Happy New Year, everyone!
Let's start the year off with some SeoWaka!
Note: For context, you must at least be caught up to chapter 62 of the GSNK manga.
...
Afterschool...
Wakamatsu laughs at the absurdity of Tanaka's remedy for a sore throat. "Wouldn't that hurt more?" Another member of the basketball team asks.
"Shut your face! It'll work." Tanaka insists. Wakamatsu opens the door leading out to the school's courtyard and begins to shake his head when his stubborn friend isn't relenting. They'll probably settle this debate at the diner later today. Hirotaka will be staying out of this argument for as long as he can. He watches as the team continues to argue amongst each other. They seem to be in high spirits at the moment. Perhaps this is due to a certain upperclassman that was absent during basketball practice earlier.
Where is Seo-senpai? Wakamatsu wonders but he must have muttered it out loud since he receives a sharp elbow to his side. "Who cares, Wakamatsu. We should count our blessings." Yamamura commented.
"Yo, Waka!" Except for Hirotaka, everyone else tenses up. Before Yuzuki got closer, Wakamatsu's team starts backing off. "Get rid of her, man!" One teammate whispers rather loudly to him. Seo walks towards her kohai. She isn't reacting to the rather insensitive whispers so Wakamatsu hopes she didn't hear them. It's hard to tell with his Senpai sometimes. " Yo, Waka! Wanna head to a café? There's a new one right by my house."
He points to the team. "I'm actually eating with the guys this afternoon, Seo-senpai." Seo looks to and fro between Waka and basketball team. "Can I come?"
"Senpai, it's boys only. I'm sorry."
"Just pretend I'm a boy then, Waka." Wakamatsu blocks her path with one arm. "Senpai, you're not a boy."
"Waka, I said pretend." At this rate, her intervening will cause some negative reaction from the group. What can he do to solve this problem? An idea suddenly crops up. A certain event from one of the ongoing manga he is reading might prove useful in this situation. However, he'll try to convince her first. "Senpai, it's a team outing only, okay? Tomorrow, I promise to accompany you anywhere you want." Perhaps his senpai will see reason is he pleads extra nicely.
"C'mon, Waka man!" She pulls his tie to bring him to eye level. He's too damn tall for his own good. "I'm part of the team! Besides, you're gonna get bored without m—" Placing both hands on the side of her head, Waka lessen the distance between their faces and lightly peck her lips. She remains motionless even after he releases her. "Tomorrow, Senpai." For once, Yuzuki simply nods. Seconds later, she manages to stutter out, "Y-yeah. Sure, Waka." She doesn't press further and simply watch as Waka's figure disappears from view.
Not so far from Yuzuki's location in the front courtyard, Chiyo and Nozaki noiselessly stand there in shock, especially Nozaki. Chiyo wanted to relay a message to Yuzuki from the glee club but she might have forgotten it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for Chiyo, her precious Nozaki-kun was drinking at the time and he spat his drink towards her general direction. "Sorry, Sakura." Reaching inside his pocket, he takes out a clean handkerchief and dabs her face blindly since his eyes couldn't leave the back of Seo's head. Anxious eyes follow Lorelei.
Seo turns her head and notices her pal Chiyo is nearby.
"Yo, Chiyo!" Yuzuki runs towards the pair as if nothing happened and cheerily asks the same question she threw at her underclassman. "They got great crepes." Hazel eyes look up at mangaka. "You can come too, Lolicon." Chiyo notes that her friend isn't fazed by the intimate moment she had with Wakamatsu-kun so Chiyo figures that it happens regularly between them. Ribbons contemplate the reason why Yuzuki never mentioned their relationship since her friend discusses everything with her.
Seo places her arm over Sakura's shoulder and leans in as if she is about to share a secret. "I ain't disrupting some plans with you and the giant, am I?" Chiyo blushes profusely and quickly shuffles her eyes on Nozaki but he seems to be in a daze. She breathes a sigh of relief.
"Yuzuki, stop it!"
After minutes of nothing from Nozaki, he finally addresses the situation he is having. "Seo, I'm not ready." His breath comes out in a short and sharp manner. "I'm not ready for a canon!" Both girls blink in bewilderment as Nozaki clutch his head in pain. "Sakura, I need to go home and process this. I will see you tomorrow." Sluggishly dragging his heavy legs with him, the manga artist leaves without clarifying the reason for his sudden departure.
"What's up his gigantic ass?" The singer utters nonchalantly. "Anyways…Chiyo, ya gotta try the one with the strawberry fruit." Like nothing peculiar had happened, Yuzuki begins to list the dessert menu eagerly. "Let's go find Kashima and bail her out of club but this time, you're distracting that Hori-chan-senpai. He's gets violent when Kashima is involved." Chiyo gives out a soft laugh. "He just takes his craft very seriously."
Midstride towards the drama club, Chiyo snaps her fingers when she finally had the time to recollect her thoughts. "Oh, Yuzuki! You know the thing that transpired between you and Wakamatsu-kun earlier? I didn't know you two are…" By the time Chiyo finishes her sentence, Seo bolts ahead of her classmate, leaving Sakura behind. "Hurry up, slowpoke!" Is her friend avoiding the topic?
"Hey, Kashima!" Bursting through the drama club's door, Seo receives a stern shout from the president of said club.
"Oz—" Hori clears his throat. "Seo, we're in the middle of practice. You can stay but keep quiet."
Yuzuki begrudgingly yields while Chiyo nods and sits on one of the creaky benches of the room. Sakura glances down when she feels her phone vibrating inside the pocket of her uniform blazer. The message is from Nozaki-kun.
"Sakura, don't read this out loud. You need to probe Seo for questions regarding Wak…" Chiyo feels the intent stare of the girl beside her. This is bad. She must have read it out loud!
"Ask me what, Chiyo?" The ribbon wearing 2nd year scoots to her right. "Not sure but forget I said anything, Yuzuki." With one swift move, Seo pounces and tries to swipe the phone out of Chiyo's grasp.
"Chiyo! Whatchoo textin' about me?"
"Yuzuki, get off!"
Suddenly, her poor cell phone is taken from her hand but Seo isn't the thief. "Oz…Seo, Sakura, I will have to ask you both to kindly exit the…" Hori reads the screen and his eyes bulges out. "What! I see." Everyone stops what they're doing when the president screams Kashima's name.
"What's the hold up, Hori-chan-senpai?" She notices her sensei's presence but is unaware of the other girl's identity.
"Who's the new kid, Sensei?" During the girls' struggle just minutes prior, Seo had remove Chiyo's ribbons from their place.
"I'm Chiyo, Kashima-kun!"
Seo amusingly snaps the ribbons back on her orange-haired friend. "Tada!"
"Chiyo-chan, you were here all along?" A dark cloud looms above Chiyo's head while repeating, "I'm Chiyo" like a chant.
"Kashima." Hori abruptly hooks his hand on the Prince's arm. Pulling her aside, he speaks in a low and hushed tone. The grim glint in his eyes troubles Yuu. "I'm assigning you a mission. It's about Oz…Seo and Wakamatsu. This must be completed, for Nozaki's sake."
Seo and Chiyo observe the actors conversing with one another in the darkest corner of the room. They can make out Kashima saluting while Hori shows her what seems to be Chiyo's cellphone. "Hori-senpai still has my phone. What if they see…I have to get it back!"
Quietly rubbing her hungry stomach, Seo's eyes slowly shadows Sakura's movement as she attempts to retrieve her phone from the president's clutches. She doesn't get this much drama when she goes out with Waka. Then, the memory from moments ago floods her mind. She touches her lips. "I wonder if I was imagining that? I was and still am pretty hungry." She shrugs.
Time will tell if that was real.
…
The next day, in the school courtyard after school…
Wakamatsu waits patiently for Seo-senpai outside near the school gates. There was a promise of going to a café with her today but he can't recall how that promise was made. "Oi, Hirotaka." His first name is carefully articulated by a very familiar voice. Turning around, he blinks when his Seo-senpai uses his given name for the first time. It's an odd feeling to hear his name fall out of her mouth. It's usually just "Waka" from his senpai.
"What is it, Seo-senpai?" Seo shifts her eyes, breaking eye contact with him. "About yesterday…" She stalls for a bit but then resumes with her intended question. "Why'd ya kiss me yesterday?" The wind around them begins to pick up and Wakamatsu shivers as the breeze grazes the skin of his exposed neck.
"What?" His mouth dries up as soon as he pukes out that one word.
"I said, why'd ya kiss me yesterday." Wakamatsu shakes his head. "No, I heard that part. I mean, what do you mean? I didn't kiss—" Yesterday, he was searching for a solution to his problem and consulted a chapter on one of his ongoing Shoujo manga. The events leading up to the point where he leans closer to his senpai's face pans out but then it blurs again.
Her voice shatters his reverie. "Was I just having a hunger induced hallucination, Waka?"
Uncertainty crosses his boyish features. "Yes?"
It's like a weight is removed from Seo's shoulders and she pats her chest softly. "Oh, good. Well, wanna head out? Me, Chiyo, and Kashima went to the café yesterday and I ate the entire place. Since you're tagging along today, ya gotta try out…" Waka agrees with whatever her whims are. He bites his tongue to prevent his voice from escaping out.
Wakamatsu is now positively sure he kissed his Senpai yesterday. How can he just temporarily erase that from his memory banks? He read that the mind sometimes unconsciously block traumatic experiences.
Is that what happened to him? The solution to his problem is hardly a solution at all! He can just hear Nozaki-senpai calmly saying to him, "don't reference Shoujo manga!" in his head.
"Waka, keep up, man!"
Dark eyes trails behind the pair as they leave the school premises. Over by an inconspicuous flower bush, Nozaki collapses on his knees and removes his headphones. From his sources, a meeting between those two will occur right after school. He is glad they delivered but not the way he wanted it to be."Nozaki, you feeling okay?" Mikoshiba is suppose to be doing some of his assistant duties today for Nozaki's manga but for some reason after class ended, the mangaka mysterious visited the bathroom where he assembled a portable device with a parabolic antenna.
The redhead strokes his chin. According to Detective Days, the detective lady along the tragic pathway used this exact device to listen in on her suspects when the detective needed to prove that there is a conspiracy of murdering the girl in the good ending reached one of the good detective's contacts.
Mikoshiba failed to protect that girl and detective paid the price.
"Nozaki, why are you listening in on Seo's and Wakamatsu's conversation?" Ignoring his redheaded assistant, Nozaki slams his notebook shut and mutters one single word.
"Unforgivable."
…
Three weeks later…
Chiyo's eyes tears up as she reread the ending of the latest side chapter of Nozaki-kun's manga.
The sun is setting but two lone figures stands in front of one another. One short-haired girl sadly stares at the ground as she wraps her hand around her elbow. Her lips starts quiver.
"Wakako, I said, why did you kiss me yesterday?" She parts her lips as she scours her head for a suitable answer to give her senpai. Saliva occludes her throat from speaking momentarily. Gathering her courage, she responds weakly and assures herself that her voice will not break.
"Oze-senpai, forget that happened. It never happened so drop it. Please…" Oze averts his eyes and smiles bitterly. "I understand. Let's go to that café, then. I'm kinda hungry." He leads the way but their walk to the cafe is dead silent.
To be continued…
Chiyo sniffs. Adjacent to her desk, Seo plops down on her assigned seat and curiously eyeballs her classmate. "Yo, Chiyo." She bites into the butter bread Hori-senpai gave her this morning. For reasons unexplained, Hori advises her to "hang in there" and that she shouldn't be skipping breakfast. Unable to ascertain what the drama surrounding everybody lately is all about, Seo will not complain when it comes to free food.
"What's the matter with you, girl?"
Without facing her friend, Chiyo pats the page of the manga and speaks with gusto. "Keep fighting, Oze-kun!"
Seo arches her brow in confusion. "Huh? Who's Oze? Is that a fighting manga, Chiyo?"Sakura shakes her head and puts the manga away. "It's Shoujo manga."
Disinterested in that type of manga, Seo finishes her bread and plans the next location she'll take Waka later.
…
If there is anything unclear about this story, then please let me know and I will answer you to best of my ability.
Also, I am unsure of the name of Wakamatsu's manga counterpart. I can't seem to find the chapter it was mentioned. I know it's in there somewhere. I know it's not just Waka so I just settled with Wakako.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day! :D
Happy New Year again!