45
“Is that so?”
I couldn’t find the right words.
I felt like I had been caught off guard.
What Mihara said seemed to have struck a chord with me.
“That’s right. Is Tsujimura-kun different?”
I didn’t know how to respond to Mihara’s question.
If this were the usual me, I would have brushed off her question and quickly ended the conversation.
It was because I, as a person, had been looking down on Mihara in my heart.
To put it more harshly, I might as well say I was despising her.
A hanger-on to Kijima. A yes-man to Mio.
Just a noisy presence often found in popular groups, with no one expecting her to play any other role, one of those who followers would be fine even if she were not there.
A parasite who couldn’t think for herself and could only live by siding with the strong.
Honestly speaking, that was how I had been seeing my classmate Mihara.
…No, it would be more accurate to say that I hadn’t even tried to get to know her.
In the first place, I had no intention of properly connecting with anyone else than Mio.
“I think… once we become close, I can call someone a friend.”
“How long does that take? If you get along, it’s quick, right? If you want to talk to someone in the first place, it means you have a good impression of them at that point. So I think it’s easier to just close the distance by calling them a friend.”
Thinking about it carefully, I felt like it had been a long time since I had talked to someone properly like this.
Maybe that’s why Mihara’s words were piercing my heart like thorns.
“But the other person might hate it…”
“If you’re scared of that, you’ll never become friends… Oh, is that why you had so few friends in middle school? I don’t remember ever seeing you talking to anyone other than Miorin. By the way , how did you guys even start dating? Was it because you were childhood friends?”
A sharp pain shot through me again.
Everything Mihara said was true and to the point.
“…Yeah, that’s right. We started dating just because we were childhood friends.”
“Then you gained a lot. You were so lucky to date such a beautiful girl.”
Mihara said that with a laugh.
It was a carefree smile. I could tell from her guileless face that she didn’t mean any harm, so I couldn’t even feel angry.
“Maybe. I probably used up all my luck.”
That’s why I was able to admit it so easily, even to my own surprise.
I never thought I’d talk to anyone about Mio.
“Well, there’s always next time! Keep trying. Life is long. Take your time.”
Fortunately, Mihara didn’t ask me why Mio and I broke up.
Maybe she heard it from Mio, but it was a little surprising.
From Noble mtl dot com
Given Mihara’s personality, I would have thought she would be more interested in hearing about Mio from me, her ex-boyfriend.
“Miorin still doesn’t have a boyfriend, you know? She got confessed to a lot in the third semester, but she turned them all down. Is that a privilege of being popular? Well, it seemed like a pain to have to turn people down, so I didn’t envy her that much.”
Before I knew it, she had smoothly changed the subject to Mio.
Does this simply mean that she’s not interested in me personally?
That’s fine with me, but I feel like we’re getting further and further away from the main topic.
“That’s… tough for her. Mio… Misaka-san too.”
“Exactly. If she had a pretty face, that would be fine, but there was this guy who was below average and totally delusional. And the high school he’s going to is far from ours and it’s a stupid school. Isn’t it amazing that he even confessed? How are they going to keep dating? He doesn’t even have the brains to think about that, so that’s probably why he’s going to a place like that. I worked really hard because I didn’t want to go to a place like that. I would never want a guy who can’t think about the future.”
Before I knew it, the conversation had completely turned into gossip or rather, Mihara’s complaints.
Why am I going along with this conversation?
The pain in my chest had already disappeared somewhere, and I had completely missed the timing to get up.
“My family’s farmers, so there’s no way I can take over the house. Once I graduate high school, I want to get out of this countryside as soon as possible…”
“Excuse me…”
I had just started to pry into Mihara’s family circumstances, something I didn’t really want to hear about.
“Hm?”
“Oh, no, sorry to interrupt your conversation… but shouldn’t we be heading home soon?”
We both turned around at the sudden voice, and there was the girl who we had left out of our conversation without realizing it.
Akanishi-san was standing alone next to our seats, speaking to us.
“Everyone else has already left.”
“Wha…really?”
I looked around in a panic, and Akanishi-san was right. There was no one else in the classroom except us.
“Man, that sucks… I wanted to see who the center of attention would be on the first day.”
Mihara muttered regretfully.
So that was his plan. I was surprised that Mihara was still planning to be a lackey in high school, but I was also a little impressed by his unexpected cunning. I couldn’t quite figure out how I felt about him.
“This is all your fault, Tsujimura!”
“Don’t blame me. You’re the one who started talking to her.”
For some reason, Mihara directed his unreasonable anger at me, and I couldn’t help but respond with a sarcastic remark.
This wasn’t like me.
Mihara’s definition of a friend suddenly crossed my mind, but I didn’t want to think about it, so I stood up.
“I’m heading out. If we get caught here, the teacher will get mad. Well, then…”
“Hey, wait a minute!”
But Mihara still had something to say.
I looked at him in exasperation, and I saw that he had also stood up and was grabbing Akanishi-san’s shoulder.
“Why don’t the three of us walk home together? That would be better, right?”
And then he made that suggestion to me.