20 Chapter 20

"Did you see that? I made it all the way!" Sora exclaimed, clearly proud of his performance.

He'd finished his swim just before Shiro and got out of the pool with a triumphant grin. But you almost came in dead last, Sora, why are you proud of that?

"Well, it looks like everyone can swim, for the most part. Normally I'd split you all up based on gender but since there's only seven of you, you're all going to compete together. Fifty-meter freestyle."

"C-compete?! Are you serious?" Sora's earlier elatedness quickly vanished when he found out we'd be competing.

"I'll give out a special bonus to the first-place winner: 5000 points. The student who comes in last place, however, will have to take supplementary lessons. Get ready."

The confident swimmers looked happy, while the less skilled students groaned.

I'd never imagined that the school would award points as a prize. Perhaps this was a way to light a fire under the students. Rather well thought out, I had to say. The seven of us lined up at one side of the pool, ready to start our competition.

My sight wandered over to Kururugi, who was two lanes to my left. His physical ability was no doubt top-notch but I doubted that he had much experience in swimming since he had been trained in the military. Because of this, I could probably win the race even if I don't swim at my top speed. With that in mind, the race started, and we dove in.

I couldn't focus on the positions of every other student while swimming, so I decided to go at a pace which would still be considered objectively very fast but not fast enough for it to seem unbelievable for a high-schooler. Granted, I didn't actually know the average-swim speed of a sixteen year old, so I adjusted my speed to an estimate.

Once I finished the race, I climbed out of the pool. After a couple of seconds, Kururugi reached the end of the pool and climbed out. Everyone else was still swimming; Light was in the lead followed relatively closely by Ryuzaki while Lelouch, Sora and Shiro had barely made it half-way.

"You're incredibly fast, Ayanokōji. Have you practiced swimming?" Kururugi approached me.

"Yeah, I have quite a fair amount of experience with swimming. What about you?"

"I've done a bit but never really trained in it, I guess."

"Your speed is impressive for someone who isn't trained."

"Thanks, but I can't really feel proud standing next to you."

Around fifteen seconds later, Shiro finished the race in last place. Nobody could really blame her though, seeing as she was the only girl. It looked like the coach had used seven seperate stopwatches to time us - he was lucky that no more than two students finished at a similar time, I thought. He went to extra effort just to put our names down in order as well. After he finished writing, he moved back from the whiteboard so that we could see the results.

Ayanokōji Kiyotaka: 21.94

Kururugi Suzaku: 24.38

Yagami Light: 26.12

Ryuzaki Rue: 29.70

Lamperouge Lelouch: 38.22

Sora: 42.03

Shiro: 47.94

After a few seconds of silence, Lelouch asked a question. "Hey, what is the world-record for fifty-meter freestyle?"

"It's 20.91 seconds," Shiro returned like a search engine.

Is there anything that Shiro doesn't know? I couldn't help but wonder just how much information this girl had collected during her mere sixteen years of life.

"At least tell us that swimming is your main specialty, Ayanokōji." Sora said more seriously than normal.

"Who knows?" I decided to be vague.

Lelouch and Sora clicked their tongues but didn't press the matter further, which I was grateful for. It looked like I had used more of my abilities than it seemed I'd needed to. In reality, the average time for a high-schooler for fifty-meter freestyle was probaby somewhere around thirty seconds but I had ended up getting a time that is extremely impressive even among adult athletes.

"So, did anyone other than Ayanokōji himself place their bets on him?" Ryuzaki asked.

"I did," Shiro replied.

That surprised me. It appeared that everyone in the class except Shiro and I had placed their bets on Kururugi to be the fastest swimmer. I wondered what Shiro had seen in me to make her think that I would be faster than him. It didn't look like she just did it to be different, rather it seemed like she was confident I'd win. What a scary girl.

"That means that everyone owes Shiro and Ayanokōji 134 points each." Light concluded.

"Could be worse, I guess..." Sora muttered in annoyance. He was probably confident in Kururugi's victory.

After school, I was relaxing in my dorm room when I received a text. Aside from the odd notification from the Class E group chat, I hadn't been sent any texts since I enrolled at this school. I hated to admit it, but I was slightly excited as I checked my phone to see who had texted me.

[Can you meet me at Palate Café today Ayanokōji-kun?]

It was from Kushida, who I had exchanged contact information with when I met her almost a week ago. What could Kushida want with someone like me? She couldn't be confessing her feelings for me, could she? Nah, there was about a 1 percent chance of that ever happening.

[Sure. What time?]

I texted back. I had nothing to do for the rest of the day and saw no reason to refuse.

[Is 17:00 good for you?]

[That's fine by me.]

[Okay, I'll see you there then ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ]

Kushida added a cute emoticon to the end of her text. I wondered if I should try that, too - it would probably be seen as weird coming from a boy though. It was about to be 4 o'clock, which meant that I had an hour before I was supposed to meet Kushida. She hadn't mentioned anything about what she wanted from me, so I couldn't help but wonder what was up.

I decided to leave half an hour early. It would take me ten to fifteen minutes to get to Palate Café, so I would probably arrive somewhere around 14:40 and I don't mind waiting a bit. It never hurts to be early, after all.

I changed into some more casual clothes I had bought earlier in the week and, grabbing my student ID card along with my phone and dorm keycard, I headed out. I ended up arriving ten minutes before Kushida did, which meant she had also decided to come a bit early.

"Ah good afternoon, Ayanokōji-kun! Did you wait long?" Kushida called out to me.

"No," I didn't lie. Ten minutes wasn't a long time, after all.

"Do you want to go in?" she asked, motioning to the café.

"That... might be inconvenient for me." I admitted, scratching the back of my head.

"Really? Why?"

"You're quite popular among the boys of this school, Kushida. If I was seen alone with you, I might find myself in a bit of trouble."

"Do you think so? I don't think it would be that unusual. You've also caught the eye of the girls, Ayanokōji-kun, Even though no one seems to really know you. You're on a first-year students' ranking chart."

"Caught their eye? Me? Also, what the hell kind of ranking?"

Apparently, we men had been rated without even noticing.

"Well, there are lots of different rankings, you know? The hot guy rankings. The rich guy rankings. The creeper rankings. And--"

"Okay, that's enough. I don't think I want to hear any more."

"Don't worry. You're ranked a respectable sixth in the hot guy rankings. Congratulations! By the way, Satonaka-kun in Class A is in first place. Hirata-kun from my class is in second. The fourth and fifth place boys are in Class A. A guy called Lelouch-kun is the third place - I've never seen him before, but apparently he's good-looking and also stood up to Ryūen in Class C which made a lot of the girls admire him. I feel like Hirata-kun gets lots of points because of his looks and personality."

From what Kushida had said, this Hirata seemed to be very influential and positively-viewed by the girls just as Sora had said when he reported his findings in Class D. It also seemed that Lelouch had caught the eye of the girls of the school after he had confronted Ryūen.

"Is it okay for me to be happy about that?" I asked.

"Of course. Oh, but you also ranked pretty high in gloominess."

"Let' see..." I looked at Kushida's cell phone. There really were a lot of different ranking charts. I saw a rather disturbing ranking titled, "Boys Who Should Die." Better not look at that one.

"Are you not really happy about it? You're ranked sixth."

"I guess if I cared about popularity it'd be different, but I don't really feel anything." Besides, no girl had ever placed a letter with a heart sticker on it in my bag. "So, does everyone participate in this?"

"Well, not everyone, but lots of people do. I don't know the exact number of votes, though. The comments are also anonymous."

In other words, many unknown variables made it difficult.

"I think you're probably at a disadvantage, Ayanokōji-kun. From my point of view, you're definitely attractive enough to be considered a hot guy, but I don't think people would say you're as beautiful or stand out as much as Hirata-kun. From what I've seen you're not a great conversationalist and you haven't done anything to stand out like Lelouch-kun either. There's something missing, some element of attractiveness, you know?"

In other words, there was nothing appealing about me at all. "Ouch. I feel like I just got stabbed in the heart."

"S-sorry. I probably should have held back a bit." Kushida appeared sheepish. "Hey, Ayanokōji-kun. Did you have a girlfriend in junior high school?"

"Would it be bad if I didn't?"

"So, you didn't have one? Ha ha ha, no. No, it's not bad."

"Rankings, huh? What would the girls think if the boys did something like that?"

"They'd probably consider them the lowest of the low."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. Well, that was to be expected. If the boys ranked girls by cuteness, the girls would vehemently object. There was a definite double standard at play.

"So, what did you call me out for, Kushida?" I asked.

"The truth is, it's about Horikita-san. She still doesn't talk to anybody and I feel really sad when I see her alone, so I want to become friends with Horikita-san. You promised to help me right, Ayanokōji-kun?"

Smiling means letting your guard down in front of another person, even if just a little. Such a relationship could most likely be referred to as friendship. Kushida seemed to understand people well, especially when it came to making them smile.

"I suppose I did. Do you have a plan?"

"Well, I thought you could help me think of something." She giggled sheepishly and lightly smacked her own head. If she were an ugly girl, I would have been totally turned off, but Kushida made it charming.

"Even if you say you want to be friends with her, it's not that simple though."

"You're probably right... Well, first I think we should try to make Horikita-san smile," Kushida said.

"Smile, huh?" So, because Kushida had asked, I was going to help her make Horikita smile. Was such a thing possible? I wondered. I doubted it. "In any case, I think there is one problem."

"T-there is?! What is it?"

"I don't have Horikita's contact information, and I don't think she'll accept an invitation from you to go out if she hasn't already."

"Eeeh? You still don't have her contact information? But aren't the two of you friends?"