Chapter 4
“I told you you should’ve come to the study room,” uttered Sekiya-san, sounding amazed.
I’d just finished telling him all about Sunday’s events.
Speaking of which...
When Runa and I had ended up alone after everything that had happened, I’d explained to her that I’d simply felt like studying at the library at the time. There, I’d happened upon Kurose-san, and I’d planned to tell Runa about it later. She’d certainly heard me out, but I couldn’t tell if she’d been completely satisfied with my explanation. There was no denying that it could’ve been more natural, considering I’d left out the part about how I’d been running away from Kurose-san at the cram school—that was too pathetic to share.
“You went through so much trouble to avoid her, so why would you go studying at a library together? She probably still has a thing for you, you know. Wanna go for both twins at the same time at this point?”
Sekiya-san was poking fun at me, but I wasn’t in the mood. Hanging my head, I drank some peach tea from a plastic bottle. When I’d gone to the study room earlier, he’d noticed that I’d been feeling down and had invited me to the lounge. We were now sitting at a table and having something to drink.
Since Kurose-san had already found out I was here, there was no need for us to go outside for this. And, apparently, Sekiya-san’s former underclassmen weren’t going to show up on this day of the week. He’d bought my drink for me from a vending machine—perhaps having remembered the promise he’d made.
“I’m not you, so...”
Hearing my snide remark, though it was both belated and weak, Sekiya-san knit his brows, looking upset.
“And what do you know about me?” he asked. “I’ll have you know, my first relationship was as pure as they go. It took us a week to get to holding hands, then another week until our first kiss...”
“But then you went into the harem route, no?”
I heard things about Sekiya-san’s high school days every now and then. While I still didn’t know the whole story, he seemed to have had quite the active love life—enough to become a ronin.
“Grrr...” Sekiya-san went silent after that—my retort seemed to have been effective.
He sure has it nice. Me, I end up feeling guilty before my girlfriend, even though I haven’t really done anything I need to feel bad about.
“You know, I’m surprised your exes haven’t taken a knife to you,” I said.
“Well yeah, I was on top of things.”
“Oh...?”
I wasn’t very sharp, so even if I were to become popular, I doubted I could do a good job fooling around with many different girls.
“To give you a serious answer, though,” Sekiya-san began as I sat there, impressed. “It’s because none of them loved me enough to stab me, probably. I only went for girls that I could be casual with.”
Makes sense...
“And besides,” he continued. “When it comes to love, girls always get right over things. The guy they’re currently dating or one they just have their eye on always comes first. Wishy-washy girls who get hung up over some dude they stopped dating forever ago? They only exist in our imaginations.”
“R-Really...?”
His words made me recall what Yamana-san had said when we’d played airsoft.
“It’s so stupid, right? Being hung up on a guy I dated for just two weeks in my second year of middle school.”
“Actually, an acquaintance of mine is like that...” I didn’t know if it was okay for me to call Yamana-san a friend, so I ended up wording it that way. “She can’t forget her boyfriend from many years ago and can’t move on to new romances because of that,” I said.
Sekiya-san folded his arms, not appearing intrigued. “Is that so? Must’ve been a hell of a guy, then.”
“It sounded like he had a bad case of chuunibyou, actually. He listened to sutras and stuff.”
After a moment’s pause, Sekiya-san said, “Well, that’s a phase everyone goes through.”
“Listening to sutras?!”
“I found it good for raising my concentration before matches.”
“Then... Do you still listen to them to raise your concentration when studying for exams?”
“If I listened to them now, it would be like I was trying to become a priest,” he retorted and smiled in self-deprecation. “Man, it’s been a while since I thought about all that stuff. And I’d rather forget it.”
“W-Well, anyway, apparently she liked that in her ex.”
“Huh... Normies.”
Sensing extraordinary irritation in his voice just now, I asked a question that had just popped up in my mind. “Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?”
I figured he’d be more tolerant of other people’s love lives if he did.
“Nah,” replied Sekiya-san, as I’d expected. “There are some girls who get in touch with me every now and then, but that’s it... And, actually, this is really no time for me to have a girlfriend. Ronins aren’t even popular to begin with.”
“Huh...”
“Even your girlfriend would dump you if you become a ronin. If you do that and your girl starts living the life in college, she’s gonna join some club, one of her seniors will bang her at the club’s welcoming party, and that’ll be it for you two.”
I went silent at that. If Sekiya-san was speaking from experience, then he had my sympathy. But Runa would never, I started to think (although I didn’t know if she was going to college in the first place), but then I considered it further. It would certainly be pathetic if I failed my college entrance exams, and she might become disappointed in me to some degree. I wanted to avoid that.
“Anyway, I suggest you line someone else up in case you get dumped,” said Sekiya-san. “It wouldn’t be easy to go for her sister...”
“Again, I’m not gonna do something like that...”
“Oh, speak of the devil.”
I turned toward where he was looking and saw Kurose-san enter the lounge together with several friends who were wearing sailor uniforms.
I couldn’t help putting myself on guard out of habit.
“She’s always with girls from that T school,” remarked Sekiya-san.
“Huh...?”
“See those sailor uniforms?”
I looked back toward him. “I’m surprised you recognize other schools’ uniforms.”
“Don’t you realize how famous Girls’ School T is? Its standard score is on the high side, and lots of cute girls from rich families go there.”
“Huh...”
It was famous? Schools like that were part of a world I had no connection to whatsoever, so I hadn’t had the slightest idea.
“Ah,” Sekiya-san then uttered.
I turned in the direction he was looking. Kurose-san, who was surrounded by other girls, was staring in our direction. It felt like our eyes met and I lowered my head a bit, at which point she gave me a pleasant smile and a light wave.
“Huh, that’s kinda nice,” said Sekiya-san. “She clearly still has a thing for you, Yamada.”
“What?!” I looked at him in panic at his outrageous statement. “You’re kidding! I-It would be a problem for me if it was true!”
“A problem? Why? All you gotta do is keep it together.”
“Well, sure, but...”
Why does he only make sound arguments at times like these?!
“Even so...” I continued.
Kurose-san was extremely cute, all right. Sure, the same went for Runa, but they were completely different types. What made things worse was that if we were only talking about looks, I naturally preferred girls like Kurose-san.
If somehow, by some chance, she were to try and seduce me again like she’d done back at that gym storage room...would I still be able to fight off the temptation? I’d come so close to giving into it last time too.
If such a cute girl kept throwing herself at me over and over, did I have the iron will I needed to remain faithful...?
“Could you do it, Sekiya-san?” I asked.
“Eh, nah. I’d totally go for it.”
“Eh...?” I gave him a cold look.
“Look, I know myself well, okay? That’s why I broke up with my first girlfriend,” Sekiya-san explained, seeming rattled. “When I kissed her, I realized I wanted to treasure her. From the bottom of my heart. We’d been in the same club for a whole year, so we knew a lot of things about each other—good and bad. It was really comfortable to be with her. Hell, I thought we might even be together our whole lives.”
“But then...”
You should’ve just kept dating her instead of breaking up, I thought.
Sekiya-san then continued. “But when I got to high school and was suddenly popular with sunny beauties, I could tell our relationship wasn’t going to end well. That it’d only be a matter of time before I gave in to temptation and started two-timing or even three-timing. I’d hurt her in the worst way possible.”
“So you broke up with her before getting too deeply involved?”
“Exactly. I do feel sorry for her, though.”
Seeing how dull his eyes were, I asked, “Do you regret it?”
Perhaps sensing the attempt at consideration in my tone, Sekiya-san put on a smile that looked forced. “How could I not? I wanted to treasure her forever, even if that thought only visited me once.” He then hung his head a bit. “But I didn’t want to hurt her by cheating or something like that. She was really pure.”
What kind of girl had managed to occupy his heart like this? I kinda wanted to meet her now.
“Still,” Sekiya-san continued quietly as if talking to himself. “If I could relive my life starting with my first year of high school, I definitely wouldn’t break up with her that time.” The serious expression on his face made him look like someone completely different than the typical Sekiya-san who joked around all the time. “There’s really something special about the girl you fall in love with for the first time in your life. You don’t fall for her ‘just because,’ and it’s not a calculated approach based on previous experiences—she’s someone you’re instinctively drawn to.”
His words startled me—in my case, the things he was saying applied to Kurose-san.
“Sure, I got to date lots of cute girls thanks to breaking up with her...but that only made me realize that my first girlfriend was the best. Even though it was too late to do anything about it at that point,” muttered Sekiya-san. He looked more downcast than I’d ever seen him before.
I thought for a moment before saying anything. “Well, why not become a priest, then?” I suggested, since I wanted Sekiya-san to get back to his usual self.
He seemed to get my intent. “I told you I don’t listen to sutras anymore.”
Seeing him force a joking attitude, I could tell he was a good person.
“I’m gonna go wild after I pass those exams,” he said.
“That’s what I’d expect from the Don Juan of our day.”
“You bet!” replied Sekiya-san with a smile. He then quietly added, “What kind of image do you even have of me?”
That question would linger in my ears for a while.
“Don’t go doing something you’ll regret, Yamada,” he said at the end.
***
Perhaps Sekiya-san, who was two years older than me, was me two years into the future.
I didn’t want to have regrets.
My first love was Kurose-san, but the one I was currently dating and wanted to treasure forever was Runa.
She was my number one. I wanted to treasure her—only her.
With that in mind, I did my best not to concern myself with Kurose-san as I went about my daily life.
The middle of October came and the weather improved. Autumn was the best season for doing sports, after all.
Even at our school, a sports day was held one Sunday.
“Runa! You’re so fast!” a girl shouted from our student cheering area set up alongside the track.
Runa, who was participating in a relay race that pitted classes against each other, was running on the track with light steps.
She was athletic and could run fast. Her hair was roughly tied up and it fluttered in the wind behind her as she nimbly moved her long legs that stretched out from under her sports uniform. She was heading to the zone where the next runner was waiting for her.
“Wow! Keep it up, Runa!”
As she ran past my class’s seats, the cheers grew louder.
“Ahh, she passed one!” someone exclaimed as Runa overtook a person from another class who had been running beside her.
“Runa’s amazing!”
“She’s so fast!”
Our class had been in third place, but Runa put us in second as she got to the end.
“That was incredible, Runa!”
When she came back, the girls took turns expressing their gratitude to her. I looked on from a distance as I sat amid my class.
“Man, your girlfriend’s really something,” uttered Icchi, who sat beside me.
“She is...”
Runa was amazing. She was as sunny as they came. And such a girl was my girlfriend... It was strange to think about, late as it might have been.
It wasn’t like I had no athletic ability either. I figured I was either average, or at the very least, just below average. But when it came to second-year students, the really athletic ones could reach the level of professionals. And it didn’t take that much to surpass me—my ability was far from that of people who worked out in sports clubs every day.
That was what made it particularly surprising that Runa was so athletic, despite not being in any clubs just like me.
“Ah, it’s Tanikita-san,” said Icchi all of a sudden.
At some point, the next event in the program had begun at the track. Tanikita-san and some other girls, all dressed as cheerleaders, were dancing to a popular song. It appeared that it was a cheerleading competition.
“Man, Tanikita-san is cute...” uttered Icchi.
“Yeah,” I replied, just to say something appropriate.
That, however, prompted Icchi to give me a fierce look. “Dude, you have Shirakawa-san and you’re still gunning for Tanikita-san?”
“O-Of course not. What’re you talking about?” I said back, flustered.
Icchi looked at me with deep-seated doubt. “You’ve got a criminal record with Kurose-san, after all...”
“Criminal record”? Is he talking about when that photo of us supposedly embracing each other was making the rounds?
“Man, I told you that was a misunderstanding...”
As I tried to protest, Icchi, who had been looking at the cheerleaders, let out a cry of surprise.
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