The silence in Class 1-B was different now. It wasn't the heavy, accusing silence from the morning, or the buzzing, gossip-filled noise from before the incident. It was a quiet of collective shame and careful readjustment. When Hikari walked to her seat, no one stared. A few even offered small, awkward nods that she ignored. The space around her desk felt wider, as if her classmates were afraid to get too close, unsure of the rules in this new reality where the quiet girl from the back wasn't the villain after all.
It should have felt like a victory. She was exonerated. The truth was out. But as the morning lessons dragged on, Hikari felt strangely hollow. The sharp edges of her anger had worn down, leaving only a tired numbness. The classroom felt like a museum of her own invisibility, and now that people were finally looking, it just made her want to disappear again.
When the lunch bell rang, the usual scramble began. Conversations started up in hesitant clusters. She saw a group of boys and a few girls begin to drift toward the front of the room, their eyes fixed on Kaito. Their expressions were a mix of curiosity, leftover jealousy, and a burning need to understand. Why had he done it? What did he know that they didn't? Was he really friends with her?
Kaito, however, moved with his usual quiet efficiency. He collected his neatly wrapped lunch box, placed his pencils parallel on his desk, and stood up. He didn't acknowledge the approaching group, simply giving a polite, non-committal nod to a general greeting before slipping past them and out the classroom door.
The group hovered, deflated, their questions left hanging in the air.
Hikari watched him go. A familiar sight—the solitary prince exiting stage left. But it didn't look the same anymore. It didn't look like cool, untouchable grace. It looked like an escape.
Before she could second-guess herself, she grabbed her own bag—containing a convenience store bun and her violin case—and followed him.
She knew where he was going. Everyone knew the honor student ate lunch on the rooftop. It was one of those facts about Kaito Sato, like his test scores or his perfect posture. She'd never had a reason to go up there. Her own solitary spot was the old music room, a place of creation. The rooftop felt like a place of retreat.
Pushing the heavy metal door open, the wind hit her first, carrying the distant sounds of the sports fields and the city below. And there he was, sitting against the fence with his back to the door, his lunch open on his lap, looking out over the sprawling view. He was the picture of isolation.
She walked across the sun-warmed concrete, her footsteps soft. He didn't turn, perhaps thinking it was just the wind.
"Aren't you the star of Class 1-B?" she said, her voice cutting through the quiet. "Shouldn't you be holding court downstairs, answering the adoring public's questions?"
Kaito started slightly, turning his head to look at her. There was no surprise on his face, just a calm assessment. "The questions would be about yesterday. The answers are already settled."
"So you're hiding," she stated, stopping a few feet away.
He considered this. "I'm eating lunch. This is where I eat lunch."
Hikari looked at the empty space around him, then at the vast sky. It was so quiet up here. A different kind of quiet than her music room. This was an open, lonely quiet. Without another word, she walked over and sat down against the fence a couple of meters away from him, not too close, but sharing the same stretch of shadow.
He watched her but said nothing, turning back to his food.
She unwrapped her bun, the silence stretching between them. It wasn't the charged, awkward silence of the library from their first meeting. This was… comfortable. Or at least, not hostile.
"I didn't get to say it properly," Hikari began, her eyes on the horizon. "Thanks. For what you did. Twice, now."
Kaito paused, a piece of tamagoyaki halfway to his mouth. "You don't need to thank me."
"Yeah, I do. No one else would have." She took a bite of her bun. "So, thank you."
He finished his bite, meticulously closing his lunch box for a moment. "They were wrong. It was a factual inaccuracy. It needed correction." He said it like he was explaining a math problem.
A small, unexpected smirk touched Hikari's lips. "A 'factual inaccuracy.' Is that what you call three people lying their faces off to get me expelled?"
"It's an accurate description of the event," he said, a faint defensive note in his voice she was starting to recognize.
"You could have just let it be," she pressed, her tone not accusing, but genuinely curious. "Stayed out of it. No one would have blamed you. It wasn't your problem."
Kaito was quiet for a long moment. The wind ruffled his neatly combed hair. He looked at her, and his usual mask of perfect composure seemed to soften at the edges, just for a second. "Did you expect me to not help a friend?" he asked, his voice quieter than before.
The word hung in the air between them. Friend.
Hikari's breath caught. She looked at him—really looked at him—sitting alone on this rooftop, having just turned his back on the entire class to be up here, having turned his back on their lies to stand with her. He'd called their project work a collaboration. He'd called this… friendship.
She didn't know what to say. Sarcasm felt wrong. A simple 'thanks' felt insufficient. So she didn't say anything. She just met his gaze.
And then, something genuine and unplanned happened. A small, real smile broke through her usual guarded expression, not a smirk of triumph or a mask of defiance, but a simple, warm acknowledgment.
And on Kaito Sato's face, in return, appeared an echo of that smile. It was slight, just a gentle upturn of the corners of his mouth, but it reached his eyes, lighting them with a warmth she had never seen there before. It wasn't the polite smile he gave teachers or classmates. It was real.
The silence returned, but it was completely different now. It was filled with the sound of the wind, the distant city, and a shared, quiet understanding that needed no more words.
They finished their lunch in that comfortable quiet, two solitary people sharing a rooftop, the invisible walls between them finally, completely gone.
(End of Chapter 9)