Relationships are unnecessary. Friends are unnecessary; well, more than one, anyway. And girlfriends are definitely unnecessary. The way most people spend their youth is horribly inefficient, and it used to be my policy to shed everything unnecessary in order to get ahead in life. My name is Ooboshi Akiteru, and right now I am wrapped up in major teenage drama.
Mashiro was taking advantage of the class trip to ramp up her efforts to win me over, and as I socialized with my classmates, I was experiencing a different kind of fun to the one I got from my work. But it wasn’t all carefree fun: Kageishi Midori, little sister to 05th Floor Alliance illustrator Murasaki Shikibu-sensei (aka Kageishi Sumire), threw me for a loop when she confessed to me.
“I am very much in love with you. QED!”
While it had all the clumsiness of a first-love confession, her nerves of steel and headstrong personality allowed her to deliver that blazing fastball of feelings refreshingly clearly, and she was so to the point about it that even somebody as dense as me had no choice but to acknowledge how she felt.
As I tried to figure out my feelings in return, I saw the face of the girl I liked in my head, leading me to turn Midori down.
The girl I liked. Who was she exactly?
She was always right there.
She was so fragile, I worried she might shatter into a million pieces if I didn’t reach out for her.
She never failed to inspire these strange feelings within me whenever we were together.
Until now, I’d always looked the other way, scared that if I acknowledged how I felt about her, everything would change irreversibly. Keeping up that pretense was no longer possible. I doubted I’d even be able to be myself around her anymore.
The class trip would be drawing to a close soon.
It wouldn’t be long now until all the tangled threads of my relationships would be smoothed out and converge into one, and the truth behind every last secret would spill.