Chapter 3

“High School Boys and Ghost Stories” is the 3rd chapter of the manga.

Cover Page
A still of the main trio walking in uniform with school bags in hand.

Detailed Summary
The trio are at Tadakuni’s house, as usual, when Hidenori starts to recount his experience at a restaurant seemingly out of nowhere. He tells the others how he sighted a ‘really cute’ girl from an unknown school ordering a fish set. As he ate his udon, the girl finished and left, leaving a clean plate behind except for three chopsticks on the bowl. This freaks out the other two, who beg him to stop scaring them, surprising Hidenori a bit. Yoshitake then pipes up with a story of his own, despite Hidenori telling him it isn’t a story-telling contest.

Yoshitake mentions his ‘well-known’ concern about his nipple hair (which turns out to be anything but well-known to the others) and how he tried to get rid of it after all conventional methods failed. Spying his father’s razor, he tried to shave it off, which unfortunately resulted in an accident. He opens his shirt to show the others a heavily bandaged left nipple, which he says has been cut off much to their horror. Hidenori yells at him for choosing a painful story over a scary one. When Yoshitake wonders aloud if nipples grew back, Hidenori asks him to seek medical help. Tadakuni then starts his story, frustrating Hidenori who’s had enough of stories.

Tadakuni talks of a visit to Kugihiko’s house one night, where they all had a lot to drink (not saké, though). Suddenly, Kugihiko started feeling ill, so Tadakuni helped him to the bathroom, where he threw up. Tadakuni then says he saw something moving in the puke, which he realized was a centipede, of all things. This grosses the others out to the point that they don’t even react. Tadakuni follows this up by saying that centipedes are unafraid of humans and could have crawled into Kugihiko. He then says it’s Hidenori’s turn again.

However, Hidenori and Yoshitake slowly rise to their feet, both saying they need a restroom break. As they lurch towards the restroom, they're still reeling from the last story and wondering whether what Tadakuni said about centipedes was really true. Upon opening the door, however, they find Tadakuni’s younger sister already there, puking heavily. Yoshitake surmises that she had been eavesdropping on them, but the boys get back on track and force themselves to puke as well.

Tadakuni, spying from the hall, realises it’s too late to admit his story was a lie, as the others continue to vomit.

Characters
In order of appearance:
 * Hidenori
 * Yoshitake
 * Tadakuni
 * Kugihiko
 * Tadakuni's younger sister