By all accounts, she was easily as pretty—if not more so—than Koharu Kawasaki, who was widely regarded as the hottest girl in our class. Yet for whatever reason, she also seemed a bit too well put-together, almost to the point of feeling unapproachable. Indeed, despite her being the talk of the school, thus far, no one had proven brave enough to reach out to her. Everyone seemed pretty content to admire the new transfer student from a distance. I wasn’t about to be the first one to extend the olive branch either, so I simply trudged over to my desk on the hallway side of the classroom and took a seat. “Kaoru! What’s up, dude?” said a chipper voice from behind me. “Not much, man,” I replied, spinning around in my chair to face him. It was Shohei Kaga, my best friend in the class. Given his tall stature, short spiky hair, and extremely candid way of speaking, you could have been forgiven for pegging him as your stereotypical meathead jock—but in reality, he was an indoorsy kid with some pretty highbrow hobbies. He was a member of the school’s calligraphy club, and he even liked to build model ships in bottles during his spare time. “Heard your train ran over a deer?” “Yeah.” “Dang, feels like that’s been happenin’ a lot lately. I’m kinda jealous. I mean, as someone who takes his own set of wheels to school, I never get to benefit from that kind of little accident.” “Yeah, well. Try sitting on your ass outside for half an hour in the middle of summer—or the dead of winter—and then tell me how jealous you are.” “I mean…I’m not any more protected from the elements on my moped, y’know.” “Fair enough,” I conceded. Shohei shot a quick glance over at the new girl. “…Bet they never have to worry about accidents like that over in Tokyo.” “Sure they do. All the time.” “Aw, no way. There ain’t no deer in Tokyo.” “Plenty of suicidal salarymen, though.”