Ignoring the two who had started bickering, Tsuna pulled out his phone from his pocket and began browsing.
After a while, Takagi and Nishikata entered the classroom one after the other through the back door, and Ajitani immediately noticed them.
However, she knew it wasn't the time to speak yet.
After they greeted each other, the sharp-eyed Nishikata immediately noticed Tsuna's abnormality that day and asked curiously:
"Miyamura, what's going on with your upper lip?"
The three's gazes were drawn to Tsuna's face at his words. Only Shouko quietly lowered her head, a little afraid to meet a certain person's eyes.
She hadn't expected it to be noticed so quickly, and the key was that Nishikata noticed it first...
Tsuna noticed Shouko's ostrich-like behavior and her reddened ears, and waved his hand casually:
"I wasn't paying attention last night, got bitten by a cockroach."
"..."
The three didn't believe the story and subtly distanced themselves from him a little.
Shouko suddenly raised her hand and lightly slapped Tsuna's arm with a "pat," not with much force.
Only her wandering gaze and increasingly red ear tips made Takagi and Ajitani, who were nearby, guess the general truth of the matter.
As for Nishikata...
He was still wondering what kind of cockroach could be so fierce as to bite Tsuna when he wasn't paying attention. He even began to suspect if Tsuna would turn into 'Cockroach Man' later.
As for Shouko's light slap, he took it as part of their daily bickering.
Ignoring the bickering duo, Ajitani pulled her chair to the aisle between Nishikata and Takagi and sat down:
"Takagi-chan, do you know?"
"Know what?" Takagi looked at her with curiosity.
Ajitani didn't speak, her eyes constantly giving her hints, constantly glancing at the two in front.
"Class monitor, are your eyes uncomfortable? Is it twitching? I brought eye drops today. Do you want some?"
"Pfft..." Takagi quickly covered her mouth.
Ajitani suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at Nishikata. After all, he meant well and was concerned about her, so she chuckled and brushed it off:
"No need, you can keep them for yourself. My eyes are fine."
After speaking, she repeated her previous actions. This time, the smarter Nishikata chose to play with his phone.
There were still more than ten minutes until class, and he didn't want to leave his seat either.
Finally, Takagi couldn't stand her winking and refusing to speak, so she slapped her to make her return to normal:
"Ajitani-chan, just say what you want to say. Like this, I can't guess what you mean…"
Seeing that she couldn't get the fun she wanted and with her eyes feeling a little sore, Ajitani repeated Shouko's previous words in the calmest tone.
"Oh…"
"Why are you reacting like this?"
Ajitani saw her so calm and, still unconvinced, reached out and fiddled with Takagi's expression: "Shouldn't you be very surprised after hearing it?"
"Sh-should I?"
"Shouldn't you? The two of them are together!"
"Clatter...!"
The two looked at the left seat at the same time. Nishikata's phone had fallen to the ground. Ajitani saw his surprised expression and felt that his was the normal reaction.
Then she pointed at him: "Takagi-chan, I still think Nishikata's reaction is normal, okay?"
"Hmmm…"
"Ajitani-chan, think back. Before they were together, every time we went out, didn't their intimate actions look like a couple?"
Seeing her rubbing her temples and trying hard to recall, Takagi added: "Besides kissing, when did it not look like a couple in a relationship?
And if you tell others, their reaction should be similar to mine."
As she finished speaking, Takagi's peripheral vision noticed him picking up his phone with a pained expression, feeling a bit inexplicably amused. "Except for Nishikata."
"Hiss…"
"Seems to make some sense?" Saying that, in order to verify Takagi's statement, she stood up and quickly plunged into the Girl's small group in the front row of the classroom.
"Everyone, I have something important to say!"
"No class today?"
"Next week's school festival canceled?"
"The school started assigning boyfriends?"
"Kimura is going to hold a concert again to pay off debts??"
"Abe Shinzo and Yamagami Tetsuya are reconciled?"
Looking at the five people in front of her getting more and more outrageous, Ajitani quickly interrupted: "What are you thinking? Except for what Rinko said, one is more outrageous than the other…"
Before the others could question or retort, Ajitani blurted out what she had been holding in her heart:
"Shouko and Miyamura are together, planning to get married as soon as they graduate from university, and they are already engaged."
Afraid of not surprising them, Ajitani unconsciously modified the content 'a little bit' and still felt it was not much different from the truth.
"What?"
"Are you sure what you said isn't more outrageous than what we said?"
"Ajitani, where did you hear this news from?"
Rinko, who saw through her lie at a glance, removed the two most outrageous sentences, came to a conclusion, and then asked the doubt in her heart:
"So the two of them are really together?"
Ajitani nodded, which was met with surprised little expressions from the five people. She was secretly pleased, thinking that Takagi-chan was wrong.
Only... her heart felt a little strange, suddenly feeling like something was off.
The news of Tsuna and Shouko being together spread throughout almost the entire class within a few minutes.
During one class, Tsuna also noticed that more gazes were directed toward their back row, and he was a bit confused.
It wasn't until after class, when the girls gathered around Shouko to chat, that he roughly understood the whole story, which was largely thanks to Ajitani's short ten minutes of effort.
Looking at her proud little expression, wanting to show off to Tsuna that it was her masterpiece, he just felt exceptionally speechless.
---
"Yumi, are you okay...?"
In an inconspicuous corner of the classroom, a blue-haired girl looked worriedly at her friend in the next seat.
"Huh?"
The girl, who had been lowering her head and clutching a pink envelope, looked up in surprise, instantly meeting her friend's worried gaze, and quickly waved her hand to indicate:
"I'm fine."
Saying that, she even raised a smile at the girl in front of her, patting her chest to reassure her: "I'm really fine, really!"
"…"
"Then... do you still want me to help you send this letter...?"
"No need." The pale-haired girl shook her head, "That letter is useless now."
"Sigh... If only I had known yesterday—"
"Even if it was a week or two earlier, I don't think it would have been possible. It's just a lingering thought in my heart."
"..."
The girl's regretful gaze looked towards a certain person who had escaped to the corridor to keep watch.
---
"Thump thump...!"
"Alright everyone, that's enough for today. Tomorrow we'll start setting up the props."
Nanase-sensei knocked on the wooden door of the dance studio and only entered after the people inside stopped their rehearsal.