He has half a second to react to a baseball rapidly approaching his face.

His reaction is flinching and covering his head with his arms.

It hits his arm, hard, the kind of hard that feels more like someone was throwing a ball at him rather than to him.

He is not going to yelp because that'd be just giving them what they want. Instead he's going to give the person who threw the ball a look. "What the fuck, man."

Ashikaga and two of his friends laugh. "Not any good at baseball? It's got bats and balls, I thought that was your vibe?"

"...is that meant to be a reference to dick? 'Cause if so I am kind of concerned for you, a baseball bat is not what a dick should look like, have you considered seeing a doctor about it?"

"Yeah? Speaking from a lot of practical experience?"

"Well, I admit I have seen at least one in my life, maybe you haven't? It should be between your legs but you might need a magnifying glass to find it."

One of Ashikaga's friends laughs at that, too, but is quelled by Ashikaga's glare. "You think you're really funny, don't you, Iwasaki?"

"No, I think I'm hot, smart, cool, and rich, I'll leave being funny to you, God knows you need all the advantages you can get."

Someone else who got attracted to the drama snickers.

"—but what do I know, maybe I am funny, too! The world truly is unfair."

"Hey, you wanna take this outside?"

"We're already outside," he explains, slowly. "This is PE class. I thought you'd noticed? On account of how you seem like you might be about to play baseball? Or do you just carry balls around in your pocket in case the opportunity to throw them at unsuspecting targets presents itself to you and you can't resist?"

Ashikaga opens his mouth to respond but one of his friends elbows him and nods in the direction of the teacher, close enough now to be within earshot.

Always good to be the one to get the last word. Though his responses might've been somewhat inadvised, this seems like it might make his future PE classes more of a headache than he wishes them to be.

Oh, well.

That day he has lunch with the AV club folks. One of them, a boy called Matsumoto Tarō, is adorably nerdy, and Yutaka thinks he's probably not gay but he's not, like, sure sure, and he's sufficiently unsure that he kind of wants to see where that goes. Thursday, though, he's with the journalism club, including the editor, Mizobe Kazuki, who wasn't there Tuesday and who Yutaka is a lot more sure is gay. However, the one he ends up getting lucki with turns out to be Yoshino Yūji, after all, who claims he isn't gay but may be a little bit curious and who felt things he wasn't so sure of when Yutaka touched him and got really close and flirted the other day, and one thing leads to another, and Yutaka shows Yūji his fuckoff huge apartment and then they end up in bed.

This is how things should be. This is what Yutaka lives for. He thinks Shimamoto High will be fun, after all.

Really, Shimamoto High is already fun, actually.

Suwan-san is back in school the next week on Monday! He's in a really good mood in spite of the wrist brace.

By the time he comes back, it's become an open secret that Iwasaki's gay; he's not quite as straightforwardly open as Haru, in that if you ask him he won't say yes, but he will also relevantly not say no. Despite all of this, he still has a persistent cadre of hangers-on, courtesy of being really fucking rich, because, oh, yeah, everyone's pretty much sure he's Iwasaki Iemasa's son, even though he also won't say yea or nay about that.

Whether Haru will learn any of this, of course, will depend on how much he'll care to. Iwasaki himself isn't going around announcing any of it, just conspicuously failing to deny it, and when he sees Haru again he lights up. "You're back! How've you been?"

"Convalescent! I'll make a complete recovery. And yourself?"

"I've been alright. I've taken notes over the week, if you want to copy them off me later. Your friends told me you fall a lot?"

"Yeah, I have all my life. We were looking into getting me a wheelchair, back in Canada, but never got around to it."

"—a wheelchair!" he says, inanely, because he's just been blinded by that smile again. Except, also, that smile is throwing errors in his brain. Why is Swan so happy? Surely it can't be just because they're talking again? Yutaka is as full of himself as they come but this would be a bit too much wishful thinking even for him. "And I guess it doesn't get quite as icy here?"

"It actually does but the maintenance is a bit better, most places I go are salted."

He squints. "Forgive me if I'm being too forward here, Swan-san, but did you win the lottery or something?"