Formation

“Good morning, Kazuki-kun!”

Turning over in my bed, Nishimura was once again just a few centimeters away from me. I rubbed my eyes a bit before the shock hit me.

“H-How’d you get in here?” I put distance between the two of us.

“The door was unlocked.” He smiled back at me.

Still, you should knock before entering. It’s just proper etiquette… Remembering what we last talked about, I asked him about it.

“So, do you have all the paperwork for the club?”

I’m glad you asked! His expression read without him having to say it.

“We just need two more members for us to be officially considered a club! I was thinking of asking Kobayashi-sensei to be our advisor…”

Two more members is double what we have now!

“So we have to go out and recruit members?”

“Yep!”

“And you don’t think that will be difficult?”

“It’s only two more members?”

I let out a heavy sigh.

“Say, Kazuki-kun, did you get another black eye?”

“…It’s a long story.”

Our walk to school was quick and quiet. Mostly because Nishimura was walking at double-time from excitement. As we waited for class to start, Nishimura stood by my desk.

“How are we going to recruit people anyway?”

Nishimura reached into his bag and pulled out several papers. Surprisingly, they were very detailed.

“Join the Sweets Connoisseurs Club!” It read, with several other bits of information. Each paper had a different drawing, depicting a different dessert. I immediately recognized the one with the cannoli on it.

“So we’re posting these in the hallways?”

“Yep.” He replied excitedly.

“Lets do it during lunch.”

He nodded in agreement and walked back to his seat. I laid my head down on my cool desk and silently waited for class to start.

“…It’s that kid.”

“The delinquent who was bullying…”

As I predicted, rumors of my skirmish yesterday were beginning to spread. I just kept my head low and tuned them out. I had already made a pretty good friend so even though everyone else thought negatively of me, I’d be fine.

“Psst, psst.”

I felt a light tapping on my back and turned to look to see who it was. To my surprise it was the girl I had bumped into not once, but twice. Apparently she sat right next to me. This was probably my first chance to get an actual good look at her. She was definitely on the attractive side. She had long dark hair that flowed endlessly over her back. Her eyes were a fluorescent black, if that makes sense. Almost like they had a purple hue. She had nice posture, which also accented her chest and curves.

“Class is about to start.” She whispered over to me again.

Dozing off was something usual of me.

“Th-Thanks.”

She looked down at her desk and opened her mouth to speak again.

“Um, I’ll try to get all the rumors settled about you… And also, is there anything else I can do to make up for it…”

I was about to reply with nothing, if she were able to correct the rumors about me that would be enough but another idea came to me.

“Do you have any clubs you’re joining?” I asked.

She tilted her head confused.

“Not really…?” She replied, her voice diminishing in confusion.

“Can you join a club that me and Nishimura-san are forming and maybe get a few friends to join as well?”

Before I could hear her reply, Kobayashi-sensei addressed the class and signaled for class to start.

The bell rang for lunch. Nishimura came over, papers in hand.

“Kazuki-kun, I’m gonna go ask Kobayashi-sensei right now, do you want to start putting these up?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Make sure to put them in main-“

I shushed and reassured him that it was all under control. Knowing how big a deal it was to him so there was no way I’d just mess it up.

Taking the papers out of his hand, I made my way out of the classroom.

“Umm…”

I turned around to find the girl from earlier following me. She took one of the recruitment posters out of my hand and looked at it.

“Do you need help putting these up… Um…”

“Inoue Kazuki, and yes, if you’d like.”

“My name is Okada Sayuri by the way.” She turned away, her cheeks were red.

We walked together through the halls, occasionally splitting up to put up the posters. For some reason I felt calm, despite the events that had transpired yesterday.

“Have you decided to join yet?” I looked over to her and asked.

“I don’t think I could convince any of my friends though…” She replied.

Her words lacked weight. She was probably trying to hold back the fact that she didn’t want to. I also didn’t want to force her either.

“You can say no, y’know.” I casually said as I put up one of the posters.

She continued to follow me. I couldn’t quite read her expression but she was in deep thought.

“I’ll join.” She answered after several minutes of work. “Under one condition.”