Soul for a Girlfriend?

We were finally done with the new seating arrangement and Ms Tachibana was looking at us with an evil grin on her face. She, of course, enjoyed this more than us. And in the entire ordeal, nothing turned out according to my expectations. I was rather disappointed.

I was hoping for Kana and Tsūmen to get paired up. Both of them ended up with different

people. But Kana's seat was close to Gaisen, who got paired with none as there were only 39 students in our class. He drew the odd one out. I was jealous of his luck.

Gaisen was sitting in the back of the middle row with Kana sitting in the middle of the row right towards his left side. At least Tsūmen and Kana were in the same row. Though Ms Tachibana had destroyed any hope, I had to ship them.

And very luckily, I got a wonderful partner who has been sitting next to me with a grumpy face ever since she got to know that I was going to be with her for the rest of the year. Kizhashi has been stealing glances at me, but not saying a single word.

This year's seating arrangement was weird because most of the people in my friends' group have been split apart. Though it's not like that, we won't be able to talk in the free periods or during the interval between two periods.

Ms Tachibana smiled at us, and she was quite satisfied. Resting her arms on the table, she leaned towards the table and said in a cheerful voice, "Alright, students… so I hope you'll try to be friends with the person you're stu… sitting with."

It sounded like she was about to say 'stuck' but realised that it would probably have been bad, so she improvised. Turning towards the board, she picked up the marker and wrote the word, 'Homeroom' on the board and turned back towards us.

There was the faint noise of chatter in the class as some students were happy that they got seated next to their friends. Ms Tachibana glanced at her wristwatch and headed towards the door. Before leaving, she called out to Gaisen and told him to look after the class as she had something important to attend to.

As soon as she slid the door shut, the class burst into a sudden roar of chatter. Kizhashi turned around and looked over at Reina, who was sitting quite far from her. It appeared as  Reina and Saki were bench partners and they appeared to be getting along quite well.

Now that was quite the coincidence that two of my former targets were sitting together. Kizhashi turned back with a downcast on her face. I asked, without turning my gazes at her, "Quite far, huh?"

She glared at me instantly and with a hesitant nod, replied, "Yes."

I said nothing further and tapped my index finger on the desk as it was quite boring and I couldn't stare outside the window anymore to escape my boredom. And being in the middle, I was literally surrounded by the noise of others chattering around me and it was quite irritating.

The sound of everyone talking went silent as the door to the classroom slid open and Ms Tachibana walked in with a student walking in shortly after, following her. It was a boy with blonde hair and he was around the same height as me. His right ear was pierced and a strange earring was hanging from it.

Ms Tachibana looked at us and handed a marker to the boy, who took it and wrote his name on the whiteboard. It was a rather strange name, as he returned the marker to her and bowed down towards us, introducing himself, "Nice to meet y'all. My name is Seryoku Kuroi and I'm looking forward to studying with you guys."

He looked quite decent despite his appearance, which was almost like a delinquent. He had this slight smile on his face and wasn't nervous at all, even though so many eyes were staring at him. His left hand was in his pocket while his other hand was in his bag.

I wish I had confidence like him.

"Students, I hope you all will help him with the parts he skipped on." Ms Tachibana said as the boy was staring over at us with his curious look on his face. He looked rather excited to be around new people. 

"No worries, Sensei!" A girl shouted from the back, and soon a wave of chatter started. A few other girls and dudes joined her too, as the boy smiled at them. Sensei seemed to be telling him where to sit as she pointed towards the empty seat next to Gaisen and started walking towards it.

As he was walking through the rows, quite a lot of eyes were on him. He would just smile and nod frequently at those who were greeting him. I glanced at Kizhashi and she also seemed to be staring at the dude. A few whispers were floating around. The boy was quite good looking, so no wonder that girls were all heads over heels for him.

He walked up to the desk and Gaisen gave him a nod of acknowledgement, saying nothing as he took a seat on the chair and looked around him a bit awkwardly. Of course, anyone would be embarrassed if they were being stared at by so many people.

"Students, get along with him." Ms Tachibana again said and everyone just let out a loud "Yes Sensei!"

That day, we got a new face among us and, of course, most of the girls in the class were quite delighted to have such a handsome dude in the same class as them. I could see a few salty faces among the boys as they were already getting jealous of him, but he seemed to have a rather calm look on his face as he was conversing with Gaisen.