Chapter 1: Hirata Yousuke's Soliloquy

Chapter 1: Hirata Yousuke's Soliloquy

Chapter 1:

Hirata Yousuke’s Soliloquy

M Y FRIENDS IN MY CLASS are extremely important to me.

…Well, what I mean is, it’s the class that’s important to me. I’m well aware how bizarrely backward that statement sounds, but in order to protect my beloved friends, I will protect the class. If I can protect the class, I can protect my friends.

There are dozens of students in this class. There are as many perspectives present as there are people, and they clash over the smallest of things. But that’s why I have to protect them. Before I even realized it, protecting the class had become my purpose. My challenge.

But in truth…that wasn’t who I really was.

I hadn’t always been the kind of person a class rallied around. If anything, I was a shadow. If I had to describe it in terms of what Class C was like now, I’d say I was a lot like Ayanokouji-kun. That’s why I sometimes compare him to my old self. But I’ve changed.

After it happened, I suppose there was no way for me to not change…

When I was little, I had a really close friend. A friend who was in the same class as me all the way from kindergarten to junior high. Unbeknownst to me, that friend was being bullied. He then attempted to take his own life, and it was only by chance that he lived. He could easily have died.

That day. From that day, my destiny began to change.

I did what I could do to stop bullying…and I failed. Though we kept the class together, we did so in the wrong way. The in-fighting stopped, but so did the smiles. And now history was about to repeat itself in front of me.

I couldn’t make the same mistake again. That was the one thing I was sure of. The only way I could protect the class.

That—

I saw the surprised faces of my classmates in front of me.

“Horikita… Just shut up for a second.”

My words were rude, coarse, and stupid. My voice was filled with neither anger nor sadness. My classmates, Horikita-san included, looked me at strangely.

It didn’t matter, though.

Now that things had gotten to this point, it didn’t matter anymore.

At the end of the worst special exam, I… I…