I’d been involved with her from eighth to ninth grade, in what can only be called a folly of youth. We first met at the school library. It was the end of July—the start of summer break. She was standing on a stool, trying her best to reach for a book on the highest shelf. I’m sure you can already guess what happened next. I reached up and got the book for her instead.
If I had the power to go back in time, I wish I could tell my past self to not get involved with her. But tragically, he had no idea what the future would hold. He foolishly grabbed the book and struck up a conversation with the girl.
“You like mystery novels?”
I’m the type who will read anything. Proper literature, romance novels, light novels—you name it. If it has pages and a spine, it’s mine. So that’s why, when I grabbed that book and saw its title, I already knew it was a classic mystery.
I’d heard of it before, but it wasn’t necessarily my kind of book. Regardless, as an avid reader, if I saw someone getting a book that I knew, it was like an automatic hit of serotonin—like a bull seeing red and going wild. It was that kind of loss of oneself. More than likely, this was some kind of trap that had been set by a higher power.
In other words, it was destiny. It was destiny that brought the two of us together, led us to hit it off, and rendezvous in the vacant school library throughout summer vacation.
Then when school started again at the end of August, she asked me out, I said yes, and that’s how I got my first girlfriend. Her name? Yume Ayai—or at least, that’s what it used to be.
Well, it goes without saying that was where things started falling apart. But seriously, what middle school romance hasn’t fallen apart? Couples have something like less than a five percent chance of their relationships actually working out after confessing. Realistically speaking, there’s no way that a middle school couple would stay together for the rest of their lives.
But back then, we truly believed that we would. Neither of us stood out too much at school, so we were able to date without being bothered. We grew fond of one another through our hobbyist conversations in the school library, the public library on our days off, and at a bookstore café.
Of course, we did couple things as well. We went on dates, held hands, and shared extremely clumsy kisses. For better or worse—definitely worse, looking back at it—we did all the stereotypical couple things slowly, one by one.
Our first kiss was when we were saying goodbye on our way home from school against the background of an orange-tinged sky. Our lips barely touched—it was more like they brushed up against each other—but even now, her slightly flushed cheeks and smile are firmly burned into my mind.
However, there was one thing my present self would like to have said to that memory.
Go to hell. To both her and past me.
At any rate, we continued dating and getting closer to one another, but began to drift apart when we entered the ninth grade.
It all started when Ayai became more outgoing. Thanks to all the time we’d spent together, she’d gotten better at communicating and made a lot of friends in her new class. It was hard to believe that this was the same girl who hadn’t even been able to find a partner in gym class just a year before. Her growth was astonishing.
She was really happy about it, and I told her I was too. Right, that’s what I’d said, but it wasn’t what I felt. Confession: while I was congratulating her, I had felt an uncontrollable possessiveness welling up within me. I was supposed to be the only one who knew her cuteness, her smile, her cheerfulness.
But that was a problem. One time, I accidentally put those feelings into words, resulting in a bewildered Ayai who tried to assuage my feelings without really understanding. That had just irritated me even more.
Yes, I know. The catalyst leading to our breakup might have been her growth, but the actual cause was my stupid possessiveness. She’d done nothing wrong. I have no problem admitting that it was all me from beginning to end.
But, that being said, I wasn’t completely at fault. Even I—being the idiot I was back then—saw that I was the problem. I tried to apologize and explain to her that it was my fault that I’d grown jealous for various reasons. I apologized for taking my emotions out on her and asked her to let this all be water under the bridge.
And then, that girl... What do you think she said?
“So, you can be friendly with other girls, but you get mad when I try to be friendly with other people?”
I don’t think anyone could blame me for having reacted with a dumbfounded, “Huh?!”
According to Ayai, I had apparently cheated on her in the very same school library that we met in. But with whom? I had no idea. She probably saw me talking to a librarian or some random person and misinterpreted that as me cheating, as me definitely cheating, as me cheating without a doubt in her mind. She wouldn’t listen to me at all.
In the end, I apologized.
I have no clue why, though.
Had I been at fault for lashing out at her way more than what was necessary? Yes, that’s why I apologized. It was up to her whether or not she forgave me. That much, I understood.
But on what grounds did I deserve verbal abuse due to her own baseless misunderstandings? Everyone, especially me, has their own impulsive verbal outbursts, and I’d already apologized for that. So where was my apology? Why didn’t she apologize to me like I did to her? I certainly deserved it after she unfairly turned it into the Nonstop Mizuto Apology Show. It made absolutely no sense that not even a single word of remorse came out of her mouth.
We’d ended up superficially making up with each other and continued dating for a few more months, but I couldn’t drop the negative feelings I held against her. In the end, what once was broken could never be mended. Things that we had once found endearing about each other became annoying. We began shooting sarcastic comments at each other to the point that it became a pain to even text one another. Despite that, we’d get mad at the other person when they didn’t respond, which just added another wedge into the growing divide between us.
The only reason our relationship lasted until we graduated middle school was because neither of us had the courage to break up—we were both cowards. We were just trying to cling to the times when we had been happy together. When Valentine’s came and not a single word was exchanged between us, that’s when we knew for sure that it was over. That’s when we knew that there was no going back to the way things were. That’s why, when we graduated, I took the opportunity to say it.
“Let’s break up.”
“Yeah.”
Just like that, it was over without a single tear shed.
She wasn’t angry at all. If anything, her expression seemed to say that she’d been waiting for this. My expression probably said as much too.
She used to be so dear to me. I liked her so much, and then she became my mortal enemy. Romance truly is a flight of fancy, and I sure was glad to be free of it. With that heavy burden lifted, I was able to graduate from middle school as light as a feather.
One fateful night, my dad came to me with a serious look on his face and told me that he was thinking of getting remarried.
I was taken aback. It became apparent to me that people lose their minds when they hit the age that my dad did. Of course, I had sympathy for him as a single father, so I wasn’t opposed to the idea of remarriage, or rather, marriage in general. I had no objections whatsoever. I’d just completed my compulsory education as it was, so I was already in a great mood and feeling open-minded. Maybe that’s why I kind of just shrugged off his question about whether I’d be okay if the woman he was going to marry had a daughter.
I was going to have a stepsister my age! It was like something straight out of a light novel. I couldn’t help but laugh because, if anything, I was excited.
At this point, I had probably lost any and all rational thought. So that’s why it felt like a splash of cold water in my face when my stepmother-to-be brought over her daughter so that we could all meet.
“...”
“...”
Of course, the one standing there was Yume Ayai—no, now she was Yume Irido.
We just stared at each other, flabbergasted, while the same thoughts probably ran through each of our heads.
“God, why?!” I shouted in despair.
And that’s how my ex became my stepsister.