Golden Time:Volume4 Prologue
Status: Incomplete
47% completed (estimated)
Golden Time 4: Prologue
Prologue
Since that Wednesday, ten days had passed.
Two hundred and forty hours.
Had he noticed the way time was passing, it was already the second Friday since then. As Banri headed to the staff room, his sports bag slung over his uniformed shoulder, a soundless chill ran up his back.
The school building in midwinter, past 7pm, was quietly getting dark and chilly. The other students were already gone from sight. All the lights had been turned off except for the staff-room, and walking alone in the corridor his slippered feet were illuminated by the green emergency lights.
In time with Banri's steps, the clubroom keys in his hand jingled. Of green and of yellow, it seemed that when the two plastic tags hit each other they made a noise. It was such a little sound, he had not noticed it before.
Accounting for and inspecting the equipment after club activities, being in charge of returning the clubroom keys to the staffroom after everybody had left, was what in the running club was called being the "Last Act", and the second years had come to take turns in doing it. Up to now Banri had done it many times, but it was perhaps the first time he'd done it by himself.
Perhaps, or rather, for sure. It was the first time.
Banri's feet stopped for a moment. Until now, Linda had gone with him every time. When it was Banri's turn to be Last Act, Linda had come with him.
It had already been ten days since then. So many days had passed because he had come to ignore Linda.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the week opening, Monday, Tuesday, a second Wednesday, with Thursday, and then today Friday--- counting them inside his head as if to make sure, once more his feet moved. When he stepped forward, he grabbed the strap to his slipping bag, putting it back in place with a grunt. It would be like this from now on, he'd decided. ...Thinking about it over and over, as if convincing himself, was strangely upsetting.
Telling himself he would not feel anything, Banri firmly sealed his slightly chapped lips. Staying disinterested, silent, he would do as he had decided. Alone, resolute, he lifted his eyes.
He would never, not another time, say another word to Linda. He would not be concerned with Hayashida Nana.
The staff-room door opened at his soft knock and he went inside.
To Banri, who had been walking alone in the cold dark corridor, the flourescent lighting in the room was too bright. It dazzled his eyes. And the heat was working too hard, which made the air too dry. While blinking over and over, he hung the keys up on the wall right next to where he entered.
"Excuse mee, I'm back from the running cluub. Thank you very muuch."
Dipping his head in the direction of an apathetic teacher’s voice, without skipping a beat he made his exit as if he were being drawn from behind and closed the door.
And then again, the chilly, dark, silent corridor. The world of mid-winter.
Today’s Last Act mission was with that completed.
Again alone in the corridor, Banri took a small breath without realizing it. He wrapped a wool muffler around his neck up to his mouth like a girl, and tied it behind his neck.
Even if Shizuoka was a relatively warm place, it was February.
Outside the sun had set a while ago, and it was probably appropriately cold. When he looked at the window pane, he saw from the raindrops sticking to it one after another, as if drawing sharp diagonal lines, that at some point it had even started to rain. With a thirty-percent chance of rain having been predicted, he had brought along a folding umbrella.
Continuing down the dark stairwell to the entrance, Banri descended carefully so as not to stumble. To the landing still as death, only the sound of the rubber soles of his hallway slippers on the metal step edges, clip, clap, echoing strangely clearly.
That Wednesday's Last Act was Linda. ...He wondered if Linda too had heard such a ridiculous sound at a time like this. At least his ears were completely covered up against the echoes.
---I am not in love with Banri!
"..."
Shouted by Linda, such were the echoing words.
Though he didn't want to remember them, they came back to mind once more, of course. Casting his eyes downward, when he reached out to grab the handrail his fingertip was suddenly zapped by static electricity. Surprised by the pain, Banri lifted his hand from the cold metal. What the? He muttered to himself sullenly. Sulking, he stuffed both his cold hands deep into his pockets.
What the heck, really.
What the, what the heck.
Since that day, that was all Banri thought about. What, what the heck. It continued to weigh on him, and in a deep funk, between the many careless comments, and people acting the fool even, he was gradually forgetting how to go with the flow.
Wednesday of last week, Banri was waiting by the stairwell for Linda to come out bringing the room key as the Last Act.
However Linda was still there, perhaps chatting merrily with the other girls, not getting a move on at all. So Banri, growing impatient, thought he would return to the room and call for her to get moving.
Once he stood before the thin door, he could clearly hear the high-pitched laughing voices of the girls on the other side, and mixed amongst them was Linda's voice too, shouting "How has it come to this!?"
Saying "of course not," while half-amazed, he took hold of the door knob, ready to turn it, and,
"Eh, you're kidding! Are we wrong!?"
"But all of us thought that Linda-senpai and Banri-senpai were dating!"
He became unable to move.
Banri, stood there alone, even stupidly, paralyzed, his eyes wide as if he'd just been given an electric shock. The voices just now were of the first-year girls, he thought. But, what the? What in the world were they suddenly talking about?
Though he had no intention to eavesdrop, he could hear everything from the very start, the thin door providing no soundproofing effect at all. To Banri's ears, the girl's conversation... was what you'd call 'girls talk', and for guys, that just goes straight in one ear and out the other.
Shouldn't a guy get a move on? Still bewildered, he thought so in a moment of honesty, but,
"Well I thought so, or rather I 'think' so! Why have you been hiding it~!?"
"Really, really. You guys have been super close, you look like the perfect couple, and you're always the most magnificent. Doesn't it look like you're having fun hanging around together!? So there's just no way you wouldn't be dating!"
Banri was still in the same poze, door-knob in hand and about to turn it, but he still could not move.
He wanted to answer back, "...It just isn't like that! It couldn't be more impossible!" but he couldn't gather the voice to say it, standing there bolt upright, gasping in vain.
They thought that he and Linda were dating.
It was quite a shock.
But that sort of thing. Linda and himself dating. This me, and that Linda. Being seen as a couple. To Banri it was something truly unexpected.
For sure, he and Linda were pretty close. They got along strangely well. Their sense of humor going off randomly, the fun they had when they were together, and the conversation and the mood too, it was as if they responded to each other. Constantly looking after each other without reservations, it was cozy being with Linda. And so whether it was in the classroom, the clubroom, wherever or whenever, the very first thing Banri did was look for Linda.
But, he thought that was as far as it went.
That is, of course, Linda was of the opposite sex. He knew that. She's a girl. He understood that. She wasn't the same as his male buddies. Her long hair was silky, her white skin was smooth too, and the way she ran was beautiful. He had even wanted to stare in silence at her eyes, wrinkled with laughter. At her mouth too. Especially the area around where her skin meets her lips. Linda's lips, by their light pink color, indeed, by looking soft, they looked altogether different from my own. He had even imagined what they would be like if he were to touch them. The other guys had not once, not for one second thought of such things.
But, because of that... because, of that.
...That?
Trying to think, Banri held his breath.
All the reasons he wasn't ever likely to date Linda, and that it was unlikely from the start, now that he'd said them, they were nowhere to be found.
Because they got along the way they did, and were really close, it wasn't particularly odd it had come to this.
In fact, from near at hand that was what it looked like.
Linda is pretty and...
"Wha...!?"
At the moment he suddenly became aware of possibilities he had not realized existed until now, Banri's cheeks suddenly blushed furiously.
If he could've seen it, they'd turned into bright red balls of fire. Suddenly he was hot around his eyelids too. It seemed his eyelashes were burning up. Attacked by a ferocious turmoil of uncertain meaning, Banri held the door knob as if clinging to it, holding up his body which was starting to shake. All of a sudden, the ground swayed to match the way his heart had started beating like crazy. He realized that his brain seemed to be boiling.
Unable to understand, squeezing his eyes shut without thinking,
"Cut! It! Out! What are you guys!? Are you idiots!?"
He heard Linda's voice.
It was as if his entire body had become an ear. No, instead, he was a human parabolic antenna. All of his body given the ability to receive, he directed himself towards Linda through the the door separating them.
Aware that he was becoming desperate, Banri asked himself, "Can this be real?"
He had suddenly become like this by simply being made aware. It seemed to him as if Linda's smile was floating in his mind, its brightness blurring slightly, as if it were melting. What a simple person I am.
<~~47% Completed~~>
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