In what could only be described as a folly of youth, I had a so-called boyfriend during the eighth and ninth grade.
His face was nothing to write home about, he put no effort into what he wore, he had awful posture, and he never had anything interesting to say. He might have been on the smarter side, but overall, he was pretty much a completely unattractive loser devoid of any charm.
But in the eyes of my middle school self who was firmly in the midst of her adolescence and a plain girl of unparalleled proportions, his slight kindness and our slightly similar interests were slightly fun. Before I knew it, it all made me happier than anything.
It was a mistake. It was truly a folly of youth.
What really put the final nail in the coffin was the love letter that I had elatedly written in the middle of the night and gave to him in the heat of the moment. That was what set everything in motion and placed me on the fated train of my doomed middle school romance.
After all, our relationship was nothing like any of those transparently deceitful shojo manga. Eventually I just opened my eyes, saw the reality of everything, and broke it off as if nothing had ever happened. That was precisely how things ended between me and that guy.
And then our parents got married, we became stepsiblings, and began living in the same house. People might say that nothing in life ever goes the way we expect, but how could the worst possible situation just conveniently play out like this? There was no doubt that some prankster god had laid this trap for us—a trap called destiny.
Although I’ve already shoved the memories of my time together with that guy into the garbage can of my mind, as much as I’d like to deny it, there’s still a memory that I just can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try.
It was the spring vacation between eighth and ninth grade, and that guy had called me over to his house.
“So, my dad’s not home today,” he said in a slightly embarrassed voice that made my foolish self at the time jump to conclusions.
It’s finally time. Like any normal middle school girl, I was thinking that since we’d been on dates and kissed, the next step was...you know what. This thought process was perfectly natural for any middle school girl in this day and age, so it wasn’t like I was especially dirty-minded or anything. Seriously.
From the conversations I’d overheard between the girls in my class, I could glean that this was a time where these kinds of conversations often came up. We were all beginning our battle with the abhorrent thing called menstruation too. We were in a completely different frame of mind compared to the bastards who would make a huge fuss over some pictures they saw on the internet.
I had steeled my resolve. I was finally about to experience the thing that I’d only read about in books. I was about three parts excited and seven parts worried when I marched into my boyfriend’s room for the first time in my life.
“March” might have been a silly word to use—especially for me—but it appropriately reflected my readiness. It goes without saying that the night prior, I had gone on the internet, pored through tons of pages such as Things to Know before Your First Time, and I even perfectly mastered moaning tricks.
I knew that my preparations were flawless. As I entered that guy’s room, I looked for a place that I could put myself. With his room as messy with books as it was, the only place I could really sit was the bed.
The bed? Is this really happening? While I was frozen with my rampant thoughts, that guy just casually said, “Go ahead. Sit down.”
So with that, I ended up sitting on the bed, but I couldn’t have expected what happened next. He sat next to me without even blinking an eye—like it was natural.
Huh?! H-He’s more aggressive than I thought! He’s usually so reserved!
I can’t believe how single-minded my past self was. As much as my present self would like my past self to have been hit by a truck and disappear to another world, she unfortunately continued to cling to life like a stain and began talking with that guy.
I don’t remember what we talked about. My head was filled with thoughts about when he was going to push me down onto the bed, if he would start off with a kiss, and if the underwear I was wearing was all right or not.
Him adjusting himself on the bed was enough to make me jump, and his pinky brushing against me was almost enough to make me squeal. This tragic time of me being an innocent maiden continued for ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty.
Huh? Not yet?
As soon as those thoughts crossed my mind, that guy opened his mouth and said, “Oh wow, it’s already this late. I guess it’s about time...”
It’s happening. It’s finally happening! Please don’t hurt. Please don’t be scary. Please let me do everything right!
“For you to go home.”
Huh? E-Excuse me?
“I don’t really want you to go, but it’s getting late, and I’m sure your mom is going to be worried,” he explained. “I’ll walk you back.”
And with that, we left his house, and he took me back to my apartment.
Is he going to make a pass at me now? Is this the part where he lets himself in?!
Right to the very last second, I thought that something would happen, but after actually using my brain, I realized that my apartment wasn’t empty. Mom was home. If he was really going to make a move, the best place would have been at his house.
We reached the entrance of my apartment, and that guy waved his hand at me and said, “I had fun today. See you later.”
I just stood there, dumbfounded, as I watched him walk away. That’s when I realized that he hadn’t asked me over to his house for the purpose I thought he had. He really just wanted me to come to his room because he wanted to hang out.
I was the only one who wanted to climb the steps of adulthood?!
“Yume? Why are you so red? Did you catch a cold?” my mom asked in a worried tone as I walked inside.
But I couldn’t even properly answer her. I just walked to my room and fell onto my bed and lay there in agony over my humiliation.
By the time we ended things approximately one year later, that guy and I had never ended up engaging in any of those kinds of activities.