Chapter 1:

Chapter 1 -- The Empty Seat

THREE OF A KIND: I Fell in Love With a Girl Who Has Three Heads

Rintarou had one goal for his first day at Harukaze High.

Find a good seat.

That was it. Not make friends, not leave a good impression, not start some new chapter of his life or whatever. Just a decent seat, preferably by the window, where he could sit quietly and not be bothered for the next year.

Simple. He was good at simple.

He got to Class 2-B ten minutes early, which he immediately regretted because it meant standing in the hallway doing nothing while other students walked past him in groups, already laughing, already comfortable, already part of things he had nothing to do with. The hallway smelled like floor cleaner and someone's breakfast. Posters covered the walls. A club recruitment flyer for the photography club had fallen halfway off and nobody had fixed it. The school rules sheet next to the door had a small drawing of a cat in the corner that definitely wasn't there originally.

He went in, looked around, and spotted it immediately. Window seat, third row, morning light coming in just right. Perfect. Still empty.

He started walking toward it.

"You're the transfer student?"

He stopped.

The guy sitting in the seat right behind the window was big, round faced, and eating a meat bun at eight in the morning with zero shame. He had the kind of smile that made you think he'd never had a bad conversation in his life.

"Kimura Daichi," he said, pointing at himself with the meat bun. "That seat's cursed by the way."

Rintarou looked at the seat. Normal chair. Normal desk. A little wobbly maybe.

"Cursed," he said.

"Nobody stays there." Kimura took a bite. "Well. Not for long."

"Why."

Kimura looked at the door and then back at him. "You'll see," he said.

Rintarou sat down anyway.

He had about four minutes of just existing peacefully by the window before the room got weird.

It started small. A conversation near the door stopped. Someone's chair scraped. Whispers moved through the room from back to front like a slow wave, and Rintarou followed everyone's eyes to the door and finally understood what Kimura meant.

The Kuroyama girls had arrived.

Okay so. He had heard about them before, kind of. It was hard not to. Harukaze wasn't that big of a city and "there's a girl with three heads at the high school" was the kind of thing that got around. He'd heard it mentioned twice before he transferred, once from his mom's coworker and once from a convenience store clerk who talked too much. He had figured it was probably an exaggeration.

It was not an exaggeration.

There were three of them, one body, moving together through the door like it was the most normal thing in the world, which for them it probably was. The one in the middle had straight black hair and grey eyes and was looking around the room in that specific careful way people look when they already know what they're going to see. The one on the left had pink messy hair and was already scanning the room like she was expecting someone to start something. The one on the right had short white hair and was holding a small notebook to her chest, calm, like none of this was any of her business.

The whole class had gone quiet.

Not normal first day quiet. Something heavier. The kind of quiet that had been there before, many times.

The homeroom teacher, a small woman with glasses pushed up on her head and a coffee thermos she was holding with both hands, cleared her throat.

"Kuroyama," she said. Her voice came out a little higher than it probably should have. "Your seat is in the third row. Next to... Mizushima."

All three heads turned toward the third row.

Toward the window seat.

Toward Rintarou.

He looked at them. Then at Kimura, who had stopped eating his meat bun and was watching him with an expression that said I told you and also please don't waste this.

The Kuroyama girls walked over. It was a smooth walk, like they'd been doing it their whole lives, which they had. The pink haired one was already looking at Rintarou like she hadn't decided what he was yet. The white haired one was writing in her notebook while walking, which was kind of impressive. The black haired one sat down, put her bag on the desk, folded her hands, and looked straight at the board.

The room was still watching.

Rintarou looked at his notebook. Then at his pencil case. Three pens, two highlighters, one broken eraser.

No sharpener. He had forgotten to replace it like two weeks ago.

He turned to his left.

"Hey," he said. "Do you have a sharpener? Mine ran out."

...

All three of them looked at him.

The black haired one like she was trying to figure something out. The pink haired one like he had just said the most unbelievable thing she had ever heard in her life. The white haired one like she had just written something down in her head.

"Are you SERIOUS right now--"

"Hana," said the white haired one. Just that. No expression.

Click.

Hana closed her mouth. Her eye twitched. Once. Twice. She looked away hard, like she was physically turning away from a thought she really liked.

The white haired one turned back to Rintarou like nothing had happened.

"I'm Yuki," she said. "Kuroyama Yuki." She nodded slightly to her left. "The one who almost yelled at you is Hana." Hana made a noise that wasn't quite a word. "And this is Sora."

Sora, the black haired one in the middle, reached into her pencil case without looking at him and put a sharpener on his desk. She gave the tiniest nod. That was apparently her version of a hello.

"Rintarou," he said. "Mizushima Rintarou."

Yuki wrote something in her notebook.

Hana was still looking at the wall.

Sora's hands went back to folded position the second she let go of the sharpener.

"Thanks," Rintarou said.

He used it. Gave it back. Opened his notebook.

The room slowly went back to being a room.

Whispers started up pretty quickly. Rintarou caught pieces without trying. Did he really not... does he know... I heard they switched schools three times because...

From somewhere to his right, a voice that was clearly used to being heard said, not quietly at all: "Unbelievable. They'll really let anyone sit there now."

He looked over. A girl with highlighted hair was looking at her nails. Nice uniform, perfect posture, the kind of face that always looked like it was performing something. Jessica, he would find out later. She didn't look up but the corner of her mouth did something small.

Rintarou looked back at his notebook.

Window seat. Working pencil. Good light.

Okay. Fine. This was fine.

Kimura found him at lunch and sat down across from him with his tray before even asking.

"Okay so," Kimura said. "You know that seat has been empty for like two semesters right."

"I didn't know that."

"People keep asking to move after the first week." He pointed a chopstick at Rintarou. It was clearly going to be a habit. "Not because the Kuroyama girls do anything. Just because sitting next to them makes you... you know. Visible."

"Visible."

"Like, everyone looks at you. All the time. To see how you're handling it."

Rintarou thought about this. "That sounds exhausting."

"It IS exhausting! That's why everyone moves!" Kimura put the chopstick down and leaned forward. "And you just sat there. First day. Didn't even react."

"I needed a sharpener."

Kimura stared at him for a long moment. Then he leaned back and shook his head slowly. "You're something else man. I mean it."

Rintarou looked toward the far end of the cafeteria. The Kuroyama girls were at a corner table. Just them. Sora was looking at her tray. Hana was frowning at something on her plate like it had personally offended her. Yuki was writing in that notebook again.

The table around them was empty. Not because there was no space. There was plenty of space.

Huh, he thought.

Two whole semesters.

He ate his lunch and didn't say anything else about it.

Last period the teacher handed out the permanent seating chart.

"Mizushima Rintarou, third row, second from the left."

He already knew. He sat down, put his bag down, got his notebook out.

To his left, three pairs of eyes were very carefully looking at anything that wasn't him.

"Guess we're neighbors for real now," he said.

Sora looked at her desk.

Hana looked at the wall. Something in her jaw was working hard.

Yuki looked at him for exactly four seconds, wrote something down, looked away.