Outsider in a Brutal Classroom
When summer vacation ended and regular classes finally resumed, the first day back was pure chaos in Class 2.
"Hey. Song Changwon! We even threw you a welcome party when you transferred here, and yesterday you acted like such an arrogant bastard—what was that about?"
"Oh? You don't know? I distinctly told you not to act like you knew things you didn't."
"What the hell is this c——"
Even before morning homeroom, one delinquent student in Class 2 was already stirring up a vicious atmosphere around the transfer student.
And Song Changwon, for his part, answered in a tone that almost sounded like he was mocking him.
Last of all, there were the rest of the class, watching the standoff between the delinquent and Song Changwon—though somehow, they seemed to be siding with the delinquent guy.
It was a complete mess.
If I’d been the homeroom teacher, I would have wanted to take sick leave and lock myself up at home.
Wait, but what was this about a welcome party? I never heard anything about that.
Of course, even if I had been invited, I never would’ve gone—but finding out about it like this still stung a little...
...
For the record, the other transfer student, Lee Narin, seemed eager to stay out of this whole incident and had deliberately moved her seat near the window, where she was tapping away at her smartphone.
"We've got nothing else to say to each other, so get lost already. Or what—do you want to settle this here?"
Song Changwon shoved his desk forward and stood up.
The height difference between him and the delinquent standing in front of him was around fifteen centimeters.
Tall by the standards of our age group, his height was more than enough to loom over a first-year delinquent whose growth spurt still hadn’t finished.
Maybe that was why the delinquent, who had been glaring at Song Changwon a moment ago, now looked completely thrown off balance.
"Think carefully. I was being kind enough to explain it in a way even Dog Hair like you could understand."
Song Changwon stepped forward one pace at a time, looking down at the delinquent.
And the delinquent, shrinking under the overwhelming difference in their builds, kept edging backward.
"Or maybe you're the type of person who can only understand things after getting hit? Hah... I don't exactly enjoy beating people up, since it makes things complicated, but if I have to, I will."
The delinquent glanced around at the other students as if begging them for help.
But everyone in the class was just reading the room. In a tense atmosphere like this, no one was going to step forward and side with him.
In the end, the delinquent wore a look of resigned defeat and said,
"...Fine. Sorry. So I just need to stop acting like I know everything, right?"
He fell back on the same survival skills he’d learned while playing lackey for the bullies in other classes.
...
...
Even after first period ended, the class atmosphere remained ugly, and Lee Narin was still holed up by the window, busy doing her own thing.
Of course, whether the class atmosphere was good or bad had nothing to do with a loner like me, so I quietly focused on my own work.
At the start of a semester, there were always plenty of forms to turn in—surveys, advance selections for art and physical education electives, and the like.
"Ian~ Hi~ ♫ I came by to talk about electives, and it turns out you were picking yours too?"
At that moment, Yu Somi came to our classroom.
Because of her radiant looks, the boys in our class all turned to look at her for a moment, but in the tense atmosphere of the room, their attention quickly dispersed again.
Since she said she’d come about electives, she was probably here to ask if I wanted to take art with her again this semester.
Truthfully, even if she hadn’t said anything, I was planning to choose art anyway.
Music, one of those bourgeois electives, just didn’t suit me.
"Somi, you’re choosing art again this time too, right? That’s what I was planning, so if things go well, maybe we can take the class together again."
"Yay~♫ Excellent choice, Ian. All that’s left now is for Class 2 and Class 5 to get paired together again!"
From what I’d heard, when classes were combined for music and art electives, the ratio of students who chose each subject was taken into account.
If they just grouped classes at random and, for instance, ended up pairing together two classes that had chosen a lot of music students, then there wouldn’t be enough seats in the music room every music period.
So in theory... if the students from two classes somehow coordinated their subject choices to match each other, it wouldn’t be impossible to manipulate which class they got paired with for electives.
Still, there was no way anything like that was going to happen for real... so all we could do was hope, by pure luck, that we’d be assigned to the same class again.
"By the way, your class seems kind of down today. Did something happen? Fighting already on the first day of classes?"
Since Yu Somi had just walked into our room and was already saying something like that, the atmosphere in the class must really have been serious.
So I wordlessly pointed at Song Changwon, the center of the current mess.
"Aha... so that’s the transfer student you mentioned last time? But he doesn’t seem all that bothered himself... Then where’s the girl named Lee Narin who transferred with him?"
"If you look over by the window, do you see the girl with the light gray bleached hair? That’s Lee Narin."
Her gaze, which had briefly settled on Song Changwon, immediately shifted to the girl by the window.
And Lee Narin was still looking down at her smartphone by the window.
I’d definitely heard she was dating Song Changwon, but the way she was acting like none of this had anything to do with her, even as trouble was brewing between him and the rest of the class...
Honestly, I could believe them if someone told me they weren’t even friends.
"Oh... she’s pretty. Going ash gray after bleaching her hair, huh? She chose the path of hardship."
"So it really is hard to pull off that hair color?"
"Totally. You have to bleach it several times, so it costs a lot, takes forever, and wrecks your scalp... Besides, ash gray can go wrong and make you look like some old grandmother, so unless you already have a naturally pretty face, it’s basically not a color you can even attempt..."
But Yu Somi seemed more interested in the color of her hair than in Lee Narin’s attitude.
Maybe that was because Somi herself had bleached her own hair, too.
For that reason, she kept going on about complicated things like the process of achieving ash gray, or dyeing techniques that used complementary colors to reduce the number of bleaching sessions.
I was actually interested in the post-bleaching dye techniques Somi was explaining, so I listened carefully.
...
But before long, Lee Narin had come over to us without me noticing and suddenly spoke up.
"Hi. I’m Lee Narin, the new transfer student. It sounds like you were talking about my hair color, so if you have any questions, I could answer them. By the way, your hair color is pretty, too. What’s your name?"
Listening to the two of them talk, I got the strong impression that Lee Narin had the air of a rich young lady.
The evidence was in her always-perfect posture, her polite choice of words, and the fluent way her conversation flowed without even the slightest hesitation.
Those were traits you could also find in Han Sia, who was, in fact, a rich young lady herself.
But unlike Han Sia, who always wore her confidence—and a touch of arrogance—openly, giving off the domineering air of a young female CEO, Lee Narin barely showed any expression at all, and even the emotions in her voice hardly seemed to change at all...
Maybe “doll-like” was the best way to put it.
Rather than standing out in front of others, she gave the impression of someone who would stay quietly at home and enjoy refined hobbies like music or dance.
...While I was listening to the two of them talk, I suddenly glanced around, and
despite the hostile classroom atmosphere caused by the feud between the class and Song Changwon, a strangely relaxed and gentle little space had formed around my desk.
Maybe it was because two pretty girls were sitting there talking and laughing—just watching them seemed to make my own mood calm down somehow.
Drawn in by that atmosphere, a few students who were tired of the class’s harsh mood had quietly retreated around my seat, and
I could even see a few boys taking their places there simply so they could sneak glances at Lee Narin and Yu Somi’s looks.
At the start of the morning, the whole class had seemed like it was lining up against Song Changwon...
So I guessed there had probably been students who’d inwardly decided they wanted no part in that kind of intimidation contest to begin with.
Well, as long as Somi and Narin themselves didn’t mind, it wasn’t really any business of mine.
-♩-♪~♬-♫
But in the end, no recess could last forever.
After happily chatting with Lee Narin, Yu Somi heard the bell announcing class time and went back to her room, looking reluctant to leave.
And even after she returned to her class, I could still see a faint smile lingering on Lee Narin’s face, so it seemed she had enjoyed talking with Somi just as much.
Was that why? Before the teacher came in, she spoke to me.
"You’ve got a really pretty and kind friend, huh? I think any chance of me getting close to the girls in my class went down the drain because of Song Changwon, but do you think I could become friends with Somi too?"
Listening to her, it seemed she had plenty of worries about Song Changwon, too.
Still, if all she wanted was to get along, wouldn’t that be fine? Yu Somi didn’t have a mean bone in her body, so as long as she could tolerate Somi’s delinquent cosplay, it should be okay.
...
Though if what she wanted was a "friend," then the story changed a little...
"Do you want to be 'friends' with Somi?"
"...Huh? Yeah. I do."
At her innocent reply, I let out a small sigh and said,
"Hah... It’s possible, but you’ll need to prepare yourself a little. Of course, the choice is yours, but I hope you choose carefully."
After hearing my ominous-sounding words, Lee Narin tilted her head as if she couldn’t quite understand what I meant, then returned to her seat.