She’ll never forget this, as in, one day she’ll kill me?!
“Hehe... Goodbye.”
Leaving me both frightened and confused, she turned around and began running away from me.
“Y-Yume...?!” I tried to call out to her, but she was getting farther and farther away. There was nothing more I could do.
Yume... Thank you too.
I could hardly believe that a girl so cute would fall in love with me. She’d previously only told me that going to school was boring and that spending time with me made her happy. All I could do now was hope that she’d find happiness elsewhere.
At least our relationship ended on a good note, I guess...
On the train home, I decided to check my Twitter... and I was shocked by what I saw. There were no tweets from Yume on my timeline.
Could she...?
I checked my follow list, and, sure enough, she wasn’t there. I looked up her account, and when I tapped on it, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut for real.
You’re blocked.
Just as I’d thought. It was weird for none of her tweets to show up on my timeline given how often she tweeted.
Did she block me today, then? Why? After all those nice things she said to me, I was beginning to think she was actually kind of sweet. Is she mad at me or something? Ugh, I don’t get girls at all...
Overcome by sadness, I put away my phone.
＊ ＊ ＊
When I got home, I was surprised by another notification. This time it was a LINE message from Mashiro. We’d never really contacted each other on LINE before, except for a couple of messages right after exchanging contacts.
“It’s been a while. There’s something I’d like to talk about. When are you free?”
Does she mean she wants to talk in person? I wonder what it’s about.
“Hey, it really has been. I’m free most of the time.”
As sad as it was, apart from my plans to go out with Elena somewhere in the near future, my schedule was basically empty. After a quick back and forth, Mashiro and I decided that we’d meet at 1 p.m. the next day in Ikebukuro.
“Thanks. Sorry for messaging you out of the blue. It’ll just be a quick chat.”
Now that I had a girlfriend, going out with another girl and enjoying any kind of date-like activity was obviously out of the question. Thankfully, Mashiro only seemed to want to discuss something with me.
I’d last seen her at the café where Yume worked, where Mashiro happened to be helping out that day. She’d sounded kind of jealous back then, but I never had the chance to ask her about it. She had also deleted her private Twitter account, and, as a taken man, I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way to initiate contact with her. As a result, I had absolutely no idea what she currently thought of me or what she wanted to talk about.
If I’d been a bit braver, I could be dating Mashiro instead right now. Feels weird just thinking about it.
The next day, I went to Ikebukuro. The town still held some special memories for me, as it was where Mashiro and I had gone out together before I’d learned the truth about her.
This time, we had chosen the least original meeting place possible: by the owl statue near the station’s east exit. When I reached the statue, I found Mashiro already waiting there.
“Sorry to keep you waiting!”
“Oh, Ichigaya...”
She was wearing a frilly, sleeveless blouse and a cutesy light-gray skirt that laced up at the waist. She looked as adorable as always... except for the fact that she was scowling at me.
Wh-What? Did I somehow make her mad?
“I-It’s been so long, huh...?”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she coldly replied, completely ignoring what I’d just said.
She’s definitely mad. I can tell that much.
“Y-Yeah, okay. Where should we go to talk?” I asked.
“Sunshine.”
I was surprised by the suggestion, since Sunshine Ikebukuro was the complex that housed the planetarium where we’d once gone on a date together.
“A-Actually, scrap that! There’s a park near Sunshine. Let’s go there instead,” she said.
“Uh, okay. Sure...” I followed her without raising any objections.
I guess the park’s quieter. That’ll make it easier to talk...
Walking together without so much as a word was unbearably awkward, so I tried my best to make some small talk.
“So, how’ve you been lately?”
“I’ve been busy with work for pretty much my whole summer vacation. Unlike someone here...”
“What are you trying to say?!”
Does she know something about me?! I’m too scared to ask her directly though...
Eventually, we reached the park.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked Mashiro, who had her back to me.
“First of all, are you sure you can be out here with me? Even though you have a girlfriend?” she replied, turning around to give me the coldest stare in the world.
“What?! H-How do you...?!”
“Did you really think I didn’t know already?” she said, glaring at me so hard that it almost hurt.
“Ah... D-Did Yume tell you?”
Even though she usually worked in a different café, Mashiro would sometimes go to Maid-Tale to help when they were short on staff. The two of them hadn’t seemed on particularly good terms when I first saw them together, but maybe they’d since become close enough to talk about this kind of thing.
“I swear I’m so fed up with you right now.”
I was too shocked to reply.
“First you approach me, then you leave me hanging... and now, to top it off, you go and find yourself a girlfriend.”
“B-But...”
Is that what it came off as to her? That I was leaving her hanging? I thought she’d already forgotten about me, since we hadn’t spoken in so long...
“You never contacted me again,” she continued. “I wanted to forget you... but I couldn’t. You, on the other hand, had no qualms throwing yourself at other women.”
“What?!”
She couldn’t forget me? Where is this coming from?!
“So, now you have to set things straight,” Mashiro said, looking as if she could cry any moment.
After being so scared that she’d entirely stopped caring about me, I was happy—excited, even—to learn that this was how she’d really felt. Those words meant a lot coming from a girl I’d dreamed of dating for so long.
But it was too late now.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You already know this, but there’s someone else in my life now...”
That was my way of setting things straight. The least I could do now was to muster up my courage and clearly state things as they were.
She looked away from me and slowly started talking. “Hmph, unbelievable. You get a girl’s hopes up like that, you stop contacting her, and then you top it all off by saying there’s someone else in your life now. A jerk till the very end.”
“I-I’m so sor—”
“I loved you.”
“Huh?”
Instead of the insults I’d been expecting, I’d been hit with a declaration of love. My brain stopped working for a second.
She... What? Did she just say...?
“Sometimes... I think like... if I’d just stayed as the fake me, then maybe you’d have become my boyfriend.” She smiled sadly. “That’s all I wanted to tell you. Goodbye.”
She started walking away, but I immediately stopped her.
“Wait a second!”