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verybody hated Shinnosuke. He was a weirdo, a loser, an otaku. He was short, pale, and pimply. His school uniform was always spotted with crumbs and stray grains of sticky rice from lunch. His shoulders were dusted with dandruff. His hair was greasy. At recess, he either sat on the school steps reading manga about werewolf-warriors, or wandered around the edge of the school yard, collecting bugs in an old plastic bento box he kept tucked in his school bag. When Jiro and his friends cornered him by the bike rack after school one day, they found rhino beetles, dragonflies, moths, even a poisonous centipede in the bento box. They pinned Shinnosuke to the bike rack, opened the bento box, and dumped the bugs down his pants. Jiro laughed so hard his sides hurt, watching Shinnosuke dance around shrieking, trying to shake the bugs out his pant legs. But the next day, Shinnosuke was back at the edge of the school yard scouring the trees for bugs. “It’s almost like the dork wants us to shove bugs down his pants,” Jiro said. He was standing with Hideki and Yasu by the gym, and watching Shinnosuke trying to snatch a butterfly out of the air. “Next time, maybe we oughta hold him down and put them in his mouth. Make him eat ‘em,” Yasu said and laughed. “Oh man, that would be the funniest thing ever. Can you imagine his face? When he’s chewing on a cockroach?” “You think he’d care? He’d like that. The freak already eats ‘em. Why do you think he puts ‘em in a bento box?” Hideki said. “No way, man. Even Shinnosuke’s not that freaking gross,” Yasu said. “Look, Ayumi told me when she was at her calligraphy class last week, she saw him going into the woods behind the community center. She said she could see the bugs buzzing and crawling around inside his bento box. Then he came out about two hours later and it was empty.” Jiro looked across the yard and saw Shinnosuke snapping the lid shut on the box and smiling. How could that ugly otaku not understand how gross he was? “Let’s follow him after school,” Yasu said. “We gotta see this. If we can get some cell phone pictures and send ‘em to everybody in school... oh man, people will bust a gut laughing.” Hideki groaned. “Man, I don’t wanna watch Shinnosuke eat bugs.” “Me neither,” Jiro said. “But after school, we are gonna follow him into the woods. Catch him in the act. Ambush him.” “Then what? Shove the bugs down his pants again before he can eat ‘em?” Hideki asked.
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