Editing NouCome: Volume 1 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 4===

“Ow...dammit.”

What waited for me at our destination was once again nothing but a torrent of violent insults and equally violent beatings.

“What are you trying to do to Yawakaze-san!” “To think someone from the Reject Five like you would want to talk to Kona-chan, wait a hundred more years instead!” “You dare say something like that to our dear Yawakaze-chan? Just die already!” “Oh? This guy’s butt actually looks pretty good.”

...I hope I misheard that last one.

Back to the topic, this defence is a little too exaggerated. Having guards patrolling around her during every single break is pretty much borderline stalking, right?

At long last, I managed to drag my aching body back to my classroom.

“Hoho~ I see that you’ve been taught a good lesson.”

Yuuouji sneered at me from her seat right behind mine.

“Amacchi, do you need my help?”

“With?”

“You know, with Kona-chan’s panties.”

What the hell is she talking about now?

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

She replied without an ounce of thought.

“Because it’s fun? Why, you...”

“Hmm? Is there something wrong? Would you like me to do boring things instead?”

Yuuouji replied defiantly, causing me to be momentarily at a loss for words. Using adjectives like fun and boring as objective standards for actions are clearly childish actions, contrary to her age.

As humans grow older, the burdens they have to carry increases, not to mention the behavior expected of them varies as well, thus the things they can do slowly decrease.

Sure, behavior expected of a high-schooler may not be comparable to that of, say, a social worker, but we still have such restrictions...sadly for Yuuouji, that doesn’t seem to be the case. How tragic.

“Let’s look at this from your position, are you sure you should be doing something like that? I’m trying to peek at your friend’s panties, you know?”

“Amacchi, your words don’t seem to match your actions.”

“Huh?”

Yuuouji didn’t give me a direct answer.

“Don’t you always say something weird or do weird things? I have a feeling that doesn’t seem to be the real you.”

My body tensed up unconsciously.

“But, it doesn’t seem like you’re acting or you have some sort of schizophrenic disorder, instead it feels like you’re being forced into doing these things, which is why that sense of reluctance is there. Are you hiding a secret?”

Yuuouji giggled as she finished her sentence.

I was speechless. She may not have guessed the existence of the Absolute Choices, but she was close enough.

“So, because you’re so interesting, let me observe you for a little longer!”

She suddenly darted forward until her forehead was mere centimeters from mine.

“Hey, what are you...!”

I hurriedly backed away.

Although Yuuouji is incredibly childish and immature, there’s no dispute that she’s unbelievably beautiful for her age.

Being a perfectly healthy and fit teenage male, there’s no way to resist such charm especially when it’s directly in front of me.

“Huh?”

Conversely, Yuuouji didn’t seem to notice anything, She...is she really sixteen?

No; even though she was somewhat short, her over-developed chest and the small snatch of waist revealed underneath her vest both indicated that she was way above the standard of that of a normal sixteen-year-old. It’s just that her brain’s somewhat undeveloped.

“Can’t you just...never mind, forget what I said.”

“Huh?”

Attempting to explain to her the attraction between people of the opposite sex would be like attempting to get a monkey to write Shakespeare. Her condition was so bad that sometimes I wonder whether she should just continue bathing with her parents or something.

“Heh. Amacchi, no matter how much you may hate it, you can’t escape me.”

Yuuouji seemed to have misunderstood my retreat. Despite the difference in character and gender, she still reminded me of a stereotypical harem male lead.

Every single time I see characters like those acting completely oblivious to various advances from all sorts of girls, I feel like killing someone.

Anyway, that’s just my pet peeve, back to the topic...Yuuouji made me realize that people like that might actually exist in the real world.

After seeing her manage to sniff out my predicaments so easily earlier, it’s genuinely hard to believe that she can have such a disparity between her intelligence and personality.

“Having went through this past month, I feel like I pretty much understand Amacchi now. I can tell that you weren’t lying earlier when you said you aren’t doing this for lecherous means.”

Yuuouji changed the subject in an instant, her tone dripping with confidence.

“I know that I shouldn’t be doing this, but do you really believe something as suspicious as that?”

“Is there anything strange about that? When two people have known each other for long enough, isn’t it only reasonable that they can read each other’s thoughts through gazes and gestures alone?”

The indignant and yet self-indulgent, honest tone that she spoke in made me question her state of mind yet again.

“Honestly, Konacchi has a very low immunity towards guys, so if we don’t hurry up to think of a way to peek at her panties, this might turn out poorly in future.”

Putting her panties aside, at least we saw eye-to-eye.

There aren’t exactly any students with actual disciplinary issues over here in Seiko High, and taking Yawakaze’s fan club into consideration as well, she shouldn’t be in any actual danger; but when she moves on to university in the big city, she might bump into some hooligans who would do weird things to her.

Well, if I were one of those hooligans I would definitely want to do weird things to her. Let me specify once again, only “If I were one of those hooligans”.

Speaking of which, Yuuouji’s brains only really shine when she’s thinking of helping others. Even if the subject matter is panties.

However, when the three of us including Yukihira are together, she seems to be able to understand all the dirty punchlines she makes, so it’s not that she doesn’t know about those things, it’s just that she fails to make the connection between those things to herself.

“Hmm, things are starting to get interesting.”

Yuuouji appeared as excited as a young child.

“Ah...”

As I saw her expression, I instantly realized why I felt a sense of familiarity from my very first conversation with Yawakaze.

It was because of Yuuouji.

Don’t misunderstand me, Yawakaze and Yuuouji are extremely different, in fact you could even call them polar opposites, but I’m not referring to anything material like appearances or actions. How should I put it, I’m referring to the essence of their beings.

Both of them could express their own true feelings without any modifications nor alterations. The closest adjective I can use to describe people like them is, well, pure.

This essence of theirs could be briefly glimpsed through every single action and movement of theirs. That was why these two people could give me the same impression despite being so different otherwise.
 
However, no matter how similar their qualities were, the nature of these qualities were extremely different, with Yawakaze being traditionally pure, in a sense.

“Hehe, Konacchi, just you wait and see how I’ll show your panties to the world.”

As I looked at Yuuouji who was sneering while contemplating how to get a guy to peek at her best friend’s panties, a strange phrase, ‘Impure purity’ surfaced in my mind.