Episode 18: Stop Groping Me Under the Desk!

Midterm exams were starting first thing Monday morning.
The Friday before.

The school, which should normally have been buzzing with the relief of an incoming weekend, was wrapped instead in a peculiar silence — less exam tension than a resigned, despairing quiet, like prisoners marching to the scaffold.

I, for my part, had finished my cleaning duty and was attempting a swift escape from this den of doom… except.

From the back of the classroom came a sound like a collective lament.

“Ugh… I genuinely can’t. These equations are less maths and more ancient cursed script.”
“Meiko~, you said that exact thing five minutes ago. Hahhh, if I don’t avoid a fail grade, Mum’s going to cancel the winter trip…”

A group had commandeered one corner of the room, desks pushed together, hosting what they were calling a Study Session (in practice: a chat with occasional glances at textbooks).
Airi, Yuina, Meiko — and, at the centre of it all, Asahina Hiyori.

…No. No thank you. Getting involved with this would be fatal.
I suppressed my presence and aimed for the exit with ninja-like precision.

“Oh, there’s Mama-pi~!!”

…I froze.

Airi’s targeting instincts were unnervingly sharp.
My escape had lasted approximately one second.

“Hey, Mama-pi! Where do you think you’re going! Heartless!”
“Pl-please just let me go… I have my own studying to do…”
“No way! If Mama-pi abandons us we’re going to have to repeat the year?! Is that okay with you?! Your daughters, left to fend for themselves!”
“Who is anyone’s daughter here! Who!”

Yuina and Meiko swarmed from both sides and seized my arms, dragging me inexorably toward the desks.
My resistance was futile. I was forcibly installed in the prime seat — directly opposite Hiyori.

“Right, here! This quadratic function! I have no idea!”
“Why are there letters in the middle of the numbers? x and y — it’s maths, not English. It’s offensive.”
“Starting… from there…?”

I looked up at the ceiling.

…The truth was, the school we attended was a reasonably well-regarded exam-focused school in the prefecture.

But the year we sat the entrance exams, there had been a miraculous shortfall in applicants.
The cut-off had collapsed, producing a year group that was, in the most literal sense, a mixed bag — from students aiming for elite universities at one end, to levels of academic attainment that were harder to categorise at the other.

Which was why the entirely improbable situation of sitting around a table with these particular people had come to pass.

That was the secret mechanism of our year group.

I sighed deeply and twirled my mechanical pencil.
Lecturing them on parabola graphs would go in one ear and out the other.
The strategy required adaptation.

“…Okay. Listen carefully. Say you’re selling tapioca at the school festival.”
“Right.”
“This ‘x’ is the price you set for the tapioca.”
“If you price it too high, customers drop off. But too cheap and you don’t turn a profit.”
“Oh, yeah — if you gouge people, no one buys.”

Good, they’re engaged.
I drew a hill-shaped graph in the notebook.

“So — what price gives you the maximum profit. In other words: where is the peak of this graph, the value of ‘y’ — maximum revenue — that’s what this equation is solving for.”
“…!!”

The colour in all three pairs of eyes changed dramatically.

“Oh my god… so we’re basically finding the golden ratio for maximum profit?!”
“Wait, this is just business strategy. This is genuinely important life knowledge.”
“Our era has come!! We’re hitting the peak, let’s go!!”
“She’s a genius!!”

…Had it… actually landed?

After running through the explanation using what I could only describe as gyaru-to-standard-Japanese live translation, they were muttering things like “quadratic functions are actually kind of beautiful” and “so we’d be raking it in at x yen” while hunching puzzled over their notebooks.

In the middle of all this, I happened to glance toward Hiyori.

“…”

She was propped on her left hand, twirling her pencil with an air of mild boredom.

(…hm?)

I caught a glimpse of her notebook.
The others were wrestling with the basic problems on page 32.
Hiyori’s notebook was open to page 40.
The application problems at the end of the chapter.

As I watched, her hand moved steadily across the page — not a moment’s hesitation, equations filling in at a clean, unhurried pace.
In the answer column, neat numerals, marked with red-pen circles in quick succession.

(Wait.)

They were all correct.
And she was solving them fast?

(Is Hiyori actually…)

I was staring, caught off guard — and Hiyori must have felt the gaze, because she looked up slowly and turned a loose, easy smile toward me.
And then.

Thud.
Something nudged my shin under the desk.

(…?)

Clunk.
Her loafer slipped carelessly from her foot under the pull of gravity, landing under the desk.
In the dim space beneath, the shape of her toes moved with new freedom.
Her foot, liberated from its shoe, slid up my calf over my sock — slow and deliberate.

(What — Hiyo—?!)

I tried to pull my legs back and escape.

But.

Clamp.

Both of Hiyori’s feet locked around my calf from either side like a vice. Caught between the desk leg and Hiyori’s feet, my retreat was cut off completely.

“Hey, Mama-pi, I still really don’t get this part~”
“…Wh, ah—”

Airi pointed to her notebook.
I plastered on a strained smile and fought to sound normal.

“Um, right. If you transpose here…”
“Transpose?”
“The number… moves to the right… side…!”

Slide. Slither.
Precisely as I tried to speak, Hiyori’s right foot shifted.
The synthetic fibres of our high socks caught against each other with a sound that was soft and somehow indecently audible, shivering against my eardrum.

Hiyori’s toes pressed into the flesh of my calf.
From there, with no regard for my wishes, they slid with slow, persistent intent up toward the soft hollow behind my knee.

(Stop — not there — please—)

The hollow behind the knee.
Hiyori’s big toe worked its way into that sensitive dip.
The heat of it, separated from my skin by a single layer of fabric, seeped gradually through.
Hot. Uncomfortable. Unbearable.

But I couldn’t make a sound.

“So then the number moves to the right side, and it becomes negative…”
“Mm-hm.”

Right in front of me, the others were taking notes with perfect sincerity.
And in their blind spot.

Press.
Hiyori worked her toe pad against the tendon behind my knee, flicking it deliberately.

“Mm—?!”

My body jerked. The pencil lead snapped.

“Oh, Mama-pi, did you just say something?”
“N-no! Nothing at all…!”

I gripped the edge of the desk hard.
Cold sweat prickled.
When I glared at Hiyori, she kept her eyes on her textbook, only her mouth curving into a faint smile.

She was playing with me.
Systematically testing my reactions.

Hiyori’s foot grew bolder. From the hollow of my knee, up toward the back of my thigh.
Her cold toes crept toward the soft territory just inside the hem of my skirt.

A crawling, full-body shiver raced through me.

(That far — no further — please—)

I tried to clamp my knees shut in resistance. Hiyori found this entertaining and pressed in harder.

The soft, defenceless inner flesh of my thigh, invaded.

And then.

Hiyori’s toes cleared the hem of my skirt with ease — and slid, slow and unhurried, toward the innermost point between my legs, right to the very edge of touching—

“—Eek!!”
“!?”

Past the limit of endurance, a broken-register shriek rang out across the classroom.
Airi and the others stared at me, blank.

“Mama-pi, you okay?! That was a weird noise.”
“Did something leak?! Do you need the bathroom?!”
“…It’s not — I have somewhere to be! I’ve taught you everything I can, you’ll have to manage the rest yourselves!”
“Ehh, Mama-pi, that’s so cold~!”

The chorus of protest followed me out as I gathered my things with trembling hands and fled the classroom.

◇◆◇◆◇

The door slammed shut behind her.
Left behind in the abandoned seat was a half-finished notebook, mid-sentence.

“What was that sprint about? Was Mama-pi actually about to leak?”
“Seemed like it. Her face was bright red.”
“She forgot her notebook too.”

As Airi and the others cackled among themselves, I alone sat in silence, chin in hand, staring vaguely at the closed door.

Under the desk.
I slid my toes, sock-clad, slowly back into the one loafer that had come off.

Tap, tap — I worked my heel down to seat it, and let a murmur drop into the air, addressed to no one.

“…Huh. Feet, huh…”
“Hm? Did you say something, Hiyori?”
“…Not really.”

Her usual composed expression, unreadable as ever.
She picked up her pencil as if nothing had happened, and turned her eyes back down to the difficult application problem waiting in front of her.