Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me - Volume 4 - Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2

When students broke into groups to work on things during a period for integrated studies, Icchi showed up to school for the first time in a while.

“Huh...? Is that...?”

“Ijichi-kun...?”

A small commotion spread through the class.

And no wonder—Icchi had lost a lot of weight.

His cheeks had buried his eyes in the past, but now that he was much leaner, you could see his eyes clearly. The whole “thin eyes with single-edged eyelids” impression he’d given off before was gone. His waistline looked trim in his uniform as well, and there was a lot of excess fabric hanging now.

Basically, he’d become a tall, rather well-built high schooler with a normal figure.

“Icchi... What happened?!” I finally managed to ask him when we started to pull our desks together for group activities. It had been difficult to approach him earlier due to the air he was giving off, which indicated to me that something was going on with him.

“Heh heh heh...” he laughed fearlessly, radiating a suspicious aura. “So you’ve noticed, Kasshi? I’ve finally become an active Kid.”

“Whaaat?!”

“You gotta be kidding, Icchi!” At some point, Nisshi had made his way next to us. There was astonishment in his voice too.

Active Kids were KEN Kids who could play games with KEN in his videos. Icchi and Nisshi had always worked on their gaming skill in order to reach one of those spots, but there were tons of people like that all over Japan, so it was a dream that seldom came true.

“Icchi, weren’t you feeling down after Tanikita-san rejected you...?” asked Nisshi, flustered.

Icchi smiled fearlessly again. “That I was... But it was more than simply feeling down. I channeled that sadness and anger into gaming... Before I knew it, I’d been building stuff in game for days—weeks—without eating or drinking.”

“Okay, ‘weeks’ is definitely a lie.”

“You’d be dead.”

He continued, ignoring us. “And so, when a test was held for those in KEN’s six-hundred-person Yourcraft server the other day and I built something on the level of a World Heritage in thirty minutes, KEN DM’d me, saying I was in.”

“What?!”

“W-Wait, you mean that new builder Kid he introduced on his stream yesterday...”

“That’s right. That ‘Gloomy Yusuke’ is my nickname.”

If you didn’t know what we were talking about, this would all probably fly right past your head. Basically, Icchi was devoting himself to building stuff in a construction game called Yourcraft, which had you use digital Lego blocks.

Icchi had been good at math from the start and was really strong at science, so it wasn’t strange for him to have more skill at building stuff than the average person. It seemed that Tanikita-san’s rejection had pushed him into gaming in an extremely detached state, and it appeared to have developed a hidden talent in him.

“Holy crap, man!” exclaimed Nisshi, holding his head. He seemed to be shocked by the fact that Icchi had stolen a march on him.

As I looked at Nisshi, something occurred to me. “Wait, why are you in our class, Nisshi? We’re in an integrated studies period right now...” I asked.

“It’s integrated studies in my class too!” exclaimed Nisshi, looking ready to cry. “Help me, man! We have thirty-three people in our class and we had to split into groups for the school trip! Before I knew it, there were four groups of seven and I had no choice other than to join a group of four, but that group has two guys and two girls, and guess what—that’s two couples we’re talking about! They’re all lovey-dovey with each other and it’s like they’re on a double date while I’m there all by myself! I wanna diiiiie!”

“Wow...”

His unimaginably harsh situation made me assume the face of a character from a Kosuke Masuda Theater manga.

“I’m not gonna get in your way, so at least let me stay under your desks or something... Please...” he whined.

“O-Okay,” I replied.

Fortunately, from now until the school trip, the integrated studies periods had a high degree of freedom and students were allowed to go to the library and back during class. Teachers were often absent too, so I figured we might be able to come up with some excuse for Nisshi being here.

Incidentally, the girls in our group were off at the library to get materials at the moment.

“By the way, is it still the same with Yamana-san?” Nisshi suddenly asked, looking around himself.

He was probably asking if Sekiya-san was still keeping his distance from her.

“Yeah, still the same,” I replied.

“I see. Huh...”

He acted indifferently, but his eyes wandered all over the place. It seemed his unrequited love was still ongoing.

If I had to choose, I was on Sekiya-san’s side, so I couldn’t proactively support Nisshi, but I did want to warmly watch over him as his friend.

“I’m back!” announced Runa, standing at the front of the group of girls who’d just returned from the library.

“Oh hey, you’re Nishina Ren,” said Yamana-san.

“What’re you doing here?” Runa asked.

“Well...” he said, flustered. He seemed to be shaken up by the fact that Yamana-san called his name.

“Also, Ijichi-kun, were you okay with joining our group?” asked Runa.

At that, Gloomy Yusuke—or should I say Icchi Ver. 2.0—nervously nodded. It looked like he was the same old Yusuke on the inside.

Curious, I looked over to Tanikita-san and saw something I couldn’t overlook.

She was staring fixedly at Icchi. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were trembling. Then, she shut her eyes as though embarrassment had just washed over her. Tanikita-san lifted the book that’d been in her hand so it was in front of her face, hiding from Icchi.

What the hell is going on here? She rejected him so mercilessly, so what’s up with this reaction...?

It was difficult for Icchi to be surrounded by extroverted girls, so he volunteered to take the materials we no longer needed back to the library. Nisshi joined him. As soon as they left the classroom, I started to get answers to my questions.

Tanikita-san excitedly spoke up to the other girls. “Hey, did you all see Ijichi-kun?”

“Huh? What about him?” replied Runa.

“Oh yeah, he lost a lotta weight. Freaked me out,” added Yamana-san.

While this was going on, Kurose-san read one of the books from the library by herself—she must’ve figured that Tanikita-san wasn’t speaking to her.