The sky was cloudy and dreary that day.
Naoya stood at the train station’s ticket gate and sighed. “Wonder if she’s doing okay?” he pondered out loud to himself.
It had been a week since they went on their incredibly eventful, heart-pounding date, and they’d been getting along better than ever... until yesterday, that is.
The train arrived, and passengers soon began to flood through the ticket gate. A distinct head of silver stood out from the rest of the crowd.
Naoya raised his hand and called out to her, “Morning, Shirogane!”
Koyuki reacted somewhat strangely to his greeting. At first, her face tensed up in a grim expression, but her cool smile quickly returned. “Good morning, Sasahara,” she replied in a reserved voice.
Naoya blinked in surprise at her uncharacteristic response. He had been expecting her adorably venomous tongue. Perhaps a quip like, “You’re here to meet me again? Could you be any more desperate? You’re already completely whipped, I see.” Something wasn’t quite right here—he could tell something was bothering her, but she wasn’t being honest with herself about it.
“Did you read the thing I gave you yesterday?” Naoya asked in a small voice.
Koyuki made a strange noise, then burst into tears while throwing herself dramatically into Naoya’s chest. He was stunned by her actions; at the same time, however, he couldn’t help but notice her warmth and sweet scent. He felt a strong urge to wrap his arms around her and only managed to hold himself back by the knowledge that it was neither the time nor place to do so. Dirty looks were being shot their way from students and adults alike:
“A lover’s quarrel? School hasn’t even started yet. God...”
“Oh, to be young again...”
“Fucking normies.”
Naoya gently—and very reluctantly—placed his hands on Koyuki’s shoulder and pried her away from him, making sure to keep her at arm’s length. “Uh, why don’t we just try calming down a little, okay?”
“Calm down?! How am I supposed to calm down?!” She yelled as she frantically rummaged through her bag. When she found what she was looking for—the thing Naoya had given her the day before—she whipped it out and added, “Why did Fran have to die?! I don’t get it!”
“Ahhh...” Naoya sighed. He had guessed that might be the case.
It had all started yesterday.
✦ ✦ ✦
On their way home, Koyuki had mentioned that she wanted to go to a bookstore. Naoya agreed—he had been meaning to stop by one, as well—so they headed to one near the station together.
“That’s what you wanna buy, Sasahara?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
Naoya peered down at the book he was holding, which was currently the subject of Koyuki’s glares. It was the latest volume of a light novel series he kept up with: To the End of the Other World. The cover featured a cast of colorful-haired girls clad in skimpy armor and cartoonishly large weapons. It was a fairly standard fantasy series where the protagonist was transported to another world—the type that was a dime a dozen recently.
Koyuki continued her pointed stare at the book and said, “Sakuya likes those types of books. They’ve got... l-lewd pictures and stuff in them, right?”
“Yeah, I can’t deny that.”
“I guess you are a boy after all,” Koyuki murmured with a grave nod to herself, as if accepting some terrible truth.
Naoya could tell she was obviously starting to form the wrong idea, so he quickly attempted to explain himself. “Nah, that’s not it. The lewd stuff isn’t the main appeal at all—the story’s great. It’s even got a manga adaptation and everything. It’s pretty popular right now.”
“But I thought—”
“Sometimes, the girls do show a bit of skin in the illustrations, but that’s pretty much it,” he assured her. Overall, there wasn’t really much in terms of fanservice. Naoya had even heard that the title had a pretty sizable female readerbase.
He also knew that words alone wouldn’t do much to alleviate the current situation, which was why he decided to skip directly to his last resort. “Well, I always say ‘don’t knock it until you try it.’ I’ll lend you the first volume. Here, I’ve got it in my bag.”
“Fine, but if it’s all just smut, I’m not reading it.”
“It’s not, but you can stop whenever you want. Just give it a shot.”
Koyuki seemed even more skeptical with the book in her hands; however, Naoya knew that the misunderstanding would soon resolve itself.
That first volume is kind of a tearjerker, though. I hope she’ll be okay... he mused to himself, the memory of her ugly crying over a kid’s anime in a crowded theater still fresh in his mind.
✦ ✦ ✦
And, just as he had feared, the scene unfolding in front of him was much like what had occurred during their date.
Koyuki made several futile attempts to piece her thoughts together through loud sobs. “I-I really liked it, a-and it was really good! Th-there were lewd parts, b-but, but... why did Fran have to die?!”
“Oh yeah, that hit me hard, too...” Naoya replied flatly, his eyes dead as he attempted to calm the weeping Koyuki. He chose not to bring up the fact that Fran ended up returning in a subsequent volume.
Naoya walked side-by-side with Koyuki all the way to school. Although he expected her to calm down by the time they arrived, he was proven very wrong.
“I think I might’ve been too hard on light novels... I’m sorry,” she sputtered through tears.
“Oooh, so you finally admit it,” he replied. He hadn’t expected the book to leave this much of an impression on her.
“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions about you being a fan of perverted books. That was rude of me...”
“Ah, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Naoya assured her with a smile. He purposefully failed to mention that he had only given her that specific book because it wasn’t one of the more male-oriented books he usually read. He owned some pretty extreme romcoms that he didn’t think he could ever show her—he was a growing boy, after all.
“The story was fantastic. I loved watching Fran grow more comfortable with the protagonist as the book went on... I should’ve known that she wasn’t going to make it...” she gave her impressions in a shaky voice.
“Yeah...” Naoya replied vaguely, trying his hardest to avoid spoiling anything for her. It was interesting that she liked the character that seemed aloof and icy at first, but slowly thawed over the course of the story—perhaps she could sympathize because they weren’t so different from one another.
“So are you gonna read the second volume?” he asked. “I brought it with me just in case you wanted to—”
“Thanks, but I’m already halfway through it,” Koyuki replied as she reached into her bag and produced the book in question. “Sakuya actually has the whole series. I guess that’s to be expected, though.”
“Sakuya really does have good taste, doesn’t she?” Naoya remarked approvingly. It turned out that their date chaperone was something of an otaku.
Koyuki looked down, caressed the cover with a bright smile, and said, “Hehe, I think I’m gonna read some during recess and then try to finish it after school. Do you wanna talk about it then, maybe?”
“Oh yeah, sur—oh wait, sorry. I can’t. I’ve got work today,” Naoya stopped himself. He hadn’t realized it was Friday, the day he worked at his part-time job.
“Oh... That’s too bad. I thought we could have a nice chat,” she muttered, her eyes cast down at the book in her hands.
No man could resist that expression, and Naoya was no exception. He clapped his hands together and proposed, “Okay, let’s do this—why don’t you come hang out at my work? That way, we can talk as much as we want.”
“Oh, no—I don’t wanna get in the way. Won’t that bother the customers?”
“Nah, it won’t be an issue at all. The boss pretty much runs the place as a hobby,” Naoya answered. He worked at a modest bookstore that didn’t exactly bring in many customers and did even less in terms of deliveries. It didn’t turn a profit, really—the boss only really used the job to give some structure to their life.
“Hm, your boss sounds like a strange person,” Koyuki commented suspiciously.
“Yeah, if I had to describe them...” Naoya agreed, trailing off while his boss’s face came into focus in his mind. “I guess I’d have to say they’re like an older sister figure to me.”
Koyuki’s face hardened, but was quickly replaced by a thin smile. “Okay, let’s go. I’m really looking forward to it now.”
“Shirogane, I didn’t mean it like that. There’s nothing like that going on between us,” he hastily added. He immediately understood the sort of misunderstanding he had just caused, so he attempted to nip it in the bud as quickly as possible.
“Are they married? Do they have a boyfriend?” she asked.
“No, but—”
“Then I’m coming.”
“You’re the only one I want, Shirogane...”
“That might be how you feel, but we don’t know what they want, do we?” she huffed angrily before storming off ahead of him.
Agh, she sure likes to jump to conclusions. It’s fine, though. She’ll understand when she meets them, he attempted to placate himself. Knowing that any further explanation would simply fall upon deaf ears, Naoya quickened his pace so he could catch up to Koyuki.