When many girls gather together, they will start gossiping regardless of the occasion.
No matter what the gossip is about, it will always start with "Have you heard?"
"Have you heard?"
At this moment, this sentence rang out in front of Shinomiya.
Shinomiya hadn't heard, but she had listened.
She frowned, about to tell the female classmate who had just sat down.
If you want to chat in the library, fine, but can you lower your voice?
This girl in front of her was named Nanase Haruka.
She was a classmate of Shizunomiya Natsuki.
She had a 'hot girl' vibe and wasn't very close with Shizunomiya Natsuki.
But the moment Shizunomiya Natsuki looked up, Nanase Haruka still caught her gaze.
"Oh? Shinomiya, are you interested too?"
The advantage of a 'hot girl' was her personality; she could strike up a conversation with anyone.
However, Nanase Haruka's tone, rather than being an inquiry, was more like a sarcastic "I didn't expect a good student like you to be interested in such things."
"Not interested," Shizunomiya Natsuki said. "I just hope you can speak a little softer when you talk."
"...Huh?" The hot girl next to Nanase Haruka made an annoyed clicking sound with her tongue.
Just as Shinomiya was about to speak, she first noticed Yamano Yuta's shoulder next to her twitch slightly.
He probably wasn't really asleep, and he had also heard the small dispute between Shizunomiya Natsuki and Nanase Haruka.
He probably even noticed Shizunomiya Natsuki's gaze on him, because Shinomiya clearly saw his eyes, hidden by his eyelids, move unnaturally when her gaze fell on Yamano Yuta.
But, even so, he still pretended to be sound asleep.
Shinomiya sighed, not expecting Yuta-kun to say anything.
However, Nanase Haruka didn't make things too difficult.
She looked at the other students who were studying around them and actively stood up:
"Forget it, I won't disturb the good students from studying. Let's go outside and talk... It's about Tamura..."
"Tamura,"
When this name reached Shizunomiya Natsuki's ears, her pupils trembled.
It was as if a switch had been flipped.
She slammed her hands on the table with a "bang."
Bang, a loud noise.
It made Yamano Yuta, who was pretending to sleep to avoid trouble, jolt, unable to keep up the pretense. He could only look left and right, showing the confusion of someone just waking up.
"What happened?" he asked.
"What happened to Tamura?"
Shizunomiya Natsuki, uncharacteristically, ignored Yamano Yuta and instead stared directly at Nanase Haruka, pressing her for answers.
Her commotion was quite loud, not only attracting the attention of others, but even Nanase Haruka, when she turned around, had a look of great astonishment and surprise in her eyes.
She had just said... "speak softer when you talk," hadn't she?
Nanase Haruka originally wanted to mock her, but seeing Shizunomiya Natsuki's piercing gaze, truly caring, she didn't drag it out further and instead spoke frankly:
"Tamura was beaten up. Speaking of which, this seems to be the second time, right? Once yesterday, once today... Did he provoke someone he shouldn't have? How funny."
From the moment she heard the name "Tamura," Shizunomiya Natsuki had a faint feeling it might be related to someone.
Now that she heard the details, this suspicion grew stronger.
"Who beat him up?"
"Huh? How would I know something like that? Weird~~~" Nanase Haruka seemed to disdainfully pick at her ear.
"You don't know?"
"You're really weird," Nanase Haruka said with increasing impatience and annoyance. "Anyway, when Tamura was found, he was already unconscious by the window of the teaching building, and there was no one around."
"Wow, you actually didn't help him up," her sister said. Although she was blaming Nanase Haruka, she kept giggling when she spoke, as if she had heard something very amusing...
"Nonsense, what if you try to extort me?" Nanase Haruka said, smacking her lips.
"There's no surveillance there, how could he extort you without evidence?" her sister asked.
"Stupid. When there's no evidence, you listen to the person in a higher position. He's a teacher, how can I, as a student, fight him?" Nanase Haruka said. After a friendly exchange with her sister, she asked Shizunomiya Natsuki, "Do you need anything else?"
"...No," Shizunomiya Natsuki said, then sat back down.
"Weird," Nanase Haruka said.
Although Shizunomiya Natsuki's table-slamming attracted a lot of attention, she ignored it.
Because she was thinking about other things.
She was almost certain that the "culprit" who caused Tamura's suffering today was the same person as yesterday, which was Hayato.
Shizunomiya Natsuki had initially thought that after Hayato taught Tamura a lesson, he would come to her to claim credit and improve his favorability.
But on the second day... which was today, he didn't even appear in front of her.
And as for this second injury to Tamura, she initially suspected whether Hayato had deliberately found someone to spread this news to her ears. This way, he could remotely increase his favorability.
Now it seemed that wasn't the case... If it were, Nanase Haruka wouldn't have been unable to even name the person who beat Tamura.
From another perspective, it meant that Hayato was actually at school today.
Did he not come to flaunt himself in front of her because her coldness yesterday made him realize that she wasn't interested in him?
But even knowing it was futile, he still went and beat Tamura again to vent her anger—other than that, Shizunomiya Natsuki really couldn't find any reason why Hayato would attack Tamura, a boy from a big city who hadn't even been in Yaso Inaba for two days.
He should never have heard the name Tamura before.
And all of this, if Nanase Haruka hadn't happened to be sitting in front of her today, Shizunomiya Natsuki would never have known.
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