Samuel Clark glanced over and saw the face of the academic genius beside him. Brian Cooper happened to look at him upon hearing his words, and as their eyes met, the words left in his mouth—“Anything else?”—took a turn: “…Why is it you?”

Still that overly proper school uniform.

The boy’s pale skin made his hair look especially black, and his features were actually quite striking—only that “stay away from me” indifferent expression managed to soften some of the aggressiveness his looks brought. Standing there, he seemed completely separated from his surroundings.

Samuel Clark’s earlier question—“Is the No. 6 High School uniform really that good-looking?”—was answered, because among all the people in the office wearing school uniforms, only he managed to stand out.

William Foster was simply overjoyed, his delight written all over his face: “You two know each other?”

More than just know each other.

They’d even had a run-in.

The two answered almost simultaneously—

Samuel Clark: “Sort of.”

Brian Cooper: “Don’t know him.”

Samuel Clark: “?”

Brian Cooper’s “don’t know him” was said with zero inflection, cold to the extreme.

William Foster was a bit confused by the two of them, unable to figure out whether they knew each other or not.

Samuel Clark couldn’t even describe his feelings right now. He’d spent the whole night writing a self-criticism, gritting his teeth as he wrote, thinking that if he found out who it was, he might barge into the guy’s dorm in the middle of the night and beat him up under the covers—only to find out the other party didn’t even remember the incident.

“Dorm building, three-thousand-word self-criticism,” Samuel Clark said. “Or should I make it even clearer? The wall.”

Brian Cooper had taken leave yesterday, rushed back to school by bus in the evening, and saw someone climbing the wall at the dorm entrance. He hadn’t paid attention to who it was—people were coming and going, and plenty changed out of their uniforms after returning to the dorm. Only now did he connect the person in front of him with the one who’d just walked across the long distance to the flag-raising platform and caused a stir with his very first words.

Brian Cooper clearly had nothing to say. He lowered his eyes to look at him, and reluctantly commented on the self-criticism: “Not bad.”

Samuel Clark: “……” Like I need your opinion?

Samuel Clark’s mood right now could be summed up in one big, bold “fuck.”

William Foster couldn’t make sense of it, so he decided to get straight to the point: “If you two know each other, that’s great. Here’s the thing: a few students in the class have applied to change seats, so I’m planning to make some minor adjustments to the seating chart. My initial plan is to have you two sit together. You don’t have any objections, do you?”

Again, the two spoke at the same time—

But this time, they were perfectly in sync.

“Yes.”

Samuel Clark really couldn’t stay in the office any longer. In front of him was the new homeroom teacher, who wanted to introduce him to classmates for who knows what reason, and beside him was the classmate he’d just clashed with yesterday.

He was afraid he’d lose his temper.

“Teacher, with this Brian Cooper classmate—” Samuel Clark didn’t know how to put it, and finally forced out, “The two of us are just fucking not a good match.”

William Foster: “……”

“There’s such a thing as fate between people. Forced melons aren’t sweet. I get along great with my current deskmate—we’re loving and harmonious, the atmosphere is great, we’re like-minded. I sleep, he listens in class, and we don’t bother each other.”

William Foster tried to interrupt him.

Samuel Clark added another line: “Feelings that are forced between classmates never end well.”

“…………”

Even Samuel Clark thought the more he talked, the weirder it sounded, so he changed the subject and simply pulled open the office door: “Anyway, I’ve written the self-criticism. As for the punishment, do whatever you want. If there’s nothing else, I’ll head back to class.”

For the second time, Samuel Clark had snapped at William Foster like this. With that attitude, he was flat-out refusing to communicate, not responding to either soft or hard approaches. William Foster couldn’t even find an opening to lecture him.

One left, and only the other remained. William Foster composed himself and turned to Brian Cooper: “You don’t want to be his deskmate either?”

“Yes.”

Today, William Foster had run into two brick walls in a row, and barely managed to swallow his frustration: “Can I ask why?”

Brian Cooper’s reason was much more practical—he just thought changing seats was too much trouble, and he had no interest in getting to know anyone: “Troublesome.”

William Foster’s buddy system plan hadn’t even made it past the first step—it was dead on arrival.

If anyone was hard to get along with, in William Foster’s view, it was actually Brian Cooper who was the difficult one.

The first time William Foster met Brian Cooper was back in the first year of high school. Although he didn’t teach first-year students, he was in charge of all the high school competition teams.

After signing up for the math competition, training sessions started during evening study. The whole conference room had only him as a first-year. With the attitude that participation was victory, William Foster had specially prepared a set of basic competition problems for him.

But the boy, sitting in the last row, raised his hand less than ten minutes in, walked up with the test paper, and slapped the completed answer sheet in front of him: “No need to prepare basic problems for me next time.”

During the month-long competition prep, he kept to himself, never clashed with anyone, but also never seemed close to anyone. He looked at test papers with more warmth than he ever showed to anyone in the conference room.

William Foster was silent for two seconds, then decided to try a different approach: “Alright, one more thing. You weren’t here yesterday, so our class committee still isn’t complete. Is there any position you’d like to take on?”