Published at 21st of May 2019 4:23 pm

Volume 1, Chapter 1: My birthday present was a beautiful girl

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

In the end, life should be done in singleplayer mode, not multiplayer. Of course, that shouldn’t be said for every single aspect of one’s life. But, at the very least, for me, this is the result I had arrived at after my 16 years of wandering this earth.

What do you think about that?

No matter how many important friendships and love relationships you build, they can’t continue for all eternity. Additionally, adults who have entered today’s society often talk about the friends they made while students as if they’re distant memories, and they seldom keep contact with them. They even break up with the person who they thought they were destined to be with because of the simplest reasons.

The same can be said about family. No matter how strong your bonds are, you will one day have to separate yourself, leave your safe shelter, or even end up as a NEET. Don’t you think that, instead of working towards relationships that will eventually crumble, it’s much more efficient and relaxing to just live life by yourself from the very beginning?

Basically, my belief is that the real strong people are the ones who hold the strength to live on their own. With that in mind, I started living on my own about one year ago. Without making any friends, and only thinking about how to set up my ‘Solitude Parameters’. What I mean by ‘parameters’ is how much I can keep my distance from other people who could potentially pull me down, so as to not get swarmed by them. Though those parameters aren’t exactly visible to the human eye, they’re basically things like spending summer vacation alone, walking home alone, or refusing to chit-chat casually with someone even after they constantly call out to me. After all, the day I really become friends with someone, my Solitude Parameter will go to zero.

And I would like to think that the days I spent in solitude like this were pretty fulfilling.

I mean, look at it this way.

Their position inside the class hierarchy… The infighting between different factions… Everybody must’ve worried about these sorts of things at least once.

However, if you were to focus on living on your own, you would be freed from this painful battle. That being said, the bare minimum of communication is still necessary. What’s important is that you neither expect anything from the other person, nor do you make them expect anything from you. If you let the other person get their hopes up, their affection will rise. And, of course, the same could be said about the other way around. But if you stay neutral towards the people around you, you will achieve the best position, namely ‘A normal classmate I’m on neither good nor bad terms with.’

Like this, you should be able to keep moving forward in life, causing the smallest amount of trouble possible. Of course, there might be people who would laugh this off, claiming that ‘He is just too inept to get any friends.’ But that clearly isn’t the case. My response to such comments is already engraved on my heart.

‘It’s not that I can’t make them. I just won’t make any.’

The reason is simple. And very simple to grasp, as well.

If you go on the exact opposite route as my proposed living alone strategy, you’ll end up making friends, like it or not. And that indeed is something that I’ve realized in my past, after taking these exact actions. It’s exactly because I made friends before that I now know how not to make any.

Thinking back on it, I can’t do anything but regret the time I wasted back then. Thanks to that wasted time, though, I’ve learned how to be a professional loner.

Keeping all of that in mind, nothing at all will change when my second year of highschool starts next week. Those days of solitude that I, the self-proclaimed professional loner, will spend will be just as intensely lonely as before. I’ll staying a single, unmarried official, and work until pension kicks in.

That was my plan, but…

That incident on that certain day brought about the end of that. The day when the girl Tsukiyono Akari arrived, proclaiming herself my ‘Rental Family’—

*

The day the email arrived was a day close to the end of spring break. Inside the apartment I live in, that contained a combined living room, kitchen, and dining room, I was busy feeding Genta (Nickname : Gen-san), when I suddenly got the notification that I had received an email.

“…An… email?”

The hand that I was using to feed Gen-san stopped, since I did not at all expect something like this. After all, there shouldn’t be anyone who knows my email address. And no, I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t use it and says ‘In today’s age, texting and LINE are way more convenient than email!’ or something. I don’t even have any messaging apps installed on my smartphone.

And while we’re at it, don’t you think that messaging apps are, like, the worst ever?

The moment you read the message, the other person is notified immediately, so even if the content is more than useless, you get pressured into answering something that’s just as inconsequential. Or, if you choose to ignore it, the other person will start annoying you about it, saying irrational things like ‘Why didn’t you answer me?!’ and so forth. Things like that cause a rift to form in this friendship that is already, well, pointless.

Of course, all of that worrying is just wasted energy, but nevermind that—

“Don’t tell me…”

With the face of the one person I would never expect to send me an email like this coming to mind, I hurriedly opened the email.

‘Happy birthday. I sent you a present that should arrive today. Do as you please with it.

Your father.’

“A present from my old man, after all this time…?”

I hadn’t had any contact with my old man for about one year now. When I entered high school, he suddenly stopped his job at a foreign investment company and hid his whereabouts. Ever since then, I never received a reply no matter how often I called or texted him, and I don’t even know where he is right now.

Why a present after all this time…? And my birthday is next week, you know? Did you actually forget the birthday of your own son, you shitty old man?

Just when I started boiling with anger, the bell to my intercom rang. I checked the time out of curiosity, and it was only 9.30am. Probably some mailman delivering the present.

“Gen-san, I’ll be right back.”

I put down the worms that I was holding in front of Gen-san and headed towards the entrance. And when I opened the door, an unexpected sight greeted me.

“Good morning!”

I could scarcely believe my eyes. After all, a beautiful girl with a charming smile was standing right in front of me. Her long hair fluttered from the slight breeze. Her large, brilliant eyes, along with her long eyelashes were as impressive as could be. Her smile looked so inviting and kind that it would make you think she would accept every evil deed you had ever done and would ever do.

Her height looked like it was around 150cm? Her pink one-piece gave off a very spring-like vibe, emphasizing her perfectly balanced bodyline and showing off her great style.

“…Are you sure you don’t have the wrong room?”

Since she didn’t look like the delivery service guy I had expected, I blurted out these words without thinking.

Can you really blame me, though?

The only people who ever intentionally ring my doorbell besides the delivery service people are advertising agencies for newspapers or people from some sort of religious cult. Oh right, there’s also this older lady next door who sometimes comes over to seek help when she’s been fighting with her boyfriend.

Thinking that, my doubt meter rose to max, and I found myself searching for hidden cameras, only to realize that I didn’t have any friends to begin with who would prank me like this.

Even so, this beautiful girl right here shouldn’t have any business with me.

“Umm… This is the room of Izumigaoka Hayato-san, right?”

The girl slightly tilted her head with a troubled expression when she asked that, which made me shiver in astonishment. Apparently, she really does have business with me.

“Yes, I am said Hayato. Do you have some kind of business with me?”

When I answered with the most weary voice I could muster, the girl returned a smile.

“I’m Tsukiyono Akari!”

She said her name with a resolute voice, and like there was a short pause afterwards.

“…Tsukiyono Akari-san?”

I repeated her name, but it didn’t ring any bells.

“Yes! I will be in your care from today onwards. I’m looking forward to it!”

“Excuse me?”

What did she just say?

“Though it might be a bit sudden, but if I may.”

While I was standing still, unable to comprehend the meaning of her words, the girl started trying to enter my room.

“H-Hey, wait a second!” I panicked and grabbed her by the shoulder.

“Is something the matter?”

“Of course…! Why are you suddenly trying to go inside?”

When I did, she looked at me in puzzlement, only to state the following with slightly flushed cheeks.

“It’s fine! I won’t mind if your room isn’t cleaned up, or if there are magazines lying around that girls shouldn’t see! Rather, I am the type of person who shows interest and understanding, so don’t worry about it!”

“No no no, having sympathy for an adolescent boy is actually a good thing, but that’s not what I meant!”

I loosened my grip on her shoulder slightly, and she took that opportunity to push away my hand and set foot into my room.

“Oh, you’re really keeping it clean, I see. And I can’t spot any adult magazines…”

I wonder why she sounded a bit disappointed while saying that last part.

“Ah!”

Letting out a voice as if she had spotted something interesting, she walked straight towards it.

“So you’re keeping a hedgehog, I see. How cute! What’s it’s name?”

“Genta. I call him Gen-san.”

“Gen-san. What a cute name! Nice to meet you, Gen-san~”

When she went to touch him, Gen-san immediately went into defense mode, extending his needles. When it looked like she still wanted to touch him, he even hid his face.

No, that’s not important right now—

“Can you please wait a second? Suddenly barging into my room, saying you’ll be in my care from now on… Tsukiyono-san, was it? Would you mind explaining yourself, please?”

In response, the girl stared at me in confusion once more. No, no, no. I should be the one making that kind of face, you know.

“You really haven’t heard anything?”

“About what?”

“That from today onwards, I will be living under the same roof as Hayato-san as your rental family.”

“…Excuse me?”

Though I definitely clearly heard what she said, I couldn’t process the information at all.

Rental family? Living under the same roof? This beauty and I? No, no, no, there’s gotta be some sort of mistake here.

“You didn’t hear anything from Kaito-san?”

“K-Kaito-san…!”

Of course I would remember the name.

Kaito—Izumigaoka Kaito. It was the name of my old man.

“Then, Tsukiyono-san was told to come here by my old man?”

“Yes!”

My head suddenly felt dizzy, and I put a hand on the wall to support myself.

Apparently, she wasn’t joking at all. I don’t know where he’s at, or what my old man is doing right now, but it looks like he pushed some unreasonably ridiculous situation onto me. As always, I can’t read this old man’s mind at all…

“Umm… You really haven’t heard anything about this?”

“Yeah. Actually, I didn’t have any contact with him for about the past year or so.”

The girl looked at me with a face filled with concern. And she finally started explaining.

“I accepted a job request from Kaito-san. Namely, I was told to look after Hayato-san and his surroundings. The contract stipulates that from April onward, I will spend every weekend—Saturday and Sunday—as Hayato-san’s family.”

A contract, huh…? “Are you serious…?” I muttered. What is this shitty old man thinking…?

“I’m sorry that you came all the way out here, but let’s forget about that contract. I don’t have any trouble caring for myself. I’ll do whatever I can so my old man doesn’t have to worry about me.”

Though it may come as a surprise to some, I actually like cooking, and I clean and do the laundry on a regular basis. After all, living alone means that you can easily fall into degradation. In the worst case, it can even cause you to mentally fall to pieces. To make sure that this doesn’t happen, you should manage everything yourself, so that you have something else to worry about. Though when it comes to washing the dishes… I often find myself just giving them a quick rinse and putting them away. It’s the only thing that I really find to be a total pain.

But the girl in front of me knew nothing of what I was thinking—

“That I cannot allow.”

And she completely denied my decision.

“I have already received one year’s payment. Since I’ve accepted the job already, I will fulfill it with all of my being!”

The girl gazed straight at me, her eyes filled with determination. She puffed out her chest in confidence.

“Though I thought that I would just come over and meet you today, I might as well do some cleaning and washing. Ahh, this is actually outside of the contract, but just think of it as a side service and pay it no mind.”

After saying that, she started tidying up the room, humming to herself.

“No, really, please wait a second!”

“Do you need a moment to hide all of your magazines that aren’t suitable for minors?”

“I didn’t tell you to wait because of that!”

Even if she didn’t wait, I already had them stashed away in places where nobody would find them. I sometimes hide them in places that are so well-hidden that even I have trouble finding them, so sometimes they appear a year later when I least expect it.

It’s like a time capsule with porn mags. Every adolescent boy should’ve had such an experience, right? Well, there’s not really any reason to hide them since I live alone, though.

“Fine. I’ll go check with my old man, so please wait a second.”

Taking out my smartphone, I turned my back to her and dialed the number to my old man. Still, one year, huh…? The last time I saw my father was back at my middle school graduation. There’s no way I could forget about that.

I still remember the shock I had felt back then—On the way home from the graduation ceremony, my old man had told me that he stopped working at his company, and that he was going to live however he wanted to from then on. I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say. He handed me a smartphone and a savings book, said ‘With these, you can also live however you want,’ put me in a taxi, and send me here to this apartment that he had rented. When I entered this room, Gen-san greeted me from inside his cage. Ever since then, my father and I never met again, let alone talked over the phone.

“Somehow… this feels pretty heavy all of a sudden… But I can’t stay like this forever.”

However, when I pressed the call button, I was notified that the number I dealt was unreachable.

“Sorry. I couldn’t get in touch with my old man. For now, let’s just leave it at that for today—?”

I said that as I turned around, but I couldn’t find the girl who was supposed to be there.

“Huh?”

In the short time that I wasn’t paying attention, she had disappeared. Instead, I heard noises coming from the bathroom.

Is she cleaning the bathroom?

I started to walk towards said bathroom, but my thoughts stopped.

“Haaaaaaaa…”

“……”

Is this a hallucination? No, please just let it be one.

For some reason, the girl was rubbing her face on my boxers with an expression like she was in ecstasy. Of course, I had trouble comprehending the situation.

Does she have some weird circumstances that makes her have to do that?

No, no matter how I think about it, she’s totally sniffing my underwear.

“Fuhihihi…”

And from that beautiful face leaked a laugh creepier than you could ever imagine.

“Umm… What are you doing?”

Though I really didn’t want to, I had no other choice but to ask. The girl froze for a second with a terrified look on her face, but in the the next moment…

“I thought that I might as well do some laundry, so I was checking for clothing with the label still on them,” answered the girl. She flashed me a wholehearted smile.

I see. So she was checking for labels, huh? I see, I see. That was close. I was about to mentally file her away as a total pervert—But wait, is there really any need to check for something like that?

“Did you manage to talk to Kaito-san?”

“Eh? Ahh… No, the call didn’t go through.”

“It figures. It would surprise me if you could reach him when he’s that far up in the mountains,” the girl said as she put detergent and fabric softener into the washing machine.

“…Mountains? Tsukiyono-san, do you know where my father currently is?”

“Yes. In order to accept this job, I went to meet him once.”

After closing the lid of the washing machine, she suddenly took my hand.

“Hey—?!”

“Please come with me for a second.”

Since that happened out of nowhere like that, my heart skipped a beat. Though it might not be all that big of a deal for her, it’s been years since a girl has held my hand like that… I only remember the feeling of Gen-san’s hand. I don’t think I’ve held hands with a girl since I was a 6th grader in grade school, when we were practicing a folk dance.

As an aside, said girl at the folk dance looked like she really hated it, saying things like “Only for a bit! Only for a little bit, okay!”, and she immediately went and washed her hands after the practice ended. Thanks to that everyone teased me and called me ‘Mr Dirty.’ Stupid brats.

Anyways, this girl’s hand was really warm and soft, and it was a completely different feeling from the spiky Gen-san. To summarize, it felt very pleasant.

“Please take a look at this.”

After she pulled me to my room and sat me down, she pulled out her smartphone and handed it to me. Shown on the screen were various video sites. One of those videos showed a middle-aged man, not wearing any shirt, living self-sufficiently in the mountains. He was grilling some meat on a bonfire outside of a small handmade hut. Aside from that, you could also see several pieces of handmade furniture, a bathtub, and a field in the background.

The channel was titled “The daily life of the bushcraft old man who retired at age 24.” Apparently, the channel was created about a year ago, and the views were already at about 300.000. It looks like this channel is rather popular. Not that I would know about how any of that works. Still, it takes a lot of guts to drop out of society at that age. What about his future plans? It was very obvious that this man was irresponsible.

However, after seeing the face of said man, I couldn’t keep my voice down.

“M-My old man—?!”

The owner of this popular channel was my old man.

“One year without any contact from him, and this is what he’s been up to?!”

I was nearly threw the phone out of anger.

“He seems to be living on a mountain between the Gunma and Niigata prefectures. Once a week, he climbs down said mountain to upload a video, and this is about the only time you can get in contact with him.”

“Tsukiyono-san… You went all the way over there?”

“Yes. Even though I had the right mountaineering equipment, it still took me about three days.”

Hey, how can you say that with a smile like that? Both of them clearly have a screw loose… What kind of stamina do you two have…?

“Since that’s how it is, I look forward to being your rental family.”

“No, I understand the circumstances, but it’s not like I—”

Without giving me the chance to finish my sentence, she suddenly stood up.

“For now, I will continue with the cleaning and laundry.”

She resumed her work without listening to me at all. And I had no other choice but to watch her, carrying Gen-san on my head.

After she had finished cleaning and the laundry, the girl returned home.

“Since today was just the first day, I’ll excuse myself for now.”

“Y-Yeah…”

No matter how much I wracked my brain about it, I couldn’t come up with anything that I should do now.

“The next time I come over will be the weekend of next week. On Saturday, to be precise. Though I’m nothing more than a rental, please feel free to call me if there are any problems.”

“For now, I’ll try to get in touch with my old man…”

She smiled at me and said “Please do your best.” Does she know that the contract will be nullified as soon as I can grab my old man by the neck?

“Since I will be staying over next week, I have to prepare a lot of things. Like my pyjamas, and towels for the bath and that sort of thing—”

“Wait wait wait! What?! Staying over?!”

“Since we’re family, that much should be expected, of course.”

“No no no no! That really is not okay at all!”

“Hayato-san, having a family means that you sleep and eat under the same roof.”

Her smile was clearly asking me ‘Is there a problem with that?’

No no no, there are way too many problems to count. Especially when you count my lower half.

“Being family is one thing, but staying over at a young boy’s home you just met is taking it a bit too far…”

“Oh, so Hayato-san is planning to do this and that to me?”

“No, that’s not what I mean… Just, what if someone found out?”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind that at all.”

Wait, which of them does she not mind? Having bad things done to her? Or having someone else find out? What should I do if she means the first? Even if I don’t plan on doing it, it still feels a bit exciting.

“Then, until next week. I’m looking forward to it.”

With those words, she crouched down in front of Gen-san. He didn’t seem as wary of her now, and she softly embraced him.

“Gen-san too. I’m looking forward to living with you.”

When she called out to him like that, Gen-san slowly lifted his face.

“Ah, that reminds me!”

Seeming to have remembered something important, she pulled out an envelope from her bag.

“Kaito-san asked me to entrust this to you. He said to open it when you’re alone.”

“For me? T-Thank you.”

After bidding me farewell, she left my apartment in a very happy mood.

After seeing her off, I took a break on the sofa while hugging Gen-san.

“Seriously… What is this rental family even supposed to be…? What should I do, Gen-san?”

He simply lay on my belly face upwards and started sleeping, not in the care in the world. But he looks really lovable, so I can’t be mad at him. Sometimes I wish that I could be like him…

While trying to run away from reality with these thoughts, I opened the envelope.

‘How do you like your present? She’s cute, right? You’d better be thankful (LOL), your father’.

“That bastard…”

My hands started trembling with rage.

“So that was it?! That girl was supposed to be my birthday present?! Don’t joke with me, you shitty old man!”

Crumpling the letter into a ball, I threw it across the room.

“Really, what the hell is going on… Hmm?”

I let out a sigh to calm myself down and looked out the window, but I noticed something weird. Out on the balcony, the girl had put up all the clothes that she had washed earlier… But weirdly enough, The boxers that I had worn yesterday were nowhere to be found.

Well, whatever… this isn’t the time to be thinking about that. I’ll find them soon enough. I had far too many other problems to worry about, and could only hold my head in despair.

*

The month turned over to April, and school started again. From that day onwards, my second year in high school had started. Inside the classroom, my classmates were already well on their way to forming newfound relationships. The school I was attending, Motoimaizumi High School, has several different areas of study: General Studies, Economics, Information Technology, Agriculture, and Fashion Design. Basically there were five different routes. In order to guarantee a suitable environment for these different subjects, specific classrooms were necessary, and these could be found in the five scattered school buildings.

The teacher’s office, student council office, and other administrative rooms were in a special building, the training rooms for fashion design were in the southern building, the normal classrooms and the research labs for information technology were in the central building, and the economics and agriculture rooms were to the north. Slightly separated from everything else was a building for career guidance and life counseling.

And between all of these different subjects, I had chosen information technology. All of the different classes were separated, and IT was Class 2. Even if classes were rotated, you would still see around half the faces from the previous semester.

When people saw familiar faces in the same class as last year, they would introduce their friends to the other students. Like this, new friendships were built, as was the class hierarchy and cliques.

They’re going through such hard work—without knowing that it won’t do them any good at all in the future. Of course, if you were wondering about me, I ignored them all and walked towards my seat at the window. It’s not like I want to fit in with everyone else in class, and I don’t plan on ever changing that mindset. As a self-proclaimed professional loner, I’ll simply make sure that nothing changes even though the year has changed.

My living alone theory has three principles:

1. Don’t expect anything from anyone else, and don’t make anyone else expect something from you.

2. Always be neutral to the people around you.

3. Use the smallest amount of communication necessary.

These principles will follow me through my adolescence, and help me in my future when I work as a single official.

Then why am I in low spirits, you ask?

There is one simple reason. Of course, it’s the incident with Tsukiyono Akari from yesterday—

No matter how much I think about it, I can’t come up with a single idea for to deal with the situation. Of course, I could always prevent her from entering my home, but it wouldn’t help much if she lurked around right outside the door. Considering her behaviour when she was there, denying her entry probably wouldn’t work anyway. If I don’t manage to satisfy her, I won’t be able to return to my peaceful loner life.

For now, I decided to send my old man an email. Though it turned into a rather long message, the gist of it was ‘Stop joking with that rental family nonsense, you shitty old man. Don’t just hide in the mountains. Nullify this contract. The video was really fun btw.’

After that, I was so intrigued about what he was doing that I made the mistake of watching all of his videos. He had moved into the woods with absolutely nothing, and was making everything from scratch. To be fair, it was more interesting than those documentaries you often see on TV. Although it might be completely different from my future goals for life, he’s living alone in his own way. Apparently, season two of his videos is about to start. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it.

“Good morning~”

While I was thinking about this and that, a cute, energetic voice rang out inside the classroom. When I turned around to find the source, it was a single female student, surrounded by countless other male students.

This girl’s name is Tomatsuri Hana, and just like me, she’s studying IT. She was an eye-catching beauty, with naturally bright hair and eyes. At around 150cm tall, she had a rather small stature. Her beauty leaned more towards the cute side, and she was cuter than many people from show biz. Personality-wise, she was simple and innocent. She was popular with both boys and girls, and everyone in the school seemed to know her. One of the reasons for this was probably because she could be friends with almost anyone.

“Everyone, thanks for seeing me off. See you after school~”

When she stopped at the entrance and waving goodbye with a smile, most of the boys started crying as they departed. All of them were basically Tomatsuri’s pets, or as she would call it, her ‘Friends.’ Though I don’t know the exact number, there are a lot of them. Are you guys really fine with that? No matter how many of them confess, she turns all of them down with a smile.

In the end, all of them revere her like goddess, swallowing their tears. Honestly, if this doesn’t make you seem like a poor loser, then I don’t know what does. What a waste of their adolescence. Don’t you have anything better to do with your life?

By the way, I got this information from eavesdropping on conversations between other classmates. But alas, I don’t have someone I can talk to for all this love talk. As a professional loner, listening to their stories while pretending to sleep or pretending to read a book is one of my most basic skills.

“…It seems like it’ll get pretty noisy this semester…”

The most prominent person always rubs off on the rest of the class. Tomatsuri Hina would be that person in this situation, so this class will probably be the most noisy classroom this year. That’s just how much Tomatsuri drags everyone down to her level. In order to make sure that I don’t get wrapped into this, it seems like I have to have a plan of attack. And while I was gazing out of the window, lost in my thoughts—

“Guha?!”

“Good morning~ Izumigaoka-kun!”

When I let my guard down, Tomatsuri hit my back with full force.

“Y-Yeah. Morning.”

Trying to endure the pain on my back, I gave a shaky greeting in response.

But this just shows what kind of person she is. Even if no one else in the class comes to greet me, she will do so without fail. We’ve been in the same class every year since first year, and this had turned into a regular routine. This is one of the reasons why you could call her my natural enemy.

“It seems like we’re in the same class again. I’m looking forward to it~”

She said that, and walked off towards the other classmates.

What nerve she has to suddenly call out to me like that… my solitary points went down from it.

And while I was mentally complaining about her, I heard a voice coming from the seat next to me.

“Even after becoming a second-year, that girl hasn’t changed at all.”

When I turned to face the source, I found a female student looking straight at me. Her hair was bright in colour, and her uniform looked out of shape. Not to mention that she was wearing thick layers of make-up, which overall gave her the appearance of someone rather lax.

“……”

For some reason, both of us stared at each other in silence. Was she talking to me just now? In the past, I sometimes thought that a classmate was talking to me, and I would reply only to find out that they were talking to the person behind me. What painful and embarrassing memories.

‘Eh? I wasn’t talking to you.’ Still felt really awkward, even for a loner like me. In order to make sure that I don’t repeat that, I looked around, seeing if someone else was about to respond. However, it didn’t look like there was anyone else she could be talking to.

Seriously? My solitary points are going down even more here.

“You’re right. I’d really appreciate it if she acted a bit more composed.”

This is the first time I’ve seen this girl. Maybe that’s why she called out to me like that. People who don’t know me yet tend to do that. When I checked for her name tag, it said Yanase Miyuki.

“I’m looking forward to being seat neighbours.”

“Yeah, keeping it in moderation would be much appreciated.”

And of course, I immediately started with my Living alone theory, rule 3: ‘Use the smallest amount of communication necessary.’

If I keep it at this level, I won’t get any closer to people than is beneficial to myself. Especially girls. You always run the risk of starting some sort of weird rumour if you say too much. Their communication network should not be underestimated. If I were to make a misstep here, it could spell the end of me.

“You’re being annoying on the first day of the new school year. Take your seats already, you kiddos.”

While saying that in an annoyed tone of voice, the female homeroom teacher responsible for the class entered the classroom. She was wearing a suit with pants, and her long hair reached most of the way down her back.

Her name was Komanyuu Yukari, and she seemed to be in her thirties. She had started actively searching for marriage candidates since last year, but from what I’ve heard she’s had no success. Apparently she was even using seven different dating apps at once. Though this might sound like useless information, Komanyuu-sensei has a bad habit of letting out her frustration about failed dates during class, often complaining about whatever man let her down.

Though everything she says just sounds like ‘It’s not like I couldn’t marry him, I just didn’t,’ which really sounds like crying from a sore loser. Everyone in the class was of the opinion that she might not be suited to be a teacher, but for some reason, she was getting high praise from the school side, which was really a mystery. At first glance, she is quite beautiful, but rumour has it that her personality is the main reason for her failing love life.

“Tomatsuri, don’t bring those hordes of boys to the classroom like that. Are you doing that out of spite or something?”

“You’re wrong~ Compared to Sensei’s charm, I am nothing but a small child.”

“Be more careful next time. My head is going crazy from envy here.”

“Okay~ I’ll be more careful.”

This really doesn’t sound like a teacher-student conversation.

“Now then, the rest of you—”

Standing behind the teacher’s desk, Komanyuu-sensei spoke up.

“Your luck ended the moment I became your homeroom teacher. I’ll say it upfront; I don’t have time to bother fixing every little problem you have. Just do as you please. I’m busy with my love life.”

Everyone present was at a loss for words. Those really weren’t words that a teacher should say.

“Just like I said, you can just do what you want. It’s better than having a teacher constantly nagging you, right? I will neither look after you, nor will I hold you back. It’s all up to you how you spend this year. However, the problems you create you’ll have to solve by yourselves. Just like you have to wipe your own asses.”

Of course, a lot of the students were utterly confused. As for me, I could sympathize with some of what she said. Being independent means being able to do a bare minimum of things by yourself. When you’re a student, you are still dependent on on your parents money, but any more than that is for you to decide, and is your own responsibility. Those words somewhat meshed well with my own loner attitude.

Though I had heard that she was a troublesome teacher, this might be better than I had expected? At the very least, it didn’t sound all too bad to me so far.

“But, before we go on, there’s a new transfer student I have to introduce. You boys, go ahead and cry tears of joy. She’s quite the beauty— Almost as good as I looked ten years ago.”

Though the other guys started getting hyped up, the latter half of her sentence completely destroyed that atmosphere. And can you blame them?

“You can come in.”

Komanyuu-sensei called out. The next moment, the door opened and a certain female student entered the classroom, but…

“……Eh?”

Because I had never expected it, I let out a dumbfounded voice. With a wide smile, the girl stood next to the teacher’s desk and bowed down slightly.

“It’s nice to meet you. My name is Tsukiyono Akari.”

My brain couldn’t process the situation unfolding in front of my eyes.

“Please treat me well.”

The girl saying that was the exact same one who had introduced herself as my new rental family several days ago. I only faintly heard all of the boys who were screaming out of happiness. They were drowned out by the sounds of alarms blaring inside of my head.

Isn’t my loner life at risk here?

That was the thought I had at the time.

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