CH 2

Chapter 2 – A Busy Day

Translator: Hayashi

Editor: Ryubii

“Stand, bow.”

I made it through another day…

I’ve been at this school for three months, and each day I go to school, it feels as if I went to work.

As for friends… It’s a yes and no at the same time.

My friends were in my hometown, though I do keep in touch with them.

Then where am I?

I’ve left my hometown and I am now living alone.

Though, my aunt… my mother’s sister, lives in this town, but I wouldn’t contact her unless I had a reason to.

As for why I left, I was involved in a violent situation at my local junior high school.

However, I don’t think I did anything wrong at all.

I did it as retribution for making my childhood friend sad.

But after that I was isolated in class.

It’s not like I was bullied, everyone just avoided me… my friends, even my childhood friend.

That’s why I decided to leave my hometown and chose a high school outside of the prefecture.

But there was one condition, I had to choose this town where my aunt lived.

I somehow passed the entrance exam and enrolled.

And thus, here I am…

I thought I would do well over here.

Since no one knew about my middle school days, I thought I would just have a normal high school life.

But by some bad luck…

There were a bunch of morons in the class whose brains were still in middle school.

And what’s more they had to be in the same class as me.

To be honest, I was disappointed.

And then, just when the noise made by the morons started to become an eyesore, the rest of the class joined them in succession as if they were caught up for some unknown reason.

I hate dealing with those morons, and I didn’t want to be reminded of my middle school days when I saw them, so I ended up not engaging with any of them.

That’s when I found myself becoming isolated again.

Then one day, I found a letter in my shoebox.

Of course I was wary of being caught up in a prank, but even so, I headed to the designated rooftop.

The result was… as you guessed.

From then on, nothing else happened to me, and the bullying stopped.

…Well, if they decided to bully me further, I’m not going to keep quiet about it either.

It’s just that I’m being ignored and left alone.

I left the town I lived in with the intention of forgetting the past… but it ended up being the same.

Am I fated to be isolated?

If that is the case, I’ll take it to the very extreme and isolate myself.

Thus, I’ve decided not to deal with anyone at school.

Frankly, I knew it was a half-hearted attempt…

Surely someday someone will come along who will understand and accept me… That was the only hope I had not given up.

It was after school and I was watering the flower beds.

When I first came here, I couldn’t help but notice how wilted they were, so I sprinkled them with water.

Sometimes I also pull out weeds… because I have time anyway.

I don’t go here every day, but I come about once every two or three days.

It seemed that someone else was taking care of it besides me. The weeds had been pulled out recently and had been neatly removed.

Thus, I only watered it today using a hose with the sprinkler parts attached.

Today’s after school troubles didn’t end there.

I picked up a wallet on my way home.

Of course, I took it to the police station.

I’ve also had trouble losing my wallet before.

That’s how I know how gratifying it is to have it returned.

This kind of thing, you probably won’t understand until you experience it yourself.

What is it with today…

In front of the stairs of the shrine I sometimes visit, there is an old lady sitting there.

I clearly see her in front of me, and I don’t feel comfortable just walking past her.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but now that I’ve stopped and paid attention to her, I feel like the people around me are telling me that 「You should help her」.

In the end, I couldn’t just pass by and decided to call out to her.

“Grandma, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m just resting here for a bit because I have a lot of luggage.”

Looking at the luggage beside her, I saw shopping bags.

However, there appears to be a lot of things inside.

“Where do you live?”

“It’s the shrine at the top of these stairs.”

So she was from this shrine…

If that’s the case, I don’t think it would be a big deal to just carry it all the way up to her house.

“I’ll take care of your luggage. Will you be fine to walk now?”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine after taking a short break.”

Naturally, I understand that she would be reserved.

“I was going up there to pay my respects. So it’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

It was not my plan to go there today, but I have actually visited the shrine several times, so I guess it’s fine to just go along for the ride.

Grandma showed a slight sign of concern.

“Then, I’m sorry for the inconvenience, could you do me this favor?”

“Yes. I’ll take your luggage up then. Please climb up slowly.”

In situations like this, it’s better to grab the luggage as quickly as possible so as to not create any extra hesitations.

After grabbing all the bags at once, I walked up the stairs and went ahead.

Once I reached the peak, I checked on grandma, and then headed for what must be the main house.

After waiting for a while at the entrance, grandma finally arrived.

“Pardon me for making you carry all these…”

“No problem, I’ll leave them here. Then with this…”

“Ah…”

Of course I was aware that grandma was going to say something, but I don’t want her to owe me anything.

It’s not that I didn’t want to, but I just helped her out of some sort of obsessive-compulsiveness.

There was no kindness involved.

After that, I went down the stairs at once.

Ah… I forgot to pay my respects… oh well…