After the Fight
“Are you sure we can leave them like that? “
Shiki asks Karin as they leave the parking lot.
He was referring to Kawato and the others.
“It’s okay, they’re fine. They will wake up on their own, get depressed on their own, and go home on their own. Well, if someone sees us fighting and calls the police, we might be in trouble.”
He doesn’t think that would be all right, but after being bullied so much, Shiki was hoping that the police would take care of them.
After walking for a while, he heard a voice when they came to the main street.
“Ah! Karin-senpai! “
Karin’s junior, the dark-haired girl whom Shiki saved from Kawato and the others, smiles and waves toward them.
She rushes through the crowd――and falls down in front of Shiki, head-sliding in a flashy way.
Such a thing on the side of the main street would inevitably attract a lot of attention. Then Shiki twists his head as he sees the eyes of the crowd shift from the girl to him.
He is aware of the fact that he does not have any characteristics that would attract the attention of others, so he is puzzled by the crowd’s stares.
“You guys, come here for a second.”
Karin is the only one who panics, then she takes Shiki’s and the girl’s hands and starts walking away, dragging them with her.
They leave the main street as the two of them are pulled and arrive at a park that is, as anyone would say, very deserted.
Shiki, wanting to know why he was attracting so much attention, almost opens her mouth to Karin when the dark-haired girl says,
“Waa! Look at you, you’re badly hurt! “
Shiki finally understands when the dark-haired girl screams.
Kawato had beaten his face a lot.
Though knowing his face was bruised and swollen was not particularly strange.
“Rather, you’re too calm. Before, you were in pain even when you tried to speak.”
It’s true that he was suffering from unaccustomed pain right after he was hit… even though there is a difference between the stomach and the face, maybe he was accustomed to pain quickly because he is used to being punched in the stomach.
It was a sad, new discovery of himself when he thought about it.
“W-w-w-we have to disinfect it first!”
While Shiki looked away, the dark-haired girl busily went through her shoulder bag and took out a small container of antiseptic solution and gauze.
She then tries to soak the gauze with the disinfectant.
“H-huh? “
She pushes her finger into the tilted container, but no disinfectant comes out, and the girl starts panicking even more.
“W-why? There should be more disinfectant in this bottle! “
The girl, sounding more and more panicked, starts to peek into the disinfectant container with the bottle tilted down.
Shiki and Karin, who had a vision of the disaster that was about to happen the next moment, rush to stop her, but they are a little too late.
“Gyaa――――! “
The girl faints in agony as the disinfectant spurts out in a gush and hits her in the eye.
Just peering into the spout from below was dangerous, but neither Shiki nor Karin could see the future when she would push the container further into her eye to make the disinfectant spurt out from it.
“You idiot――――! “
“Ah, quickly get to the water fountain! “
Fifteen minutes later――
“I apologize! And please accept my deepest gratitude for saving me! “
The girl――Haruno Momozono――bows her head toward Shiki, her eyes still bloodshot even after being washed with water.
“No, uh, Kohinata-san also saved me, and Momozono-san already gave me first aid, so there’s no need to speak so formally to me.”
True to his word, Shiki followed Haruno’s instructions to refill the ice she bought into two sheets of plastic bought at a convenience store and wrap them in a towel, which he then pressed against both his cheeks where Kawato had beaten him severely.
Aside from the fact that it was uncomfortable for him to have Karin and Haruno press it for him, Haruno’s treatment was so appropriate that it was hard to believe what had just happened.
“Haruno’s parents are both doctors. She’s pretty good at this kind of thing――”
“I’m a klutz and get hurt easily, so my mom and dad told me over and over again [This is the one thing you must learn.] That’s why I’m used to this kind of simple first aid.”
Haruno talks openly about something that could be described as a shameful part of her.
Karin held her head in one hand as if she wanted to say, [You didn’t have to tell him that.]
Incidentally, Haruno’s bag was filled with gauze, bandages, plasters, and disinfectant to the extent that it can be called a small first-aid kit.
Shiki thinks that her parents probably put and prepared this in her bag.
Karin said, [Well, anyway.] she prefaced her words as if she was trying to sort the situation and then pointed at Shiki with the iron fan that she had taken out of her pocket.
“Let me introduce you again. This is Orifushi Shiki. He’s in the same grade as me and we go to the same school. For Haruno, he’s a senior――”
She then points at Haruno and continues,
“This girl is Haruno Momozono. I probably don’t need to tell you this, but she’s in the same school as us, and she’s one grade below us.”
“Yes! I am Karin-senpai’s junior!”
Haruno says happily, but when he compares her and Karin, he can’t help but notice that Haruno looks more like a senior than Karin, if only in terms of appearance.
Karin herself is about average height for her age and has a face appropriate for her age. It is simply that Haruno’s appearance is so mature that she does not look like a high school student to him. It is hard to believe that she was a junior high school student until half a month ago.
But that’s only if she were standing there silently because there are many points where it is understandable that she was a junior high school student aside from her appearance.
“I don’t know if I should say this, but she doesn’t look like she belongs at St. Lukimantz Academy.”
” I know, right? I already told her to go to the other school too…”
Shiki had expected they had only known each other for less than half a month, but after hearing these words, he realized that this Senpai-Kouhai relationship had been going on since before Haruno enrolled at St. Lukimantz Academy.
