Yup, that was me, Amaori Renako. Single for as long as I’d been alive.
When I confessed the truth to her, Mai snorted.
That set me off. I yelled, “Well, it hasn’t! But that’s just how high school romances work, right? I’ve never heard of anyone who started dating in their first year and stayed with the same person their whole three years of school! Anyway, what about you? Have you ever dated anyone, huh?!”
Mai put a hand on her chest and confessed, as sincerely as a maiden vowing to marry a deity, “Of course not. Not a soul.”
“See! I knew it. I knew it!”
“But I know that the first person I date will also be my partner for life.”
“Fat chance of that happening!”
And quit blushing and hugging yourself! Good grief, girl!
My shoulders heaving with my wild breathing, I glared at her. “No matter how we approach this,” I said, “we’re never coming to an agreement.”
“That’s exactly right,” she said. “I have full faith that we won’t ever break up, whereas you seem to be under the impression that we inevitably will. And so you stubbornly insist that we’d be much better off as best friends instead.”
“I’m not sure I love the word choice there, but close enough.”
Mai fell silent for a moment. To be honest, her asking me out was trouble enough on its own. I mean, I couldn’t even handle hanging out in a group of friends, and then she was telling me she wanted to add the trouble of dating on top of that? No freaking way, hands down. I’d never had a crush in my life. What was a date anyway? Like, a kind of fruit, right? That’s the level I was at. The hurdle I’d have to leap in order to become Mai’s partner was way too high.
But maybe there was still hope for us as friends. We could stop by cafés after school, go hang out at places together, share common interests and whatnot. Even I had managed that level of friendship before, and I knew it was enough to give me all the happiness I needed. Although my friends in junior high had always left me out of those kinds of things…
Whatever! My point was, I wanted Mai to understand that we should have been best friends, not girlfriends.
The June breeze caressed Mai’s hair. She pushed away those long strands that reminded me of threads of light and opened her mouth. “In that case, let’s make a compromise.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Mai didn’t seem to have a single worry about our strange relationship status. Her beautiful smile never faded as she laid out her suggestion. “I want us to date, whereas you want us to just be friends. But relationships are a two-way street.”
“I mean, yeah. That’s true.”
“So what if I said there’s no point to being friends if we can’t be lovers? If I asked you to never talk to me at school again, would that upset you?”
“Um, I mean…” My heart pounded wildly in my chest. I was struck with the horrible sensation that the world was crumbling apart under my feet. Did she mean that she was going to abandon me?
“That would…really upset me…” I admitted.
Seeing my eyebrows bunch together in helpless worry, Mai rushed to amend her statement. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was joking just now. Of course I don’t want to hurt you in any way. I promise.”
“Gotcha… I’m okay, don’t worry. You just kind of shook me up a bit, I guess.”
“Okay. But, I mean, that is kind of how I feel. I hope you can understand how painful it’d be for me if I had to continue being friendly to someone who’d turned me down, right?”
“Well…yeah, I guess.” I didn’t get it exactly, but I was sure it couldn’t feel good. “So, what was that about that compromise?”
Mai nodded as if she had full faith that this amazing plan of hers would work out in both of our favors, crushing my will to resist. “Oh, that’s right,” she said.
Mai laid out the rules for a contest, and it was hands down the most bonkers thing I’d ever heard. On one day, we’d be best friends. On another, we’d be lovers. Then we’d each take turns trying the two roles out. And, oh yeah, we were also competing with each other to see if we were better suited as friends or girlfriends.
After I got home, I ran myself a bath and then zoned out and stared up at the ceiling as I soaked in the tub. I’d been in the habit of shutting myself up in the bathroom and doing my heavy thinking from the tub for a long time now. As I soaked in the cooling water, I grabbed my chest—I was kinda surprised at how big it had gotten lately—and jiggled it in my hands a bit, like this whole thing was getting to be too much of a handful.
“Hot damn, girl…” I mumbled to myself.
I wasn’t talking about my body. I was talking about the fact that ever since that whole scene on the roof, Mai’s smile had been burned into my retinas. The fact that she looked like a queen was really no fair. Plus, she was up and getting in my face earlier. The impression she’d made was way too powerful.
The day before, we were friends, and today she’d told me she had a crush on me. And then now…
“Do I want to be her friend or her lover?” I asked myself.
I thought back to what Mai told me up there on that roof in the lovely early summer sun. On the days when we’re lovers, I’ll show you what it is that makes dating so wonderful. And, if even then you think it won’t work out for you, I’ll take it like a big girl and back off. Because that means my charms weren’t enough to win you over.
Then best friend days were the reverse, where I’d present to her all the joys of being best friends. It was like having a demo version of being friends and lovers both, and whoever made the other one go, “Yeah, okay, I think I like this kind of relationship better,” would come away the winner. From then on, we’d spend the rest of our time in high school in whatever relationship we’d both agreed on.
“Hot damn, girl, what have you gotten yourself into?” I groaned. I slid down in the bath until the water covered my mouth, and blew bubbles up into it.
Relationship: The Demo was supposed to run throughout the month of June, meaning that we would go at this for a month. I was not about to accept her as my girlfriend, so defeat was not an option. That being said, though, it seemed equally hard to change Mai’s mind on the subject.
But I’d never get anywhere if I gave up right out of the gate. Besides, I’d made up my mind to change myself for the better, and that meant that I could surely pull off a win against Mai.
Okay! I surged up out of the bath armed with new motivation. “I refuse to go back to being a loner!” I cried. “I’ll win and get the best high school experience a girl could ask for!”
My sister overheard me whooping and hollering alone in the bath and muttered, “And just when I thought she was finally getting herself together…”
But I was not about to lose heart, not even when she looked at me with pity in her eyes!
Thus, my month-long battle with Mai began.