Cardfight!! Vanguard: Heiwa - Volume II

-Part 3

The fateful encounter between a man and the guy who kicked him down a hill.

At the park where the guys wanted to go have their casual games, there existed a cafe with tables surrounding a small lake, which was where the two parties decided to take their unexpected meeting.

Because Yukiko would rather be shot twice on an arm than to have Chika be surrounded by boys, the two got a table for themselves, near the rest of the group.

On that main table, so to call it, Tate was growling and glaring at Yasuke like a dumb dog, who in turn was just peacefully looking at cute artwork of V-Tubers on his phone. With them where Izuru and Ban, who was going town on a bowl of strawberry ice cream.

And by Yasuke's side was someone whose name he had mentioned on the day he met Tate. Junpei and Yasuke's upperclassmen, an average looking boy with black hair and orange eyes, Nakano Ren.

And no, none of the parties got the last piece of fried chicken. Why?

"Setting aside how awkward this is..." Izuru coughed. "We're sorry for the Vladidumbass getting us kicked from the store for trying to dropkick someone in the fried chicken aisle."

"Bro I had my reasons, this guy kicked me before too!!" Tate exclaimed.

"Eheh, Noel-chan said the thing." Yasuke chuckled, picking his nose with his right pinky. He hasn't paying much attention to anything in general.

"Can't believe we lost such a perfect piece of fried chicken because of you mixing real life with an episode of literally any shounen ever." Ban deadpanned.

"S-shut up!"

"Huh, r-right..." Nakano sweatdropped.

And then the awkward silent returned faster than Izuru empties his wallet for png images. It was somehow more normal to talk to Endo about doing things with his ex-wife than to confront the people who knew Junpei.

But even so, Izuru managed to muster up some decent small talk.

"S-so... How did... Midterms go...?"

Nevermind.

"Oh, right." Nakano cleared his throat. "Our midterms were average. Not too hard, but they posed a challenge nonetheless."

Not even Yasuke was heartless enough to let poor Nakano handle the entire social situation in front of them by himself, so he put his phone down and gave his upperclassman a strong slap on the back, to wake up some of his inner confidance. With a loud laugh, he took the wheel of the conversation away from Nakano's hands.

"I'm sure what you wanna know is about Junpei, yeah? Afterall, you're that dude who made it impossible for him to wank one for ages!"

"You dumbass! Don't go make fun of what happened like that!!" Tate exclaimed.

"No, it's fine. I mean... I kinda thought about that too." Izuru snickered, holding back a small laugh.

'No one's at that table has any social skills, do they?' Yukiko thought, staring at the rest of the group with a flat look.

"C'mon, be honest, Sawada. You're prolly curious about what's been happening too, ain't you? Well lucky you, I can answer anything." Yasuke chuckled, pointing at himself with a thumbs up.

"Well then... How... How were things after he went to Shinjuku?"

"Except that."

"Eh?" Izuru blinked.

"I kinda just joined Shinjuku the year after that. But Nakano-senpai was there already, so you go and tell him, senpai!"

'Yasuke, you idiot, what are you doing?! Don't make me guide this convo!' Nakano thought. "W-well... Our school was something else on the year Kotomine joined. In a normal school, he'd have become miced meat in less than a second because of how he was, but not in Shinjuku. There was someone who lead the students better than the actual student council president himself. This all happened while I was in my last year of middle school, but I remember it like if it was yesterday. He joined during the last year with Jack-senpai attending Shinjuku Tech."