Now it was Hoshihara who looked like she’d been caught in an awkward position. Normally, I would’ve liked to say she didn’t have to tell me if she didn’t want to… But I knew this was one thing that would eat away at me forever if I didn’t get closure—even if the truth would be a bitter pill to swallow.
“Well, when we first exchanged contact info,” she began, “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Hm… Does this guy have a crush on me?’ So ever since then, basically.”
“Hold on.” For a moment, I stood there in a daze—like I’d been clubbed over the head with a rock. Then it sank in, and I nearly shouted in her face, “Wasn’t that literally the first time we ever talked?! You’re kidding me, right?!”
“L-look, I’m sorry, okay?” Hoshihara began to tear up.
Oh, crap… I’m getting way too emotional, aren’t I?
“N-no, I’m sorry!” I said. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice like that. My bad. I’ll chill out, I promise.”
What the hell was I thinking, yelling at her like that after I was the one who insisted she spill the beans? Man, I was such a jerk. I needed to find a way to repent for this and get back to our usual rapport before it cast a haze over our group activity day tomorrow.
I took a look around—and my eyes landed on my carton of Soft Katsugen lying on the ground. I’d forgotten to even pick it up. Hey, that’s it. Maybe if I buy her something to drink, that’ll help clear the air.
I fed a few coins into the machine and pressed the button, grabbed the drink it dispensed, and offered it to Hoshihara. “Here,” I said. “Consider this my way of apologizing.”
“What? No, it’s okay! You really don’t have to do that…”
“I do, though. I’d feel really bad if I didn’t do something. Just take it, please.”
“All right, if you insist.” Hoshihara accepted the blue drink carton and inspected it curiously. “Soft Katsugen, huh? What does it taste like?”
“I actually don’t know. Never had it before.”
“Wait. So you’re gifting me some random drink you haven’t even tried?”
O-oh, shoot! Good point… What was I thinking?!
I’d defaulted to getting her the same thing as me, but she was right; I definitely should have asked her what she wanted to drink. It wouldn’t make for a very good apology if I bought her something on a whim that she ended up hating. How stupid was I?
Ugh, damn it… Intense self-hatred coursed through me. Hardly anything was more mortifying to me than moments like this, when I revealed just how socially inept and lacking in basic life experience I was through these little oversights. And now I could only stand there, wallowing in anguish, as Hoshihara stabbed the plastic straw into her carton and took her first, fateful sip.
“It’s really sweet,” she said, her lips broadening into a smile.
Well, at least she didn’t hate it. This didn’t erase my embarrassment, but it was definitely a relief. I picked my own carton up off the ground and gave the beverage a try myself.
Oh, I see… It’s one of these kinds of drinks. Not bad. Pretty tasty, I guess.
“Did you come down here to buy a drink too, then?” I asked.
“Nah, I just needed to get away from the girl talk for a while,” said Hoshihara. “Was getting a little too deep for my personal comfort level, that’s all.”
“Gotcha…”
And then she ended up stumbling into an uncomfortable conversation about how I used to have feelings for her anyway. I supposed it was an unlucky night for both of us.
“So, uh…” I said, pivoting. “Sorry, not to keep circling back to this, but…are you saying you basically knew all along, then?”
“Yeah, I felt like I had a pretty good hunch. No offense, but you’re kind of easy to read, Kamiki-kun.”
People said this about me fairly often, actually—that I was a terrible liar or that my expressions always gave my true feelings away. Yet for some reason, I never once considered that Hoshihara might have already figured out I had a crush on her. Looking back on all of our early interactions, I cringed at the thought of how cluelessly blatant it must have been to her.
“It’s not only you, though,” Hoshihara clarified. “I’d say I have a pretty good sense for that sort of thing in general.”
“Dang… Yeah, that’s impressive.”
Come to think of it, she had instantly sussed out that Ushio and I were dating on our first day back at school from vibes alone. It was an interesting dichotomy to behold. While she was the stereotypical “clumsy ditz” character in our class, her social skills and perceptiveness were second to none.
“Well, the thing is,” said Hoshihara, “I kinda had to learn this stuff the hard way after some awkward relationship drama back in junior high. Ever since then, I’ve tried to stay hypervigilant when it comes to gauging how other people feel about me. I actually find it really hard to be friends with someone if I can’t get a good read on what their intentions are and what they might want from me.”
“Oof, yeah… Rough world we live in, isn’t it?”
It made total sense that a girl as cute and popular as Hoshihara would have had to deal with her fair share of unwanted suitors over the years—and learned to interpret many of the classic tells in the process. Heck, it was entirely possible that even her cheery ditziness was a defense mechanism she’d developed to conceal how keenly aware she was of these things. Like how swans looked so elegant gliding on the water but were always paddling their feet like crazy below the surface.
“That’s insane to me, though,” I said. “I never would have guessed that you had me all figured out from the start. I really hope that didn’t make it super uncomfortable to hang out with me or anything.”
“Yeeeah… Maybe a little bit at first,” said Hoshihara, awkwardly scratching her cheek with one finger. “But I realized pretty quickly that you were totally harmless. And I mean, you didn’t even really like me anymore after a certain point, right?”
“Well, not in a romantic sense, no…”
“Right, so I guess what I’m trying to say is that I knew you weren’t gonna make things weird or ruin our friendship by asking me out, so it didn’t bother me either way.”
She “knew”? Like, for a fact?
This statement made me feel a bit conflicted. As did the unstated implication that it would have been “weird” or “ruined our friendship” for me to make an attempt. I thanked my lucky stars that she was telling me all this only now; if I’d found out back in June or July that she wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of going out with me, it would have completely destroyed me. I might have dropped dead on the spot.
“Sorry, this might be a pretty embarrassing question, but…what made you so confident that I wouldn’t try to ask you out?” I said. “Did you just think I didn’t have it in me or something?”
“Ah ha ha… No, it’s nothing like that,” said Hoshihara. “Try again.”
As she took another sip from her straw, she smiled knowingly like she was waiting for the lightbulb to go off in my head—but when it never did, she cocked her head in confusion.
“Wait… You really don’t know?” she asked.
“No, sorry. But I’d appreciate it if you could fill me in, just so I know for future reference…”
Hoshihara’s gaze suddenly softened, and her smile turned gentler than ever.
“I mean, Kamiki-kun…you were always—”