The LCD screen showed…085.
“…What?! K-Kazune?!”
Takigawa-san—no, Kazune!—saw the shock on my face and burst out laughing all over again. Three days ago, she led me to think she shifted back home, but it was all just an act!
“How could you trick me like that?! I thought you finally went back home! I was happy for you, damn it!” If only she knew how sad I was when I realized I never got to say goodbye to her! …Not that I’d say that out loud and embarrass myself further!
“Okay, seriously though… Why did you wait so long? Did you honestly agonize for three days straight…over asking me to be friends with you?” she asked, incredulous.
Yes!!!
“Ha ha… Ha ha ha! My sides…my sides are in orbit…!”
With one arm wrapped around her waist, she grabbed my glass off the table and downed what remained of my ginger ale. Normally I might’ve been thrilled at the thought of this indirect kiss, but my brain didn’t have room to consider that right now. I snatched my glass back from her, tilted it back, and crunched the ice between my molars. It cooled my face ever so slightly. My head was a mess, but I needed to try (however unsuccessfully) to keep her from finding out, so I donned my best poker face.
“So you still haven’t shifted back? Now I’m really concerned,” I said.
“Oh, uh… Here, Takasaki-kun, take a look.”
She showed me her IP band again—was she that tickled to have tricked me?
“Yes, I get it, thanks! The gullible idiot totally fell for it! Happy?”
“Not that!” Still guffawing away, she reached over to her band’s LCD screen…and peeled off the “085” with her fingers. “It was just a sticker. Looked real, though, didn’t it?”
“…What?!”
Beneath the sticker, on the real LCD screen, was the number 000.
My mind went blank. I couldn’t understand. Logically, the answer was simple, but my brain didn’t even try to process it.
“When we first spoke here, you asked me why I didn’t think to check my IP band. Do you remember what I said in response?”
“That…you were used to shifting one or two worlds away all the time and barely noticed a difference. So you stopped bothering.” As far as I could recall, that was more or less what she said to me at the time.
“These prototypes are loaned out for testing purposes. Everyone who wears one is required to check and report their IP number on a daily basis. I’d never forget to do that!”
“So…what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying…” she said as she donned the biggest smirk I’d ever seen. She then revealed the truth. “I never parallel shifted to begin with. ‘Kazune from World 85’ doesn’t exist—I was the Takigawa Kazune from World Zero the entire time.”
Right. It was just that simple. The day she called me Koyomi, when she looked at her IP band and got flustered, when she told me she and I were lovers in another world, and that it was going poorly… All of it was a lie. A performance.
What I didn’t understand was…
“Why would you do that?” I asked, choking the words out as best I could manage. I was too confused to be angry. If Kazune was the Takigawa-san from my world the whole time, then that was the first time either of us had ever spoken to each other. Why would she do this to a total stranger?
At my question, the smile faded from her face. She answered with a single word.
“Revenge.”
“What?”
“You tricked me, so I wanted to trick you back,” she said.
“…I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
I swear, I couldn’t think of a single possible thing. Sure, I was a loser, but I was positive I never deceived anyone in my life. As such, the very next words she said took me a moment to process.
“Valedictorian,” she said simply.
“Huh?”
“You declined it, didn’t you?”
“What? How did you—” I started.
“Prior to the entrance ceremony, when I got that call from the school asking me to speak as the class valedictorian, I was beyond ecstatic. I even bragged to my parents that I got the highest score on the entrance exam to the prefecture’s most competitive high school! They were so proud of me! And I was proud to give that speech!”
Ah. At last, I was starting to understand.
“Then, after the ceremony, I accidentally overheard the teachers in the staff room talking about how relieved they were that I agreed to the role after the real highest scorer declined. I stormed in there and demanded to know who it was. Only then did I learn the truth so unjustly hidden from me!”
Right. So that was what she meant.
“Do you have any idea how bitter and pathetic I felt? From that moment on, I vowed I would outscore you on every test. But then, for whatever reason, you started getting bad grades on purpose!”
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? 97, 89, 83, 79, 73—they’re all prime numbers. It was so obvious!”
“I’ll think of a new pattern from now on.”
“My point is, you never gave me an opportunity to really compete with you. That’s why I decided I’d pull one over on you and have a hearty laugh at your expense!”
“…You’re a real odd duck, you know that?”
“Yes, I get that a lot.”
Frankly, it all made sense. She thought she earned that title through her own academic prowess, but then she found out it was a hand-me-down from me. She then tried to retroactively “earn” it by beating me on another exam—but I was screwing around the whole time, collecting prime numbers. Yep, I was partly to blame for this.
Still… To think that she’d plot out this wild prank and spend a full ten days fooling me… And with the kind of acting performance that could win awards…
There was no doubt about it. I was in love with—
“Kazune?”
“What is it?”
“Would you maybe… I mean, will you be my girlfriend?”
She chuckled. “No.”
Then, after a pause…
“The Koyomi I love is a manly man who would charge in to rescue me from a weirdo. So no, I can’t date you, Takasaki-kun.”
✦ ✦ ✦
And there you have it. My first-ever romantic confession ended in a spectacular failure. That was how I, Takasaki Koyomi, met Takigawa Kazune—my beloved wife.