Chapter 1:
There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover!
THE FIRST PERSON in my whole life who’d ever asked me out was none other than the girl everyone called the supadari.
“No, no, no, no,” I said. “No way. No freaking way!”
It was after school, and I came up to the roof so that no one could watch me where I now stood clutching my head. All the hustle and bustle of school getting out was making me retreat into my shell, but the girl right next to me was determined to draw me out again, and she glowed brighter than the sun in the deep blue sky. She was making her presence very, very known.
“Why not?” she asked. “You don’t have a crush on another girl instead, do you?”
“No, but that’s not the point!” I cried. “And why did you even follow me up here in the first place?”
“Because you were beating around the bush instead of answering me,” she explained. “I knew it was only going to keep me up at night if I was still worrying about it, and that’d be a big issue for me.”
“Oh my god,” I groaned in defeat. All it took was one look at her with her amazing features and I became a nervous wreck. My brain was only working at half-capacity. I’d just started to slowly warm up to the concept of us being friends, and then she’d seized the initiative and dropped this bombshell on me.
“And anyway,” I persisted, “this whole head over heels thing. Isn’t it too soon for that? We literally only started talking yesterday.”
“That’s true,” she said, and she leaned against the fence. She hadn’t tied up her long, blonde hair, and it waved in the breeze. “But you were the first person I’ve ever shown my weak side, and you accepted me for it, didn’t you? Even after I went home, my heart wouldn’t stop pounding whenever I thought of you. You really made an impact on my life, you know. And then I had a moment of self-awareness and realized what it meant. That I’ve fallen for you.”
“You have to be exaggerating,” I insisted. I was standing there with a total “oh my freaking god” look on my face as she ecstatically sung my praises. “Look, you’re Oduka Mai. Anyone would try to make you feel better if they saw you upset.”
“But at that moment, it wasn’t just anyone,” she said. “It was you. You were the one who was there for me.” She pierced me with her powerful gaze, and I was just as moved as if she’d suddenly grabbed me and pulled me into her arms.
“Okay,” I said, “that’s not really the right takeaway here, but okay. That’s still no reason to jump to telling me that you like me right off the bat.”
The glaring reality that the girl standing directly across from me actually liked me was starting to sink in, and my cheeks reddened. I turned away to hide my embarrassment, but Mai got the wrong idea.
“I knew it,” she said. “You like me back, don’t you?”
“No! I’m your friend! I like you as a friend, okay?”
It was already embarrassing enough calling her by her first name, and besides, we’d really only talked like this today and yesterday. I was aware that I’d just spouted off a pretty cheesy line, but then Mai went and had the worst possible reaction to it.
“That can’t be right, Renako,” she said. “You like me as a lover.”
“This baseless self-confidence makes you the worst person ever to argue with, you know that?”
I, the lowly peon that I was, tried to creep away from Mai and put some distance between us. She was trying to brainwash me. Be strong, me! I reminded myself.
“Why are you so reluctant?” she asked. “Is it because I’m a girl?”
“Well…I don’t know,” I admitted. I could imagine there were probably quite a few girls out there who wouldn’t have minded dating a girl so long as it was Mai, in all her tall, three-quarters-Japanese, professional-model glory. Plus, she was rich and super kind. She was the prettiest girl in our grade, and even if you threw all the guys into the mix, she was probably the handsomest person in the class too. Even her athletic skills were top notch—she leapt off the roof, after all. She really lived up to that supadari nickname. Wait, but remember, this had nothing to do with whether I liked her or not.
“Then that means I have a chance after all,” she said.
“No, you don’t!” I yelled. “There’s no way! No freaking way!”
And don’t give me that innocent look and get right up in my face, dammit! I thought. Because it was making my heart go into overdrive! Once again, I turned away from the intensity of her beauty worming its way into my personal space.
“Look,” I said. “I want us to be friends. Best friends who spend all our time in high school together.” Yeah, that really did sound like the perfect school experience to me. Sure, maybe I would have liked to date someone later down the line, but not at the moment. My mind was set on having fun with Mai by going places with her, maybe inviting her over to my house every so often to play games, that kind of thing. I wanted to hang out with her every day and have fun in that sort of sense.
Yet Mai sounded surprised when she said, “Seriously? That’s all?”
“What do you mean, that’s all? Look, being someone’s girlfriend isn’t a step up from being her best friend, okay? They’re two totally different things.”
“But, Renako, it’s kind of messed up that you’d rather be best friends when the girl you like tells you that she has a crush on you, don’t you think? When you say you like me, does that mean you want all the physical aspects of a relationship without us actually dating? Don’t you think that’s rather…dishonest?”
I could not even remotely follow her train of thought!
“You’re so stupid!” I yelled at her. “Why do you keep insisting that I like you in the first place?”
“Who doesn’t like me?”
“Oh my god!” I groaned. “You’re an idiot. You’re an absolute idiot, Oduka Mai!” What was with this girl? Why the heck did I think yesterday that she and I would be able to get along with each other? I had no idea anymore. “Listen up, and I’ll lay it all out for you! We’ve just barely started high school, right? But if we date and then break up, things are going to get really awkward, and I’m going to have to find a new friend group and everything. Neither of us want that! That’s why I flat-out refuse to get involved in such an unstable relationship with you.”
Mai smiled oh-so gently at me, like she was soothing a fussy toddler. “I see now,” she said. “I understand your concern. That’s why you want us to take a step back and just be friends. That’s a very cute idea, but you don’t have any reason to worry. We’ll just never break up!”
My god, if only I had her level of confidence!
“No matter how amazing you are,” I said, “there’s no guarantee that things’ll work out that smoothly. Feelings can sometimes suddenly fizzle out, you know.”
“Why, has that happened to you before?”
I jolted in alarm. There was a puff of breeze, and Mai plucked up one of her locks of golden hair. She held it in her mouth like a rose and aimed an audacious smile in my direction.
I turned to her woodenly and, my lips pursed into a pout, mumbled, “Not…exactly.”