Unsurprisingly, having joined the club for such a stupid reason, I ended up playing solitaire through every meeting. And during any group free time, I played cards in the crowded office with the upperclassman. What in the hell were we doing? Obviously, we could have been focusing on other, more important things.

Well, that doesn’t matter at all anymore. The past is the past.

Anyway, it happened after school on one of those club days. My classmate and I were walking along the first-floor hallway that faced the central courtyard. Suddenly, she pointed at one of the corners of the courtyard. “Over there!”

“Hey, that’s bullying, isn’t it?”

Several students had surrounded a boy wearing a middle school uniform. They were punching him in the stomach.

A weak smile appeared on the face of the boy being bullied. The ones doing the bullying, too, smiled broadly. It was the kind of scene you often saw.

“That’s terrible.” The cute girl broke the silence. A very empathetic person, she made a face as though she honestly felt sorry for him—at which point, an amazing idea flashed through my mind: I could show her how cool I was.

“Shall I go help him?”

“You would do that?”

I nodded. I figured that middle school brats shouldn’t be any problem at all. Of course, that ended up being a huge miscalculation.

It was fine when I yelled the slogan, “Bullying isn’t cool!” and waded into the fray. Not only did I get beat up, the group of bullies also got away. The girl looked at me in disgust, and the victim continued to be bullied for the entire year, so my actions were completely fruitless.

Nevertheless, Yamazaki, the boy who had been bullied, seemed to respect me—though I didn’t know what kind of mistaken impression he was under. He even joined the literary club as soon as he moved up to the high school division.

By that time, I was already a third-year student. Since the older girl had graduated, I had absolutely no desire to do anything. Thus, I set him up as the president so I could focus on my entrance exam studies.

Then, just like that, I simply graduated.

Except for talking to him two or three times at the graduation ceremony, I hadn’t heard from Yamazaki at all since then—at least, not until this moment.

In the middle of his own six-mat, one-room apartment, Yamazaki was in exaggeratedly high spirits. He hadn’t changed at all since I had last seen him. He remained slender, with hair as light as a Russian’s. At first, he seemed to have become somewhat more masculine; that turned out not to be the case, though. He appeared to be a weak young man, with little combat potential.

“You? Is it really you?”