Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me - Volume 7 - Chapter 4.2

I looked at Nisshi’s hands as he sat across from me. His right hand, the one holding the spoon, was much smaller than Sekiya-san’s. It still had some childlike roundness to it.

“I’ve gone all this time looking at Nicole when she was still with her ex,” Nisshi said. The pain in his expression was intensifying.

I remembered seeing that expression before. When we’d been on our school trip in Kyoto, he’d watched Yamana-san and Sekiya-san embrace each other. After that, he’d walked for a long time, and then he’d had the same kind of face at the end of it.

“The faces she showed him, and the ones I see... They’re completely different.”

I knew how Yamana-san looked when she was with Nisshi, and I knew how she’d been with Sekiya-san.

“Still, I’ve always felt that when she was with you, she was being her real self,” I told him.

Nisshi looked at me and gave me a small, happy smile. But the dejection returned to his face right away. “I do feel like I’m asking for too much here. I should be grateful that she’s agreed to date such a total introvert at all.” His smile turned into one of self-deprecation. “And besides, we were friends for so long... It’s hard for everything to just up and change now that we’re a couple. It hasn’t been long since she broke up with her ex either. And I get all that, it’s just...”

Nisshi rested his chin on the hand which held the spoon and directed his eyes at the window. Outside, the vivid green ginkgo trees swayed in the wind.

Watching the sight with narrowed eyes, Nisshi quietly said, “We’re a couple now... Is it really too much to ask for things to be different from when we were friends?”

***

“Oh, welcome!”

I was inside a multitenant building in the shopping district near Station A. After I took the elevator to the fifth floor and rang the intercom of what visually resembled a regular apartment, Yamana-san opened the door and greeted me energetically. The atmosphere of the place was rather different from that of the izakaya she’d used to work at, but the way she carried herself was still the same.

“Come in, come in. Take a seat over there.”

Yamana-san pointed at the back of the room. There were two long, narrow tables, and in front of each of them were plush chairs that looked like small sofas.

I went to the chair Yamana-san had indicated and sat down timidly.

The room was cozy. It was about the size of an apartment meant for one person—one with a single bedroom and a combined dining room and kitchen. It felt barren because there were so few things inside, but the white walls and furniture made it also feel very clean.

“This place feels pretty private,” I said.

“I know, right?” Yamana-san smiled and sat down across from me on the other side of the table. Unlike the chairs for clients, her seat was just a simple stool without a back. “A girl in a higher year at my school started this place and worked here all by herself. For safety reasons, she only had female clients. When I came in in April, she decided that when we’re both here, it’s okay to serve men too. And there’s a new nail technician coming in autumn.”

Yamana-san prepared things quickly as she spoke. At the center of the table was some sort of a box with a thin fluorescent lamp attached. She moved it to the side and put something that looked like a pen holder in front of her. It was filled with brushes of some sort.

“Give me your hand, I’ll disinfect it.”

“Oh, okay...”

This was the first time I’d touched the hand of a girl other than Runa outside of folk dances. Even though I was well acquainted with Yamana-san, it still made me a little nervous.

One at a time, she laid my hands over her own and quickly wiped them with what looked like cotton wool. Then, she took a picture with her phone to use as a sample shot.

“That girl you mentioned—she’s not here?” I asked.

It was a small room, so I didn’t need to look around to know there was nobody else present.

“Yeah, I told her to take a lunch break since you’re a friend.”

“Oh.”

It felt a little awkward to hear Yamana-san call me a friend. The thought that she’d accepted me as both her best friend’s boyfriend and as a friend of her own made me happy.

“I had lunch with Nisshi at my university the other day,” I said.

After hearing him talk about his relationship with Yamana-san, I’d recalled Runa having mentioned Yamana-san’s nail salon and the offer so she could take sample shots. I’d talked to Runa about it and made a reservation for 1 p.m. on a weekday the following week. I’d be going to work at the editing department right afterward.

“I’ve heard, yeah. Houo University, isn’t it? He said the place was so highbrow it upset his stomach.”

“He just ate too much—simple as that.”

After eating his omurice, Nisshi had ordered a parfait and a no-bake cheesecake. He’d eaten it all and said that he physically couldn’t eat any more afterward.

“I’m glad you guys are still friends,” Yamana-san said while filing my nails.

As she removed as much of the white part as she could, my nails were looking neater by the minute. I could see that she really was a pro at this.

“Ren says he can’t get in touch with Icchi. That he doesn’t want to,” Yamana-san said with a smirk. “After all, those two are off in their own little world right now.”

“Icchi and Tanikita-san?”

“Yeah. Akari’s totally off the rails. She’s all over him. If you look at her Instagram and TikTok, she’s super cringe there too. Wanna see?”

If anything, it was clear that Yamana-san couldn’t wait to show me. Her hands had stopped working before I even agreed to look. She then stuck a hand into a pocket of her apron, pulled out her phone, and turned it my way.

The most recent post on Tanikita-san’s TikTok was a short video of her and Icchi singing something together with twinkle effects around their faces. Judging by the thumbnails on her page, there was an endless stream of videos like that.

“Wow. She’s posted a video of herself with Icchi practically every day,” I said.

“Yep. What’s with her? Are they living together? It’s scary how carried away she is.” Smiling in mild annoyance, Yamana-san took the phone back from me and resumed the nail care.

“So you aren’t getting carried away?”

“Me and Ren? Of course not,” she replied. Her hands continued to work, and she had a faint smile on her face. “We were never like that to begin with.”

“But now that you’re a couple, shouldn’t things be...a bit different?” I asked. Since I’d never been in a relationship like theirs, there wasn’t much confidence in my tone.

Yamana-san glanced at me without stopping her hands and smiled. “Looks like Ren wants them to be.” Her eyes returned to my hands. “It’s funny to me, though. I just can’t.”

“Really?”

“Well yeah, obviously.” Yamana-san smiled. “What I always liked about being with Ren was that I could be myself.” Her eyes were on my hands, but at the same time, it felt like they were looking at something far away. “When I dated senpai, I always thought about how I wanted him to see me as cute and a good girl. I kept a lot of stuff on the inside. Ren says I don’t need to do that with him. After all, I’ve never been like that with him even once, and he fell in love with me anyway.”

“I see...”

Again, that was the only reply I could give. It didn’t sit right with me after seeing how Nisshi had acted, but perhaps in Yamana-san’s mind, her relationship with him was absolutely great.

And if Nisshi wasn’t satisfied with it...then perhaps he was the one who’d have to let go of this love. With that in mind, I couldn’t say any more on this topic to Yamana-san.

“By the way, how did you and Sekiya-san start dating?” I asked instead.

I’d heard he’d been her senior in the ping-pong club in middle school—she’d been the manager. Neither of them had ever told me the details of how their feelings had become mutual and they’d gotten together, however.

It felt like Yamana-san’s relationship with Sekiya-san had been special to her. I was curious about it, even though it was from far in the past.

“What? Why do you ask that now?”

“Oh, it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it...” I said.

“Nah, it’s fine.” Yamana-san was still quickly proceeding with the nail care process as she spoke. “Well... It’s hard to describe it in a few words. We gradually grew closer after being in the same club for a year, and when he graduated, we used that opportunity to start dating.”

“Which one of you confessed first?”

“Hmm... Senpai, I think? He said something of the sort on Valentine’s Day, and we grew closer after that.”

“Huh.”

I recalled the photo that Sekiya-san had once shown me of him in middle school. He wasn’t good-looking at all, but he’d still been able to make a move on Yamana-san when he had to. Guess I should’ve expected no less from him.

Yamana-san seemed to have finished my nails at some point while we talked.

“What kind of scents do you like?” she asked at the end.

“I don’t know.”

She rubbed a citrusy hand cream on my hands, and the whole thing was over.

“Wow, this is amazing!” I said, raising my hands to eye level and staring at my nails. “They’re shining...”

Every fingernail was smooth and had been trimmed to the same length as the others. They weren’t wet, but they still reflected the light from the fluorescent lamp. The thin skin at the bottom of the nail that often created hangnails had been cleanly removed, and it felt like my nails had become longer.

My fingers didn’t feel like they were my own.

I felt like I understood now how Runa felt. When your nails looked this good, you couldn’t help but look at them. It raised your spirits. It felt like I’d become a narcissist.

“We’re entering an age where men must take care of their nails too. Especially if they have a girlfriend,” said Yamana-san. “Your hands and fingers are what your partner touches the most, so keeping them clean is part of being considerate.”

My hands were resting on the table, and as she spoke, she took some pictures of them with her phone.

Yamana-san grinned at me. “You guys will finally do it in Okinawa, right?” she asked quietly, even though we were alone.

It startled me a little. “Y-Yeah...”

Runa, you told Yamana-san about it...?

“That is the plan, I guess...” I added, my face burning up.

Yamana-san continued, smirking. “Why don’t you come again before the trip? I’ll give you another special fifty percent discount. ♡”

She winked at me mischievously.

***

August arrived, and now temperatures were above thirty-five degrees every day.

“Damn, it’s hot...” I groaned as I walked under the burning noontime sun.

The reason I’d gone out at such a time despite not having work or a date was to see a certain someone.

“Hey, Ryuto.”

As Sekiya-san passed through the ticket gates of Shim-Misato Station and saw me, he raised his hand.

“You’ve got a tan. That’s unexpected,” I said.

“I went to the beach with a friend from middle school on Sunday.”