“I can understand your point of view too, of course,” I said. “And maybe if everyone was completely and equally faithful to and in love with one another, then having multiple lovers would only ever be a net positive. But for me, the thought of the person I love in a romantic sense going around and doing stuff with other people… It just makes me feel kind of nauseous, to be honest. Like, I’d want to be the single most important person in their life, and for them to feel the same way about me.”
“Yeah, that’s called being possessive, buddy,” said Momozawa, who turned to address me with a scornful gaze. “Try having a little self-confidence, maybe. It’s guys like you who are tanking our country’s birth rate.”
“Pretty sure that has nothing to do with it, dude…”
“Don’t call me ‘dude.’”
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat and circled back to my original point. “I won’t deny that possessiveness can be a very toxic trait in a relationship. At the same time, like…doesn’t that just kind of come with the territory when it comes to love? Sure, it can be messy and ugly sometimes… And yeah, when you’re in a committed relationship, you’re both bound to hurt the other person in some way sooner or later, and probably more than once… Oh, but I guess that’d probably be the same even with multiple partners, wouldn’t it…?”
The more I prattled on, the more I could feel my face growing redder and redder. What business did a total beginner to love like myself have pontificating to these people on what it meant to be in a relationship? Regret billowed up from within me.
“I think I see what you’re trying to say,” said Yuzuki. “But to be clear, we have no intention of trying to force our lifestyle on you. For the record, I think monogamous love can be a very beautiful thing, in its own right.”
While I appreciated the validation, I felt like I hadn’t given a single effective argument in defense of my own position. Which was fine, since it wasn’t like I was looking to debate her or anything—but it did make me feel a bit empty to realize that my own philosophy was so flimsy and underdeveloped compared to hers, which I hadn’t even been able to put a single dent in.
“Kamiki-kun,” said Yuzuki, lowering her voice in seriousness. “I’ll say it again: I don’t think your point of view is invalid. But I also want you to know that I’m one hundred percent certain it’s only a matter of time before relationships like ours will be seen as perfectly normal, or even commonplace. The prevailing notion of what romance should look like—as something that should only exist between one man and one woman—is already on its way out. It probably would have died off even sooner if it hadn’t been propagated and kept alive by the media for so very long. But mark my words: Sometime in the not too distant future, the world will be a much freer place to love.”
“…I guess we’ll just have to see, yeah.”
There came a resounding dong as the antique wall clock struck six.
Shortly after my back-and-forth with Yuzuki, Sera readily relinquished my bike lock key. Since I’d already finished my coffee, I wasted no time in excusing myself from the table. I vowed to never accept an invitation from Sera again as I got on my bike and pedaled for home through the bitter evening breeze.
I’d been so ready to give him a piece of my mind to get myself some mental clarity when I first walked into the café, but in the end, I hadn’t even managed to do that. Not to imply that it hadn’t been an enlightening experience for me, of course; talking with his three girlfriends had given me some food for thought in terms of what a romantic relationship could look like and the many different forms one might take.
Perhaps Yuzuki was right, and there’d soon come a day when relationships like theirs would be totally commonplace. But even if it didn’t, I was still pretty sure that the traditional, widely accepted image of what love should look like would shift over time as society continued to progress. One of these days, even the stereotypical fantasy of love at first sight with a random passerby who just so happened to drop their handkerchief might be seen as no less ridiculous than some antiquated mating ritual from the Stone Age. Or maybe that day had already come.
“But I guess what I’m most afraid of…is being so preoccupied with some overly idealistic definition of love that I let a kind of happiness I can attain slip right through my fingers.”
This was something I’d said to Ushio on the day I’d asked her out. While I certainly had no intention of experimenting with Sera’s particular brand of romance, perhaps I’d be well served to question myself a bit more when it came to my definition of what love should be.
Like, what did I really want to happen between me and Ushio, in the end? Or what form did I want our relationship to take going forward?
I needed to start thinking more proactively about these kinds of things.
Hitting a break in my train of thought, I let out a sigh. “Man, why do I feel like I’m doing something wrong here?”
I wasn’t even sure if I was doing the right thing by merely letting myself think so hard about all of this stuff. Wasn’t love supposed to be something you could enjoy and indulge in without second-guessing everything all the time? I should be thinking about fun new date ideas, not questioning whether we were doing things all wrong by virtue of the manner in which we were dating. Or did every couple in the world grapple with questions like this constantly, but they put up a front to look like they were doing just fine and enjoying themselves to an outside observer? That would be a tough reality for me to swallow, if so.
I came to a red light and hit the brakes. When I lifted my gaze, I could see the crescent moon shining clearly in the pitch-black skies overhead. I’d seen on the forecast that the weather here in Tsubakioka was expected to be unseasonably good these next few days.
I wondered if Hokkaido would be so kind.