Getting To Know Ya

Although, now that I think about it... When did Umi agree to this whole Idol thing? I had thought that she was against it.

Class was in session and our math teacher was droning on about cosines and tangents and such. The weather continued to be gorgeous and I could even hear a couple birds tweeting somewhere. The normal kind of tweeting, not the social media ego driven kind of tweeting.

Though, that would be a funny sight to see. A couple birds tweeting on Twitter, puffing up their feathery downs when they got retweeted. Who really cares about that nonsense anyway?

Whatever. Not important.

I was going through some of the math problems that the teacher had put on the board when I remembered that Umi was against being a school idol yesterday. What changed? Did something happen while I was away from them? Perhaps Honoka was finally able to convince her friend to join in her efforts to save the school? That was nice of her. A real stand up thing to do Umi-chan. Though, I found it a little difficult to imagine her actually prancing around on stage and singing. But who knows? Maybe she could sing and dance. I shouldn't judge.

But seeing Little Miss Stern acting all kyun kyun, kira kira in a cute outfit on stage would be fun to watch, no doubt. The image would be so far removed from her usual serious personality.

I also wondered what Honoka's singing would be like. If she thought it would be a great idea to try this idol thing, then she must be confidant in her voice. Maybe if I hung around her for today I might be able to hear her sing. But I didn't want to just ghost the trio like I've been doing. I wanted to actually talk with them without my earrings making my presence "normal." Which means I need to take my Normalcy earring off and try to introduce myself somehow.

Can't do that in class though. Might have to wait until lunch. Maybe I could try eating with them under the pretence of wanting to get to know my classmates better.

Yeah, I liked that idea. I just have to make sure I don't get nervous without both earrings on. Just got to make a good impression. And since me being here at this school has something to do with the school's attempt at integrating males into the system to save it from closure, they might feel like we're in the same boat. Allies, or perhaps rivals. Who knows what conclusion they might jump to.

But that's the first step. Eat lunch with them. Good thing I brought a lunch box with me. Though, being fed by those three might also be nice.

The reason I still had both earrings on right now was so that we could all focus on our studies. Though I didn't really need to, the rest of these girls needed to pay attention. I didn't want to be a distraction. Plus, having girls constantly glance at me was more than slightly embarrassing. Which was something I was more than slightly nervous about when lunch rolled around.

Anyway, with my next step decided on, I focused on my work.

The schools bell signalled the end of class and the beginning of lunch.

The Japanese Language teacher finished up her lesson and gathered up her stuff before leaving the classroom. A lot of the students also left the room, opting to eat elsewhere instead of the classroom.

I sat at my desk with my lunch box sitting in front of me unopened, waiting to see if the Idol Trio would eat in the classroom. It seemed like they were, judging by them setting up their desks together and laying down table cloths to put their lunch boxes on.

Now was the time to make my move. I removed the Normalcy earring, put it in its case and got up. Then I picked my lunch box up before I walked over to Honoka and the others.

Now, those few steps leading up to them were quite nerve racking but I swallowed my irrational fear and kept going. Just yesterday I had sat with some of the other girls in this class. This is pretty much the same thing, right?

Except, in this case I was crushing on one of them...

"Hrm, still nothings coming to mind..." I heard Honoka mumble to her friends. Umi looked like she was about to respond but stopped when she saw me walking towards them.

I cleared my throat. "Excuse me." I started off with. I definitely wanted to be polite. I even tried to come across as calm as possible.

Now all three girls had turned to me with a little surprise in their eyes. Honoka herself seemed a little flustered, sporting a small blush.

"Forgive me for intruding. I was wondering if perhaps I might join you for lunch. And perhaps we could get to know each other as well?" I asked them with a smile while holding my lunch box up, my eyes never leaving Honoka's.

"Uh, err... Um..." Were the noises coming out of her mouth. She couldn't seem to form a real sentence.

"Um, what she means to say is, yes you may." Umi came to her rescue. Although, she too seemed a little red in the face. I turned to her and smiled in gratitude, to which she flushed even brighter.

"Thank you." I said earnestly.

"No, it's fine..." Her voice got quieter by the end.

I then looked at Kotori and saw that she too was blushing as much as Umi, if not quite as much as Honoka. "And is it all right with you, too?"

"Huh? Ah, Mn. It's alright with me." She said with a stiff nod. She had jumped when I addressed her and had to visibly calm herself as she talked.

"Thank you. I'll just move a desk over, then." I told Honoka, even though she really hadn't said anything yet. She just nodded at me, her lips clamped shut as if she didn't trust herself to speak.

I left them to move my desk over next to Umi's, facing Honoka's, and went back for my chair too. As I was doing this I revelled in the feeling that making three girls blush was giving me.

Just wow. This feeling was incredible. Girls blushing and stuttering because of me? That's just insane. A few days ago, girls didn't really give me a second glance. Now I had them positively melting. Is this how hot people felt? Did they get to experience this all the time? It felt awesome, and yet... also a bit unfair if I'm being honest.

How many times have I heard girls proclaim that it's not about the appearance but about the personality? Do they actually believe those words? Even the ones that gush the moment they see a hot guy or a pretty boy?

A bit hypocritical, that.

Not that I can talk, now that I had these earrings. But maybe I can help out my average, and less than average brothers a bit. "It's normal that when a girl says that the personality of a person matters more than appearance, they actually believe it." I whispered low enough that the girls didn't hear.

There, I just helped girls become a bit more consistent with their words. And maybe they'll give some guys more of a chance.

I'll type that Normality into my phone later.

Anyways, I finished placing my desk and chair with the girls and sat down.

"Thanks again for letting me sit with you." I told them. I looked from Umi to Kotori as I continued. "Let me introduce myself again. My name is Nakano Naoki. It's nice to meet you." I finished, looking Honoka in the eyes with my most earnest expression.

I was rewarded with the most adorably blushing face, similar to the one from yesterday's Homeroom.

"Ah, i-it's nice to meet you... I'm Kousaka Honoka..." She said slowly and quietly. Her eyes flickered from my face to her desk and back again, unable to look me in the eye for long.

I tried giving my best smile in thanks. This made her stare fiercely at her desk with her skin seeming to take on a permanent red hue. Either that, or she was about to pass out. I turned my attention to the other girls, if only to try and give Honoka some respite.

"I'm M-Minami Kotori, it's nice to meet you." Kotori introduced herself in that puppy dog voice of hers, sounding quite nervous as she tried to get that out in a rush. I smiled at her and got a cute blush in return.

I finally turned to Umi.

"I'm Sonoda Umi." She seemed the most in control of herself, though there was a slight quivering to the set of her mouth. As well as the blush that couldn't seem to leave these girls' faces. "It's nice to meet you again."

Again? "Ah, you mean yesterday?"

"No. I mean the day before." Umi said softly. "When you offered to help carry Honoka to the nurse's office. Which, by the way, you still haven't thanked him for, Honoka." This last bit was directed at the girl opposite me with a stern tone.

Wait. So, they did remember what happened then, even though I hadn't really begun to change things up at that point. I guess it made sense. They did look at me with recognition in their eyes yesterday when I was introduced to the class.

I turned to Honoka to see how she would respond.

"U-Uh, well... Um," She started off, a little flustered at being addressed. She then brought her hand up to her mouth and cleared her throat. "Um... thank you for helping me yesterday."

She still seemed to have trouble meeting my eyes, but honestly, she was too cute right now. "Really, it was no trouble at all."

"I-I wasn't too heavy?" She asked meekly.

This question reminded me of what these three were talking about earlier. The whole "going on a diet" thing. A little encouragement might be in order here. "No, you were actually quite light."

"Really?!" Honoka suddenly asked, her face becoming more animated. Her blush didn't lessen, by much.

"Nakano-san, please don't spoil her too much." Umi gently chided me.

"Umi-chan!" Honoka complained.

"What? You'll still need to watch what you eat if you want to be an idol." Umi reasoned. Still in her strict mode. "You can't be getting complacent."

I suppose Umi had a point. But I stand by what I said. Honoka wasn't that heavy and I was quite confident in at least some of my athletic ability. I may have been somewhat average in the looks department, but I didn't sit back and do nothing in gym class.

"That's... true, I guess." Honoka conceded after a moment.

I took a glance at Kotori since she hadn't said anything while Umi and Honoka had their little argument. She looked a little uncomfortable, but also appeared as if she had to deal with this sort of thing quite often.

Maybe I should change the subject.

"Sonoda-san, you mentioned something about being an idol." I said to Umi. She stopped looking at Honoka with her stern eyes and looked back at me with a softer expression. That soft expression then turned to slight embarrassment when she realised what I was talking about. "I admit that I overheard something similar when you three were talking this morning."

Her embarrassment made it difficult for her to look me in the eyes. Just like Honoka a minute ago. "Ah, well, Honoka thought that it would be a good idea to form a school idol group to save the school from shutting down."

"Really?" I turned back to Honoka with easily feigned curiosity. Even though I've heard most of their reasoning behind this decision, getting them to talk about it with me would help me get my foot in the door, so to speak.

This time Honoka was having a difficult time being embarrassed by having to talk to a boy about becoming an idol. The blush magnified and the fluster intensified. "Ah, uh... uh, yeah, ha-ha..." She laughed nervously. "I-It's to attract prospective students. Yeah, to attract more students to the school. So that it doesn't close down." She finished with a wobbly smile.

"Wow. That's amazing. Wanting to help the school like that." I praised Honoka. A little bit of buttering up wouldn't hurt.

"Ah ha-ha, no that's..." Her blush got steamier, if that was possible, while she also scratched the back of her head in her nervousness.

"I guess we're all kind of in the same boat, then." I said.

The Idol Trio all looked at me a little confused.

"What do you mean?" Umi asked.

"Did Miyama-sensei not mention why I transferred to this school?" I asked in turn.

Three questioning faces turned into three thoughtful faces. Finally, Umi figured it out.

"Ah, that's right. It was to see if boys could be introduced to the school." She declared. The other two looked like they now remembered with a chorus of "Oooh!"

"Exactly." I said, giving Umi a smile, to which she gulped. I turned back to Honoka again. "My purpose here is quite similar to yours."

"I-I see." Honoka said. Her eyes were wide as she processed this information. I could literally see the cogs turning in her head at the implications. Then she smiled, no doubt at the fact that she had something like a kindred soul in me. "I see!"

And there was my foot in the door, so to speak.

After that we ate our lunches and talked some more. I had heard most of their talks about being idols but let them fill me in regardless. Over the course of our talk they seemed to have relaxed a bit around me. Of course, they still had moments of jittery nervousness, but for the most part they were able to talk without stuttering, too much.

They eventually got to the part where they couldn't think of a name for their group and even with my help they still had trouble deciding on anything. Of course, I had very little knowledge about the naming sense of idols so yeah, I wasn't much help.

Still, it felt like we had bonded somewhat during this whole discussion. I counted that as a victory. Even though I didn't do anything dirty with them. Actually, I didn't really feel in the mood to mess around just yet. I guess that the good weather still had me in a lazy lethargic mood.

A lazy mood on a beautiful day while eating lunch with three cute girls. Well, I can safely say that I was making the most of my school life. It's a shame that I'm making myself sit through classes, though.

Even after finishing our food we sat there talking the lunch period away. I learned that these three were childhood friends and that they often played together growing up in their neighbourhood. I learned that Honoka was the rambunctious one, always dragging the other two into whatever she thought was fun. Umi was, obviously, the more level-headed of the three, always keeping Honoka from going too far. Kotori was the more girly one of the group, being the scaredy-cat but also going along with Honoka's plans more often than not. They seemed pretty much inseparable despite their differences in personality, though.

Out of the three, Umi was the one who belonged to a club, the archery club. While the other two just lounged around the school, until Umi was finished so they could walk home together. I asked a little about Umi's club and was impressed when Honoka and Kotori told me that she was one of the top archers in the school. This of course embarrassed Umi quite a bit but she seemed to handle the praise quite well.

She got her **** when I asked about how their studies were going. You can tell that I was running out of topics to talk about. But still, us Japanese were quite intent on our grades.

Umi leaned over to me in a faux conspiring fashion. "If Honoka used that time after school to study instead of play around then maybe she wouldn't have panicked the day before yesterday."

"Ah, ah! Umi-chan! Don't mention unnecessary things!" Honoka almost shouted. The look of panicked embarrassment was hilarious to see, but I tried not to look too amused at her expense.

"There, there." Kotori said, trying to sooth Honoka.

So, as I might have guessed, Honoka was... well, the least academically inclined of the three. But I didn't fault people for having bad grades. No, I wasn't that type of person. I realised early on that there were many types of intelligent people. Book smarts weren't the only kind of smarts. Maybe Honoka will impress in other areas, who knows?

"I was just simply answering Nakano-san's question." Umi told Honoka while looking to the side appearing a little smug.

"Nakano-kun doesn't need to hear that, though." Honoka moaned.

I smiled as these two continued to argue. Despite how it may look, these two really did seem close. I shared a look of exasperation and sympathy with Kotori since this was pretty much her life.

But there was something that bothered me. Something that I wanted to bring up with the girls. I just wasn't sure if it was too soon, though. But then again, it was really bothering me.

"Actually," I said to get all their attention. Umi and Honoka stopped bickering to look at me while kotori just tilted her head slightly in a cute bird-like fashion. "My name." They looked confused for a moment before I continued. "Using my family name is kind of awkward for me. Would it be okay if you used my given name instead? I'd just feel more comfortable if you did."

Of course, this wasn't entirely true. I did think that it was better to use my given name, sure. I just really wanted some girls to use it so that I could feel close to them. That was something I wanted to achieve back in my old school too. It just never happened.

My confession brought back their fading blushes to the max. Man, this whole blushing business was making me a lot more confident now.

"Are you sure?" Umi asked hesitantly.

I nodded at her with my earnest smile.

"Then... Nao... Naoki-kun." Umi had a bit of trouble saying.

Not to be outdone Honoka blurted out, "Naoki-kun!" With a fierce blush, looking at me intently as if she were afraid that I might take it back.

"Naoki-kun," Came Kotori's turn, cheerful yet ever blushing.

Three girls were looking at me. All of them red in the face. All of them making a slightly different expression. And all of them wanted me.

Yes. I really was making the best of my high school life.