Mission: Reincarnation into COTE

SS.1 - Karuizawa Kei: The First Day

As soon as I entered my room, I slammed the door shut and immediately jumped onto the bed.

How- how could he say such embarrassing things like that without even batting an eye? Was he some kind of a buddha? How?

'No Kei,' I thought to myself, burying my head inside a pillow. 'Don't think about it too deeply. I mean, he was just being friendly after all. That's what friends do, right? Righ-'

'Promise me that you will never hide things from me.'

Just the thought of him saying that was enough for me to go fully red. What he said to me was not normal. Even if I did not exactly have the most normal middle school experience, I knew for certain that this was not something friends said to each other, especially if this was their first day of meeting.

'Remember that I'll be there to help you, okay?'

Streams of steam bursted from my ears as I tried to cover up my heated face. Noooooo, Kei! Don't think about it!

My first impression of Toshiro-kun was not anything to write home about. I noticed him from the moment he entered the class. Even though I was talking to Hirata-kun as he seemed like the perfect candidate to protect me, I still kept an eye out for anyone else that was entering the class. Around ten minutes before the bell was supposed to ring, he came into the classroom.

Judging by his appearance alone, I could see that he wasn't definitely was not a loner during middle school, and that he seemed like the student who would have a lot of friends. His height was about 5 foot 9, which made him the third tallest student in the class, behind the red and yellow haired students at the back of the classroom. His face, while not overly handsome, was cute enough to a degree that enough girls would take interest in him for his looks. His hair, while a little unkept, did fit into his vibe and style pretty well. Overall, judging his appearance on the scale of 1 to 10, he would be around a 8, good but not overwhelmingly better than everyone else in the class.

Throughout the explanation Chabashira was giving us, I seldomly looked over to Toshiro-kun to see how he was faring with all of this exciting news. However, he did not seem to listen to Chabashira at all, only looking through the boring manual that she gave us before her speech. Even after, she exposed the fact that we would have an allowance of 100,000 private points a month, which took the class through a wave of excitement, he did not seem to react at all. If anything, he started frowning and sighed, before closing his eyes and tuning out. This... wasn't the normal reaction students would give.

The first time I heard Toshiro-kun's voice was during the self-introduction period. Not on his turn, but on the red haired student's turn. The red haired student, whose name was... Suedog, Sudon? Sudou! Yeah, Sudou, was not agreeing to introduce himself in front of the class. A lot of girls were sending him dirty looks, and it seemed like it would only be a matter of time before someone would shout at him. But before anyone could have the chance to do that, Toshiro-kun turned the situation around immediately, beckoning Sudou to introduce himself in order to not create a bad image to the class. In hindsight, it was probably already too late, but still, after listening to Toshiro-kun, he reluctantly agreed and introduced himself properly to his classmates.

While walking towards Pallet, I took a look behind from time to time, letting Mori take control of the conversation we were having with Hirata-kun. Behind us, Matsushita and Toshiro-kun were talking, probably about something funny, as they were chuckling about. This made me wonder: why was I looking behind at Toshiro-kun? We haven't properly introduced ourselves to each other. We didn't even have a single conversation yet.

Interest. I determined that to be the reason. For him to become friends that quickly with a delinquent and controlling the situation that easily, he needed to have the right amount of social skills. I was only interested in how he did that, nothing more or less.