Chapter 3 - the roof top

Chapter 3

Class 2-A is loud before the bell.

I don't mind loud when it has nothing to do with me. I take my seat third row, left side, window and put my bag down and look at nothing in particular while everyone around me exists at full volume.

Kenzou Momonosuke is standing on his chair explaining something with his entire body. Nobody knows what he is explaining. He doesn't either probably. Yuma Ichinose is sitting next to him smiling the way you smile at something you find genuinely sweet despite everything. Warm, patient, like she has decided this is simply who Kenzou is and she has made her peace with it.

Kaito is already at his desk reading. He doesn't look up when I sit down but says "math exam" without looking up, like a reminder, like he already knew I hadn't studied.

I had not studied.

"I know," I say.

He turns a page.

Kurenai Akatsuki walks in at 8:02 and the room shifts without knowing it shifted. She doesn't announce herself, she just arrives, and somehow the air reorganizes around her. She drops into her seat and immediately starts talking to Yuma about something and laughing before she even finishes the sentence.

I look back at the window.

Hori walks in at 8:04. Front row. Sits down. Starts talking to the girl next to her like they have known each other for years.

They met four days ago.

The bell rings.

Math is first period.

I finish in fourteen minutes. I spend the remaining time looking out the left window.

Kaito finishes in twelve. He sets his pencil down without expression and stares at the wall like he is solving something the exam didn't ask.

Kenzou raises his hand three minutes before time is called and asks if the exam is double sided. It is not double sided. It has never been double sided. We have been in this school for a year.

Yuma covers her mouth. Kurenai doesn't bother.

Lunch is on the roof.

Kaito and I are already there when Kenzou arrives somehow despite raising his hand twice during the exam. He has food from three different places and is distributing it like a general managing supply lines except the general has no strategy and is offering everyone the wrong thing.

"Kaito you want the pork bun"

"I don't eat pork."

"Since when."

"Since always."

Kenzou stares at him for a long moment. "Since always," he repeats, genuinely processing this as new information.

I eat. The city sits below us doing what cities do. Somewhere in it my father is shaking hands with someone important and saying things that sound like promises.

I look at the left side of the railing instead.

Kenzou offers me something. I take it. He looks satisfied.

"Hey."

I look up.

Hori is standing at the rooftop door with Kurenai Akatsuki and Yuma Ichinose behind her. She is smiling the warm easy smile she always has and she is looking directly at me like she already decided something.

"You guys know Shin from class right?" she says to the two behind her. Then to me, like an explanation: "He's actually a pretty nice guy."

Kaito glances at me. I look at Hori.

I have no idea what I did to make her say that.

"Sit wherever," Kenzou says, already moving his bag.

They sit.

Just like that there are six of us on this roof and nobody voted on it and nobody discussed it and Hori is already talking to Kenzou like she has known him for years and Yuma is smiling at something Kaito said and Kurenai is looking at the city with the expression of someone deciding whether this view meets her standards.

I eat my food.

I don't know what just happened.

I don't know what to do with that.