Episode 5 – School’s Madonna Studies

The temperature is kept at a moderate level and there are many tables.

Looking around, I saw high school and middle school students, and businessmen in suits with their laptops open and doing some kind of work.

It has been about a week since the May holidays, and the atmosphere has returned to normal, and we are now doing what we are supposed to do as students.

At a table for four, Aizawa and I are sitting across from each other.

Each of us is studying with a math textbook and notebook spread out.

Since this was a food court in a large commercial facility, we had secured seats for the purpose of staying longer, since we could get power and food and drink.

“Aikawa, I’m sorry. Is this the right answer to this question?”

Aizawa scratched his head and abandoned further thought as he held out a notebook to me.

In the notebook, he wrote down the formula as if he had scribbled it down, but I found a mistake in the middle of the page.

“The formula here is wrong, and then……after that is probably wrong too. I think you got the formulas mixed up?”

“Ah ! It’s true !”

Aizawa reacted exaggeratedly to my point.

“Even so, there are quite a few people even though we came here right after the morning class. Everyone is thinking the same thing, huh?”

Tomorrow is the start of mid-term exams, so there are a lot of students here. It is natural for them to gather at the food court in search of a cost-effective place to study.

“If you take a closer look, you can see that there are students from our class, too,”

Aizawa told me to look around, and there were many students from the same school. Among them, there was one group that caught my attention.

“Oh, it’s Watanabe san.”

I found three girls studying in a relatively far away place. Watanabe san. Ishikawa Rie. Sawaguchi Maho.

They seem to be the gossip in the classroom these days, and they all have eye-catching looks.

Because they are such three conspicuous figures, students studying around them were also glancing at them.

“Well, a sight for sore eyes. It’s a feast for the eyes tired of studying.”

Aizawa, perhaps having lost his concentration, sucked on a straw and quenched his thirst with a carbonated beverage.

The girls are chatting and laughing, oblivious to the stares of those around them. They spread their textbooks and notebooks out on the table, but isn’t that not enough to make progress in their studies?

“You say you’re not confident, so we’re studying together. If you’re not motivated, I’ll go home.”

“I’m kidding ! If I get a red mark, they won’t let me participate in practice. Please !”

As I looked at him coldly, Aizawa picked up his pen and continued studying. I let out a sigh and resumed studying for the exam myself.

“I’m tired.”

I stood in front of the mirror and washed my hands.

I had been studying for about two hours since then, but I had lost my concentration.

I wanted to take a break, so I had Aizawa look at my luggage and came to relieve myself.

“My father would get mad at me if I failed to make the grade.

Since Golden Week was blessed with mostly fine weather, I fished every day.

As a result, I neglected my studies, so I was grateful for this opportunity to concentrate on my studies unexpectedly.

Maintaining a certain level of grades is a condition for fishing freely.

“If I do it for another half hour, I’ll be done with the test.”

Wiping my hands, I went out of the restroom……

“Ah !”

I encountered an unexpected person. It’s Watanabe san, whom I had seen from a distance earlier.

She too had something to do and had just come out of the exit, and she looked surprised, as if she had never dreamed that she would bump into me here.

We both stopped at the unexpected situation.

The last time we talked was when we walked back to the elevator from the library. Perhaps because of the consecutive holidays that followed, our relationship with each other must have been reset to almost its initial state, so I don’t know what to say to each other.

I was thinking of just bailing and walking away……

“You got sunburned pretty well.”

“Yeah. I spent a lot of time fishing during the holidays…….”

I didn’t expect her to talk to me. The only two times I had contact with her were when we were fishing and when someone confessed to her. I was not actively talking to her, and it would not be surprising if she had forgotten about me after that.

“What did you catch?”

But Watanabe san smiled at me as if she was talking to a friend.

“Erm, I caught mostly horse mackerels and mackerels…..but I also caught a few small kisu.”

“Kisu……?”

She touches her lips with her right hand, as if it were a natural motion. Unexpectedly, my gaze was guided, and I turned my gaze to Watanabe san’s words and her lips, and I was shocked.

“T-thanks to that, I haven’t been doing much studying. I’m studying with Aizawa today.”

I changed the subject so that she wouldn’t notice that I was conscious of her.

“After all, did you cook like you did the other day?”

“Eh…..yeah, I cooked the mackerel in miso because it shouldn’t be raw, and the kisu in tempura, I think? If they were bigger, they could have been sashimi.”

By this time she must be referring to the lunch box in the courtyard.

I could feel the spit in her mouth as I recalled the dish I had cooked with the fish I had caught over the holiday weekend.

She nodded at my explanation and responded with interest. It is said that a good listener does not let the other person know that she is letting the conversation flow, and I always found myself becoming more talkative when explaining things to Watanabe san.

“Ah, sorry, I have to go back. Aizawa is waiting for me……you too, right?”

The place where this restroom is located is a blind spot in the food court. Aizawa wouldn’t come because he was looking after my luggage, but there was a possibility that one of the girls would come to see how Watanabe san was doing.

Witnessing such a place would probably cause her unnecessary trouble.

Thinking this, I turned my back to go back to my seat,

“P-please wait !”

I heard a quiet voice from Watanabe san.

“W-what’s wrong?”

She was not the same person she had been a few minutes before, her face was red, she was looking up at me, and she was somewhat frightened.

“A-are you free this weekend?”

“Umm, the weather is nice this weekend, maybe fishing?”

It’s going to straddle the prefecture, but I heard that there is a big catch at a certain fishing port. I was going to crawl there because if I missed the opportunity, I might not be able to fish.

When I told her about it, she said…….

“That’s it ! Will you take me with you?”

“Excuse me?”

Her offer froze my thoughts.