My New Life

Chapter 103: Happy Boredom

I glanced behind me, back at the halfway point.

Shizukana was carefully observing each and every person that ran through.

I recognized that look in his eyes, he's inputting and analyzing data again.

This morning, on the fifth day of the training camp, we'd been given the full length of the day between breakfast and lunch to do a test run of the path we'll be running for the relay race.

We'd at first been with our big group, in other words, it was us as well as the second and third years, but their physical abilities allowed for them to pull ahead early.

Shizukana had passed the reigns off to Katsuragi as he went on ahead, saying that he was going to practice something.

Katsuragi had gotten us organized, and while the uphill trek was difficult, by jogging in intervals and taking walking breaks, we got up the mountain with a reasonable amount of time remaining to get back down.

I could practically read the expression that he had on his face.

No, it wouldn't be a difficult thing to do at all.

As he watched each of us go by, he had an expression on his face that told us he was very clearly interested.

That being said, we made it back down the mountain easily, and went off for our lunch break.

...

"Hahahaaaa!"

Miyake was wheezing as Shizukana sat in his seat, pouting and angrily grumbling about something.

Hasebe was laughing as well, though she was more controlled, and Sakura was just blushing red from the conversation topic.

Said topic, Shizukana's change in popularity.

Apparently, Miyake has been trying to get the five of us altogether to eat for a while now, but because of my elusiveness, (talking to Karuizawa to gather information on the girl's side,) and Shizukana operating like a machine staying constantly busy, he wasn't able to wrangle everyone up until today.

I did notice that Sakura was breathing a little heavy due to the long distance running that was done earlier.

Back to the topic at hand.

Miyake had made a comment to Shizukana to not let his new-found popularity get to his head, to which Shizukana responded in a manner indicating he didn't know what he was talking about.

Miyake, without any tact whatsoever, dropped the bombshell of information regarding what everyone saw in Shizukana since the bath house.

Strangely enough, Shizukana hasn't been to the public bath house since, but still looks relatively clean.

Perhaps he found a spring or something that he prefers?

"Man, but like, hah, maybe you're secretly some sort of succubus?" Miyake asked jokingly, causing Shizukana's pout to broaden.

"This probably just happened because the guys have been mostly secluded from the girls for the last week."

"No no, it's definitely you."

I nodded in agreement to Hasebe's words, and even Sakura agreed.

"Yeah, Shizuku, you have like, no idea how many times I've been approached by people, girls and guys, who were asking about you." Hasebe added.

Shizukana flinched at those words.

"Is it that bad?"

"Yeah, the other guys in my group, they speak about it really openly." Miyake stated.