My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

I pride myself on having a good eye for people.

On top of that, I've always been pretty lucky, and I'm decent enough at studying and sports. My relationships with my family and friends are good too.

I'm not exceptionally brilliant at anything like Sato is, but I don't really have any obvious flaws either. I figure I'll probably keep living a pretty average, happy life from here on out.

And then, after entering high school, I found myself with one little source of entertainment.

"He ran off first thing after school...!! Didn't I tell him we had choir practice after class?!"

It was around autumn of my first year. I'd come to the empty school building after classes to pick up something I'd left behind, and there I found Tsukasa Satou, furious with a more intense expression than I'd ever seen on him before.

Our school's cultural festival includes a choir contest between grade levels, and the music elective class from each year performs in front of the entire school. The class I belonged to was one of those classes, and its class leader was Tsukasa Satou.

And today too, we had after-school practice—but Oda Akira had skipped it. For that matter, he hadn't just skipped the practice session before the sports festival held before summer; he hadn't even shown up for the actual event. He sleeps through most classes too, so what the heck is he even coming to school for?

"Satou, what's wrong?"

"Ah, Nanase-kun..."

When I called out to him, Satou turned around with an embarrassed look on his face.

It seemed I'd stumbled into a moment where he was venting his everyday stress in an empty classroom after school.

Even though he'd volunteered for it, being both class representative and choir leader meant he'd taken on all the troublesome responsibilities, so the stress from that must be considerable.

Knowing how proud Satou was, he probably didn't want anyone to know he was like this, so maybe calling out to him had been a mistake.

At that point, I still wasn't interested in Oda Akira.

He had absolutely no teamwork skills, conversations with him never lasted, and on top of that he was so inconspicuous you'd often lose track of whether he was even there. I thought he was a problem child, but as long as he wasn't causing me any trouble, I didn't care. We weren't little kids anymore—we were long past the age where everyone had to get along like best friends. The whole class probably felt the same way. In fact, Oda Akira's presence was so faint that the only time I'd notice him was during group work and think, Oh right, this guy was here. Also, his eyes were just plain too intimidating to approach.

Besides, at the time, I thought Satou was the more interesting one.

"That guy means Oda, right? Then why not just leave him be? As long as you give him the bare minimum of admin notices, it's up to Oda whether he comes or not. I don't want someone coming unwillingly and ruining the rhythm because he didn't practice enough. And if a teacher ever accused me of bullying or whatever, I'd just say I was the one keeping my distance from him. Honestly, even if he really were being bullied, I doubt he'd even notice."

"Well, yes, but... No, that's beside the point! I hate that he acts like my words don't even exist! It's infuriating! And at the sports festival, I ran two extra laps to make up for him because he skipped it! He should listen to me at least a little!!"

"I see."

In other words, Satou's pride couldn't stand the fact that Oda was ignoring him. What a troublesome personality.

For Satou, who had always stood at the top and led everyone, Oda was probably the only person who wouldn't obey him.

"And besides, back in middle school he was..."

Even as Satou kept grumbling about Oda, I listened with a steady "mm-hm," and learned that Oda and Satou had been in the same school and the same class all the way since elementary school—and yet Oda still didn't even remember Satou's name.

When I heard that, I thought:

"This is hilarious as hell!"

"There is nothing hilarious about it!!"

Satou barked at me while I laughed my head off.