Popular Vote PART 1

PART ONE

I, Sakai Rumi. Was on my way home from school which had ended an hour ago.

Tomorrow is the day that we will know who will be the most popular boy and girl. Of course, this is going to be me. I will be chosen as the most popular girl, but how do I know this for sure? It’s easy; I look at the majority of the boys in school with my specialty, love eyes. All I need to do to steal a boy’s heart is to look directly in their eyes for a short moment and they are mine! Why do I do this? Just to waste some time, having a boring school life is not something for me, I like fun and excitement. Crushing every male spirit that starts confessing to me is like the cherry on top! Me being in their mind the whole time is the key to being chosen by them when the voting phase starts.

Normally I wouldn’t care to be the popular person in school but a week ago I received important information about the ‘hidden’ privileges and I somewhat got very interested in this. The reason for that is that I can make this guy’s life in school miserable with these ’hidden’ privileges. This boy, Nage Gazo, I can’t help but think only about him.

Why?…

Did I change?…

Me?...

No that isn’t the case, my life was perfect but it changed the moment this guy showed up. I tried to get his heart but this was the first time in my life that I didn’t get what I wanted. And was shocked to find out that my love eyes didn’t work on a boy.

After I get chosen as the popular girl I will start my plan to steal his heart, and then crush it for making me suffer these weeks. Just wait Nage Gazo…

PART TWO

It is 7:30 AM.

I, Nage Gazo. Just entered the subway and sat down on a nearby chair, but I felt that someone was watching me I looked around and found out that it was Sashi Mai, the friend of Nakata-kun’s girlfriend. I showed no emotion and continued my stare outside the window from the moving subway.

Today is the day that the popular boy and girl get chosen, I wonder what kind of ‘hidden’ privileges there are for these individuals but I only get to know them if I get chosen as the most popular boy in the school.

“Er-Errhhm— Excuse me can I sit next to you?” The girl with the ponytail asked.

This girl just asked to sit next to me, the seat isn’t reserved for anyone as I don’t have any friends so that wasn’t the problem. The fact is that this beautiful girl wants to sit next to me, this girl is Sashi Mai. I knew her because sometimes we sat together in the cafeteria.

“You are free to sit wherever you want Sashi-san.”

I don’t care if someone sits next to me, this won’t ruin my day.

She took the seat next to mine, but when she sat down she touched my elbow. This resulted in a little screech from her, “AHHH— Sorry for that.” She immediately said while her cheeks were red as a fully ripe tomato.

“It’s nothing… don’t worry.”

It’s normal if you sit close next to someone touching the other’s body is something you can’t help with that distance. Being this close to this girl I smelled this flower aroma, Perfume perhaps? This was the first time I smelled this kind of perfume, it smelled so nice it must have been really expensive.

It was quiet for a couple of minutes, during this time she continued to stare straight ahead not moving her head even an inch. And me just looking at the buildings behind the windows.

“How’s your family doing?” She asked bluntly.

I continued to stare outside and replied, “They are fine, my parents live across the country so I don’t see them that much.”

She looked surprised to hear that.

“You live alone?” She asked.

“No,” I replied. At that moment I wanted to continue talking more about my situation with my aunty because I didn’t want her to think I was living like a jackal alone, but then she spoke. “So you do live with your girlfriend…” She said with a sad tone while looking a little bit down.

I couldn’t believe what I just heard, and turned my head around to look at her.

“Girlfriend? What do you mean by that, I clearly stated that I don’t have a girlfriend.” I said to her.

She turned her head up to look at me.

“Whaaat?— You didn’t lie about that?” she said surprised and continued, “last week there was this rumor that started going around about you living together with your girlfriend in this apartment. You see, someone saw you entering an apartment and they saw this girl and came to the conclusion that you lived at your girlfriend’s house.”

That must have been the time when I visited my Aunty’s apartment to ask her for the ‘favor’ and Azumi opened the door. Someone started this rumor to put me off deliberately.

“Now I live together with my aunt and cousin, that means that this person saw me entering my aunt’s house and thought that my cousin must’ve been my girlfriend when she opened the door,” I explained to her.

After she heard that she felt more comfortable it was almost like a burden that was lifted from her shoulders.

“I will vote for you Nage-kun, to be the most popular boy in the school.” She said.

I again was surprised to hear something like this.

“Why’s that?” I asked formally.

She took a couple of seconds to respond, “I just think that you could benefit from all those privileges that you get from acquiring that popular spot…— And if I had to choose one boy then I would choose you.” She said bravely while looking directly at my eyes but immediately after she looked back straight ahead while feeling embarrassed from that moment of honesty.

I thought it looked rather cute.

At the moment of me thinking this, I noticed that she had a little scar behind her left ear it had the size of a fingernail. I couldn’t help but ask about it because I have never seen this kind of scar before it looked like the one you get by birth instead of getting it from a wound.

“You have this strange scar behind your ear, you didn’t have an accident or something of the sort that got you that?” I asked interested.

She immediately covered her scar with her hand when she heard me asking her about it. But withdrew that same hand when she looked me in the eyes.

“No, I got it by birth. It’s the same for all my siblings they also have the same scar on the same spot, behind the left ear.” She said.

I didn’t know she had siblings, she had never talked about her family during lunch so this was new for me.

After confirming my theory I started to ask her something different, “do you think I have a chance for the most popular boy spot?” I ask her this because I just don’t see myself winning a voting contest like this one.

She immediately replied with these bright eyes that were staring directly at me, “Yes, I do!” and she continued. “I already heard from a lot of girls that they also were going to choose you as their vote.”

This was something that I didn’t know, so the majority of the girls are going to vote for me. That’s good and bad news… The bad news is that this is going to be something completely against my code: ‘Don’t Stand Out’. I don’t like to draw any unnecessary attention and being the most popular boy in school means that I will get a lot of eyes on me during my school time. But this isn’t something that I can control if that was the case I would never let it pass. But that being the case means that I don’t have a choice if I do get chosen as the popular dude.

The good news is that I will get to know the ‘hidden’ privileges and use them along with the ‘known’ privileges to benefit a little bit during my school time.

We arrived at our stop and got out together. During the time on the subway I got to know a lot more about Sashi-san, that she was a rather easy person to talk to and that she comes from a rich family and that she has brothers and sisters, and also that she can gather some important information within school.