When I woke up, I thought it was all a dream.
Of course, I didn’t really think that. Reality is strong. But it felt unreal enough to have been a dream. I was dating Wataya. I had told her I liked her in the library, and she had accepted my confession, conditionally. Then we exchanged numbers.
“So starting today, we’re a couple?” she asked.
“I guess so…”
“How does it feel to be dating an older woman? Does it get you going?”
“Well, um…”
“I’m joking. You don’t have to answer that.”
She seemed to have forgotten her seriousness of a few minutes ago. Continuing to joke around, she picked up the books spread out on her desk and made to leave.
“Um, Wataya. Why can’t I fall in love with you?” I gathered the courage to ask.
She looked back at me, staring directly into my eyes. I continued.
“I might not have conveyed it well, but I really do—”
“Then it’s no good. Let’s cut things off now.”
Her blunt statement frightened me. She thought for a moment.
“It’s just that I… A make-believe relationship is enough. I don’t care if it’s a surface-level thing. I’d actually prefer that. If you don’t like the condition I set, then like I said—”
Let’s end it.
I interrupted her before she could say that.
“No, it’s fine. As long as I can be with you.”
Make-believe. She had just called our relationship that.
Surface level is enough.
I thought about how to make sense of that. I arrived at an answer surprisingly quickly. Make-believe was fine. That was all right for now. We could start out by pretending, but maybe at some point, we’d become a real couple.
I thought about that as I got ready to go to class the next morning. When I started university, I got my own apartment near campus. I left earlier than usual that morning because I had a lecture first period. My place was less than a ten-minute walk. As soon as I got on campus, I started looking around for Wataya out of habit.
I could have texted her something like Hey, are you coming to school today? But we’d only been dating for a day, so I didn’t have the guts. In the end, the morning passed without my seeing her. At lunchtime, I went to the dining hall with some friends in our department. As I was trying to decide what to eat, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned in that direction and saw Wataya carrying her tray of food to a table by herself.
“Staring at Wataya again?” one of my friends joked. They all knew I liked her, which was why they recognized her. They looked in her direction.
“Wow, she seems totally unbothered by eating alone. She’s so cool.”
“She’s a strange one. Aloof or something.”
My guess is that everyone at our school thought that way about her. Amid the herds of students who clumped together for fear that people would think they had no friends, she was completely fine with being alone, remaining dignified, cool, and mysterious…
I couldn’t believe I was dating her, even with conditions.
I told my friends I was going to get us a table and took out my phone. After hesitating for a moment, I sent her a message.
Hello. I found you.
I was slightly nervous. What would I do if she saw the message but ignored it because it was from me? How would I feel if I saw her do that?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her notice my text and pick up her phone. She tapped the screen and peered at it, then started looking around the cafeteria. When she found me, she laughed softly. She typed something, and I received a message.
Your hair is sticking up. You should fix it.
I instinctively brought my hand to my head. As I searched anxiously for the offending patch of hair, another text came.
Sorry, kidding.
I looked over at her. She was gently smiling.
We’d started dating, but that didn’t mean our relationship dramatically progressed or regressed. On campus, Wataya acted like she always did, and I didn’t cramp her style by staring at her with googly eyes or anything. I didn’t tell my friends we were dating, and I don’t think she did, either. Still, one thing did change noticeably.
“Hey. Whatcha reading?”
Since the university library was near my apartment, I usually went there to study and read. One day as I was opening the book I’d seen her reading before, she came up to me.
“Come on, it’s not that surprising. Your eyes look like they’re going to pop out of your head,” she added.
She had never approached me before. I must have been gaping like she said.
“I know, but…you caught me off guard.”
She smiled and sat down next to me.
“Hey, is that the book we were talking about the other day?” she asked.
“Yup. They had it at the university bookstore, so I got a copy.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay reading it here? It would be weird to see someone so openly crying over a novel in the library.”
I imagined that scene. Strange indeed.
“No worries; if I feel tears coming on, I’ll run to the bathroom,” I said.
“That would be even more odd.”
She smiled, her chin resting in her hand. Her becomingly short black hair swayed. She was breathtakingly beautiful. As I gazed at her, bedazzled, she asked, “By the way, have you ever had a girlfriend before?”
The question must have been related to our pretend relationship. I wasn’t sure how to answer but ultimately decided to be honest, since I didn’t have anything to hide.
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised. What was she like?”
“Well, she was good at cooking and housework, and she liked growing up,” I said.
I’d been so intent on answering her question that I ended up blurting out something only I could understand. Who would know what “she liked growing up” meant?
“Hmm, good at cooking and housework, and…”
Wataya was confused, of course. I tried to explain. We’d started dating in our first year of high school, and she was my first girlfriend. She was not only generous but blessed with a shapely figure. Elementary school had been okay, but in high school, a hierarchy emerged in class that was determined by appearance, among other things. For some reason, though, she existed outside of that hierarchy. She would voluntarily take the lead in cleaning the classroom, using her mother’s secret techniques to get it spick-and-span.
She strode around boldly and smiled cheerfully; everyone adored her like she was some kind of mascot. But she was also much smarter than the other kids. She loved the words grow up. She’d eat her large homemade packed lunches and say her dream was to get a job with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to raise Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate.
Wataya seemed shocked by this description of my ex-girlfriend.
“But why did you go out with her?” she asked.
“I was skinny, and she used to tell me to eat more and give me rice balls and stuff.”
“And?”
“I don’t know if the rice was good or if the seaweed was high quality, but those rice balls were amazing.”
They were so good, I started to wonder about the other things in her boxed lunches, and she started sharing them with me. Before I knew it, she was making an extra lunch just for me, and I had a crush on her.
Wataya covered her face with her hands. I wondered what she was doing; she was laughing hysterically.
“Seriously, what’s up with that? It’s too wholesome!”
“It’s the truth. She also used to bring me thermoses of green tea, and I don’t know what she did, but it was the best tea ever. Like, it was sweet or something. Of course she didn’t put sugar in it or anything.”
Sadly, we broke up in our third year when the intense studying for university entrance exams began. It was spring. We were having a picnic in the park, eating rice balls and drinking green tea. We hung out for a while, and around sunset, we waved at each other like elementary school kids and said goodbye. Then she strode off alone into the sunset. She always smiled so happily.
But that day, I realized maybe I didn’t understand her true self at all. I felt like she had kept it hidden from me. I wondered if I had been drawn to the weakness and loneliness she didn’t let show.
I didn’t tell Wataya that part. I left the funny story as a funny story. To let her think of my past as happy-go-lucky.
My story must have been entertaining because it put a gentle smile on her face. An expression I had never seen before, that I hadn’t discovered until now. That’s how natural it looked.
“By the way,” I asked her, “did you go out with anyone in junior high or high school?”
Her smile instantly disappeared.
“Not in junior high, I can tell you that.”
“Then in high school?”
She gave a sad little grin.
“Maybe.”
“You’re making me curious.”
“I did kiss him once.”
“Was it…the person you were head over heels for?”
“So you remember that.”
“Of course I do. I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said it.”
She looked at me again and smiled, but she didn’t answer my question.
“Well, I think that’s enough for today,” she said, standing up and walking off.
I watched her familiar back recede. It was the back of someone who has walked through life alone.