Song of the chapter: Orion by Kenshi Yonezu
"One extra spicy yuzu ramen please!" happily ordered the raven-haired bespectacled girl as soon as they got seated in front of Muramatsu.
"I never took you for a spicy type, guess I was wrong." murmured Itona with the smallest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
"Nothing beats an extra hot and spicy ramen with extra fishcake and onsen egg!" replied Manami undeterred.
"Like you're the one to talk Itona, it was you who started to take her here in the first place. You couldn't even hide how happy you-" Terasaka was interrupted halfway with a fried gyoza being shoved straight into his mouth by none other than the silver-haired boy. The former started choking and hurriedly grabbed his glass of water to drown down the food into the right pipe. Muramatsu, Yoshida, Takebayashi and Manami were watching their usual antics. Despite being alarmed at first by the way these hot-headed friends communicated with each other, Manami has now gotten so used to it that she didn't beat an eyelash even when furnitures started flying around the little restaurant. She could just roll her eyes at their exclamations, well mostly Terasaka's that true men talked with their fists.
"Here you go Okuda-chan, one extra spicy yuzu ramen right up!" smiled Muramatsu while putting the bowl down in front of the chemist lover.
"Thanks so much Muramatsu-kun! Your ramen is always the best!" cooed Manami while proceeding to take her chopsticks to slurp down and the delicious noodles.
After their fateful third year of middle high school, the students of class 3-E parted ways with their entrance into different high schools. However, some groups of students ended up going to the same high school because of their similar interests in study fields. As Itona, Manami and Takebayashi wanted to go into a sciences-specialized school, they all chose the most famous sciences- oriented school in Tokyo, Oku Tokyo Kagaku Gijutsu. Yoshida also enrolled in the same school because of his interest in mechanics and vehicle. Terasaka decided to enter a school near there, where he can focus on social studies to become a politician. Muramatsu wanted to inherit his dad's ramen shop, so he chose a 2-years culinary course in a specialized school in the same prefecture.
Their chosen schools were so close that Manami found herself getting even closer to the whole Terasaka-gang and Takebayashi. She still saw Karma, Kayano and Kanzaki from time to time, even though they lived and studied in other prefectures. Throughout her first months of high school, Manami got more comfortable to Itona, Takebayashi and the others, even more than when they were in junior high to the point that she didn't even stutter around them anymore. She was dubbed 'the glasses witch' by Terasaka, Muramatsu and Yoshida, since Hazama was unofficially considered 'the gloomy witch' of their group back in junior high school. Even if Hazama went to a literature-oriented university in another town, she still showed up at Muramatsu Ramen Restaurant from time to time. She got along pretty well with Manami, despite the latter's being intimidated by Hazama's spooky attitude at first.
Manami, for her part, was really glad to see some familiar faces in high school. When she first started at Oku Tokyo, she was so afraid to be all alone again, with Karma, Kayano and Kanzaki all went to different schools respectively.
Unknown to the bespectacled girl, a pair of golden eyes is intently observing her discreetly. Even though he hasn't really talked much to Manami during their third year of junior high, Itona did take more notice of her than the other girls in class 3-E, mainly because the proximity of their seats and her passion in sciences. Also, in their last fight against the government and Yanagisawa while the latter was trying to trap Koro-sensei in the mountains to kill him, Manami did stay with Itona and the rest of Terasaka's group to get rid of the government's officers who were preventing them to come to their mountain campus to try to rescue their sensei. He remembered using her efficient and easy-to-use smoke bombs and chloroform bullets.
When they first met at Tokyo Oku as fellow classmates for physics and chemistry, it was a bit awkward at first to start the conversation even though they knew each other, mainly because of Manami's shyness and also because Itona was trying to filter what he said since he knew that he could be pretty blunt sometimes and didn't want to scare the girl off. However, in the later periods as the first trimester progressed, Manami got more comfortable around Itona and started to animatedly discuss with him about her favorite subject. He also discovered that the chemistry-lover was also interested about other branches of sciences, such as physics and math. She did admit that she wasn't as good with the latter as she was with chemistry. That, however, didn't stop her competitiveness from trying to get the best marks that she can in them, and not just in chemistry.
Before they knew it, they became project partners in all of their shared classes, helping each other mutually with their own forte while comparing their grades with each other to push themselves further. Itona also invited her to hang out with him and the rest of Terasaka's group, along with Takebayashi who also got close with them since junior high after he introduced Terasaka to the greatness of maid cafes. They usually met up at Muramatsu's Ramen Shop at least three times a week, if not every day after their classes. To their pleasant surprise, they discovered that Manami liked ramen almost as much as she liked chemistry. It was her who gave Muramatsu more helpful tips about how to enrich the ramen's broth, as she claimed that cooking was really similar to chemistry. "It's all about following a recipe and get it right!" she said.
As he kept on discovering more and more interesting facts about Manami, Itona was starting to see why Karma always made a point to keep Manami as his assassination partner during their third year in junior high.