Playing the Game of People

Chapter 6 - Menacing Midterms

It was Thursday. Tomorrow, the midterm would be upon us. Class had just ended as Kushida made her way to the front of the classroom. Everyone remained seated with their eyes trained on her. In her hands, were more than three dozen slips of paper.

"Everyone, before you return, would you mind listening to me for a moment?"

Naturally, everyone in the room murmured their agreement and allowed Kushida to continue. No one in their right mind would turn down her request, perhaps only Horikita.

"I know that you've all been studying a lot in preparation for the test tomorrow. I have something to help you. I'm going to hand out some papers."

As I watched Kushida make her way through the lines of desks, I mulled over my decision to take on a more hands on approach. To me, she was the most interesting individual in our batch of misfits, so naturally I'm going to use every ounce of ability to understand her properly. She approached the back corner of the classroom and as she handed a single paper to me, I accidentally brushed my hand with hers.

"...Sorry, Kanera-kun," she apologised, shyly meeting my gaze.

"No, it's my bad, Kushida. I wasn't particularly paying attention," I assured, gently. She took a second to take her eyes off mine and dutifully gave the remaining papers to the class. As she made her way back to the lectern at the front, Horikita had some choice words for me.

"Can you please not romanticise every girl you lay your lecherous eyes on?"

"Could it be I've romanticised you too, Horikita?!" I gasped jokingly as I turned my head towards her.

She scoffed at my reply, unamused. "Whilst this is par for the course, for you. I can tell you were paying attention and initiated contact with her on purpose."

"Indeed."

Of course, I was paying attention. To an outsider looking in, my actions look completely accidental and somewhat stupidly cute. It would look like one of those accidental situations two people get in which came prior to a romantic journey. However, all I was doing was attracting her attention. Not in any romantical sense, just in her sub-conscious. Human thoughts filter out a lot of unnecessary details, human interactions being major. For a girl like Kushida, this filter would be dialled up to eleven. The angel of class D is as sociable as she is pretty. If there was a leaderboard which showed who had the best social contribution in the school year, Kushida would be at the top. Which is why a lot of her dull conversations with just as bland people would get filtered out of her mind.

However, the human body remembers physical clashes more than anything. It basically leaves an imprint on the mind of the physical stimuli it was connected to briefly. Thus, is why I initiated physical contact with Kushida. We 'accidentally' brushed hands and had brief eye contact throughout. A typical cute-awkward scenario that would stay in her mind above trivial conversations with lesser people. Even if she had no romantic or platonic interest in me to begin with, her mind would infuriatingly remember that moment any time she would hear of or see me.

Horikita chalked my actions up to some unnecessary game and immediately snapped back to perusing her handout.

"Test questions...? Did you make these, Kushida-san?" Horikita was surprised at the unexpected forward-thinking of Kushida.

"Actually, these are the old test problems. I got them from a third-year student last night."

Obviously, everyone in class was visibly surprised at this turn of events. Kushida went on to explain to the over-excited class that she heard that these questions are identical to the ones on the test tomorrow.