Saki Ayase – April 7 (Thursday)

● April 7 (Thursday)

Aya

“Wow. It’s a Mac!”

As I waited for class to start at my seat by the window, I turned around at the voice that came from behind me.

The first thing that caught my eye was the color of her eyes. Despite her Japanese features, her eyes were red. She was wearing colored contact lenses. I realized that I hadn’t considered that option for my own look.

Her long hair, dyed an orange ash, fell past her shoulders. The sunlight streaming in through the window made the edges of her hair softly translucent and beautiful.

Even though spring had barely begun, she wore a one-shoulder top, had long nails, and a short skirt. Her accessories included a necklace with a large glass pendant. It was a bit chunky, but that was part of its charm. Yeah, she looked cool.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, I just thought you looked cool.”

I simply expressed my honest impression, but the moment I said it, she widened her eyes in surprise and plopped down into her seat. She stared at me intently.

“You’re… different.”

“Really?”

“Of course! You’re pretty out there yourself. What’s with that shocked face? With hair dyed so bright, you’re definitely having fun.”

“I don’t know… I guess I’ve been seen that way since high school.”

I found myself seriously pondering her words. Am I having fun? Well, I hadn’t dyed my hair with that intention, so I didn’t feel like I was particularly being playful.

“Well, whatever. So, that’s a Mac, right?”

She pointed at my laptop.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Macs are expensive, you know.”

Well, I suppose if we’re just talking about price, there are definitely cheaper options among Windows machines.

However, when I mentioned it to Ruka, she said it might be better to get used to Macs if I was going to work at our company.

“It’s a bit of an older model, so it’s not that expensive…”

I had also bought a drawing tablet and painting software along with it.

“Still, it’s pricey. I got my brother’s old one for free, you know, free!”

I was taken aback when she pulled out her laptop from her pink bag. It was black, big, and bulky.

“Wow…”

“No compromises allowed. Use this! Men should stick to carbon black! Can you believe that? I’m a girl! Seriously, don’t shove something this heavy onto a girl! My brother is such a gorilla.”

So she has an older brother… It certainly looked heavy. Wait, could it be that this is much more expensive than my laptop if bought new?

“Want to try it?”

She said, casually handing me her laptop. I quickly reached out to catch it. Whoa, I almost dropped it! And the moment I held it, I thought,

“It’s heavy!”

What is this…?

“It weighs three kilograms.”

“That’s like… one and a half bags of rice…”

“What’s that? That’s hilarious!”

She burst into laughter.

Since my family became a four-person household, we’ve been buying five-kilogram bags of rice, but when I buy it alone, I usually get the two-kilogram bags. I’ve been doing that since I started helping with grocery shopping in middle school. So my weight standard has become whether it’s under or over two kilograms. I can carry up to two kilograms by myself. My laptop weighs 1.24 kilograms. I think that’s about the limit for carrying around.

“Thanks. Yeah, it is a bit heavy.”

As I handed it back, I heard a voice say, “Is it really that heavy?”

Looking toward the voice, I saw a girl with a relaxed expression sitting next to the orange-haired girl, resting her hand on her cheek and looking at me with interest. Her light brown hair looked more natural than dyed. She had it loosely tied at her neck, but if she let it down, it seemed like it would spread out softly, as if it were delicate.

Just looking at her made me feel like I might sigh. Her face was so well-formed. The small beauty mark under her left eye seemed to mar her perfection, but it also served as a lovely accent.

“Oh, sorry to interrupt your conversation. I just thought that’s a nice computer.”

Her voice was lovely. There’s a saying about a bell rolling, but her soft alto voice flowed into my ears, vibrating my eardrums and melting my brain.

“Nice? You just looked at the sticker here and said that, right?”

The orange-haired girl’s pitch-black laptop had a large sticker on the closed lid.

It was an illustration of a cute girl. Since she mentioned it was her brother’s hand-me-down, it was probably his taste. I’m not as familiar with anime and manga as Maya or Maru-kun, so I couldn’t tell, but it must be a popular character. It was cute.

“It is nice. It seems like they made a second season too. But, ah, I wish it had a bit more general popularity. The animation quality is high, and the direction is good. Plus, it’s super erotic…”

…Did I just hear a word from this beautiful girl that shouldn’t have come out?

“No way, I don’t know about that.”

“Eh? You haven’t seen it?”

“I don’t know my brother’s tastes! I—”

As she said that, she started listing names of K-pop idols and Japanese celebrities. I didn’t recognize half of them.

“If you’re going to put stickers on it, you should put those on. He got mad when I tried to peel them off. I’ve already received it, so it should be fine, right?”

“But you’re not peeling them off for him. How nice of you.”

With a smile, the orange-haired girl held her breath. It seemed like I hit a nerve.

“Well, I guess the sticker design is for all ages, so they were being considerate.”

I added that, but I didn’t understand what it meant, and I tilted my head. The orange-haired girl seemed to be confused too, tilting her head in the same way. The relaxed beauty next to her placed her hand at her mouth and elegantly chuckled. Her cute smile made me feel a slight pressure, as if she were saying, “You don’t know this?” I thought this beautiful girl might not be as simple as she appeared.

A ripple of chatter spread through the classroom as the instructor entered from the bottom of the stairs. However, there was no class today; we were just going to receive an explanation about our courses and register for them on our laptops.

Once that was over, with nothing else to do, I headed home.

On my way back, I stopped by the supermarket and, for some reason, picked up a two-kilogram bag of rice even though I had no intention of buying it. Yeah, it was definitely heavier than this…

When I got home, Asamura-kun had just returned as well, and we ended up having dinner together.

As we shared our impressions of our respective universities, I mentioned the two people sitting directly behind me, and Asamura-kun told me about a classmate he had also ended up chatting with in a similar way.

“I thought they were going to start a fight out of nowhere; I was so nervous.”

“Really…?”

Asamura-kun said he felt a sense of impending chaos at that moment, but when he said that, I felt like I had met some very unique individuals right at the start of my university life.

I couldn’t help but think that perhaps university attracts even more colorful personalities from all over the country than high school did.