“Why’s this guy here?” Unmei thought to himself after finding Orokana Hakuchi standing at his front door.

“Hakuchi? What are you doing here?” Unmei has never once seen Orokana come to his house. How did he know where he lives?

Hakuchi hands some letters to Unmei, “Here, these were on your porch.”

“Oh, thank you. I didn’t know mail had arrived.” Unmei felt pretty awkward right now. Why was Orokana handing him his own mail at his front door?

Orokana scratches the back of his head and looks away from Unmei, “Unmei, I… I just wanted to say thank you.”

Unmei officially has no clue what is going on. “Thank you? For what?”

“Well, for convincing Furukawa to give me my money.”

“Well, I didn’t really convince him, it was actually my mon-” Orokana, not paying attention, cuts Unmei off.

“You see, the money he borrowed actually came from my father, and he’s a… well,  let’s just say he needs to make sure he has all of his money returned to him on time.”

Unmei tries to reply, “Oh, I see, well then I’m glad I-”, but rather than hearing Unmei, Orokana continues his story.

“If I hadn’t gotten the money back from Furukawa, no matter how small, I would’ve been the one punished. So truly thank you very much for saving me!”

Finally, Orokana lets Unmei speak. “You're welcome, I guess. I don’t really think I saved you, though…”

Yamato comes to check out who’s at the door, and to his surprise, he sees the same person who was roughing up Denki earlier for not even two thousand yen. “Hey Hakuchi, what are you doing here?” 

“Oh hey Sato, I didn’t know you and my buddy Unmei live together.”

“Wait, no, we don’t live to-” Yamato doesn’t get a chance to correct him before he continues.

“I came here to…” As Orokana begins to replay out loud how he got to Unmei’s house and for what reason, Unmei realizes he’s not talking to him and turns around.

“Oh, Yamato! When did you show up?”

Orokana doesn’t seem to notice Yamato isn’t listening anymore because he keeps talking even though nobody is paying attention. “You… didn’t notice me? Hakuchi and I are talking right in front of you!”

“I don’t know, I thought he was talking to me.” 

Yamato covers his face with his hand and shakes his head in disappointment. “Idiot… ”

Unmei looks back at Orokana, who’s been talking to nobody without even noticing. “And then after that, before you showed up, I was right about to tell Unmei that we aren’t friends anymore because now we’re rivals!”

Not a single word that comes out of this burly man’s mouth fails to leave Unmei questioning everything, “What’s he on about? We weren't friends to begin with.” 

“We’re… rivals?”

“YES! Since we’ve both got our sights set on that new girl, that makes us rivals!”

Unmei finds himself even more confused than before. “You must have it wrong, Hakuchi. I don’t care about that stuff. I certainly don’t have my ‘sights set’ on any girls.”

Standing there awkwardly, Yamato decides he’s got no clue what's going on and heads back to the couch to lie down. Neither Unmei nor Orokana notices that he leaves.

“I’m positive you like the transfer student, Hizashi, the girl from Wakayama. There’s no doubt about it!” Orokana is a bit hard-headed and also not the brightest; this makes it difficult to change his mind once it's set on something.

“Transfer student… What are you talking about?”

“The girl who sits next to you, I think her given name is ‘Saku’ or something.”

“Oh no, it’s Kazuya that sits next to me, not a girl.” Unmei’s memory is either failing him or he really is just out of it, though thankfully, the events from earlier come back to him suddenly. “Wait, no, Kazuya’s locker was replaced with someone else… and now that I think about it, wasn’t there a new student today? Was it this girl?” 

“Well, I don’t know what a ‘Kah-zue-ya’ is, but it doesn’t matter! Make one move on Hizashi, and YOU'RE DEAD!” Orokana steps forward towards Unmei and looks at him with a deep and uncontrollable rage, but Unmei remains standing where he was and looks up to the 6ft 5inches tall hunk of meat.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Hakuchi. I don’t have any interest in girls. Anyways, Yamato and I need to get back to what we were doing, see you at school.” Unmei turns towards where Yamato was standing, but doesn’t see him, “Huh, I swear Yamato was just there… “ 

Orokana’s sharpened features soften up a bit before he turns to leave, “Alright, Unmei, don’t forget what I said about talking to her!”

Unmei closes the door and walks back to the couch, only to find Yamato lying down, snoring. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.” He shakes Yamato to wake him up, “Yamato… Yamato! Wake up!”

“Huh… what, what’s going on?”

“Why are you always sleeping, and how on earth could you fall asleep so fast?”

Yamato’s grogginess causes him to act like he’s lost all normal human function, and it's not even been 5 minutes since he sat down.

“Come on, get up, we’re gonna go on a walk.”

--

Oh… interesting. Unmei and Yamato decided to leave the house. He doesn’t usually come out at this time of day; it must be because Yamato is with him.

Unmei and Yamato take a short walk around the block to a convenience store to grab some snacks, and on the way back they somehow find themselves debating on who the best music artist is. 

“Unmei… as I’ve already said like ten times, it’s obvious that she makes better music because her production value is way higher. I mean, have you ever even BEEN to an Ado concert?”

“No, I haven’t, and that doesn’t mean anything anyway, it’s the flow of the music… or… I don’t know, something like that. His voice is much smoother. If only you tried LISTENING to one of his songs, you’d also think Fujii Kaze is better than Ado.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what you keep saying, but you’re still objectively wrong.”

“Who says I’m wrong? I’ve actually listened to both of them and still think Fuji Kaze is better, it’s just an opinion.”

“A dumb one.”

Even from here I can hear them, and they’re BOTH wrong… Natori is far better than all of them.

--

The next morning after Unmei completes his morning routine and leaves the house for school, someone approaches him on the sidewalk.

“Hey Unmei-Kun, I didn’t know you walked down this road to school!”

Unmei didn't hear her and kept walking since he has some wired earbuds in his ears listening to Fuji Kaze on AWA.

“Huh? Unmei-Kun!” Finally, Unmei notices her, 

“Oh, sorry I didn’t see you there, Takeshiba. Did you need something from me?”

“Oh… erm. I was just walking and saw you so I thought I'd say hi. Though I’ve been meaning to ask you something. What does… What does your name mean?”

Unmei is startled a bit from the sudden interrogation on his peaceful walk to school.

“My name?”

“Yeah! I mean, the name Unmei is pretty unique don’t you think.” 

Unmei, still confused as to where Takeshiba came from to talk to him, explains to her the meaning. “Oh well, yeah I suppose it is. It means exactly what you’d think it does, it means Destiny. My father gave me this name as a sort of parallel to his name, Shukumei, which means fate.”

Sumi Takeshiba’s face lights up, "That's so cool! I wish I had a unique name like that. Well, I should probably catch up to my friends now, see you around Unmei-Kun!”

“Alright, bye Takeshiba.”

Now that she’s gone Unmei can finally return to his music-

“You. Are. SO… LUCKY!” Denki screams into Unmei’s ear from behind him.

“What the hell Denki! Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Unmei pinches Denki’s arm in retaliation.

Unbothered by the pinch, Denki continues. “Who cares about that, you were just flirting with a super-hot girl!”

“Are you okay in the head? We were not flirting.” Unmei grits his teeth and gives Denki a death glare.

“Oh come on man, she was definitely flirting with you at least. Why didn’t you ask her out!?” Denki is jumping off the walls at this point, his energy levels are way too high for Unmei to calmly handle.

“I really don’t see why you think I would do that, besides, like I said, we were just talking.”

Just as Denki was about to respond, the two of them arrive at school and enter the halls, at which point, Denki notices Saku Hizashi walking by.

“SABU!!” He yells across the halls in attempt to grab her attention.

Unmei looks at him both confused and still a bit ticked off. “Who are you yelling at?”

“The new girl! Saki or whatever her name is.” Denki’s eyes don’t leave Saku’s face, in fact his eyes begin to resemble cartoon red hearts.

“You don’t even know the name of the girl you’re trying to- and you aren’t listening are you.” Denki is in fact completely ignoring Unmei and practically swooning over Saku.

“You’re very strange Denki, why not just walk over to her so I can pretend I don’t know you.” Unmei chuckles a bit at his own joke after Denki kindly punches his arm.

The first warning bell chimes through the halls.

“Nevermind with that idea, come on, let's get to class.”

Denki sighs with defeat, “fineee.”