Chapter 24: Onee-chan’s secret (1)
The air in Sakura High was thick with that pre-exam dread. Not the heavy, silent kind, but the buzzing, anxious sort that made everyone just a little bit more on edge. Even Tanaka seemed to feel it. She walked into class, slides already up on the smartboard, a cheerful "Morning, everyone!" that was met with a chorus of groans and mumbled replies. Just another regular day, ready to dive headfirst into quadratic equations.
Regular for most, anyway.
Haruto slumped in his chair, trying to look attentive, but his mind was about a million miles away from parabolas and polynomials. He was smart, probably smarter than he let on. The kind of smart where you could coast by, get good grades without actually trying all that hard. But today, even that wasn’t happening. His brain was just elsewhere... Specifically, it was stuck on last night. The details were fuzzy, like trying to remember a dream right after waking up, but the feeling of it, that weird, electric hum, was still lingering. Something about a flickering taste, Akiko’s whisper... And then just waking up, feeling like he’d missed something huge.
He traced circles on his desk with his thumb, completely oblivious to Tanaka rattling off formulas. Across the aisle, he could see Akari, one of the top students, meticulously copying down notes, her brow furrowed in concentration. Next to her, Kenji was already half-asleep, his head propped on his hand, a tiny trail of drool threatening to escape the corner of his mouth. Haruto almost snickered. Kenji was a legend for sleeping through anything, even her pop quizzes.
"Haruto?"
The sudden sound of his name snapped him out of his daze. He blinked, looking up to see Tanaka peering over her glasses, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. "Care to share with the class how you solve for ’x’ in this equation, or are you too busy contemplating the mysteries of the universe?"
A nervous titter went through the classroom. Haruto felt his cheeks warm slightly. "Uh, sorry, Sensei. Just... thinking."
"Thinking, are we?" Tanaka chuckled, not unkindly. "Well, let’s try thinking about this equation then." She pointed to a complex-looking problem on the board. Haruto squinted at it, his brain still not quite connecting.
Suddenly, a soft voice whispered next to him. "Haruto-kun, it’s a simple substitution. If y = 2x + 1, then you can plug that into the second equation."
He turned his head slightly to see Ayumi, her long, dark hair falling over her shoulder, a tiny pencil held delicately between her fingers. She was leaning in, close enough that he could smell her faint, sweet shampoo. Her eyes, usually so shy, were bright with a helpful, almost eager, glint. Another girl, Mika, on his other side, was also subtly nudging her notebook closer, pointing to her perfectly written notes with a reassuring smile.