Starting a Night Shift Part-time Job at a Convenience Store.

It was a strange sensation. I was sleeping, yet somehow I was vividly conscious. Even so, I could not sense my body.

It was as though I was watching a film―I was looking at myself.

There I was, back in high school, with short hair that hadn’t been dyed yet, wearing dull glasses. Dressed in the uniform of the baseball club, I was alone on the bench, tending to the ball.

The sports ground was vacant and dark. Nearly all the members of the club have already left.

Right.

Back then, the majority of the guys were either getting girlfriends in between club activities or skipping club activities to attend live concerts, whereas I was called a baseball fool by both myself and others since I was running around without exhibiting any interest in events such as karaoke or blind dates.

Even after my friends had made their way home, I remained on the field for as long as time allowed. I wasn’t forcing myself to stick around and demonstrate that I was a striver.

For me, this time after club activities was the most blissful and settling time of the day.

Cleaning the used balls by removing all the mud, scrubbing them, and washing them up was practically a daily routine for me. Many times I was told that it was a meaningless thing to do since tomorrow they would be equally muddy again and that I should let the freshmen do it. As a pitcher, I wanted to throw a clean pitch… yeah, I had the obstinacy to not concede to others from that time on.

Amidst the silence, I carefully cleaned up the balls on the darkened ground. After cleaning everything up and tidying up lightly, I would pitch the ball against the wall, and when satisfied, I would go home, which was my customary routine.

However… that day did not end the same way as usual.

“―Aren’t you leaving yet? Senior.”

A voice called out to me from behind, and I turned around with a startle.

Wrong, not there. It was higher up.

Right behind the bench was the wire fence, which I slowly followed with my eyes.

“What!?”Translator: MadHatter

It was inevitable that I rose from the bench with a yell.

After all, the guy who had called out to me was still standing on the other side of the fence. Like a huge bug, her legs and hands were hooked to the wire fence and she was looking down at me from a fairly high vantage point and smiling.

With hair so long it looked as if it might get tangled in the wire fence, she was sporting red-rimmed glasses that reflected the lights on the ground. Her bangs were neatly trimmed like a kokeshi doll, and she donned a navy blue sailor suit with a knee-length skirt.

A quiet girl who seemed like she would be quietly reading a paperback book during recess. Contrary to her appearance, though, she was looking at me while climbing up on the fence. Perhaps it was the gap between her appearance and her behavior that made me perceive her as a weirdo from this moment on.

After a few seconds of silence, I glared at her who appeared out of the blue and suddenly called out to me.

“What?”Notsharedonaggregatorsites

Even if it was a girl, I wasn’t going to be sociable with her. If anything, I was not good at dealing with girls.

Without a group, they couldn’t manage anything and their attitudes varied depending on who they were with. I was not like that from the beginning but my prejudice against girls was at its peak at that time.

Despite having adorable faces, they had a very vicious side that surfaced when they were mistreating others. And when the situation turned sour, they would immediately burst into tears. That was why I didn’t want to associate with them. They were such a hassle.

Due to this prejudice, I never had a girlfriend, and since I didn’t want to relate to them, the girls didn’t talk to me either.

She was a strange person to call out to me given that I carried an air of sharpness that others pointed out to me.

While wondering this, I glared at the female student who was hanging on the fence and noticed that I had never seen her face before.

“What is it, you ask? I am your junior.”

“Huh?”

“I am Hyuga, a student in the 4th class of the 2nd year, one year below you.”

She lifted her glasses with one hand, skillfully gripping the fence, and showed a self-satisfied look on her face. Another reply followed subsequently.

“You’re not going home?”

“Shut up… Whoever you are, don’t speak to me with familiarity.”

“I answered your question, so please answer mine.”

“Go away, you’re a nuisance.”

Wow… What kind of response was that to someone I just met for the first time?

“Aren’t you going home? Senior.” 

“You’re the one who should go home. You’re being a bother and a nuisance.”

Frustrated, I resumed cleaning my ball, wondering why I had to get tangled up with this incomprehensible person when I was finally able to take a breather at the end of the day. All the while, the weirdo kept hurling words at me in an attempt to make me turn my attention to her, but I brushed off all of them.

She was patiently trying to converse with me, nonetheless, I was not willing to give in to her persistence. I never turned my head. Nothing good will happen to me when in the company of girls, I must have reiterated that in my head.

But then she dropped the bombshell remark on me.

“Senior, um.”

Those words, the only words I would never forget.

“I like you… Please go out with… me.”

A faint voice rang out from behind me. The ball momentarily slipped from my grasp as I didn’t catch on to what was being said.

Please go out with me…?

…Like me?

L-Like―!?

Something exploded with a bang as I repeated it in my brain. All the blood in my body pooled on my face at once.

“You! What are you suddenly―!?”

This was the first time I had ever been told something like this but I instantly grasped the meaning.

I knew that it was a confession.

My ridiculously loud voice reverberated through the sports ground. I turned around with such speed that it seemed as if her glasses were going to be blown off. Just as I had thought, I was looking like an idiot, and Hyuga dropped the second bombshell remark on me right then and there.

“It’s a lie.”

No matter how many times I thought back on it, this still irked me.

“Did you believe it?”

Accompanied by the sound of a cell phone button, that guy chuckled. At that moment, my mind cooled down at once and realization set in that I had been teased by the junior student one year younger than me. With my face bright red all over from unprecedented humiliation, I kicked off the bench, approached the fence, and shook it violently with all my might.

“Youuuuuuuu!! Get down here, you monkey woman! I’ll crush you!!”

“I won’t come down as I don’t want to be crushed.”

“Shut up! Delete that damn photo right now!!”

“It’s not a photo, it’s a video.”

“Screw you! You amateur!!”

Hearing my mad voice, she burst into a fit of hysterical laughter as she put her phone in her pocket, maneuvered dexterously off the fence, and faced me over the fence.

“You’re interesting, senior. Can I come hang out here again?”

“Don’t you ever come back! Don’t disturb me! Forget it, just delete the video! You have bad taste, you bastard!!”

“I get it, I’ll be back.”

She took off running, disregarding all my words as she howled like a beast through the wire fence.

This was the first meeting between me and Hyuga, my first memory of her.

The first time I fell for Hyuga’s mischievous prank.

The day of my bizarre relationship with a strange junior ensued.

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