Second Interlude
I’ve always paid close attention to others since I was little. Things generally turned out the way I expected. Why do people do things that they know will result in failure? I used to wonder when I was young, but through my observations, I realized I was the only one who knew when things would fail. People in this world don’t think very hard before acting. Once I noticed that, I saw the world as something simple.
So I took a liking to people I couldn’t predict. That held true for Tatsuya, who’d been exceedingly stupid since childhood, and Natsuki, whose self-esteem was much too low for his extraordinary abilities. Those types of people were interesting, and I never got bored of watching them.
Among that group, the most interesting one for me was Motomiya Miori. I shouldn’t admit this myself, but I’ve always been popular with girls. I usually contended for first or second most popular guy in my year. So I was used to girls approaching me, and I’d gone out with several on a trial basis before. But I had never experienced love for them, and we would soon break up. What if I don’t have the capacity to have special feelings for other people? I worried at times, but those fears were found to be groundless.
My first impression of Miori was that she was the same as all the other girls who had approached me in the past. At best, I found her to be especially cute out of all of them. But that was it. If an attractive appearance was all I needed to love someone, then I wouldn’t have struggled so much up until now. I figured I would keep my distance, with typical excuses to reject her advances, but Miori utilized every tactic in her book to pushily invite me out.
She dragged me around, saying she was on a journey to find clothes that looked good on me, fussed over a store she absolutely wanted to go to that had some delicious cake, and tagged along to movies that I’d been originally planning to watch—in any case, she was fundamentally assertive. She’d even used Natsuki and Hoshimiya-san to plan a double date.
But Miori was a smart girl who observed people closely. If I had truly hated anything she did, she would’ve given up immediately. She sensed that I was intrigued by her boldness. I was also fond of her determined personality. But I had no intention of having a girlfriend.
“Hey, don’t you think she’s cozying up too much to Reita-kun?”
“I know, right! Isn’t she so annoying?”
“Boys just eat up her looks. They love the meek girls.”
“Y’know, shouldn’t we teach her a little lesson? Put her in her place.”
In middle school, my nebulous attitude caused tension among the girls, and I’d even seen one get bullied. I noticed immediately and put a stop to it, but since I was the source of the problem, even when I stepped in, it did not lead to a peaceful resolution. In the end, Uta had intervened and settled the conflict, but when I remembered what had happened back then, I couldn’t help but think that I should stay out of romance.
“...And that’s why, I’m sorry. I can’t go out with you,” I told Miori after she’d steadily closed the distance between us. In a rare moment, I had spoken to her about my true feelings. I liked her so much that I could be up-front with her.
However, Miori shook her head and said, “We’re fine the way we are now.”
I had withdrawn into my shell, but she drew me out. She showed me a new world. Her unexpected actions charmed me, and my eyes followed her back. “I’ll change your cool and composed expression into a smile,” she’d said.
It hadn’t taken long for me to realize that I was in love.
It’s my first love. I want it to bear fruit at all costs. But at the same time, Miori was slowly becoming drawn to Natsuki. I didn’t know if she realized it herself, but it was easy to tell as an onlooker. I didn’t have time to play the waiting game. I needed to make my decision while Miori’s heart still wavered.
I had confidence in myself, but I wasn’t conceited enough to think that my charm could win against Haibara Natsuki. The more time passed, the more I would be at a disadvantage. I’d fallen for Miori so hard that I was calculating how to raise my chances of success.
Fortunately, Natsuki was still hesitating. Though, he probably already knew his answer. He was just pretending not to notice. He was a little too kind, after all.
But sometimes kindness can hurt people.
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