Tachibana Tora, the King of the Academy Jungle, Roars from Golden Encampments

I was sure that our class president, ‘Golden-Oracle’ Tora, could afford it. In fact, every year he did this same thing. As the loudest cryptocurrency kingpin I knew, he paid classmates to go after the lowest. I mean, it was in the interest of those at the very top to make sure that those down below stayed below. It was a business objective as much as it was about sedating pride. Kicking around the tiny ants was a satisfying way to declare yourself the king of the jungle.

“Hah? Do you really think you can give us that attitude and we’ll let it slide?!” My bulky classmate spat as my back hit the wall hard.

“Look at him. Still doing the ‘quiet respectable boy’ act. Your business is on life support. You don’t get to act like you’re above us,” another kicked out.

“You’re up against three. Go ahead and grovel, and we’ll make it less bloody.”

They called it “the high looking down on the low,” like it was the law of cause and effect. Like the word ‘elite’ granted them permission to become ugly.

And sure, this Academy loved that hierarchy. It loved turning people into rankings and calling it education. But you know…

“I’m a student here too, damn it. Fact is, I tolerate the high looking down on the low. It entices them to grow. But not when it’s done roughly. I despise that, significantly!”

They found out I wasn't just a pretty face and could actually throw down.

Finished with the combat, I sucked the blood leaking from my lips and scoffed.

Triple teaming was so unfair. In another way, commencing by sending three classmates was almost kind. Next time, it would be four or more, adding up until I would absolutely lose. The whole world felt like it was after me.

I needed to clip this problem at the base.

Not by beating up Tora, the most untouchable student at our Academy and probably all of Japan, but by employing alternative tactics that force him to re-label me as someone he can’t easily hunt down.

By befriending his untouchable crush.

I was planning to talk with Wakami anyhow. This merely gave me an extra push to do so.

I texted her maid Aki. When I got Wakami aside, I was quite frustrated by the time I did.

“You know Tora-san better than anyone else.”

“Do I?”

“You could’ve told me ahead of time. Two fights in one day are pushing it.”

“I was curious. I don’t support it, but I don’t bat an eye if it happens.”

Be worthier of the title of class vice president!

“Besides,” Wakami continued, “I have no inherent interest in what holds no intrinsic value other than what the onlooker thinks of it. Truly, just like Tora-san and his crypto. I had to see the outcome! Wouldn’t that have been your decision too? You want to know. No, you have to know, right?!”

“Is this how you come to know everything?”

“I know everything, even the things I don’t know. For example, why you waited for us to be alone since you have that red tag. And why you did it after you were beaten up, despite having intel about the second group, to facilitate empathy from me. Even so, I appreciate that consideration.”

“Well, it would be troublesome if people saw us associating.”

“You didn't let me finish. I appreciate your consideration, but it’s unneeded. Talk with me whenever you feel like it. I want to know about you. I'm curious, especially when a top contender for the handsomest quiet man in our prefecture approaches me. You can rely on me. Say it. You work for me. I care for you. So you can lay anything on me. It’s alright, don’t feed me. You don’t have to feed anything but my mind. There is so much to know. So much I want to know about you. Come, you came here to feed me privately, right? I’m simply starving! Come, go ahead and say it!”

Terrifying… Wakami-san said what she needed to say, as she needed to say it, just as fast as I prepared a perfect meal.

There was such an intensity to her, I felt like I had been blasted with a response from a god after clapping twice at a shine.

I was no match for her.

“May I talk to Aki-san instead?”

“Oh, Rintarō-san,” she sang. “You came all this way. Dragging your collar and your guilt like chains around your ankles, humming that tired little song of obligation you call protecting others. And now, now, when you are finally at the precipice, you want to speak to Aki? And still you run. You always run. But you’ve arrived, haven’t you? All roads, every choice, every silence, every breath, led you right here. Before me. And what a rare thing this is! A marked boy standing upright. Knees not buckled. I will help you stop Tora-san,” she said with unshakable serenity. “He is small. You are smaller. But I, I am terribly bored. So, let’s pretend we’re all the same size, and see what breaks first.”

Her eyes took me whole.

“Is it because of Yui-san, your childhood friend? Or the changes with Kotone-san, and the bruises no one but the three of you see? Of all the things, everything led you to be right here, and correct about coming to me. I will help you stop Tora-san.”

“In exchange,” she said, transcendent, devouring, celestial insanity, her hands engulfed me, and finally, the whole globe, “a single fragment of advice.”

I could barely breathe.

“Don’t keep running away.”

With a clap, I was gone.

I was obliterated faster and with more damage than Tora’s cronies could ever manage.

I knew it.

I was outmatched, outclassed in conversation in the same way that it would take Wakami a week to master my desserts, and I, I could spend a month mastering her rhythm and not yet match her wit. And that’d only be after I broke out of this cage I adored.

I wasn’t a good fit with people like her, people who tore insecurities from inside others’ hearts and laid them out to the cold air. Especially Wakami, and I repeat, especially with someone like Wakami, who understood things at an impossibly cosmic level.

If it were for the sake of filling her curiosity, Wakami would absolutely drag out of me a monster that I was fully unprepared to face on my own.

If it were Yui, we would at least face the horrid truth together.

After all, my way of living was as such: Don’t talk to me. Don’t close the distance. I didn’t want to read the emotions in my heart. As long as I could protect this fragile inner peace, that was all that mattered.

My first of my last sixteen school days at the Academy was coming to a close.

I had temporarily concluded the physical confrontations, and I had no added recourse or classmate to accompany me to my end. Frankly, it was because I’d rather be alone for this.

It was time to head home and take the full brunt of the world alone with my family.

Worst case, our shop would close by Golden Week. Anything other than this was a best-case scenario.