Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me - Volume 1 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3

Shirakawa-san was popular with all our classmates, both guys and girls, which naturally meant she often spoke with guys as well.

The sight of it used to make me feel like I was watching a different world, one I hadn’t thought much about—but now that I was Shirakawa-san’s boyfriend, seeing her act like that on breaks between classes considerably unsettled me. Not to mention the person she was talking to was a good-looking, sunny guy—a regular member of the soccer club.

Still, I had no right to tell her whom she could and couldn’t talk to. Maybe some overbearing handsome guy from a shojo manga could say “Don’t look at other men,” but that was inconceivable for me to do.

And besides, it wasn’t like I wanted Shirakawa-san to change.

When I gave it more thought, I realized that the Shirakawa-san I’d fallen in love with was a popular girl surrounded by numerous friends of both sexes. I most definitely didn’t want her to become gloomy like me and only keep a few girl friends just because we were dating.

“Gotta say, though, that guy from the soccer club has been coming to talk to her really often these days...” I remarked.

Having been a Shirakawa-san-watcher since before I started going out with her, I more or less knew the faces of those who hung around in her orbit. The soccer guy was a newcomer who had suddenly started approaching her over the past week or two.

Then, as Shirakawa-san talked to him, she turned her head my way all of a sudden. Her eyes met mine.

“Ah, Ryu—” she began with a smile, before noticing the gaze of the soccer guy.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“It’s nothing,” she replied, lightly shaking her head. Then, she flashed a small smile again and looked away from me.

Shirakawa-san was doing as I’d asked her—not talking to me at school—so I had no complaints about her attitude. Still, at times like these, I couldn’t help but wonder—would this slightly hazy feeling disappear if I could say “Shirakawa-san is my girlfriend” in front of everyone?

As I ate lunch with my usual crew, I decided to voice the question on my mind. “Hey... I should keep it a secret, right?”

“What’s that, bro?” asked Icchi, looking at me.

“You mean the fact you’re a KEN Kid?” anxiously added Nisshi. “Of course you should. KEN may be a god to us, but to normies, he’s not just obscure—he’s a former pro player of games where you shoot people. He’s barely any different from a hit man to them. You’re just gonna creep out everyone in class if you RR like that.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Also, don’t bring out Mafia terms,” I replied.

Nisshi was KEN’s most ardent follower, even among the three of us, but that didn’t stop him from saying awful things about his god.

“I mean the fact I’m going out with Shirakawa-san,” I explained, lowering my voice.

The two of them were taken aback and their shoulders jerked up. They looked at me, then at each other, and finally lowered their eyebrows in pity.

“Kasshi... You’re still saying that?”

“Well, what can you do? That’s a virgin for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And you guys are virgins too,” I replied.

Paying no heed to my retort, the two shrugged in exasperation.

“Look, man, she accepted your confession because it was her idea of a joke.”

“Exactly. And you took a sunny girl’s joke seriously, and you still think you’re dating her? Kasshi, that’s beyond pitiful—it’s downright ridiculous.”

“Wh-Whaaat?!”

I wanted to argue back, telling them how Shirakawa-san messaged me on LINE every day and that we’d even gone on a date on Saturday, but it didn’t look like they’d be willing to listen.

“If you’ve got time for such nonsensical daydreams, don’t you think it’s a lot more productive to be like us and gun for a top spot among the Kids?”

“What he said. IRL girls stop calling and texting you right away, but KEN uploads new videos every day instead of betraying us, right?”

Tempted as I was to ask my friend if he had ever called or texted an IRL girl, I was pretty sure those two would only look at me with pity if I said anything here, so my only option was to keep quiet.

“Whatever, guys,” I muttered, refocusing on my lunch box.

They said good friends were great blessings, but since mine didn’t even believe I was dating a girl, I couldn’t ask them for advice.

***

The reason I’d suddenly started to mind the soccer guy and was considering going public about dating Shirakawa-san had to do with a minor event that had occurred on Sunday.

On Sunday—so the day following our date—Shirakawa-san had sent me her usual morning greeting over LINE.

I’d sent her a reply, but unlike always, it had taken some time for the “Read” marker to appear. Naturally, I hadn’t gotten a reply from her either, and it had remained that way for a few hours. My message had only been marked “Read,” and she’d sent one of her own four hours later.

Moreover, she hadn’t said anything about what had happened during that time period. I couldn’t find it in me to ask, but I also couldn’t help remembering what she’d said the other day.

“I have plans on Sunday, but I’m free on Saturday.”

She’d definitely said that when I’d asked her out on a date. What plans had those been, exactly...? Just what had she been doing that would prevent her from replying to me for four hours when she’d always replied right away, no matter the circumstances?

Once it had started bugging me, the thought wouldn’t leave me alone.

***

Even after coming home from school, I found myself agonizing over the subject as I lay on my bed.

Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that she had gone somewhere on Sunday with a male friend. I wouldn’t mind. Okay, to be honest, it would bother me a little... More than a little, really. The point is, I wished she’d been open with me about it.

It would’ve been much better than doing a bad job of keeping it a secret like she was doing now, and it would’ve at least let me think she put me—her boyfriend—above other guys.

“Here I go again,” I remarked.

How pathetic. I really couldn’t be confident in myself—couldn’t be sure Shirakawa-san liked me as her boyfriend.

I’d known from the very start that my feelings for her were much stronger than hers were for me. She hadn’t even known me at all! And she had only grown to “like me a little bit” because I’d confessed to her.

Still, since she’d made me her boyfriend, she must’ve thought of me as more special than only a male friend. Even so, it just wouldn’t sink into my brain.

And this was solely due to my lack of confidence...

“Agh, damn it! But how could a guy like me act like a boyfriend and ask Shirakawa-san what she did on Sunday?!” I exclaimed.

Then...

My smartphone buzzed by my pillow. Looking at the screen, I saw a LINE notification.

☆ Luna ☆: Can you come to the station right now?

“Huh?”

Right now? What’s this about...? I wondered, startled.

“She’s not gonna say ‘Let’s break up after all,’ right...?”

***

Once I’d nervously made my way to Station K, I found Shirakawa-san at the ticket gates. She seemed to have gone home at some point as she was in her casual clothes now—a miniskirt and a top that exposed her shoulders.

Going inside with my commuter pass, I approached her.

“Shirakawa-san, what did you—”

“Ta-da!”

Before I could finish, she held out something to me that looked like a smartphone.

“Huh...?”

Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be a phone case. I recognized the character inlaid over its entire surface—it was that rabbit with a weird face that Shirakawa-san frequently used stickers of in LINE.

“A Mabbit phone case!” she exclaimed. “A character shop in Harajuku sold only a few of these after it opened, and each person could only buy one.”

“‘Mabbit’...?” I asked.

“You don’t know? ‘Middle-Aged Rabbit.’ Don’t you think it’s super cute?”

“Cute...?” Its face looked more like Golgo 13’s to me. “Well, if you wanted it, I’m glad you got one,” I said.

“Uh-huh! Here!” Shirakawa-san pressed the case against me without hesitation.

“What?”

“Take it. It’s for you.”

“Huh? Why...?”

Hadn’t she gone all the way to buy this thing that was one per customer? As I stood at a loss, Shirakawa-san took something else out and showed it to me.

“Check this out! It’s a matching case!” She was holding her own smartphone in the exact same case. “I asked Nicole to stand in line with me. We were playing games since morning, so my phone ran out of battery before the shop opened and I couldn’t message you.”

“Oh...”

I was startled to realize she was talking about Sunday. Shirakawa-san continued smiling as she watched me.

“If I was gonna buy one anyway, I wanted us to have matching cases,” she explained. “D’you remember? Today’s our one-week anniversary since we started going out.”

“Ah...”

Now that she mentioned it, I noticed it had been exactly a week since my confession. Not that I could relate to treating our one-week mark as an anniversary.

“Th-Thank you...” I stammered.

I couldn’t express my gratitude very well—I was so touched that I found myself in a daze. The hazy feeling I’d had until this point was dissipating little by little.

“Sounds like you troubled Yamana-san,” I said. “I would’ve lined up with you if you’d let me know.”

“Outta the question! I wanted to give it to you today as a surprise,” she replied, then smiled again. “You had no idea, right? Did my surprise work?”

Seeing her happy smile, I felt love for her well up deep inside me.

“Yeah, it sure did...”

Her unnatural behavior sure had made me worry. She had gone silent when the battery on her phone had run out, and she hadn’t told me why either—but after seeing her carefree smile, it felt like there’d been nothing I needed to be anxious about.

When our relationship had started a week ago, I was still afraid Shirakawa-san might’ve only been making fun of me by accepting my confession. I’d thought that she might’ve been about to do the same thing as that girl who had rejected me a long time ago. The reason I’d gotten worried about the soccer guy, as well as why I hadn’t been able to insist to Icchi and Nisshi that Shirakawa-san and I really were going out despite their refusals, was my lack of confidence as her boyfriend.

However...

“If I was gonna buy one anyway, I wanted us to have matching cases.”

Perhaps Shirakawa-san cherished me more than I’d realized. The moment I’d seen her smile as she said that had been the first time I’d had such a thought.

“What’s wrong, Ryuto?”

I was taken aback when she called out to me. Despite the fact that I was standing right in front of her, I’d been so deeply moved that I’d gotten lost in my thoughts instead.

“Not a fan of the phone case? You don’t wanna use something like that?” she asked with a worried look.

I shook my head in haste. “No, I’m happy with it. Thanks. I’ll treasure it.”

Setting aside whether this Mabbit was cute or not, the fact that Shirakawa-san had given me a matching item as a present for our anniversary(?) genuinely left me supremely happy.

“Really? That’s great!” she replied, a happy smile on her face. “So why were you spacing out just now?”

“Huh? Uhh...” I searched my thoughts from a moment ago for something I could tell her. “A long time ago...I...confessed to a girl...”

“What? That’s sudden! When was that?”

In a moment, her eyes lit up and she pressed me for answers. Shirakawa-san seemed to be into love talk.

“In my first year of middle school.”

“What was she like? Was she like me?”

“Not really...” I said. “She was quiet and had black hair.”

“Ah, so the feminine type. That’s not like me at all,” she immediately agreed. “So, what happened with her?”

“She rejected me. She was really nice to me before that and said things that made it seem like she liked me, so I was convinced she actually did... But then it turned out I had the wrong idea.”

Shirakawa-san listened to me in silence.

“Ever since then, I haven’t had confidence when dealing with girls,” I continued. “It’s not even like I had much to begin with. So it was just hard to believe that a cute girl like you had really made me your boyfriend.”

She blinked in apparent surprise. “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? You confessed to me!”

“I did, but...I kind of didn’t really think I stood a chance with you...” I had yet to tell her that my friends had made me confess to her as a punishment—I thought it might be rude. “So even now that it’s been a week, it was still hard to believe... Which is why I was really happy you prepared this kind of surprise for me.”

After I finished speaking, Shirakawa-san stared at me for some time.

“I see,” she said at last, a gentle smile on her face. And when she smiled, her beautiful face looked angelic, like that of a little girl. It made her all the more adorable.

“So you have confessed to a girl before, Ryuto.” Her expression turned into a lightly teasing grin. “I thought I was your first.”

“It’s really just something I’d rather forget.”

“Still, it’s thanks to that girl that we can date now. I should be grateful to her.”

“Huh?” I asked.

As I watched her and wondered what she meant, Shirakawa-san smiled at me again. “’Cause like, if she said yes and you two were still going out even now, you would’ve never confessed to me, right?”

“Well, I guess... But love in the first year of middle school doesn’t last that long.”

“That’s not true! It’s when my mom and dad started going out!”

“What? For real?!” I asked in surprise.

Shirakawa-san gave me a deep nod. “It was the first relationship for both of them. When my mom was in her third year of high school, she got pregnant with my big sister. My parents got married right after graduating.”

“Huh...”

Wow... Even her parents lived satisfying lives... Wait, Shirakawa-san has an older sister? She must be beautiful.

“I thought I’d end up like that too...” she suddenly muttered, looking up at the ceiling.

Since it was rush hour, the station was overflowing with people hurrying up from the platforms and through the ticket gates to get home. In the midst of this chaos, Shirakawa-san and I stood by the wall. I had to wonder how we were able to have such a long conversation at all in such a place.

She continued, “My dad confessed to my mom in their first year of middle school, and she said she didn’t know what dating was about, but she accepted it anyway ’cause she was glad to have a boyfriend. So when I had a guy confess to me before summer break of my first year in middle school, I wondered if I’d be marrying him.”

“I see...”

“That was why I accepted his confession...”

It wasn’t hard to guess how that story ended.

I went silent for some time. Thinking about her ex-boyfriends was still unsettling for me, which was a problem I needed to do something about.

Now that a week had passed, I was gradually coming to accept our relationship as reality, but I still couldn’t help but wonder if she was okay with me.

I had to man up. Shirakawa-san was going out with me.

“Guess I should be grateful to your ex-boyfriends,” I quietly said to encourage myself.

“Ah! You stole that from me!” she quipped, looking up at me with a soft smile.

I smiled back at her. “I just thought it was well said.”

“Sheesh... I should’ve copyrighted it.” She acted bitter in jest.

Even though I’d said it, I didn’t mean it. However, until the day came when I really could express my heartfelt gratitude to her exes without any mixed feelings, maybe I could live with that.

By that point, my heart would surely be full of confidence that Shirakawa-san loved me, and I could proudly call myself her boyfriend.

I hoped that such a day would be in store for me.

“Still, though...” Shirakawa-san suddenly began, “my mom and dad split up too, in the end.”

“Eh? Oh...”

There was still much I didn’t know about her family situation. Sure, maybe it was only natural, since that wasn’t the sort of thing you’d go telling friends you’re not particularly close with, but I hadn’t heard any rumors about her family at all.

That being said... Since she deliberately came back to this topic after we’d already moved on...had she been considering whether to tell me about her current family circumstances or not while I’d thought about her ex-boyfriends in silence? The thought of it made her even dearer to me.

“So you live with your mom now?” I asked.

“Nope. With my dad and grandma. My big sister lived with us until two years ago, but she’s now living with her boyfriend.”

“I see.”

I wondered what the right thing was to say at times like this, since I came from an unremarkable nuclear family. My birth parents lived together, and they weren’t on bad terms or anything either.

“Still, at least you didn’t get separated from your sister, right?” I asked.

Shirakawa-san’s expression shifted. “Huh...?” As she looked at me, she seemed caught off guard in a way that could be taken as either good or bad.

“Huh?” I was surprised in return.

Did I say something bad? I thought it was a rather innocuous remark... As those thoughts passed through my head, Shirakawa-san looked away from me and nodded with a smile.

“Ah, yeah. I guess so...” she said.

Something felt off about her attitude, and I wondered what that was. It wouldn’t be long before I found out.

***

Ever since that day, I used the matching phone case I got from Shirakawa-san. However, that also marked the beginning of a chapter of my school life where I couldn’t take my smartphone out so easily.

And then, something even more absurd happened to me.

One morning during homeroom, the teacher in charge of our class said, “A new student will be joining this class today.”

Those words sent the whole classroom into feverish excitement.

“For real?! A transfer student?!”

“A guy? A girl? Which is it?!”

Instead of answering my classmates’ questions, our homeroom teacher opened the classroom door and beckoned someone in the hallway to come inside. Everyone held their breath for an instant as the person came into view.

She was a striking beauty. Large, glistening eyes accentuated by her puffy eye bags; round, rosy cheeks; upturned, shapely lips... On top of that, her glossy, straight, shoulder-length hair enhanced her flawlessly lovely features even more.