AFTER THE SURVIVAL and elimination special exam ended, the first break arrived.

I went to the gym without anyone telling me to.

After training alone for a while and sweating it out, I headed to the rest area. Sitting on a chair, partly to cool down, I remembered something and took out my phone.

Then, I searched for a certain word.

“…I see.”

I could only be convinced after looking at the article that came up.

While admiring the photos in the article alone, I heard―

“Good morning, Ayanokōji-kun.”

“Morning.”

The ones who appeared in the rest area were Ichinose and Amikura. They seemed to have come to the gym.

“Oh, that’s a cute photo. It’s a red panda, right?”

Amikura squinted and asked, having seen my phone screen.

“Yeah. I was just doing some research.”

I turned off the screen as if to dodge the question, but Ichinose seemed to have some insight.

“Is it related to the exam question? Ayanokōji-kun, you got it wrong, didn’t you?”

It was the special exam from the other day.

It was a memorable moment, so there was no way they would’ve forgotten, even if it was about another class.

“Now that you mention it, you got the tapioca question wrong too. Are you surprisingly ignorant of the world?”

Hearing Ichinose’s words, Amikura also seemed to understand and asked.

“I can’t deny it. Probably because I hardly ever watch TV.”

I offered the most common excuse, but both of them just smiled wryly.

“Honestly, I didn’t think not liking TV would backfire like that.”

“Is that really the problem? These things garnered quite a buzz on the internet too, didn’t they?”

Amikura expressed her doubt; perhaps my not-watching-TV excuse wasn’t persuasive enough, Amikura expressed her doubt.

“An unexpected weakness was discovered, huh?”

Ichinose chuckled at my confused expression.

Right after, Akiyama, a member of the gym staff, appeared and called out to Ichinose.

There seemed to be a mistake in some paperwork she had filled out, and she was asked to rewrite it, so they both headed toward the counter.

They’d probably be back soon, but for the moment, it was just Amikura and I left alone.

Feeling it’d be strange to leave just then, I decided to either voluntarily leave Amikura or wait until Ichinose came back. 

Since we came to the gym together, Amikura probably intended to wait for Ichinose to return as well.

I sat down on a chair, leaving one empty next to me.

“Honami-chan’s really changed, huh? It’s like, unimaginable from a few months ago…”

“Is that so?”

Indeed. Recently, Ichinose had started showing a side of herself that she hadn’t before.

But to say it was a matter of months was an exaggeration.

It wasn’t surprising, as the changes in Ichinose that Amikura mentioned weren’t about this incident.

“It was right after the second-year deserted island exam ended, and the second semester had just started, I think.”

Amikura began to speak, smiling as if recalling something funny.

“Back then, Honami-chan seemed unstable, or rather, she was often lost in thought.”

“The deserted island exam, huh?”

Hearing that, I caught up with Amikura’s story.

That was when I received an unexpected confession from Ichinose and told her about Kei.

Considering Ichinose’s feelings, it wasn’t surprising that she seemed unstable to others.

“Right around that time, a little incident happened in the class… Oh, but keep this story between us, okay? Don’t tell Honami-chan.”

Amikura said, implying a sense of responsibility in the tale.

“I don’t think there was any malice, but there was a time when a boy in the class accidentally overheard a rumor that Honami-chan might like you. Well, it all started with a message that Honami-chan sent by mistake…”

Apps were convenient since you could send messages with just a press of a button. Therefore, it wasn’t uncommon to mistakenly send a message to someone other than the intended recipient due to a tap error. Even if there was a delete function, sometimes the message gets seen before it can be retracted.

For a while after the deserted island exam, Ichinose was going through a mentally unstable period.

It wouldn’t be surprising if she made a small mistake.

“I didn’t see the text myself, but I think it was something like, ‘I want to calm down and talk. Can we meet in person?’ Taken out of context, it sounds quite meaningful, right?”

“Yeah, that’s true. So, the classmate Ichinose mistakenly sent her message to was a boy?”

“Different class. But the problem lies in who she accidentally sent it to. That person was Ishizaki-kun, and during the break, he came to our class and boldly asked, ‘What does this message mean?’ while showing the screen.”

Apparently, that caused a stir. The fact that the misdirected recipient was Ishizaki meant the message wasn’t taken too seriously, which was a relief, but on the other hand, it was problematic that he thoughtlessly came to check the message with the person involved.

However, it wasn’t unusual for Ichinose to be on casual messaging terms with Ishizaki.

“Honami-chan was flustered but immediately corrected it, saying it was a misdirected message. Ishizaki-kun was convinced and went back to his class, but the difficulty was what followed. The fact that it was a missent message meant that she intended to send that important message to someone else.”

That might’ve sparked the rumors among the boys in the class.

“But why does that lead to me?”

“You’d understand if you saw it, right?”

For some reason, I was met with a somewhat forceful smile.

“Well, that’s limited to those with sharp intuition… The boys started making noise for a different reason. Ayanokōji-kun, maybe it’s because your ‘A’ and Ishizaki-kun’s ‘I’ are close in the contact list, which is arranged in alphabetical order. There are other names close by, but you and Honami-chan are often seen together…”

(TL NOTE: The Japanese “Alphabet” is ordered by the Gojuuon, this places the vowels あ(a) and い(i) directly next to each other.)

The accumulation of past events and the missent message to Ishizaki led to such speculation.

“Honami-chan is always bright and composed, but she gets quite flustered when it comes to matters concerning herself. Maybe she couldn’t come up with a good excuse at that time, and she turned pale with her eyes drawn to the floor.”

It seemed to be another difficult situation.

Somehow, I could picture the scene at that time.

I can’t tell the truth.

But I can’t pin it on just anyone either.

And since I just said it was sent to the wrong person, I can’t pretend it never happened.

Even though I wandered into this myself, it feels like I’ve approached a dead end.

“Catching sight of the scene, from our point of view, it was very rare to see Honami-chan like that.”

Ichinose was a fundamentally excellent person.

She’d usually overcome most things and could resolve situations.

However, as Amikura described, it was a period when she was in a poor condition.

“We were watching over her for a while, but it gradually started to feel heavy. Boys who didn’t think it was you started to wonder if she was planning to confess to someone.” 

She couldn’t sort it out by herself, and the situation only worsened with her silence.