"Yamamoto, I'm telling you. Sakura-san is basically in love with me."
Kudo practically slammed his hands onto my desk, eyes wide with the specific kind of energy that meant he had either done something very good or very stupid, and hadn't figured out which yet.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I asked her to go out with me."
I put my pencil down. "You what."
"And she..." He paused. Drew a breath. "She said 'sure, yeah.'"
I stared at him. "That's not a yes."
"It's in the yes family."
"It is not in the yes family."
"She didn't say no, Yamamoto."
"She also didn't say yes."
"She said 'sure, yeah.' Do you know what 'sure, yeah' means? It means yes. It means absolutely. It means—"
"It means she was probably being polite."
Kudo went quiet for exactly one second. Then he straightened up, entirely unbothered. "You're jealous."
I picked my pencil back up.
Was he telling the truth? Probably, in the way Kudo always told the truth, which meant the facts were real and the interpretation was completely unhinged. I figured I'd see the actual story soon enough, based on how Sakura-san acted around him.
Before he could say anything else, the bell rang.
PE next. My stomach dropped.
The first-year boys' locker room smelled like cheap body spray and quiet suffering. Dozens of tenth graders crammed into a concrete room, tearing off their uniforms, nobody making eye contact. The National Physical Fitness Test had that effect. Something about being officially ranked by your body in front of everyone made the air feel different.
I pulled on the white gym shirt and stared at the floor.
"You don't train, Yamamoto?"
"No. You?"
Kudo looked down at himself. I looked at him.
We both already knew the answer.
"Move it, first-years! Out to the grounds! Lines of four by height!"
The April sun was aggressively bright. The main field was split down the middle, boys on the track lanes, girls near the equipment shed on the far side. Separated, but close enough to see each other clearly, which was somehow worse than being in the same space.
I spotted Ichika immediately. It was hard not to. She was already helping carry a box of stopwatches for the female instructor, completely calm, like the test was something happening to other people.
I was already sweating and we hadn't started yet.
"First heat to the blocks!"
The 50-meter chalk lines stretched out ahead. I was in the third heat, which gave me enough time to stand on the grass and think about everything that could go wrong. The girls' group had settled on the grass about twenty meters past the finish line, waiting for their rotation.
Which meant Ichika was sitting directly in my line of sight for the entire run.
"Dude, Sakura-san is watching!" I heard someone nearby say. "Time to go."
I glanced over. Sakura-san was sitting with the girls' group, camera around her neck, looking vaguely in our direction.
Isn't she... taken? Kind of? Sort of?
"Third heat, move up!"
I stepped to the chalk line. My heart was doing something embarrassing. Don't trip. Just don't trip.
"Take your positions. Set."
Bang.
I threw myself forward. My sneakers hit the loose dirt wrong from the first step, and everything after that was just damage control. My arms came up too high. My stride was too short. Two guys from the class next door blew past me like I was standing still, their form effortless in that way that only happened when someone had actually practiced.
I pushed harder. The finish line came up fast. I caught a glimpse of the girls' group in my peripheral vision, Ichika somewhere in there, watching the lanes, and the thought alone made my foot catch on a patch of uneven ground. I stumbled, arms out, somehow kept upright, and crossed the line.
"Yamamoto: 8.7 seconds."
I put my hands on my knees and breathed.
When I looked up, Ichika was watching. She just looked at me, directly, and gave a small nod. Like it was fine. Like 8.7 was fine.
I looked away first.
The teacher called the boys off the track.
The girls' heats were next.
I sat down on the grass with the rest of my class, still catching my breath. Kudo dropped down next to me, already recovered, already talking. I didn't register what he was saying. Across the field, the girls were lining up at the blocks, sorting themselves into heats.
My eyes moved through the group without meaning to.
Found her without trying. Again.
Ichika was in the second heat. She stood one lane from the outside, arms loose at her sides, not shaking out her legs like some of the others, not checking her laces twice. Just standing there, waiting, like the gun hadn't gone off yet and that was fine.
"Second heat, take your positions."
I watched her settle into the starting stance. Her weight shifted forward slightly, heels coming up. The ponytail fell over one shoulder.
"Set."
Bang.
She was fast. Not the fastest, the girl in lane one pulled ahead in the first ten meters and stayed there, but Ichika was second by the halfway point and held it. Her stride was clean and level, no wasted movement, arms close to her body. She crossed the line and immediately slowed to a walk, not doubling over, not stopping dead. Just decelerating.
The instructor called out numbers. I didn't catch most of them.
"Ichika: 7.8 seconds."
Second in the heat.
I only knew that because I was counting.
"You're staring," Kudo said.
"I'm watching the race."
"There are eight girls running right now."
"You're watching one of them."
I didn't say anything.
He dropped it, which meant he filed it away for later. I could tell by the way he went quiet too fast, the specific silence of someone storing information.
"Man, Nakamura-san looks totally wiped," Kudo muttered, "Guess even the top tier gets tired of running"
I looked at her. She looked exactly the same to me. I chose to believe Kudo just had bad eyesight.
Ichika walked back past the finish line. She didn't even glance over at the boys' section.
I don't know why I noticed that.