← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl
Volume 1
Chapter 07: A Look Back at the Beautiful Girl
Chapter 7: A Look Back at the Beautiful Girl
Leaving the staff room, Matsurika walked down the hallway in silence.
Tsutomu chased after her, a little behind.
The two walked in the same direction. Because they were classmates.
The precious lunch break was nearing its end, and the afternoon lessons — which would require battling drowsiness — were coming up.
—Oh.
The sight of the school idol from behind was something Tsutomu had never experienced.
The students walking in the hallway silently parted to the sides.
It was a scene rather like Moses parting the sea, famous for the Ten Commandments.
Of course, this wasn’t a divine miracle, and they weren’t being considerate toward Tsutomu.
They were probably clearing the way out of fear of the furious Matsurika ahead.
From Tsutomu’s side, the slender white legs rhythmically stepping forward were dazzling. A feast for the eyes.
The swaying tips of her hair and the movement of her hips, visible even over her skirt, were also captivating.
—So she has a mole there.
On Matsurika’s legs, which he’d assumed were pure white, there was a mole on the back of her right knee.
A single black spot leaves a stronger impression than a hundred percent white.
And since it was a spot he rarely got the chance to observe from that angle and distance, there was an odd sense of rarity to it.
“…Haa. Yeah… thanks.”
“Hm?”
Suddenly stopping, Matsurika let out a big breath, then abruptly offered words of thanks.
Tsutomu, whose attention had been taken by her legs, took a moment to realize the words were directed at him.
He covered his unease with a cough at almost the same moment Matsurika turned around.
“You went so far as to help me while being glared at by the teachers — I really think that saved me.”
The fact that she’d taken the trouble to put it into words made him think she was a conscientious one.
The Matsurika he knew was a blooming high school girl and the center of the classroom.
If the classroom were a world, you could call her the sun, so to speak.
Overwhelmed by Matsurika’s jet-black eyes, he hurriedly composed himself.
He had no room to fix his slipping glasses.
“You don’t need to worry about it. That lot and I were already on bad terms.”
“Is that so? You’re such a grind— oh, sorry.”
‘ガリ勉’ (gari-ben / grind) carries the connotation of an insult aimed at those devoted to studying, but in this case it was Tsutomu’s nickname.
The play on ‘Kariya Tsutomu’ had somehow stuck. T/N: here the play is 狩谷 勉 (Kariya Tsutomu). His first name 勉 - tsutomo can also be read as ‘ben’, thus ‘kari(ya) tsutomu’ vs. ‘gari ben’)
The first time he heard it, he’d been impressed — ‘I don’t know who came up with it, but they think quickly.’
“I thought someone like Kariya-kun would get along with the teachers.”
“Not at all. In fact, I’m probably the one at this school who hates the teachers the most.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes.”
There were plenty of students around the school who expressed their grievances about teachers.
Whether it was plain complaining, or grousing about being scolded, the reasons were various.
“Can I ask why?”
“It’s no big reason. They’re incompetent.”
The reason Tsutomu hated teachers was simple.
Incompetent. That one word covered it.
He studied something else during class because the teachers’ level was low.
Even if they claimed to be the prefecture’s number one college-prep school, in the end it was just a public high school.
Not long after enrolling, he’d come to realize that fact and had felt discouraged.
He’d never expected much from the teaching profession to begin with, but if it was a college-prep school, surely a little more… that feeling never left him.
Since then, Tsutomu had loathed this school’s teachers. Nothing had changed from before.
“Isn’t that going too far? If they taught at your level, everyone else wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
“Even so, that doesn’t mean it’s fine to just leave me be.”
He gave a snort.
Now that tuition was being paid (by his family), Tsutomu had the right to receive the service called education, and the teachers had the obligation to provide the service called education.
‘Pay your money, and then do as you please’ was, as a service industry, way out of line.
As someone working a part-time job in a restaurant, he couldn’t help but feel so.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the Japanese education system, in some way, was wrong.
“Geniuses come in all kinds. So, did you help me because the teachers annoyed you?”
“Well, roughly. Though not only for that reason.”
Tsutomu considered himself no genius, but he didn’t correct her.
To be precise, he hadn’t the leisure to.
Being peered at up close by those big black eyes was bad for the heart.
Quietly averting his gaze while stroking his chin, Tsutomu spoke.
“It’s my mother.”
“Eh? Your— Kariya-kun’s mother, what about her?”
“Well, she’s a person who’s always been working, but she’s someone who never misses a day of makeup, no matter the occasion.”
“And?”
“She used to say, ‘Getting your makeup done sharpens you up.’ I don’t quite understand it myself.”
Perhaps there was an ethnic or ritual connotation to it.
At such events around the world, too, it felt like people wore makeup more often than not.
“So, I don’t think it’s wrong to wear makeup to school, either.”
“Um, so in other words…”
Matsurika, who’d been listening to Tsutomu’s story, furrowed her brows in puzzlement.
“Are you a momma’s boy?”
“…”
He pushed the frames of his slipping glasses back up with his middle finger.
At such an outrageous remark, he couldn’t hold his fingers steady.
“I’m kidding, it’s a joke. So, what do you think?”
“What, about what?”
“The teachers. Do you think they’ll strip off their own makeup and still push it on us?”
“They won’t.”
He answered immediately.
He stated it plainly.
“Right.”
Matsurika agreed as well.
“Half the faculty here are women, after all. It’s unthinkable for working adults to come to work bare-faced.”
“Exactly.”
In the ‘students VS teachers’ structure, with the difference in positions, the students had little chance of winning.
No matter how you spun it, in school, the ones who held power were the teachers.
The students’ attributes, like ‘gal’ or ‘rich in real life,’ didn’t matter.
Students were sheep and teachers were shepherds. That was the truth of the world called school.
Sheep can’t defeat shepherds. So he’d made the shepherds fight among themselves.
He’d endured the reluctance and drawn attention in order to get the lot who busied themselves with all manner of things that would get a student scolded for breaking the rules to listen and get caught up in it.
If it became ‘teachers VS teachers’… no matter how much the discipline teacher raged, he’d be overrun by numbers.
“Kariya-kun, you’re surprisingly devious.”
“…I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Kind of surprising. Or rather, you’re not what I pictured.”
“Just what sort of image do you have of me, then.”
Matsurika lifted the corners of her mouth at Tsutomu’s grumbling.
“That’s a secret. But… I’m genuinely grateful. I’ll pay you back properly for the favor.”
Leaving behind a single smile, Matsurika quickened her pace.
Outwardly a modest Yamato-nadeshiko; inside an energetic gyaru-type.
Every little gesture was simply brilliant, and she kept drawing away his gaze.
As befits the beauty-contest victor. Her smile from up close had tremendous destructive power.
“…That smile alone is more than enough.”
“Did you say something? Lunch break’s almost over!”
“I said nothing.”
Getting involved with a real-life girl wasn’t his kind of thing.
Even so, Tsutomu didn’t feel bad about it.