Vol. 1 Chapter 15: Broken Promise

Translated and Edited by: ynlucca.

Common Honorifics:
-san: A polite suffix, but not excessively formal.
-kun: A common suffix among friends and younger people.
-chan: A common suffix among people you’re close with, mostly used for feminine nicknames and girls, since it’s cutesy and childlike.
-senpai: A common suffix and noun used to address or refer to one’s older or more senior colleagues in a school, workplace, dojo, or sports club.
-sensei: A suffix and noun that literally means teacher.

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“Um, guys, what are you doing…?”

That day I went to school alone. When I opened the door, I saw my classmates doing something around Takkun’s desk. I could see through the gaps that it was ridden with abusive insults.

“Ah, Sakurai-san is here! Do you wanna play with us?” One of the girls approached me.

Play? Do they want me to join them in writing these horrible things?

I approach the desk and examined it further. It was sickening… I could never hurl these gruesome words at a person. They almost made me vomit, and I couldn’t keep looking at it.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s just some words on a table, they won’t know.”

“Uh…”

I could feel their gazes pointing at me like knives, expecting me to join their “fun”. Surely, no one would know if I were to write on that desk, and I was afraid that, if I refused, they would come my way too.

They handed me a pen, which I held with a quivering hand. I approached his desk and I wrote a small “Idiot” on of the corners. I used to say that a lot when I had fights with him, so that’s as far as I would go.

As I thought that, I heard the classroom door open with a rattle.

I turned around and there he was. His eyes were dull, almost lifeless, and his gaze was fixated on my hand.

“Oh, um, Takkun, this is…”

“Yo, Aizawa, what’s up? You don’t look so good, ya know?”

Kakitani interrupted me, standing between both of us. His voice as he called out Takkun dripped venom.

“…”

He didn’t answer. All he did was stare at my hand, at the pen I held. He didn’t even glance at Kakitani. After a few moments of thinking, he let out a big sigh.

“Haah…”

“You ignoring me, son of a bi—GUH?!”

A loud thud reverberated in the classroom, and one of the girls screamed out of shock. I looked over and saw Kakitani being blown away, knocking over the desk, and cowering down on the ground. He held his stomach with both his hands, desperate and vomiting. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he processed Takkun’s kick.

“Haha… T–This hurts!!!”

He kept clutching his stomach and did a meager attempt at lashing out. Unfortunately for him, there was almost no room in his voice to do so.

“Kakitani! —Aizawa, you b*tch!”

Another one of the boys approached Takkun and punched him in the face.

“Suck it!” He cackled, only to scream the next second. “GUH—!!!”

Despair overwhelmed him as he was thrown back by a swift hit. It wasn’t normal for a person to get knocked back so far, so the force of that gut-punch was tremendous.

And from there, it went downhill. Every boy that jumped on Takkun was punched, kicked, and they all began bleeding. The screams of the girls echoed through the whole school, yet he did not stop beating them.

I could only watch it all unfold. My legs quivered, and I kneeled down on the ground, staring at the whole scene with my eyes wide open.

Eventually, no one could stand up and the rampage reached its end. The incessant groans of the beaten boys, along with the sobbing of the girls filled the classroom.

He walked toward me with his lifeless eyes gazing straight into mine. In his hand was the bracelet of our promise, tattered. Maybe it was cut during the struggle.

“U–Um, Takkun… I—”

“It’s enough.”

“… Eh?”

He gently placed that bracelet on the ground right in front of me. “If you felt that way against me, you shouldn’t have made that promise…” And with that, he walked away.

It was the symbol of our promise, and it will never be broken… I thought that, but now I see that same symbol tattered right in front of me.

“H–Hic…” All I could do was cry over it, and eventually, the classroom became dead silent. All one could hear were my endless cries to our broken promise.

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