"Of course, he also has a dark past," Hiko replied, as a matter of course.
"Just this once~" Ai clenched her right fist and raised it, then flicked her index finger.
"I want fried chicken."
Hiko immediately took advantage of the situation and ordered, "I don't need the whole bento to be fried chicken, just a few pieces, with some rice, that's all."
"Rice…" Ai murmured the two words in a barely audible voice.
Hiko heard Ai seemingly utter a sound, but couldn't quite make it out, thinking she was talking about him, so he asked, "What did you say?"
"You haven't had fried chicken yet, have you?" Ai remembered that Hiko had mentioned wanting fried chicken to Miyako when he made a fake call on Sunday.
"Huh. You still remember that?"
Hiko hadn't expected her to remember what he said on Sunday. When he was teaching her yesterday, she often couldn't remember what she'd been taught, so he thought her memory wasn't very good.
"I'm not a goldfish." Ai felt that Hiko was thinking something very rude. "I can still remember something like this."
"Then please tell me, what is the third digit after the decimal point of Pi, after 3.14?" Saito Hiko casually thought of a way to test her memory.
"Pi is 3.141…"
Ai recalled and said, but she only said these few digits and couldn't remember the ones after that.
"3.1415926545."
Hiko casually recited ten digits after the decimal point. "I don't expect you to remember it like I do…"
"Urusai! Baka! Baka! Baka!…[1]"
Ai interrupted Hiko's words, cursing him excitedly and quickly.
Ah, I messed up… Hiko saw Ai suddenly get angry and curse at him, only then realizing that he had accidentally fallen into the trap of self-righteousness and the curse of knowledge again.
But Ai's voice was really pleasant to listen to, even though he knew she was cursing him.
He didn't get angry at all; just shouting 'idiot' was too weak an attack.
Although Hiko found Ai's voice pleasant and wanted to keep listening, he considered that if he didn't find a way to calm her down, the distance between them might be affected. So, after she had cursed for a while and her tone wasn't as rapid, he looked at Ai and said sincerely, "I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that."
As he spoke, he put on a dejected, sad, and hurt expression, as if he had been scolded.
"Hmph!" Ai saw Hiko's expression, which looked like he realized his mistake, and said, "If you can promise not to do it again in the future, I'll forgive you."
"I'll try my best," Hiko replied honestly.
"You! You won't even promise!"
Ai crossed her arms over her chest and said angrily, "I'm not talking to you anymore!"
"I promise I will never mention anything about your shortcomings again."
Seeing that he couldn't bluff his way through, Hiko had no choice but to make a promise.
Ai felt a subtle emotion upon hearing this promise. She wanted Hiko to state the matter precisely, but she felt that if she brought it up herself, wouldn't that prove she cared?
'Don't let me catch you with anything!' Ai could only think bitterly to herself.
Lunch break ended happily like this.
Since the fifth period today was art, they needed to go to the art classroom. So, the entire class moved to the art classroom.
"Students, today you each need to paint an oil painting with pigments. You can choose whatever content you like…"
Upon arrival, the art teacher immediately announced what they would be doing in this class.
For convenience, the seating in the art classroom followed the seating chart of their regular classroom.
Therefore, Ai was next to Hiko.
"What do you want to paint?" Hiko picked up the palette and painted from his spot, but hadn't decided what to paint, so he proactively asked Ai, wanting to get some ideas from what she planned to paint.
"What I want to paint…"
Ai thought for a moment before answering, "I'll paint grapes. What about you?"
"Me, huh…" Hiko heard Ai's answer and thought, if she's painting fruit, he might as well paint fruit too, since he didn't know what to paint anyway. "I'm planning to paint strawberries."
"Should I say, as expected of you… to paint something challenging…" Ai felt that strawberries would be very difficult to paint with oil paints.
After laying down the base, you need to add tiny, delicate dots. If you're not careful when adding the dots, the strawberry's appearance will be distorted.
These are oil paint brushes, not easy to control.
"I just thought it wouldn't require color mixing, that's why I wanted to paint it," Hiko replied casually.
"If you don't need to mix colors, wouldn't an apple be fine?" Ai retorted.
"You're right, then I'll paint an apple." Hiko thought it was a great suggestion.
"You should still paint strawberries." Ai saw that he was genuinely considering painting an apple and advised, "Hiko-kun, don't change your mind so easily because of what someone else says."
"It's not that I change my mind just because someone says something; it's because it's your opinion that I consider it and decide to change," Hiko said meaningfully.
Ai fell silent after hearing such a reply. She picked up the palette and brush, about to start mixing colors, but for a moment couldn't remember how to mix purple, so she asked Hiko, "What colors do I use to mix purple?"
"Use red and blue."
"Mixing blue and red creates a deeper purple. With more blue and pure red, the purple will be somewhat close to a brownish-purple. Blue and red with a little white will create a very light purple, like the pale purple of clouds. A combination of blue-green and light red creates a purple that is somewhat close to rose red; this color is suitable for flowers. A combination of blue-green and a little pure red creates a deep purple, like the color of an eggplant, almost black. You can also mix it with black and red, but the resulting color will be more purplish, though this method for mixing purple is more difficult." Hiko reeled off all the methods for mixing purple in one breath.
Ai listened carefully to what Hiko said, choosing the shade of purple she thought suitable for grapes in her mind, and began to mix it.
As she mixed, she suddenly remembered the story Hiko told yesterday, Aquamarine and Ruby.
Blue and red mixed together made purple, and her eyes were also purple.
Thinking of this, she asked aloud, "The story you told yesterday only mentioned the color of the children's eyes, but didn't mention the color of anyone else's eyes. Why is that?"
Hiko, who was in the middle of painting his oil painting, didn't know why she was asking this, so he replied, "Because it was originally part of the story's clues."
Ai heard this answer and then asked, "Then, in this story, is the girl's eye pupil color purple?"
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[1] Shut up! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!