Prologue
What’s the most thrilling event in school life?
The cultural festival, the sports festival, the school trip—once you start listing them, there’s no end, but if we’re talking about a frequent, everyday sort of event, wouldn’t it be the ‘seat change’?
Wanting to spend high school life near your friends, hoping to get closer to your crush—those schemes and that heart-pounding excitement. Among the frequent events at school, it’s definitely one of the most thrilling.
…No, the ones enjoying it are just the yankees, the outgoing types.
Have you ever thought about the feelings of a loner, the opposite of those yankees?
Hoping for a seat in the corner of the classroom, wishing that at least the people around you are the quiet, second- or third-tier types who don’t stand out—that’s the mindset of a loner.
For a loner, the seat change is the most thrilling event in the opposite sense—a high-risk, almost no-reward event where you have to leave a seat you’ve finally gotten used to.
The heartache of a loner who has to leave that divine seat where they could quietly read light novels—only another loner in the same position could understand.
Yes, this is something only a loner like me could possibly comprehend.
And in my case, the seat I got next was, of all things…
“Hey! Let’s hit up Starbucks after school today! Airi, I wanna try the new frappuccino!”
“Starbucks again? I’m kinda broke this month, you know.”
“Hehe, then I’ll cover for you, Yuria. You’ll come if I do that, right?”
“W-Well… if Rui insists that much.”
“Then it’s settled! And also—”
The gazes of the three beautiful girls sitting to my left, right, and in front of me all turn toward me at once.
“Of course, Ryouta’s coming with us too, got it?”
Due to the seat change, I, a loner, somehow ended up surrounded by the three most beautiful girls in class.
And because of that, I ended up learning a certain secret of theirs, which led to me being surrounded by these three beauties in more ways than one.
Nobody could understand how I feel in this situation… no, correction, I’m absolutely the only one who could.
It all began on that day—that unlucky yet fortunate day.
