“It isn’t healthy to address your emotional issues by drinking,” Yamada-san said.
“Perhaps not if we were talking about alcohol, but this is cream soda! The sugar is letting my brain work harder.”
“Sure, in moderation. But drink too much and it’ll affect your brain power negatively. That, and you’ll put on weight like there’s no tomorrow!”
“You needn’t worry about that either. This’ll be my last one.”
“You said that about the last one too.”
“Ten minutes. A fourth drink. The birth of a heavy drinker.”
“I’ve never seen Midori-san like this, but it doesn’t feel as weird as it should.”
The stares of my fellow club members felt warm on my skin. Their somewhat dismissive reactions were lovely and refreshing, combining with the stimulation of the bubbles to soothe my hardened heart.
I was determined that this drink really would be the last one.
These girls had been indulging me for long enough now, and it would be a shame if we came all the way to Tenchido Eternaland just to sit in the café all day. As club president, I needed to broach the topic, else Yamada-san and the others might find it too difficult to say they wanted to leave.
“I apologize for keeping you all here so long. I’m your leader, yet I put myself first.”
“We don’t mind...”
“You should. I’m being selfish, knowing you’ll all forgive me in any case. But I bet you’re bored out of your minds, aren’t you?”
“We’re not bored,” Yamada-san answered simply.
“Huh?” My eyes widened in surprise—and everyone else was nodding in agreement. They looked like they really meant it too.
“You’re always so serious and dependable, Midori-san. This is probably the only time we’ll ever see you drunk, even if just on pop.”
“I can’t stop smiling!”
“Wait,” I interjected, “don’t tell me you all just see me as some sort of mascot?”
“We do!” came the immediate, unanimous response.
Oh, wow. Didn’t I have any authority as club president anymore?
My replacement cream soda arrived then. Yamada-san smiled wryly at it. “We’re not bored—but we are worried about you. Make sure this really is your last one, okay?”
“Okay... I understand.”
Yamada-san’s gentle scolding brought a glow to my heart and tears to my eyes. Though I’d resigned myself to being “bad” now, I still didn’t want to cause these great friends any more trouble than I already had.
“It’s the last one, so I’m going to make sure it counts,” I said.
“Chug! Chug! Chug!” Two of the more excitable members of our club were clapping their hands in a rhythm.
My friends were right behind me, and I felt that keenly. This was what it meant to be an adolescent.
Being in love was lonely. But being young was bliss.
I couldn’t believe I had allowed myself to become so obsessed and discomposed over something as silly as romance. I was having a wonderful time making merry with my friends, and without Ooboshi-kun. This was happiness: the cheers of these girls and the cold bubbles traveling down my throat, working together to massage my most mischievous brain cells so that they released endless amounts of endorphins!
I would challenge everyone to find a more supreme version of happiness!
“Paaah!” Flooded by intense emotions, I downed the entirety of my cream soda. “Let us depart! I can’t just sit here brooding all day, can I? Let’s paint this theme park red, and...” I’d put down my empty glass and stood up, but the moment I had, I found my positive proclamation interrupted.
Why? I wasn’t even looking for him...
Like a perfect homing missile created by a bloodthirsty, warmongering state, I had locked on to what I saw almost automatically. I didn’t even know my eyes had such an ability.
It was right outside the café window.
Throngs of visitors were walking this way and that, like specks of dust in a nebula, and somehow, among all of them, my eyes had focused on those two in particular, like I was looking through a camera lens.
“Ooboshi-kun and Tsukinomori-sa— Wait, that isn’t her...”
Possibly because of my memory of before, my brain had tricked me into thinking that it was Tsukinomori Mashiro beside him—but it wasn’t.
It was a girl with bright, blonde hair. She wasn’t in uniform, and there was a sensitivity to each of her movements, even while she walked and talked at the same time. None of those things could be said about Tsukinomori-san.
“Iroha-chan?” I whispered, too quietly for the others to hear. They were staring at me now, wondering why I’d frozen as they each sipped their drinks through their straws. I knew this was none of my business, but I couldn’t work out why the two of them acting so normally made me think something strange was going on.
Kohinata Iroha.
She was Ooboshi-kun’s kouhai and lived in the apartment next to his. She was also the younger sister of his best friend, Kohinata-kun. To sum up their relationship, she was his “friend’s little sister.” The drama club was deeply indebted to her, as she had coached us previously.
Now, what was she doing at Eternaland with Ooboshi-kun? Apart from anything else, it was a weekday, and she was a first-year. If she were a second-year, her presence in Kyoto would be explained by the class trip, but she wasn’t. As such, this was a most unusual situation.
Presently, Iroha-chan was pointing at something and, with her arm entangled in Ooboshi-kun’s, was dragging him along in the same direction. Their trajectory would lead them to the rollercoaster based on Tenchido’s science-fiction game series.
If that wasn’t a date, I didn’t know what was.
My mind was flung into disarray.
Unless I was mistaken, Ooboshi-kun had been on a date with Tsukinomori-san just a short while earlier. And I was fairly sure I’d interpreted what I saw as him having feelings for her and nobody else.
So why was he now with a completely different girl?
And then there were his reactions, in particular the movements of his eyes. They were darting this way and that, never settling in one place. Here he had one of the school’s most beautiful girls with a perfectly proportioned body on his arm, making herself fully vulnerable to him. Though she was right there, Ooboshi-kun was keeping his gaze at a strange angle, almost as though he was doing everything he could not to look at Iroha-chan.
That reaction told me he was overly conscious of her.
I was no mind reader; I could not begin to guess exactly why Ooboshi-kun was struggling to keep his eyes on Iroha-chan.
All I knew for certain was that every last one of Ooboshi-kun’s thoughts and feelings were being dominated by Iroha-chan in that moment.
Ooboshi-kun was in love with Kohinata Iroha. I was sure that was the case. And how could I be wrong? I was the girl who got a perfect score in every test in every subject. The girl capable of solving every problem I came across.
There could be no doubt!
...
Hold on a second.
Who was Ooboshi-kun in love with?
His reactions to both girls was proof enough to me he was with the girl who occupied his heart in both cases. What on earth was wrong with this boy? First, he rejected me on account of his clear feelings for somebody else, and then the very next day he went and created confusion! Not to mention, while his choice could have been either of these girls, he turned me down categorically—me and only me!
Confronted with a problem it could not solve, my girl genius brain was starting to overheat and emit black smoke.
Sensing the sudden buildup of stress, my frontal lobe released an emergency edict to crush my anxieties and to vent, vent, vent!
“I can’t take it!” I yelled. “Get me another drink!”
“Another one?! I thought you were done!”