I was smiling bitterly and spouting words like smoke, but Oduka’s eyes swam. I knew then that these were the very things that I wished someone would say to me—that it was fine to drop the extrovert act from time to time. I wished I had a friend who would stick with me and tell me that.
“Wait, Oduka-san,” I said. “Why are you tearing up?”
“Huh?” she said. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just…very happy right now, that’s all.”
“Huh?” I looked away, too embarrassed to meet her eyes. “W-well,” I stammered. “I don’t know, I guess that’s just how I feel every so often.”
Oh, great. Now I was the one crying! The makeup I did my best to put on every morning was going to run. I figured that the effect of surviving a fall off the roof was finally catching up with me. My knees were quaking!
“A-anyway,” I said, giggling through my tears. “It might be kinda presumptuous of me to say that I want to be there to support the great Oduka Mai, but still!”
“It isn’t presumptuous at all.”
Whoa. As her blonde hair softly fluttered in the wind, she suddenly grabbed my hand. My heartbeat skyrocketed when her warm, pale, beautiful hands encircled mine, but it was more the power of her gaze that fixed me in place.
“I’m such a lucky person to be told these things,” she said.
“Um. No, uh, not really, I mean. Um.”
“I’m very glad I met you.”
I gave a little shriek. All I was able to do was rattle off a bunch of tongue-tied, emotional ranting, but there she was shooting me straight through the heart with every word like a lover who knew just what to say for the greatest effect. Her earnestness mortified and almost blinded me.
“Oh, uh…” I stammered. “I feel the same way too! I want to be friends!” It was a heartfelt scream from the depths of my soul.
Oduka-san gave me a grin so warm and affable that it about made me melt. “Then let’s be friends, Renako,” she said.
“Huh? Do you really mean it?”
“Yes, I really do. Let’s be true friends.”
Sure, we’d been in the same friend group this whole time, but this was the first time I felt like I was actually connecting with her. I didn’t even know what to call this feeling. Happiness? Yeah, happiness! Oduka Mai and Amaori Renako. The resident supadari and the mere plebeian turning over a new leaf for high school. We could not have been more different, but now I couldn’t help but feel like we were meant to meet each other.
That was why I took my free hand and placed it on top of hers. “Great,” I said. “Let’s be friends, Oduka-san. No, let’s be friends, Mai!”
Mai immediately lit up. It’s like there was a visible halo around her, a divinity so strong it was about to blow me away, but that was okay, because she was still there holding my hand.
After I grinned back at her, I took the key out of my pocket. “Feel free to come get me whenever you want,” I said. “Then we’ll go take a break.”
She giggled. Her laugh itself was as innocent as could be, but the way she tapped her lower lip with one finger felt pretty suggestive. “This’ll be our little secret,” she said.
“Huh? Yeah, uh… I guess!”
We were both girls, but I still couldn’t help reading a little too much into what she said. I guess it must have been because she was so pretty.
“Oh, but don’t be so domineering with me, okay?” I said. “Because you’ll make me nervous.”
“Oh, nonsense,” she said. “I’m never domineering at all.”
“You liar! You’re always walking around acting like you’re right about everything!”
“Don’t be silly. After all, I’m right about almost everything.”
“That is the most you thing to say.”
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined I’d someday be teasing Oduka Mai like that. She and I laughed openly. Honestly, if I could have continued to talk nonsense with Mai like that from then on, then I would have been so happy I couldn’t have asked for anything else.
“At any rate,” I said, “how’re we supposed to get down out of this tree?”
Mai climbed down before I did and then caught me in a bridal carry. We’d fallen on the side of the school facing the hallways, so fortunately no one saw any of that whole ordeal go down. That must have been another example of Mai’s luck.
We decided to return to class separately so as to keep our relationship itself another one of “our little secrets.” I took a couple of deep breaths before I walked into the classroom. I’d already gone to the bathroom and plucked off all the leaves that were stuck on me, so I figured I must have looked okay.
Yet the minute I opened the door and tried to nod in greeting to my friends, they all rushed over.
“Oh, Rena-chan! What happened earlier? Are you okay?!”
“Huh?” I said.
“You ran out of here so fast!” said Ajisai-san, one of the members of our friend group. She, Kaho-chan, and even Satsuki-san all crowded around me. Yikes! It was a squad of extroverts.
I wasn’t used to being in the spotlight, so I panicked. “Oh, uh,” I stammered. “I just kinda felt weird earlier, uh…you know what I mean?”
Thanks to Mai, I had the power to go back and try my hardest to fit in with these social butterflies. Now that she was there, I knew I’d be okay. I could come up with an excuse on my own! I could! …Wait, I think my stomach was starting to hurt again!
Just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Mai, who had returned to the classroom before me.
“You weren’t feeling too well, right, Renako?” she said. “But you said you had something to do so that none of us would worry, right?”
“Huh?” I said. “Uh, no, um…”
I mean, that was certainly one way of putting it, but not the right way necessarily. Mai swooped in with a smile for poor, bewildered me.
“Wha—” I squawked.
Her eyes crinkling into happy crescents, she beamed with so much charisma that all I could do was shut up and nod woodenly in response. I could not believe that this girl was actually my friend. She was legitimately the coolest.
As the day went on, I kept catching Mai’s eye, and every time she threw me a grin that warmed my heart.
A group of girls in pretty clothes mobbed her, but Mai just smiled happily at them all the while. “Hey, Oduka!” one of the girls said. “Someone asked me for your number again.”
“Oh yeah, me too!” cried another. “Oh, and the other day, do you remember that guy waiting outside for you to leave? Wasn’t he from another school, even?”
“But of course,” Mai said. “After all, there’s only one Oduka Mai in the world.”
That girl was incredible. I could practically see a whole rose garden springing up behind her.
“You know,” said one of the girls. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re totally out of his league… Y’know, if I’m gonna be honest, I kinda feel like the fact that you’re a girl isn’t a deal breaker for me.”
“Huh? I didn’t know you batted for that team.”
“Only ’cause this is the supadari we’re talking about.”
A group of the popular boys saw the girls enjoying themselves and came up to join in the fun. Pretty soon, Mai’s rose garden was replaced by a crowd of people. Yet even in the midst of all that hubbub, Mai happened to catch my eye as I sat a bit of a distance away from them, and she smiled at me. I made a strange noise.
“Wh-what’s wrong, Rena-chan? Does your stomach hurt again?”
My friend looked on in concern as I fell flat across the desk and writhed in agony. Whoops. Sorry. It was just that Oduka Mai, literally the most popular girl in the whole school, was my secret friend. This legit felt like a dream. For all my life up until now, friendship had been some vague, undefined concept, but now that hazy idea was replaced by the very real Oduka Mai. Oh man, I really hoped that she and I would end up getting even closer! Sure, this was really jumping the gun, but still. Maybe someday I could become her very best friend in the whole wide world…but, hah, sure, like that was ever going to happen!
I was still walking on clouds, daydreaming about that cheesy crap, when everything turned on its head. It was the next day at school, and we were up on the roof. My eyes about shot out of my skull as if someone had crashed two cymbals together right next to my ear to wake me up. Because Mai was standing right in front of me, blushing bright red and unable to meet my eyes, and she said—
“I do apologize, but you’re the only girl for me. I think I’ve fallen head over heels for you.”
I went silent.
Oduka Mai said she had a crush on me right in broad daylight.
“Wha—?” I said.
Wait. What happened to being friends?!