Apparently, Shirakawa-san had been on the phone with Nicole until late at night the previous day too. She had told me it was her routine before weekends and holidays, which was why she had asked that we meet up in the afternoon—and because of that, it was already past four.
If they’d talked over the phone the previous day, what in the world could they be in such a hurry to tell each other now? Even so, Shirakawa-san seemed to be in chatting mode, looking at how she wouldn’t let go of her smartphone at all.
Wait, she’s not complaining about me, is she? It was unsettling to think about. Okay, cut it out, Ryuto! Being paranoid won’t do you any good.
I only arrived at such thoughts because I lacked confidence. I had to change... It might’ve been impossible to do right away, but I had to do it to whatever degree I could. I wanted to stop losing my confidence all on my own, without Shirakawa-san even saying anything to me. I really did.
Unless I managed to get over my trauma that prevented me from believing cute girls, I couldn’t keep going out with my supercute girlfriend.
Still... Even though I thought of Shirakawa-san as a nice, honest girl, I wondered why her face would sometimes overlap with that of the beauty who had rejected me. It was really strange—they weren’t alike at all.
Shirakawa-san had been silently using her phone all this time, but she suddenly tapped the screen and brought the phone to her ear. “Oh, come on, Nicole!” she exclaimed. “I just told you, I’m on a date with Ryuto!”
A girl’s high-pitched voice came from the phone’s speaker. “I know! That’s why I called you!”
“Huh...? Ah, there’s no need for that now, I’ll tell you later!” Shirakawa-san sounded slightly tired. Maybe the girl on the other end of the phone was persistently asking her something. “Like I said, we went to Lumine, looked at some clothes at Cécile, checked out makeup at Etu House, then we went to a beach café... Yeah, that’s right, they were all places I said I wanted to go.” She was a lot more cheerful now. “I know, right? I’ve never had a date like this before.”
As Shirakawa-san gazed at her sweet-looking drink on the table, she had a childlike smile on her face, the kind one would only show to someone they fully trusted. When I saw that expression of hers, my chest felt so tight that I stopped caring about all the things I’d been thinking up to that point.
This cute girl was my girlfriend. Shirakawa-san had accumulated various experiences with her previous boyfriends, but now she was here, sitting in front of me, as my girlfriend. While that was a bitter pill to swallow...
Had her previous relationships been happy ones, she might not have been here with me at this moment. The guys she’d dated had taken advantage of her and then tossed her aside. I wasn’t going to do what they’d done to her. I wanted to make her happy...but what I didn’t know was how. I had the motivation, but that wasn’t getting me anywhere.
It seemed that my lack of confidence as her boyfriend really was a product of my negative thinking. Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t give me any ideas on what to do instead.
“What’s wrong, Ryuto?” asked Shirakawa-san, gazing at me with curiosity. She had ended the call with her friend at some point.
“Oh, uh... I was just remembering we have a kanji test next week and going, like, ‘damn’...”
An enormous frown appeared on Shirakawa-san’s face. “Oh, yeah, no kidding! Man, what a bummer... And after I finally managed to completely forget about it too!”
“Isn’t it good that I reminded you, then?”
“I wanted to forgeeet!” she exclaimed, holding her head.
“But then you couldn’t study for it,” I retorted, laughing.
A black coffee sat in front of me, which I had ordered for the sake of acting like a grown-up. Its bitter taste wasn’t the only kind of bitterness I was experiencing at this moment.
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