Chapter 190 - Out Of My League

It was the start of another week, as I was sitting quietly at my desk, feeling lethargic in the morning. I couldn't sleep at night even though I went to bed early. I couldn't fall asleep. I spent most of the time overthinking about things.

My eyes were drowsy as my head was resting on the table while my eyes were on the verge of closing. Tsūmen's voice drew my attention towards him as he asked, "You good?" 

I raised up my head and looked at him while yawning and replied, "No… I just wanna sleep."

He chuckled slightly, as a smug formed on his face and narrowed his eyes. He said in a sarcastic way, "Was talking with your girlfriend?"

I knew he would say that because he was in disbelief ever since I started dating Naoto. Well, l I can't blame him since most of the people who knew about this were just as surprised as him. 

"Don't ask…" I shook my head in declination, as my eyes shifted towards the mobile in his hand.. Since the homeroom still hadn't started, he was scrolling through his mobile. As I focused on his screen, it looked like a manga, so I asked, "What's that?"

He looked at me with a confused look, as his eyes shifted over to his mobile screen again and in a surprised tone he asked, "You haven't heard the news?"

The way he said it, I thought that he was talking about the release of the new manga, which has been a hot topic for the past few weeks. I looked at him, but he had a rather serious expression on his face.

"Umm… what news?" I asked in a hesitant voice, because I was sleepy and probably sounded like a drunkard back then. He handed his mobile towards me as I squinted my eyes to look at the screen, "Ah, here…"

As my eyes took some time to adjust to the brightness of the mobile screen, the first word that popped up was written in bold black colours, "A murder?"

He nodded with a serious expression as took the mobile and started reading the news article. A bit into the article, Tsūmen said, "Apparently there were two bodies found, but the crime scene was so graphic that they couldn't show it on television."

Well, I wasn't really surprised because of a murder, but I was surprised at the fact that it was brutal enough that they could not show it on television too, "Really?"

He pointed towards the mobile and said, "This is just the article, but from what I've heard, it was horrifying…"

"Huh? You sure they aren't exaggerating it?" I asked as it's common for the media to exaggerate their news for broadcasting, but Tsūmen shook his head from left to right and said in an unsettling tone, "No, the first responders said in the news that even they have seen nothing like that before."

I was getting a bit curious about this incident, so I couldn't help but ask, "Damn… you know what it is?" 

His eyes shifted to me curiously as he had this creepy smile on his face and he asked, "You sure wanna hear?"

"Yes… go on… how bad can it be?" I said in a laid back tone but by his face I could tell that he was thinking otherwise as he gulped and said, "Oh boy… so… the bodies were actually in pretty terrible conditions."

"How bad? On a scale of Ten…" Looking at this expression, I took a slight pause and asked hesitantly as his eyes widened up a bit and he replied in an agitated tone, "20!"

"Wha…?" I was a bit set back by his reaction because he wasn't the kind of guy to exaggerate something when it came to gory stuff like this. He stared at me for a while and started, "Yes, like… they said that one of the bodies seemed to have exploded and the other one was hanging from a wall with a metal rod pierced into their head."

The description he gave seemed to be out of some horror novel as I chuckled and asked, "What is this? A horror book?"

"No, I'm serious!" His expression didn't change at all, as I looked at him hesitantly and nodded, "Oh...kay… and where did this happen?"

"In Shibuya, last night." He answered, and realising it was pretty close to Tokyo, I nervously chuckled and said, "Oh… kinda close…"

I didn't want to sound insensitive at that moment, so I was holding myself back from making any comments that would make me appear like some abnormal person with zero emotions. Thinking about a neutral comment, I said, "Well… it's shocking to see crimes like that taking place."

"Yeah… we generally don't see these as much." He nodded slightly as I gave his mobile back to him, and he changed the topic because it was weird to talk about murder. He smiled and started by wiggling his eyebrows, "Anyways… So how was your date?"

The speed at which our topics change during conversation was truly remarkable. I looked at him and thought for a few moments before answering, "Uh… I don't know… it was fine, I guess…"

"You went on a date and you don't know how it was?" He rolled his eyes and sighed, as I was rather embarrassed to tell him about it so I decided to answer him vaguely, "I enjoyed it to be honest, but the thought of having a girlfriend is still weird."

"Why?" He asked as I said the last part, and I answered him, "Probably because I went from liking no girl to making a girlfriend?"

He chuckled and slapped my shoulder and said, "True, I was so shocked when you said that you were dating Naoto-Senpai."

He stopped laughing and looked at me in utter disappointment as I said, "Yeah… she's kinda out of my league."

"Oh… definitely she is! That's why she asked you out." With a surprised expression he nodded and added sarcastically, "Hmmm… makes sense!"