is full of geniuses, okay? I've been trying really hard!"
"Yeah, sure. Totally."
Oikawa honestly couldn't agree with that.
Kawasaki was someone who genuinely worked hard — she was literally still carrying around a vocabulary notebook right now.
Yui, on the other hand, just felt like she was working hard.
"What's with that reaction? Next exam I'm definitely gonna surpa—"
"Surpass who?" Oikawa grinned teasingly. "Me? Kawasaki? Or Yukino?"
"Hmph! I'm not talking to you anymore!"
Yui huffed and stormed off, leaving Oikawa and Kawasaki behind as she joined Hayama and Miura's little social circle.
Hayama always seemed to naturally become the center of any crowd.
A short distance away, he stood in the middle of the group, with scattered little cliques from Class 2-F surrounding him.
When Oikawa glanced over, Hayama happened to look this way too.
Their eyes met.
Oikawa smiled and gave him a small nod in greeting.
Hayama returned the smile.
But for some reason, Oikawa felt like there was something else hidden behind it.
Farther off, he also spotted Yukino and Zaimokuza, and couldn't help laughing a little.
Zaimokuza had once dreamed of going to Hokkaido.
Reality, however, had slapped him in the face without mercy.
The students really did vote for Hokkaido. The school administration, meanwhile, decided on Kyoto.
Previous years had allowed free destination choices by class, but for some reason this year everyone was being sent to Kyoto together.
Probably easier to manage that way.
At least, that was Oikawa's guess. He'd heard the previous year's free-travel trip had turned into absolute chaos.
That was just how the world worked most of the time. The people who made the mistakes were one thing. The ones who paid for them were always the next group.
"Oikawa, have you eaten yet?"
Kawasaki's voice suddenly cut in. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she produced two rice balls.
"Rice balls? They're still warm too. How'd you manage that?" Oikawa accepted them, surprised by the lingering heat.
"A thermos lunch box?"
As he ate, he looked at Kawasaki curiously.
"I just kept them tucked in my hands really well. The generated heat must have helped." Kawasaki lifted her head with a smile.
For some reason, the rice ball that had tasted pretty good just moments ago suddenly became very difficult to eat.
Oikawa stared at the smile on Kawasaki's face and quietly fell silent.
He knew she was lying. If she'd really kept them in her hands that long, the rice balls would've been damp and grimy from sweat by now.
And yet… they really felt harder to swallow.
Maybe this was punishment for being such a scumbag.
…
..
"Everyone, gather up!"
At the shout, the students who had been scattered around the station immediately crowded together again.
Once everyone lined up neatly, roll call began.
The order was probably based on grades, which meant Oikawa got called first. There was an unfamiliar girl between them, and then Kawasaki after that.
After the class attendance came the smaller group check-ins.
Once he regrouped with Hayama and the others, Oikawa finally boarded the Class 2-F train car. After putting away his luggage, he let out a long breath.
Because of his ranking, he'd boarded earlier than most and managed to snag a window seat. Maybe this was one of those hidden perks reserved for good students.
Oikawa had chosen his seat immediately.
Hayama's group, meanwhile, had somehow turned seat selection into a life-or-death debate, especially the girls.
As usual, Yumiko Miura tossed back her long blonde curls and declared, "I'm taking the window seat."
"Okay, then I'll sit next to you," Yui said right away.
Oikawa had already expected that answer. It suited her personality perfectly.
"Saika, which do you think is better, the window side or the aisle side?" Ebina asked with the face of a full-blown fujoshi. She looked seconds away from drooling.
Everyone stared at her in shock.
Oikawa's face twitched. He genuinely couldn't understand how this woman could be so openly rotten-minded without even trying to hide it.
In the end, Hayama stepped in and sorted out the seating arrangements himself.
The shinkansen seats were arranged five across: three on one side, two on the other.
Oikawa sat across from Kawasaki on the two-seat side.
On the three-seat side were Miura, Ebina, and Yui, facing Hayama, Tobe, and Hachiman.
It honestly felt like the seating chart had been planned in advance.
Tobe kept sneaking glances at Ebina across from him, grinning so hard it looked like his mouth might split off his face.
'Kid, have some dignity.'
'Why be a perfectly normal human being only to end up simping instead?'
Oikawa closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat.
The trip from Tokyo to Kyoto would take at least two hours, so he planned to get some sleep.
More importantly, he had absolutely no interest in getting dragged into the Service Club's clearly doomed "love consultation."
"You going to sleep? I've got a travel pillow if you want it."
Kawasaki suddenly spoke up and handed him a neck pillow.
Oikawa stared at her for a long moment.
"What?"
Kawasaki tilted her head, confused.
Oikawa simply shook his head and closed his eyes again.
The departure chime rang through the train.
Rain tapped softly against the windows. Tokyo's weather really was annoying.
Pulling his jacket tighter around himself, Oikawa drifted off to sleep.
He woke up less than an hour later.
Almost instinctively, he took out his phone and checked his messages.
"Senpai, hope you enjoy your school trip. Unlike me, who's still stuck revising volume two of Love Metronome. Life is suffering."
The message was from Utaha.
Oikawa smiled faintly and replied with a simple, "Good luck."
"Who's texting you? Is it that classmate you went to meet? Lemme see what she looks like. Is she cute?" Yui's voice suddenly sounded right next to his ear.
Wait a second. Wasn't this even her seat?
"Guy," Oikawa replied casually. "If he whipped it out, it'd probably be bigger than mine."
Yui paused for a second while processing that.
Then her cheeks turned red and she glared at him.
"This is so hard… It feels like Tobe can't even hold a conversation with Hina. What are we supposed to do? Maybe it's because this is the school trip, but Hina's extra excited today. She's been talking about weird forbidden topics the whole ride." Yui slumped gloomily.
Oikawa pretended not to hear a thing and opened Pokémon, a game he'd neglected for ages.
"Oikawa-kun, help us think of something!" Yui started acting spoiled, her voice going soft and clingy as she shook his arm.
There were countless illnesses in this world.
But terminal simping was incurable.
If Oikawa were some kind of god of matchmaking, maybe he could randomly force a pair together.
The problem was, he wasn't.
"Maybe Tobe should just reroll his character. If he looked as handsome as me, maybe Ebina would be the one chasing after him instead."
Oikawa gave his opinion with complete sincerity.
And when it came to sincerity, he was absolutely an expert. After all, he'd spent ages practicing on his readers.
"Tch. Hina's not that shallow."
Yui looked at Oikawa's shameless narcissism and honestly didn't know what to say anymore.
"Mount Fuji!"
Kawasaki suddenly spoke up.
"So that's Mount Fuji… It really is beautiful." Looking at the snow-capped peak in the distance outside the window, Oikawa couldn't help admiring nature's craftsmanship.
"Where? I wanna see too!"
Yui suddenly stood up, placing one hand on Oikawa's shoulder.
At the same time, his other shoulder became the support point for a certain pair of spherical objects…
A faint perfume drifted into Oikawa's nose.
There was a hint of cherry blossoms mixed into it, making it feel strangely like standing in the middle of April.
But that wasn't the important part.
The important part was… was that Oikawa's shoulder felt heavy and soft.
Before, he'd only ever judged by sight. But now that he'd experienced the weight firsthand, he was completely amazed.
…So this was the talent Yukino would never possess in her entire life?
Honestly, Yui being bad at studying suddenly felt pretty understandable. People had to trade stats somewhere in life, and Yui had clearly rolled too many points into other categories.
...
The weight on Oikawa's shoulder disappeared, leaving him oddly disappointed.
Why did the shinkansen have to move so damn fast?
Mount Fuji soon vanished from sight, though Oikawa could still feel the lingering warmth left on his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Yui looked extremely flustered. "Ah, I should get back."
She abruptly straightened up and hurried back to her original seat.
"Oikawa, since you're awake now, can I have my pillow back?" Kawasaki looked… annoyed, for some reason. Very annoyed.
Oikawa had intended to ask what was wrong, but the look in her eyes practically screamed please do not talk to me right now, so he wisely abandoned the idea.
The rest of the trip passed quietly.
Most of Oikawa's time was spent playing Pokémon.
The remainder was spent staring out the window in boredom.
The scenery outside the shinkansen was beautiful.
It just passed by too quickly.
Every time something breathtaking entered his view, it vanished again within seconds, leaving behind a strange sense of regret, like missing out on something before he'd had the chance to appreciate it.
Kawasaki continued muttering vocabulary words under her breath.
And just like that, they arrived at Kyoto Station.
Back in Chiba, Oikawa had thought the weather there was already cold enough.
But the moment he stepped off the train and felt Kyoto's temperature, he instantly realized Chiba had practically been paradise.
Thankfully, Shizuka Hiratsuka had warned the class about it in the group chat beforehand. According to her, it was only going to get colder from here.
"Kawasaki, you cold?"
"A little."
Oikawa removed the scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around Kawasaki's instead.
"Come on. It'll be warmer once we're inside the bus."
Pulling up his zipper, Oikawa headed toward the tour buses nearby.
Come to think of it, Kyoto was kind of similar to northeastern Japan. Cold, but with beautifully distinct seasons.
In spring, you could admire peach blossoms and cherry blossoms blooming everywhere.
In summer, you could sit beneath the trees with an ice-cold watermelon and feel like life couldn't possibly get any better.
In autumn, some places became covered in blazing red maple leaves, so vivid they practically looked painted.
And in winter, snowflakes danced through the air in a way many parts of Japan never got to experience.
Unlike Chiba. November was exactly when the maple leaves were at their reddest.
According to the itinerary, when they visited Kiyomizu-dera later, Oikawa would get to see an entire mountainside dyed crimson with autumn leaves.
...
After boarding the tour bus, everyone more or less kept the same seating arrangement as on the shinkansen.
Oikawa opened Line and posted a status update. He attached his Kyoto location beneath it.
The first comment appeared almost immediately. It was from Chris Yamada: "Sensei, enjoy your trip."
Oikawa chuckled inwardly.
Being an editor really wasn't easy. Even when an author posted a random status update, they had to rush over and like and comment immediately.
A little while later, Utaha Kasumigaoka replied too, "Senpai, don't forget to bring me back souvenirs."
Oikawa answered with a simple, "Sure."
Meanwhile, Kawasaki tried peeking at Oikawa's phone, but failed completely.
Oikawa smirked proudly. A privacy screen protector was essential equipment for every scumbag man worth his salt.
Right then, a message popped up from Yui, "Oikawa-kun, Hina wants to add you on LINE. Can I send her your ID?"
"Ebina wants to add me?" Oikawa muttered under his breath before replying, "Sure."
A moment later, Ebina's friend request arrived.
Seeing the profile picture of two guys embracing each other, Oikawa instantly regretted agreeing to this.
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