Day 1

Tuesday, February 1st.

Morning

I had an unusually late start today, waking up an hour later than I usually do. It left me almost no time whatsoever to get to Ryoo High School. I quickly grabbed my lunch (which I had prepared the night before), told my mom goodbye and left. Sure, I was within walking distance of the school, but it took me about 20 minutes to get there! Usually I'd have taken a shower, brushed my teeth and had breakfast in the hour I usually had, and still have plenty of time to get there!

Aah, damn. I ended up getting to class a couple minute late.

"Eh?" Kuroi-sensei was already in the classroom, obviously. "You're usually not late, Ajiyoshi. What's your excuse?"

I hung my head. Indeed, I'd never been late before now; I was usually very good when it came to time. I sighed, defeated. "No excuse. I just overslept. Sorry Kuroi-sensei."

She shook her head, smiling, and lightly bonked me on the head with the ruler she had been holding. "Whatever, I'll let it slide this once since you're usually a good kid. Get to your seat." I took my seat, glad that I didn't get punished, but still disappointed that I didn't get there in time.

As I sat in my seat, my focus drifted off of what the teacher was talking about (it seemed to be something I'd already knew anyways, in my defense) and around the classroom until, finally, as always, settling on a short blue-haired girl sitting a few seats in front and to the left of me. Her name was Konata Izumi.

I mean, hey, I couldn't help but admire her! She was perfect to me…we had so much in common, it seemed! We both liked anime, we both liked video games, we both made references to our friends that no one else would get. And she had blue hair. Blue hair! I've always had a weakness for blue haired girls! And those deep green eyes…aaah, green's my favorite color! Everything about her was just so…perfect. I had decided last month, as my New Year's resolution, to ask her out this year.

A friend who was sitting next to me nudged me with her elbow, which broke me out of my trance. It was Aika. "Sakana!" she exclaimed, "Sensei's asking you a question!"

I looked at Aika, then quickly to Kuroi-sensei, then back to my open journal and started blushing. "Ah-wha, yes?" Hastily I tried scrambling myself together. "I'm sorry could you repeat the question, I must not have caught it!"

An unimpressed look on her face, Kuroi-sensei dully said, "What's up with you today, Ajiyoshi? That long hair of yours starting to weigh your head down too much?" A few classmates chuckled, including me. It was a running joke that I was one of the only males with long(ish) hair accepted by the school. Nothing as long as Konata's or anything like that, a slight past shoulder length at most…and I didn't keep it in my face either.

"So Ajiyoshi, who overthrew the Anglo-Saxons then?" Kuroi-sensei asked again.

"Oh! The Normans!" I said almost immediately. Kuroi nodded approvingly, and continued teaching.

"So, you gonna do it or what?" Aika asked in a low voice so that Kuroi-sensei wouldn't hear.

"Uh…do what?" I said, clueless. Aika gave me a 'you're hopeless' expression.

"Duh, ask Konata out!" she said, grinning.

"W-what? Now? What are you crazy? We're in the middle of class!"

"Yes, yes we are Ajiyoshi." Kuroi-sensei suddenly said, "Good kid and all, but a hell of a chatterbox, now stay quiet until I'm done!"

"Sorry Kuroi-sensei." I said. She continued teaching.

"You should ask her out during lunch." Aika whispered to me.

"Today? No way!"

"It's already been a month, c'mooon!"

"No, dammit! I don't want to!"

Suddenly Kuroi-sensei, with a fluid motion, turned around and threw the chalk she was using at the time, hitting me square in the forehead and startling the crap out of me. "Ajiyoshi, I'm trying to teach!"

"Aah, sorry sorry!" I said, clutching my forehead, a nice lump rising from it.

Lunchtime

"So you gonna ask her out?"

"No."

"You should!"

"No."

"C'mon! You can't wait around all year you know!"

"Damn you Aika. No, dammit!"

"Dooo iiit."

"Nnnn oooo"

Aika and I were fairly good friends, but sometimes she annoyed the hell out of me. We had been bickering about this all lunch. A good twenty minutes had passed, and we'd only about half finished our lunches. I was a big sushi person, so I usually just packed ten or so things of sushi into my lunch container and called it good.

"I'm gonna keep bugging you like this until you do it!" she said playfully.

I smiled. "You really don't give up easy, do you?" She had always been stubborn with things like this.

"Do it."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"Denied."

"Accept your fate!"

"Never!"

"Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet naaaaaaaaaaaaoooooooooooowww wwwwwwwwwww-"

I stood up. "Alright alright, FINE! If it'll shut you up about it." Aika gleefully fist pumped in the air victoriously. "I mean sheesh, it's just Konata. It's not like the end of my life if she rejects me or anything." I was more trying to convince myself that than anyone else.

"Whooo! All right Sakana! Go get 'er, you beast!" she yelled. Thankfully the lunchroom was usually pretty noisy, so no one else really noticed.

"Ay, keep it down would you!" I said anyways, blushing furiously. "I'm having a hard enough time as it is without you doing stuff like that!" I then turned around and looked.

Yep, there she was, that blue haired beauty. Konata was sitting down eating her lunch, seemed to be chatting with two other girls. Hiiragi, I think the others were called? Eh, who cares?

To be honest, I had never really approached her to talk to her before. Up until now, I had admired her from afar. Aika had always called me a pathetic, hopeless romantic because of it, but I didn't mind. That was just her way of saying it looked grossly adorable to the outside observer.

So now…I was taking my first step towards her, really.

Slowly…almost inching my way towards her table…with each step I took, I got a little shakier, and a little shakier. I wondered what I would say when I got up there. I wondered how she would react. What should I do? How should I word it? I hadn't expected myself to be this fast into it. I hadn't prepared myself for this at all. I wondered…

I wondered so much that I almost didn't realize I had worked my way right up in front of their table and all three of the girls were looking right at me. When it hit me, my face felt like it would be emitting steam from its pores at any moment now, and I seemed to be shaking harder than the average Nintendo 64 rumble pack.

I just stood there. I, Sakana Ajiyoshi, was practically standing right in front of Konata and her friends. I had no idea what to do.

"Whoa dude, you okay Sakana-san?" I heard a voice say. It took me a second to register that it was none other than Konata's.

Okay dude. Get a grip. Say her name. Deep breaths. Ask her if he could talk to her alone for a minute. Yeah, that might work. Alright, let's do this! We got this!

"K-k-Konata-san…"I began, stuttering and chattering, "C-can I-er-could I please t-talk to you a-alone for a sec? P-promise it'll only be j-just a sec, alright? Nothing big or anything, okay?"

Nothing big? Nothing big!? Are you an idiot!? Asking her out is pretty effing big!

"Sure, what's up Sakana-san?" Konata had gotten up, and I guess my legs decided to say 'Ah, this sap doesn't know what he's doing anymore' and started acting of their own accord now, because she and I moved a few meters away from the table she was sitting at. I caught a glance of Aika grinning her face off from across the room. "Hey man, you don't look so good," she said, "Maybe you should go to the nur-"

"Iwaswantingtoknowifmaybeyou'dgooutwithme!" I almost incomprehensibly drooled out through speech. I shut my eyes tight as though I was trying to avoid seeing my own death and braced myself.

"…huh? I didn't catch that. You sure you're alright?" It must have been too blurred out for Konata to understand. I tried again slower. Deep breaths, man. Deep breaths.

"I…was wondering…was wanting to know…if…maybe…you'd…if…I…could…be…your…y-your…uhh…" I imagine my face was purple at this point.

"Be my whaaat?" It seemed that Konata already had caught on, and was teasing me in a way not unlike Aika would. I guess she'd played enough romantic visual novels to not be completely oblivious to this sort of thing.

I looked away and muttered, "…if I could be your…boyfriend…" I heard her giggle ever so lightly. "What, what's so funny?!" I turned away even further.

"Hey Sakana-san?" Konata said.

"What?" I was still turned away.

"Look at me, hmm?"

"Eh?"

"C'mon, I wanna see your eyes!"

"W-what…" I was going to ask why, but somewhere along the line that got kicked in the head. I slowly raised my head and turned back to look at her. We made eye contact, and I almost got myself completely lost in that emerald green sea of hers.

"Now ask it again." Konata said, smiling.

I hesitated, not knowing what to think. "Uhh…I was wondering if I could…be your boyfriend…?"

A satisfied look crossed her face. "There, now that's better! Good job!"

I was dumbfounded for a little while. Neither of us spoke. She kept her satisfied smile; I kept my confused and blatantly uncertain look until I decided to break the silence. "So…are you…going to answer my question?" I asked, trying not to come off as pushy.

Konata thought about it for a moment. "We've never really hung out, have we Sakana?"

I glanced away. "Not really, I guess…"

"And we don't honestly know each other besides from being classmates, do we?"

"…yeah, you're right about that."

She sighed. "You're an odd one, even compared to me. Asking someone out you hardly know? What if I had some sort of incompatibility with you that you didn't know of, or the other way around? Or if there was some habit either of us had that the other couldn't stand? Or any number of things, really! I mean, we don't know each other at all after all, so for all we know, we might just not even care for each other."

"I…hadn't really thought about any of that really…I just knew that I really really liked you."

"But you don't really know that, do you? Because we don't know each other."

"…I guess…" I didn't really know what to say to that. I felt like such an idiot. Of course, Konata had been right in almost every point, but how was I to react to something like that? It was far from what I expected. I had expected either a nonchalant accept or any variation of reject. "Uhh…well…" I hesitated for a bit. "W…what happens now?" At least I had calmed myself down a little at this point.

Konata chuckled. "Well, I'll tell you what. You seem to be a nice guy and all, so I won't outright reject you, but I'll make you a deal. How about…for the rest of the month, during lunch, you come and sit at our table?" She said motioning to the table where her two purple haired friends were still sitting. "That way my friends and I'll get to know you and all that stuff, and you'll get to know all of us too. At the end of the month, if you still want, I'll get back to you on the dating request, though my only guarantee is that by the end of the month, I'll have a solid 'yes' or 'no' for you. Deal?" She seemed oddly excited, as though this was the plot of one of her recently read manga or something.

But hey, what's the worst that could possibly happen? I'm gonna get to meet new people, and I'm gonna get to be around Konata every single lunch for a month? As far as I was concerned, it was a win-win! I smiled excitedly, and said "Alright, deal!" Almost on cue, as I said that, the bell rang.

"Ah, class time." Konata said in a way that blatantly said she wasn't looking forward to it. "Later, Sakana." She said as she halfheartedly waved to me while moving back to her table to get her stuff. She and the purple haired girls with her left, and I was just standing there when Aika suddenly bopped me on the back.

"Heeey! Did she say yes?" she asked pryingly.

"Well…" I smiled.

"SHE DID!?"

"Not exactly." I then told her all of what had happened on the way to class.

"Wow, that's surprising!" she said, "Well, hope you have fun in the next month then!"

Something struck me then. "Uhh…Aika…are you-"

But Aika stopped me. "I already know what you're gonna say. 'Oh Aika, are you sure you'll be okay without me? Won't you be allll aloooone?'" she said, making a cruel impersonation of me, "Don't worry about it, alright? I've got lotsa friends! Just go and get her already! I've had to hear you complain about wanting her for almost a year and a half now, so go and DOO EET! Besides, I usually get to walk with you to and from school anyways."

I laughed. "You know me way too well, Aika. Well alright then, if you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure, you dolt! Anyways, I gotta head to my class now. Later!"

"See ya." I walked cheerfully into my class, barely being able to wait until tomorrow.

The rest of the school day was kind of a blur. It didn't really matter. The rest of my classes, I don't have any friends in really. Acquaintances aplenty, but no one really worth mentioning, so I probably won't talk much about them at all.

After School

As per usual, I waited to walk with Aika back to my house. She lived a few houses down from where I lived, but it was in the same neighborhood anyways.

"So how's your boyfriend been anyways, Aika?" I asked idly.

"Oh, same old, same old."

"Christ, how long's it been? Three years? Four?"

"Since him and I started dating? Two; he asked me out in Freshman year, remember?"

"Ah, yeah, that's right. We're Juniors now, so that'd make it two. Still, that's impressive for people our age."

"I guess. I've heard of people our age that started dating in middle school and were still dating come graduating from high school."

"Whaaaat? No way!" I called her out on her bullcrap.

"Oh, I guess it was just that one couple after all." Aika grinned. "But still, it happened!"

"Yeah, that's true I guess. Ah." We had arrived at my house. "Later, Aika." I said, smiling and waving as I went in.

"Laaaaterrr!" she said, doing the same.