Confessions are said to to be the roses of youth. The heart-pounding, anxiety-inducing, fairytale-like spectacle idealized across all avenues of media. Acceptance would lead to a new chapter in one's life where with sugar-coated eyes they'd gaze at the world around them and notice the finer details not seen before. With light steps they'd walk to school with their boyfriend or girlfriend, their hands laced in blush-inducing embrace. After school, they'd indulge themselves in sickly-sweet dates and at home, text each other with butterflies in their stomachs. At night they'd drift to sleep—not to the counting of sheep, but to the good memories they'd just created.

But what if they were rejected? Better yet, what if the confession that one received wasn't real in the first place, but a sick prank meant to damage the self-esteem and pride of the victim all in the name of good fun? What if every "romance" was simply a one-sided misunderstanding, a naive fantasy that wasn't even worth transferring to words?

These questions were the lessons that youth taught me. Confessions are not the roses of youth, but rather the thorns one pricked themselves upon after being deceived by its supposed beauty.

Yet despite all those lessons, I was at the shoe lockers with a pounding heart and sweat-laced palms.

Earlier this morning, I opened my shoe locker to find a letter telling me to meet up at this exact spot after school. The handwriting was reminiscent of a girl's, so I assumed it was a prank. However, upon turning the letter around, a picture of my list of people-to-kill was printed on its back.

I thought the list was gone after I threw it away, never to be seen again, but I was blatantly wrong.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the white digits greeting me on its screen. Roughly thirty minutes had passed since classes ended. Most students were either at club or had already left campus, which meant I was completely alone at the shoe lockers.

Distant footsteps brought my attention back into my surroundings. I pocketed my phone and looked in the direction of where I thought they were coming from. With each step they became louder and louder; it was like Chinese water torture, but instead of water dripping onto my forehead, it was methodical footsteps reverberating into my ears.

Suddenly, everything went silent.

My breath lodged in my lungs. I clenched my hands into fists as I fixed my eyes onto the entry point of the shoe lockers.

BAM.

A gust of wind suddenly burst by me. My eyes slammed shut and I stumbled backwards, slamming against the lockers behind me. My entire body shook out of pure fear, my breaths in small bursts like I was struggling to breathe. Adrenaline coursed through my veins.

I slowly opened my eyes to see a pale and slim hand at the side of my head, pressing against the locker and pinning me in place. Cautiously, I looked in front of me where my assaulter lay, only to look straight into her icy cerulean eyes. Black hair framed her porcelain face; a certain unruly strand hovered in front of an eye.

"Be my partner."

She was close enough to where her breath brushed against my mouth and nose, its warmth seeping into my skin and spreading across the entirety of my face like a mask.

"W-what?"

"Be my partner," she repeated, her voice unfaltering. A sharp contrast to my own.

"F-first of all, move back."

Thankfully, she obliged my request. She removed her hand from the locker and took some steps back, then crossed her arms. With my hand pressed over my heart, my breaths began to stabilize themselves, and I steadily regained my composure.

I looked at her a second time. Her raven hair easily reached down to her waist; adorning it just above her shoulders a pair of red ribbons. Oddly enough, despite her wearing the usual Soubu uniform, the way it fit her was somehow different. Maybe it was tailored?

In any case, the girl standing in front of me was Yukinoshita Yukino, the most popular girl and unrefuted Ice Queen of Soubu High.

And she wanted me to be her 'partner.'

I cleared my throat.

"You're the one who placed that note into my locker?"

"Yes," she replied monotonously.

"How did you get my list? And what do you mean by 'partner'?"

"What I mean by 'partner' is in the romantic sense."

"..."

"Close your mouth; it's unsightly," she reprimanded. Her fingertips pressed against her temple. "Don't misunderstand—I don't have any romantic feelings towards you. Rather, I want you to act as a deterrent against confessions."

She smiled angelically, though it did nothing to comfort me as she continued. "As you can imagine, a girl like me receives a plentiful amount of confessions per day. Even though I reject them all, I still continue to receive them."

"I fail to see how that's my problem," I grumbled. "Find someone else. I'm sure you of all people can do that easily."

She shook her head solemnly. "It can't just be a random person: I need absolute control over my partner. That's why I chose you, Hikigaya Hachiman. Now that you've generously provided me with your notebook—which contains your heinous list—you have no choice but to submit to my will."

If I remember correctly, her family deals in politics. Of course she would come up with a scheme like this.

A meager laugh escaped me as I thoughtlessly spat out words. "So what if you have my notebook? My name isn't written anywhere in it, and if you release it, I can always deny it."

She clicked her tongue. "Hikigaya-kun, if you truly believe that you're important enough for me to know you without any justification, then you're quite idiotic. I know your name from this book, which means that your name is, indeed, inside of it."

A sense of defeat coursed through me like a paralyzing poison, causing my legs to buckle beneath me. I fell to the ground.

"...How long do I need to serve as your deterrent?"

"Until I graduate from this place, of course."

A vision of the future ahead of me flashed through my eyes: the rest of my high school days spent as the personal servant of Yukinoshita, emptying my wallet buying drinks and food, the threat of my list being exposed and my subsequent expulsion from Soubu always weighing on my shoulders.

I couldn't live like that. I needed my money to buy Komachi presents, and I couldn't disappoint her with a drop-out brother. And my parents too.

I rubbed my eyes, making them red and moist. I forced my voice to quiver as I spoke.

"Do you feel no shame? Forcing someone into this miserable life of yours? I'll let you know that I want a normal high school experience. I'm not even asking for romance."

"No, I don't feel ashamed. Because if you look at the bigger picture, this actually benefits the both of us."

Clearly, my magnificent acting didn't work. I stood up, wiping off my pants and rapidly blinking to clear the tears. "What do you mean?"

"I can infer that the student body thinks quite lowly of you, yes?"

"...That's debatable."

"I'll take that as a yes. With your low social standing combined with my high social standing, they average each other out to where we both get a 'normal high school life.' "

"That's definitely not how it works."

"I was joking. You see, if you pretend to be my boyfriend, then you gain some of my popularity as well. At the same time, people will stop confessing to me, or the confessions will at least decrease in number." She finished with a flip of her hair. "Either way, it's a win-win situation."

"I couldn't care less about how my peers view me." I smirked scornfully. "Their opinions are nothing but assumptions. It's not like they actually know me. They're nothing but meaningless strangers who have no impact on my life."

The corners of her mouth rose into a small, ominous smile. "I see. However, that doesn't matter. You have no choice but to participate in this deceit—less you want your list to be released to the public."