Vol 2 Chapter 13 – The World Calls That Youth【Volume 2: The Flirting-All-Over-the-Place Second Semester Arc】

“— I have things to attend to as class representative.”

With that, the class representative snorted, puffed out a breath, and marched off somewhere.

Apparently, he was a busy man.

For the time being, Sandai and Shino made their way to the home economics room.

Inside was a single girl.

Small and slight, with her hair in braids, she gave off the impression of a tiny woodland creature — her name was Mahiro Takasago, one of the quieter, less conspicuous students in the class.

“Hnngh… hnngh…”

She was pressing a rolling pin into a sheet of dough, leaning her whole weight into it.

Takasago kept at it for a while, but then she sensed them and turned around.

“Um… uh… Yuizaki-san and Fujiwara-kun…?”

True to her small-animal appearance, Takasago gave a visible flinch.

Then she shuffled over to the corner of the room and made herself very small.

She probably didn’t mean anything by it, but being treated like some kind of apparition was a genuinely indescribable feeling.

“…Look, we were trying to help with the festival preparations, but everyone turned us down. The class rep told us to come here.”

Sandai scratched the back of his head and gave her the short version. At the words class rep, Takasago reacted.

“Shienin-kun sent you…?”

She referred to the class representative by his surname — and that was how Sandai casually learned it for the very first time.

Shienin, apparently.

“…That’s actually a pretty cool last name, for a class rep.”

He murmured it under his breath, and Shino nodded in quiet agreement beside him.

She’d apparently been in the dark too.

“I just always thought of him as ‘the class rep,’ so this is a bit of a surprise.”

“Same, Shino. Me too.”

“We’re the same~”

They were still whispering to each other about the class representative’s surname when Takasago crept nervously closer.

“Y-You’ll really help me…?”

She seemed genuinely uncertain whether to believe it.

Since they fully intended to help — they both said yes without hesitation. If they weren’t going to bother, they wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.

☆

“S-Sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Takasago bowed her head over and over and over again.

One look at the plate on the counter explained why.

“…These are, uh… quite a color.”

Sandai picked one up from the plate and examined it carefully.

The cookies were quite colorful.

Seven of them, to be precise. Seven different colors.

“In a way, it’s kind of… artsy? I mean, there are sweets like that… but I don’t think that’s quite what this is…”

Shino was struggling for words, too.

Something about these cookies was setting off an instinctive alarm.

But it was too soon to judge by looks alone.

There was a chance they were surprisingly good.

“Should we… try one…?”

“W-Well, looks and taste don’t always match, sooo…?”

Sandai and Shino popped a cookie into their mouths at the same time —

— and collapsed, drenched in cold sweat, flat on the floor.

☆

“I’m so sorry. I’m really so sorry… I can never get anything right, no matter what I try…”

With Sandai and Shino lying out across a row of chairs pushed together as a makeshift bed, completely wrecked, Takasago heaped apology upon apology.

“These are dangerous…”

“If we served these, it’d be a disaster. And not a good kind.”

The two of them hauled themselves upright on wobbling legs, and Takasago’s eyes began to fill with tears, her lower lip trembling.

“T-The other cooking groups are all doing fine, and I’m the only one who can’t… so I’ve been practicing alone… Shienin-kun said if I kept at it, I’d get there eventually, but… but…”

Now Sandai understood why the class representative had said, “Please go help her.”

This absolutely required intervention.

Sandai himself didn’t know much about baking, so he wasn’t going to be the one to give useful advice — but Shino was here, and Shino was good at making sweets.

He glanced over at her. She seemed to read his intention immediately, smiled, and gave Takasago a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“Um, well…”

“It’ll be okay. I’m actually pretty good at this kind of thing, despite how I look — I’ll teach you properly~.”

☆

The sun was sinking low by the time the evening light began to creep in.

On the fresh plate on the counter sat perfectly normal-looking cookies, and Takasago’s face shone with barely contained emotion.

“Amazing… I made normal cookies…”

“See? Easy, right?”

“Yes! Thank you so much!”

Sandai had half-expected it to take some time, but the results came through cleanly, without a single stumble.

That was entirely down to Shino being a far better teacher than he’d anticipated.

When he thought about it, Shino dealt with Miki daily — and Miki was, to put it kindly, a handful. Having that kind of experience meant that teaching someone like Takasago, who was unskilled but cooperative, was probably simple by comparison.

“Stick to the recipe and follow the steps — that’s all you need~.”

“Y-Yes.”

“And when you’re still learning, it’s better not to add any secret ingredients, okay? I’m guessing you put wasabi in there, didn’t you?”

“…I did. …And I wanted to add color, so I put in some paint.”

“…O-Oh. Okay. So just to be very clear — no paint next time, ever. If you want to add color, there are actual food-safe dyes for that.”

Well, in any case, the task had been completed successfully.

With that, they were ready to make a quick exit from the home economics room — but Sandai noticed something slightly off about Takasago’s expression.

Her cheeks were flushed, both hands pressed over her face, and she was murmuring something to herself.

“…I worked hard today, so maybe Shienin-kun will say something nice… N-No, but there are probably lots of other girls who like him too, right? He’s always so dedicated to everything, it’s really cool… I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that…”

It was autumn.

Just recently, Sandai and Shino had gone to see the fall foliage together.

But right now, right in front of him —

Something that was the complete opposite of autumn was quietly beginning to bloom.

“Sandai, what’s up?”

“Nothing. Just… I don’t know, I feel kind of… tingly.”

“…?”

“Like I suddenly want to kiss Shino.”

“Ah, so that’s it. Okay — here.”

Shino closed her eyes.

Sandai leaned in, slowly and quietly, and pressed his lips to hers.

Nothing special. Just a kiss.

There was no particular reason to do it right now. He could have waited until they got back to the apartment.

But even so — he just wanted to.

Vol 2 Chapter 14 – Class Rep, Just Explode Already【Volume 2: The Flirting-All-Over-the-Place Second Semester Arc】

By helping Takasago, Sandai, and Shino had managed to save face — they’d contributed to the festival after all.

The class representative seemed satisfied with this as well. The next day, he gave a dignified nod and said, “Very well. If you can also lend a hand in the back-of-house cooking crew on the day of the festival itself, that will be more than sufficient.”

Sandai and Shino exhaled in unison.

That meant no one had any more grounds to say anything to them.

They could go home with a clean conscience.

Now… ever since the help session ended, a small but noticeable shift had begun to take shape in the classroom atmosphere.

Between Takasago and the class representative.

No one else seemed to have picked up on it yet — but Sandai had noticed that Takasago was, little by little, finding reasons to position herself closer to him.

“Shienin-kun, would you mind tasting this…? I’ve gotten the hang of it now.”

“Takasago. A taste test, you said? Understood.”

Whether or not this quietly budding feeling would blossom into something real remained to be seen.

But as long as nothing got in the way, it had a decent shot.

“By the way… the end-of-term exams are coming up after the festival, but I’m rooting for you, so please do your best, Shienin-kun.”

“Mm. My goal is first place in the year. …That said, there is something I find puzzling. I study quite rigorously as a rule and attend prep school on top of that, so my scores are generally high — and yet, first place has eluded me every single time. I keep landing in second. …I’m curious who is in first place, but due to privacy reasons, the rankings are only shared individually.”

“I wonder… who it could be?”

“I don’t know. But next time, I fully intend to claim that top spot.”

“Yes! And if you get first place, we should c-celebrate!”

“N-No, you don’t have to do anything like that… worry about yourself first, Takasago…”

Overhearing this exchange, Sandai felt an instinctive pang of certainty: it was probably better to keep the fact that he was ranked first in the year to himself.

If it came out, things were going to get complicated fast.

(That said… If the class rep gets first place, it sounds like things between him and Takasago might actually go somewhere. It’s not like I want to get in their way. …Maybe I should aim for third or fourth on the next exam on purpose. If I keep my score to around 890 out of 900 across nine subjects, that should do it. Since he’s always second, his average is probably around 895 total.)

He was mulling this over with a yawn during lunch break when something was suddenly shoved into his mouth.

A piece of tamagoyaki from his bento.

The culprit: Shino.

“Got you~!”

“…This is really good.”

“Of course it is. I put love into it.”

When she said it like that, it genuinely tasted several times better than it had any right to.

The seasoning called love was apparently quite potent.