Chapter 4: You Call Them 'Prey' Because You're Too Scared to Act Normal and Admit You Like Them

"I like you, Airi-chan-senpai! Please go out with—Woah!"

Kenta was a spontaneous man, so when he decided to lend an ear to his own nervous heart, it didn't matter that he was on the crosswalk. He had to confess then or forever remain silent.

Yet his confession was rudely interrupted by an incoming truck, and it was only by a whisker that the driver was able to avoid the young man.

But, his confession hadn't reach its target. The shocked gaze of the girl named Airi was enough proof. The incident just seconds ago had scared her, and she must have not heard Kenta well enough.

All he had to do was repeat the same words, but once was already too much for one of such a playful nature to get serious.

Still, Kobura Kenta slithered past his fears and bowed his head.

"Airi-sempai! I lo—"

"Stop! Don't say it again!"

A second time, he had been cut off, this time by the very girl he was talking to.

"That was about to turn ugly.... Good thing you're okay! Come on, let's go. Don't scare your friends like that..."

Thus, the line had been drawn clear for Kenta to see.

*****

"I'm not made for this, Haruto..."

To see your friend who had just gotten dumped try and pick himself up is a feeling Haruto couldn't wish on anyone. The feeling of powerlessness that came with it was unlike anything the boy had felt before.

Were he to fail an exam, he could blame himself for not learning enough. Were he to be dragged into a mishap and caught, he could blame the one who had dragged him. Were he to be punished unfairly, he could blame the one who had not lent him an ear.

Yet whom could Haruto blame now? When Kenta had finally gathered the courage to ask somebody out, that person was somebody so far out of his league that not even his father's devoted prayers could have given him a chance.

"This love game... I'm not fit for it. No, this whole society thing is a bit too much for a bumpkin like me from a forgotten village. How many years has it been now? And I'm still no closer to adapting to this place..."

In the end, Kenta didn't have anything to draw attention upon himself. His looks and the buzz cut he refused to grow out didn't take him far, and his lack of social skills could only push him deeper down the drain.

Even Yuurei, a ghost who was looking with pettiness in her eyes at the boy unloved by luck, avoided placing her invisible body on the same bench as him.

The boy wasn't repulsive, but maybe that was all the more frustrating. His curse was that every single piece that made the puzzle named Kenta screamed "nice guy," but none of them screamed "man."

"...So what?"

Yet, as far as Haruto was concerned, that was no reason to take pity on him.

"So what if Airi-senpai doesn't like you like that? That's just one high-maintenance girl who doesn't think you fit the bill. If anything, I'd be surprised to see anyone fit that girl's tastes!"

"Haruto..." the voices of both Yuurei and Kenta said at once, yet only one of them was aware of the coincidence.

"Kenta isn't for just anyone, you know?" the boy continued.

"It's King Kobra we are talking to, after all. Wouldn't it be weird if just any girl could tame the mighty beast?"

For a second, Haruto's speech seemed to work.

"Hah…can you really call a cobra who has failed to catch anything its whole life a 'mighty beast'?"

But Kenta's depression wasn't such an easygoing foe that it would turn tail and run away from so little provocation.

"Of course you can. You're my friend after all!"

From depression to confusion, Kenta changed expressions as if they were mere masks.

"That helps with absolutely no—"

"I'll stop you there before you say something hurtful."

Clearing his throat, Haruto stepped on the bench forgotten by time, its putrid wooden slabs barely holding his weight.

"It's me we're talking about here! Do you think I'd take just any country bumpkin as a friend?"

"You're looking for a fight or what—"

"Of course not! I'll only take the best loser around to be my friend! No two ways about it! You hear that? The best! And when somebody is the best at something, of course there will come a time when ladies will flock around! And even if they won't—"

"What do you mean they won't?—"

"The best is still the best! And even if King Kobra will never in his life catch the prey he is looking for, he will forever be King Kobra! The best loser there is! And that's no small feat, my friend."

Haruto finished his speech with a wink, and the silent garden... remained as silent as before.

But that was only for the unknowing ears, for in truth, somebody out there was clapping loudly. Yuurei, moved to tears by the speech that made little sense, clapped as if that was her last ever chance at clapping.

And, although not as moved, Kenta also found the spectacle funny enough for the corners of his mouth to turn up.

"Hah... I thought getting dumped was bad. How could I ever recover from having you tell me all this?..."

He couldn't recover, so Kenta had no choice but to accept these words. Thus the heartbroken one smiled.

"Hey... I heard there is a quiet spot around here..."

Suddenly two never-before-heard voices reached their ears. They were suave, girlish voices coming from two ladies walking around campus as they looked for the abandoned bench.

"Oh... I guess it's taken..." one of them said the second she came from behind the wall, but it was too late once they had come into view.

Now, with two ladies in front of him, Kenta's hair stood on end—a sign Haruto had long learned to read.

"Ladies! Have you come to gaze upon the great Ki—"

"Haruto! Stop!" a ghostly voice begged at the same time as King Kobra tried to introduce himself.

But in vain did Yuurei try to put herself between her darling and his friend. Haruto had already made up his mind, and one of the wooden bench slats passed through the girl's ghostly body and stopped only when it reached the back of King Kobra's head.

Needless to say, Kenta did not speak another word. He got to taste the grass, and these two girls kept away from Haruto ever since that day. Rumors went as far as to say that Kenta had been killed that day, and the one walking the campus now was a ghost.

The young aggressor had made peace with that the second he ripped the slat from the bench. It was but a small sacrifice, and he didn't think twice about it.

There was, however, one thing that stayed on his mind ever since that day, for Airi never struck him as the type of girl to turn someone down, especially since she hadn't met "King Kobra" yet when she did.

"Why did she all out refuse him?..."

Haruto was now in need of answers.