My youth story cannot be a knight war

"……I see."

Zaimokuza took a few steps back in silence, then lowered his head and spoke in a muffled voice.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Hiratsuka. I was so rude just now."

He turned to Hiratsuka Shizuka, whom he had almost pushed to the ground, and sincerely apologized, and then gave a perfect bow.

"It's nothing. Just you... and Hikigaya can calm down. It's okay for me."

Hiratsuka Shizuka patted Zaimokuza's shoulder and helped him up from his bent waist. She glanced hesitantly at Hikigaya Hachiman who was still standing there without turning around, and spoke softly.

"Xiao Qi...are you okay?"

Yuigahama Yui reached out to hold Hikigaya's shoulders with some concern. Ever since the video revealed that her future self liked the boy in front of her, her words and actions began to become unconsciously intimate with Hikigaya.

"I'm fine, Yuigahama...you don't have to worry about me."

Hikigaya's eyes were still calmly staring at the sliding door in front of him, as if he was talking to someone who didn't exist there, and he didn't turn around to look at Yuigahama Yui beside him.

A small conflict seemed to be over, but everyone had their own unknown thoughts, especially Zaimokuza Yoshiki and Hikigaya Hachiman. They were so worried that even Tobe Sho, who was the most shrewd here, could see it, but they all remained silent tacitly.

call--

Just when everyone picked up their phones and wanted to watch the video again, a strong wind suddenly blew outside the open window of the health room, blowing the curtains in the room high up, and also caused a mirror hanging in the room to shake, and then fell unsteadily to the ground.

Clap!

The mirror fell to the ground and shattered. The sound of the shattering attracted everyone's attention. The mirror fragments that were broken into more than a dozen pieces on the ground also reflected the expressions of everyone when they turned back, like a vivid portrait.

Zaimokuza Yoshiki's confusion, Hiratsuka Shizuka's doubt, Yukinoshita Yukino's frown, Yuigahama Yui's uneasiness, Hayama Hayato's thinking, Ebina Hina's surprise... everyone's expression is clearly visible, and all kinds of people are in sight.

——Except Hikigaya Hachiman.

When everyone turned around to look at the mirror fragments, he was the only one who didn't look back, as if he didn't hear the crisp sound of the shattering in his ears that seemed to explode in his heart.

Therefore, when the mirror reflected everyone's faces, only the fragment reflecting Hikigaya Hachiman had a completely different back view from the others.

In the mirror, he was standing facing a different direction from everyone else.

Never looked back once.

……

A junior high school in Chiba Prefecture.

"Hi, Hikigaya-san, are you okay?"

The fat boy, whose water cup was accidentally broken by Hikigaya Komachi, swallowed his saliva and looked at her with some trepidation as she held the phone in front of her with a dazed look on her beautiful face. Hesitant, hesitating whether he should take this opportunity to help his goddess sit down and take advantage of the opportunity to sneak in.

"My future self... is dead?"

Hikigaya Komachi stared blankly at the message spoken by Hiratsuka Shizuka on the phone, her mind going blank.

For a moment, she subconsciously wanted to think that Shizuka Hiratsuka was talking about someone else, but her sober mind immediately reacted and she realized that it was impossible to have such a coincidence.

Hikigaya Komachi also knew Shizuka Hiratsuka, because when her brother was in a car accident and hospitalized last year, it was Shizuka Hiratsuka who called her family to inform them of the incident. She even drove her own Aston Martin to pick up the Hikigaya family and go to the hospital to find Hikigaya who was hospitalized.

Unless there is another family with the last name Hikigaya in this country, there is only one "Hikigaya" that this teacher knows, and that is her brother, Hikigaya Hachiman.

And Hikigaya's sister, of course, only has one person.

…That was herself, Hikigaya Komachi.

This video briefly describes the future, that is, in the future, she has already——

died.

An indescribable feeling of chill and panic rose up from her spine. Human beings' fear of the unknown of death made Hikigaya Komachi's petite body tremble slightly, and her legs in black socks also began to tremble involuntarily.

"Whoa!"

She stepped back in panic, tripping over the leg of the table behind her and falling backwards while screaming in panic.

——And the back of his head was facing the sharp square corner of another table behind him.

Just as Hikigaya Komachi closed her eyes in fear as she fell backwards and was about to be hit on the head by the table, a pair of hands reached out from the side and supported her slender waist and back.

——"Komachi."

A voice came from Hikigaya Komachi's ears with her eyes closed. The deep and familiar voice carried a power and gentleness that could calm one's mind involuntarily.

——"Don't be afraid."

"……elder brother!?"

Hikigaya Komachi suddenly opened his eyes with tears in the corners, and what he saw was the somewhat helpless expression and wandering eyes on the chubby face of his classmate sitting behind him. His face turned red.

"Hikigaya-san, are you okay?!"

The fat boy half-held Hikigaya Komachi in his arms, looking around at the classmates who were walking towards him in panic, and he didn't dare to look at the goddess in his arms.

For the innocent boy whose biggest delusion in the past was just holding hands, this unexpected close contact almost burned out the CPU in his brain, making it completely unable to function. His imagination was like a wall being bombed by a Gatling gun, with holes popping up one after another.

Let's date. Where is the first date? When is the first kiss? When do we get married? How many children do we want to have? What are their names? Where do we want to buy a house? Tokyo is not a good choice because there are unconfirmed life forms in the future there. It's too dangerous. Ukraine is a good choice...

Hikigaya Komachi stared blankly at the head at the table behind her which was already starting to emit steam, wondering what he was thinking.

The strange thing is that after the voice just now rang in my ears, the panic and anxiety in my heart about knowing that I would die in the future gradually subsided, as if it had never existed at all.

Hikigaya Komachi didn't know if it was her illusion, but she was very clear about one thing.

I did hear my brother's voice just now.

"I...I'm fine. Thank you, Arita-san!"

Hikigaya Komachi, who was quickly helped up by the girl next to her, stood up and shook her head, then turned around to express her gratitude to the person sitting behind her who was still staring at her blankly. Her eyes, which still had tears in them, narrowed up, and the smile on her face was like the little white flowers growing in the wind in the corner of the school rooftop, swaying in the light.

puff--! ! !

Facing the smile of his goddess, "Arita-san" covered his heart which suddenly stopped beating. The incomparable feeling of happiness hit his heart, causing his eyes to roll back and he fainted.

We are now at peace, with no regrets in this life...!

"Arita-san!? What's wrong with you???"

……

There was a mirror hanging on the wall at the back of the classroom, reflecting the people in the classroom who were frantically carrying the unconscious "Arita-san" towards the infirmary.

hum.

When everyone left the classroom, a ripple like water spread out from the center of the mirror, and the image of the classroom in the mirror began to distort.

A pair of large bright yellow eyes appeared in the mirror during this distortion, looking at the door where everyone was leaving, and then disappeared the next moment.

Ow—

A faint sound, like the roar of a wild beast, came from the other side of the mirror.

A creature with a body as slender as a snake and claws as sharp as an eagle's falcon flashed across the mirror. Finally, as its blade-like tail swept across, its figure disappeared in the distorted scenery of the mirror.

The next moment, the distorted mirror returned to normal, the buzzing sound dissipated, and the mirror once again reflected the empty classroom.

70. The Past Beneath the Smile (Two in One)

[Chiba Prefecture, Sobu Prefectural High School, former site of the Service Club.]

【Puff.】

[The leaping flame ignites the cigarette, and the lit cigarette burns rapidly backwards as the owner inhales, and a thick white mist spews out from Hiratsuka Shizuka's open lips.]

[“…Even now, I still remember the Zaimokuza I met that day.”]

[“It was raining heavily that day, and the guy was hiding on the school rooftop, getting soaked by the rain. His hair was stuck to his face.”]

[In the aroma of nicotine, Hiratsuka Shizuka's eyes were a little blurry. She slowly recounted what happened that day. Her words, in the pervasive smoke and the smell of nicotine, seemed to have some kind of magic, bringing Yukinoshita Yukino, who was sitting opposite her, back to that day many years ago.]

[The originally clear and sunny sky outside the window is changing rapidly at this moment. The rotation of the sun and the moon is going backwards by hundreds of times, back to a day of heavy rain. The world seems to be covered by rain. Everyone is hurriedly holding up the rain to block the rain, speeding up their pace or looking for a place to take shelter nearby.]

[Hiratsuka Shizuka and Yukino Yukinoshita were sitting in the heavy rain, surrounded by people coming and going. The rain fell through their bodies, splashing one drop after another on the concrete ground of the campus.]

"When I learned Zaimokuza wasn't attending class, I spent almost a day looking for him. After searching almost the entire Sobu High School and failing to find him, I went to nearby KTVs and game halls where students frequented. In short, I searched everywhere within a ten-mile radius of Sobu High School where young people frequented, but I couldn't find Zaimokuza. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth, leaving no trace."

[“Until the end, I returned to Sobu High School feeling a little discouraged. I was upset and borrowed the key to the rooftop chain from the janitor and wanted to go up to smoke a cigarette. Only then did I find that the iron chain that locked the rooftop had been pried open with a piece of wire thrown nearby... Because the rooftop was locked before, I had never thought that there was another place I hadn’t looked for.”]

[“Really? Where did that guy learn such a crooked trick? He made me waste a whole day looking for him. You know, I had agreed with my friends to attend a social gathering that night.”]

[Speaking of this, Hiratsuka Shizuka couldn't help but smile, and Yukinoshita Yukino's face, which had been a little gloomy, also curled up a little from the corner of her mouth after hearing it. ]

[“That’s definitely Zaimokuza-san’s style.”]

[“I opened the door to the rooftop and shouted for a long time, and finally found Zai Muzi sitting there in the rain on the second staircase leading to the rooftop corner.”]

[“The guy sat huddled up, hugging his legs, leaning against a water tank. The rain water flowed from his soaked body and mixed with the water on the ground, flowing down the pipe on the roof.”]

[Hiratsuka Shizuka and Yukinoshita Yukino turned their heads to look at the stairs next to the rooftop. The female teacher in a white coat turned around the corner beside the stairs without saying a word and looked at the boy sitting there.]

【Zaimokuza, who was wearing the brown windbreaker over his Sobu High School uniform as usual, looked up at Hiratsuka Shizuka with a confused expression after hearing the footsteps. He had caught a cold after being caught in the rain all day, and his runny nose was hanging on his mouth and chin. With his white hair that looked like a pot lid after being soaked, anyone who saw him would probably think he was a kappa who had run out of a river.】

[After seeing that the person coming was Hiratsuka Shizuka, Zaimokuza's lifeless eyes barely shone with a little light, and he sniffed his nose. His appearance was somewhere between a homeless stray dog ​​and a rabbit hiding from the rain under a tree.]

[“That look was so miserable that I forgot about the thought of scolding him… huh.”]

[Hiratsuka Shizuka took another deep puff of her cigarette and exhaled. White smoke rings floated toward the ceiling of the classroom, like a slowly rising white halo.]

"...I had no idea something like this happened back then."

[Yukinoshita Yukino was silent when she heard this. She really didn’t know about this. Firstly, Zaimokuza had never told her about this, and secondly…]

【At that time, everyone in the service department was not having an easy time. 】

「At that time, it wasn’t just Zaimokuza. I was worried about all of you as well. But Zaimokuza and──」

[Hiratsuka Shizuka paused again, then glanced at Yukinoshita Yukino's calm expression before speaking again.]

[“…Hikigaya, those two are the ones that worried me the most. At that time, I was always worried that they would do something impulsive and radical, and I was watching these two guys all day long in school, both openly and secretly.”]

[“And what happened next was exactly what I expected. Those two guys really got into trouble. Putting Hikigaya aside, Zaimokuza got into a brawl with the people from the school’s Taekwondo Club.”]

[Hearing Hiratsuka Shizuka say this, Yukinoshita Yukino immediately recalled the incident that caused a sensation at Sobu High School. ]

[“Is it the fight that was criticized by the whole school? I remember the result of that incident seemed to be…”]

[“Ah, Zaimokuza got into a conflict with the Taekwondo club members for some reason, and he fought seven of them alone.”]

[“There’s actually nothing to say about this matter. The number of people is one to seven, and the other side is a club that specializes in practicing martial arts. One of them is in the top eight of a certain competition. No matter how you look at it, you can tell which side will win in the end.”]

[“…But the outcome was beyond everyone’s expectations, because the winner was not the Taekwondo Club, which had the advantage in numbers and strength, but the Zaimokuza.”]

[Thinking of the scene that she and other teachers saw when they rushed to the scene after learning the news, even after many years, Shizuka Hiratsuka's eyes twitched, and she couldn't help but recall her dumbfounded expression at that time. ]

[“You know, one of them was the vice president of the Sobu High School Taekwondo Club, and he had won awards in competitions outside of school. But he was the one who was hurt the most. Zaimokuza grabbed him and restrained him, then hit him with his head for more than 20 times. When he went to the hospital, the doctor diagnosed him with a mild concussion and a dislocated nasal bone fracture. He stayed in the hospital for more than a week before being allowed to leave.”]

[“The rest of the students weren’t much better off. They all had injuries, including Zaimokuza. He had a fractured right fist bone and a broken finger, and had to wear a cast and bandages for a long time… But I think you should know the outcome of this incident, because I heard that you, Yukinoshita, went to the Taekwondo Club to warn the then president in a stern manner.”]

[“In fact, it was more than a warning. I even had a private “sparring” with that president. However, he was too weak. His punches were weak, his kicks were not good, his steps were loose, his reactions were slow, and none of his moves were decent. He still wanted to compete with me? I used my hand knife to cut his neck and knocked him unconscious in a few moves... Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Hiratsuka. I was careful when I attacked him. Even if he went to the hospital for a checkup, his injuries wouldn’t even be considered minor.”]

[“But I was surprised that he didn’t tell the school about this. It seems that the president is the type who cares a lot about the dignity of a man. He must have considered losing to a woman like me as a huge shame, so he didn’t want others to know.”]

[“…Perhaps I made a wrong judgment at that time. You are just as troublesome as those two guys.”]

[Faced with Yukinoshita Yukino's casual recounting of this past event that she had never known, Hiratsuka Shizuka's mouth twitched slightly again, and she helplessly reached out to hold her forehead.]

[“That incident caused a big stir at the time. The parents came directly to the school to make a scene. Some even wanted Zaimokuza to call home and ask his parents to come to the school to apologize in person… Tsk.”]

[“…Don’t the parents of those students understand why Zaimokuza-san would fight with their sons? Could it be that their brains have degenerated to the level of apes due to long-term disuse?”]

[Thinking of the whole story that she had learned through some channels at that time, Yukinoshita Yukino's eyes became unusually gloomy, and her hands, which were flat on her thighs covered by the white skirt, couldn't help but tightly grasp the fabric of the skirt. ]

[“Yukinoshita, your sharp tongue is still the same as it was back then… But you are right about this matter. Those people’s brains really seem to have not developed yet. They came to the school to cause trouble without understanding the whole story.”]

[Thinking of Zaimokuza saying in front of the students' parents and teachers, "My parents are dead, your son told me," and the dumbfounded expressions of those parents, Hiratsuka Shizuka couldn't help but sigh. ]

[“If those bastards hadn’t known about Zaimokuza’s parents’ death and hadn’t come to him and laughed at him, how could such a fight have happened? Those students who were beaten into the hospital were just asking for it, and they don’t deserve any sympathy at all.”]

"…Tsk! This kind of thing really happens everywhere."

Ishigami Yu, who was sitting in front of the computer screen, frowned when he heard this and felt very uncomfortable.

With some bad memories in his mind, he snatched a bottle of AD calcium milk from the table, tore open the package, pierced the seal with a pencil, and drank it in one gulp, hoping to suppress the disgust and grievance in his heart in this way.

If I could have been like Zaimokuza-san back then... No, I couldn't do it.

The smile of a girl flashed through his mind, that smile as bright as a sunflower blooming in midsummer.