"In any case, not getting enough sleep every day is absolutely no good. You're still growing, Hayakawa-kun. Keeping up this kind of schedule will stunt your height,"
Furuhashi Fumino went on in her usual rambling way, completely unfazed by Shiro's look of disdain. "I'll have to tell Rizu about this too. You'd better be ready."
"Are you my older sister or something?!"
Hayakawa Shiro's face darkened as he turned to leave. "Alright, alright, I get it. Class is about to start. I need to head back."
"O-okay…"
Furuhashi had been about to let him go, but the sight of his exhausted face, struggling to hold back sleep, made her realize with a jolt of guilt—she had just wasted what little break time he could've used to nap.
On impulse, she reached out and grabbed his arm. "Wait."
"Hm?"
Shiro turned, puzzled.
"Want to skip class together?"
Furuhashi looked him straight in the eyes, her voice serious. "We could find a place to nap."
Shiro: "..."
"Hah?!"
He stepped back in disbelief, staring hollow-eyed at the blue-haired girl before him. "What did you just say? You want to skip class and… sleep with me?!"
"N-no, no, no!!"
Furuhashi's face went bright red, flailing her hands in a panic. "That's not what I meant! You totally misunderstood, Hayakawa-kun!"
"I always thought you were a pure, innocent literature girl… but I didn't expect you to be so forward. And so indecent, too. To think such frivolous ideas would come so easily to you…"
Shiro shook his head with a look of disappointment. "Furuhashi, we're students. We should focus on studying."
"I told you that's not it!!"
Her eyes spun like mosquito coils as she looked ready to faint. She squeezed her eyes shut and shouted, "I just thought you looked exhausted and wanted you to skip one class to catch up on sleep! But I figured you wouldn't feel safe ditching alone, so I suggested going with you! That's all—it wasn't about sleeping together!"
"…Oh. So that's what you meant."
Shiro's face stayed expressionless. "Still, the way you phrased it was incredibly misleading."
"It's your imagination that's misleading! Why would you even think of that?! I was just trying to help you get some proper rest, and you twisted it into that! You hentai!"
Furuhashi's brain was already fried from embarrassment, and now she found herself yelling recklessly. "What kind of person even thinks that way?! Even yesterday, when you replied to me, I felt like your mind was going someplace weird! You… you pervert!!"
"…Hmm."
Shiro was struck speechless by her accusations, and a flicker of doubt entered his mind.
Two misinterpretations in such a short time… Is there really something wrong with my thinking?
Could it be that… I am kind of an H…?
"I'm not talking to you about this anymore!"
Furuhashi puffed up with renewed indignation, emboldened by his silence. "Let me just ask you straight—are you willing to go take a nap or not?!"
Shiro: O_O
Shiro: "Of course not."
Furuhashi: "..."
"It's just one class! What's the big deal?!"
"I need to study."
"Ugh! I've had enough of you, Hayakawa-kun!"
"..."
While the two of them bickered, a silver-haired girl listening from around the corner smiled faintly, then slipped away.
Hayakawa-kun was hopelessly dense.
Furuhashi Fumino was absolutely sure of it, with countless reasons as proof.
The most recent being that she had, out of simple kindness, tried to care for his awful sleep schedule… only to be grossly misunderstood and then flatly rejected.
That alone was infuriating enough. She often called herself a "dumb little fish" and, in terms of science, she really was hopeless. But she was also very aware that she was a bona fide beautiful girl. She wasn't the type of fake-modest "Eh? Me, pretty? No way, I'm not cute at all" green tea girl.
And yet, despite her good intentions and kind invitation, Hayakawa Shiro had brushed her off with nothing but: "I need to study."
If that wasn't bad enough, what happened the night before was even worse. She had gathered all her courage to share something deeply personal—her love for the stars, the reason she had chosen the sciences—and his response had been:
"What feelings does this passage express? Four points."
Furuhashi felt that she might remember that humiliation for the rest of her life.
This blockhead, utterly blind to a girl's heart… Hayakawa Shiro was definitely destined to never get a girlfriend.
"Hey, Furuhashi."
A sharp tap tap on the library desk startled her out of her daydream.
"Focus. Stop spacing out," Shiro said flatly.
See? There it was again.
Furuhashi swallowed down her frustration and forced a smile. "S-sorry, sorry! I'll look at the problems seriously now."
"Honestly…"
He gave her a fleeting glance before turning back to explain a problem to Ogata Rizu.
"Kisi, kiss…"
Furuhashi tried desperately to focus on her math problems, but Shiro's voice kept drifting over, making concentration impossible.
"Uu…"
She hesitated for a long moment. Then, just as Shiro finished explaining and was about to look back at his papers, she reached out and lightly poked him.
"Hayakawa…" she whispered.
"Hm?"
He looked at her in mild confusion—only for Furuhashi to lean in close, her breath warm against his cheek as she murmured, "Hayakawa, about what I told you last night… about how I love the stars… what do you think of that?"
Shiro froze, frowning.
What did he think? Obviously, it was a stupid, childish hobby. A proper, rational Japanese high school student should keep their feet on the ground and focus on the present—on studying. And she wanted to waste her time staring at unreachable, meaningless stars scattered across the void of space? That was the most idiotic, pointless thing imaginable.
He didn't understand. He didn't respect it.
He didn't like it at all.
That's what he was about to say. The words had already formed on his tongue when—suddenly—alarms blared in his head. A massive sense of danger screamed at him to stop.
Wait!!
This was a trap. A deadly one.
Think, Shiro! Any normal person would obviously want their hobbies to be accepted by their peers. The rarer and more niche the hobby, the stronger the desire for validation.
If someone's passion wasn't respected—or worse, ridiculed—it could crush their motivation entirely. They might even abandon that dream.
Shiro broke out into a cold sweat.
If he had blurted out "Only idiots like stars," then—
Furuhashi: "So my hobby isn't respected at all, huh? That's… kind of crushing."
Furuhashi: "Maybe I should just give up on astronomy and go back to the liberal arts."
And then—
"Ahh, Hayakawa-kun, second place again? Funny how back when I was in science, you managed to be first in the liberal arts. But now that I've switched back, you're second again~"
Holding a perfect liberal arts test paper, Furuhashi would loom over him with a dark smile, hand to her lips.
"How pitiful~"
His imagination ended there.
"Ugh…"
Shiro slumped forward onto the desk, his breathing heavy.
No good… his heart couldn't take it.