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● April 7th (Thursday) – Asamura Yuuta
I’d used a tablet in class before, but I’d never been told to buy my own laptop until now. They said it was for creating and submitting reports, and while the official word was ‘recommended,’ it felt more like ‘required.’ So, I’d gone ahead and bought one back in March. Even though I have a desktop at home, this was my first laptop, and the novelty hadn’t worn off. The keys were light to the touch, the screen was small, but its portability was an undeniable advantage. I could take it anywhere.
April 7th. My university life was finally beginning.
They’d told us to bring our laptops on the very first day, and as I stepped into the classroom, I was immediately struck by the problem of where to sit. The only other time I’d been in a university lecture hall was for entrance exams, and back then, the seats were assigned. It had never occurred to me that, just like at a prep school, you could just sit wherever you wanted.
As you might expect, the seats near the front—where it would be easiest to hear the lecturer—were already completely full. Crap, am I late? I thought in a panic. Reluctantly, I found an empty spot in one of the middle rows. There was no particular reason for the choice; it was simply available.
To my left sat a guy with golden hair.
“Is this spot taken?” I asked.
“Nah, it’s free,” he replied. His accent was distinctly from the Kansai region, probably Osaka-ben, I guessed. It felt a little nostalgic, maybe because my graduation trip had been to Osaka.
“What’s up?” he asked, noticing my stare.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” I said, sitting down and pulling my laptop from my bag. “Are you from Kansai?”
“Ah, ya notice?” he said, his speech a curious mix of dialects. “I’m tryin’ to match the local way of speakin’, but it just ends up soundin’ all weird, y’know.”
So that’s why his Kansai dialect sounds a little off.
“I don’t think it’s weird at all,” I replied. “I was just in Osaka recently, so it felt familiar.”
At my words, the guy—whose blond hair, I now noticed, was streaked with black mesh highlights—broke into a wide grin. He was tall with a solid build and had seemed intimidating at first, but his smile erased that impression completely, making his face, which I’d initially thought looked older than mine, seem almost boyish.
“Oh, for real? The food was awesome, right?”
“Yeah, it was delicious.”
“Tokyo’s gotta step up its game, y’know? The food here is terrible. Not tasty at all!”
“You think it’s that bad?”
“I’ve been here for ‘bout a week now, and every single day, I’m just screamin’, Agh, I ate somethin’ gross again!”
“No way.”
“Back home, I could eat three servings of anything, y’know. Here, two is my limit. Seriously, they gotta try a little harder—”
His tirade was cut short by a quiet question from my right.
“Is this spot… okay?”
I turned to see a young man who was the complete opposite of my blond neighbor. He was slim with sleepy eyes, standing there with a dazed expression. His skin was pale to the point of being almost unhealthily pallid, and his longish black hair was tied back in a half-up style with a thin cord.
“It was open, so I think it’s fine,” I said.
“I see… Thanks,” he muttered, sitting down silently. The moment he was seated, he pulled a smartphone from his pocket and his thumbs began to fly across the screen. Huh? Um…
“What?” he asked, not looking up.
“Ah, no. It’s just… class is about to start.”
“The lecturer isn’t here yet. I don’t want to waste time. I haven’t cleared my dailies, you see.”
“Dailies…?”
“Right. There are three enemies I haven’t cleared…”
I glanced at his hands and saw a game on the screen, and it clicked. Ah, he means daily quests. The little tasks designed to make playing the game a daily habit. I don’t play many games myself, but I knew the term because Maru had invited me to play a PC game with him a few times.
“Whoa, what a gloomy dude,” the blond guy commented from my left.
The slim guy’s thumbs paused. “Is that something you say to someone you’ve just met? It’s rude.”
“What’d you say?”
“Is there a problem?”
Wait, wait, wait. Why are they suddenly starting a fight on either side of me?
I glanced back and forth between them, trying to figure out how to de-escalate the situation, but just then, the door at the front of the room slid open, and a man who appeared to be the lecturer walked in.
Of course, since we hadn’t even chosen our courses yet, a proper lecture wasn’t about to begin. The man was here to explain the course registration process, handing out instructional papers and giving a brief overview. What impressed me was that we were expected to use our laptops to register online right then and there, rather than filling out paperwork.
So they want us to use our laptops right from the get-go, huh.
University is a place where if you don’t get the credits, you don’t graduate. It’s as simple as that. As expected, even the bickering pair beside me quieted down and listened intently to the instructions. We all took out our laptops and began registering for our courses.
After I’d finished the process, I glanced around the classroom again. It seemed that by some twist of fate, the two people sitting to my left and right were easily the most stand-out individuals in the entire room.
And I have to wonder what kind of coincidence led to us all being invited to the same freshman welcome party, where we would meet again.
I had been hoping I’d have new encounters in university, like the ones I had with Maru and Narasaka-san.
I had been hoping, but I never imagined it would turn out to be this kind of encounter.
