Chapter 95: His Request is to Diffuse the Situation
"I don't mind giving you her email address, but..."
Hachiman pulled out his phone and placed it into Yui's waiting hand.
"Is it okay if I operate it myself?" Yui gazed at the smartphone in her palm with a hint of hesitation. "Now that I think about it, Hikki, you're actually pretty amazing for handing over your phone without a second thought."
She then produced her own pink flip-phone and began tapping away at the keys with terrifying speed.
Hachiman stared in genuine shock. "Your typing is way too fast!"
"Well, Hikki, I bet your thumbs have probably undergone some kind of evolutionary degeneration since you never have anyone to mail, right?"
Struck dead-center in his sore spot, Hachiman averted his eyes and fumbled for an excuse. "How rude. Back in middle school, I actually maintained a steady correspondence with a girl via email..."
Thud!
Before he could finish his sentence, Hachiman's phone hit the floor. Yui wore an expression of pure, unadulterated disbelief, as if her entire long-standing worldview had just suffered a catastrophic collapse.
"No way... that's a lie..."
"Hey! That's my phone! My property!"
"Ah! Sorry! I just... I really couldn't picture the scene of Hikki actually chatting with a girl."
"Are you an idiot? Listen, after the class shuffle, when everyone was busy swapping addresses, I was standing there holding my phone and looking around, and someone actually said to me, 'How about we exchange ours too?'..."
Hachiman struck a pose of forced confidence. "In other words, since someone took the initiative to talk to me, you could technically say I was popular, right?"
Yukinoshita, however, offered a thin, needle-like smile. "'How about'... I see. Sometimes kindness can be truly cruel."
"Stop pitying me. Even after that, she kept chatting with me normally over email."
Yui tilted her head, her curiosity piqued. "So, what kind of girl was she?"
"She was... a girl with a healthy constitution and a very calm personality, I guess?"
"You guess?"
"Yeah. Because whenever I sent her an email at seven in the evening, she wouldn't reply until the next morning with a message saying, 'Sorry, I already fell asleep, see you at school.' Her sleep schedule was remarkably disciplined."
Yuigahama turned her face away, her expression clouded with a profound, second-hand sadness. "Wait, isn't that just..."
Yukinoshita, barely suppressing a smirk, picked up where Yui left off. "...She was feigning sleep just to ignore your emails. Hikigaya-kun, do not avert your eyes from the truth. You must face reality. However..."
Yukinoshita shifted the direction of the conversation, closing her notebook and turning to look directly at Hachiman. "They likely regret it now. After all, you are currently Chishima-sensei's student—his only student, in fact. Even the school's board of directors has to show you a degree of deference."
"What you're saying sounds way more grounded in reality, doesn't it? Sensei did mention recently that I'd be living in his shadow. Apparently, when people think of me, he's the first person who comes to mind..."
"That certainly sounds like something Chishima-sensei would say."
"Well, he's the one who said it."
"Um, how should I put it... about that shadow thing..."
This was the feeling. This specific atmosphere was exactly what Hachiman enjoyed—the ability to speak and debate with such free-flowing ease. At school, aside from his two teachers, only these two members of the Service Club provided that.
Even if his heart constantly tried to deny it by insisting that Saika was the absolute best, he couldn't deceive his own intuition.
If he expanded that circle just a little bit, it only included his parents and Komachi.
Suddenly, Yui looked down at her phone and let out a heavy sigh, her face twisting into an uncomfortable grimace.
Yukinoshita Yukino asked with concern, "Is something wrong?"
"No, it's nothing..." Yui instinctively tried to deny it, but then remembered she wasn't in the middle of a classroom. "It's just... I got a really weird email. It caught me off guard."
Yukinoshita's gaze snapped toward Hachiman instantly. Her eyes turned cold and serious. "Hikigaya-kun, if you don't want to end up with a criminal record, I suggest you stop sending those kinds of lewd emails immediately."
"You've already decided the content is sexual harassment and labeled me as the culprit?" Hachiman's expression soured at the blatant misunderstanding. "Show me the proof. Evidence, please."
Yukinoshita's eyes sharpened to a lethal point. "Your statement just now is evidence enough."
"..."
"The dialogue of a culprit always follows a fixed pattern," Yukinoshita continued. "'Where's the proof?', 'That's quite an imagination, you should be a novelist.', 'I don't want to be in the same room as a killer.'..." (Author's note: Conan: Hehe!)
Yui chimed in, "Eh, I don't think Hikki is the one doing it."
"The reasoning?"
"How do I explain it... the content is about stuff happening inside our class... so it shouldn't have anything to do with Hikki."
Hearing that, Hachiman couldn't help but shout, "Hey! I'm in the same class as you!"
Then, quite unexpectedly, Yukinoshita actually conceded the point. "I see. In that case, Hikigaya is not the culprit."
Hachiman stared up at the ceiling and grumbled, "So you accept that as proof? What kind of logic is that?"
Knock, knock!
The sound of rapping on the door echoed through the room.
Yukinoshita's expression immediately regained its icy composure as she called out, "Come in!"
Slide!
The door swept open, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed Hayama Hayato stepped inside. His eye color was the same as Yukinoshita's, yet the aura he projected was entirely different.
"This is the Service Club, right?"
Hayama Hayato offered a warm, radiant smile toward Hachiman, his usual social rival.
Hachiman replied with a deadpan expression. "That's right. Do you need something?"
"Hiratsuka-sensei said if I had something to consult about, I should come here..." Hayama Hayato set his school bag down, laughing sheepishly as he scratched the back of his head. "Man, the guys at my club activities were a bit reluctant to let me go..."
Yukinoshita Yukino stared at Hayama with chilling indifference. "You can stop with the self-praise. You're here because you have business, correct? Hayato Hayama-kun."
"Ah, yeah, I do..."
Looking slightly awkward, Hayama pulled out his phone and opened an email...
The following day.
During the fourth period of physical education.
Hikigaya stepped down from the sparring arena, walked toward Chishima Akishin, and took a seat.
He pulled off his head protector, his face flushed a deep crimson, and exhaled a long, ragged breath. He grabbed a bottle of mineral water from his side, took several large gulps, and watched the ongoing match between Mizukawa Masaru and four other opponents.
Ever since the "Mizukawa Masaru Debate" incident, the sense of awe Hachiman felt toward Mizukawa had faded, but their relationship had shifted into something better—they had become casual acquaintances.
"Sensei, do you know anything about the weird emails going around the class?" Hachiman asked, glancing at Akishin beside him as he recalled Hayama's plea from the previous day.
—The request: Diffuse the situation regarding the indiscriminate, malicious emails being sent around the class! The primary reason was that it made the classroom atmosphere unbearable; the secondary reason was that someone was slandering his friends, and it made him furious...
Yesterday, Hayama Hayato had even gone out of his way to emphasize: 'It's not that I want to find the culprit; I just want to find a way to resolve this.'
"Emails? No, I haven't heard."
Akishin shook his head and turned to look at Hachiman. Taking the hint, Hachiman stood up, went to his locker, and pulled his phone out of his jacket.
"Sensei, here's the email."
Returning to his seat, Hachiman opened the message and showed it to Akishin. The contents were as follows:
[Tobe is a low-life delinquent from the Inage District; he picks fights with Nishi High students at the arcade...]
[Yamato is a shameless scumbag who's dating three girls at once...]
[Ooka crippled a star player from a rival school with a dirty play...]
Akishin took the phone and scrolled through the information. He had to admit, the writing style was quite effective.
"Is it only people in your class receiving these?"
"...Most of our classmates got them." At the very least, Hachiman himself hadn't received them directly; he had only just swapped addresses with Yui yesterday.
The info on the phone was actually a message forwarded to him by Yuigahama.
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