Shinya Takafuji has someone he likes.
It’s the girl who lives across the road, a so-called childhood friend.
Her name is Yuki Shiina.
She’s in the same third year of junior high as Shinya and stands around 150 cm tall.
Her hair falls to her shoulders, and her eyes have a slightly sharp shape. Her mouth is small, and her nose is a bit on the lower side.
She doesn’t have an exceptionally small face, but the overall balance of her features is good, and you could say she has a well-proportioned face.
She might not be the most beautiful girl in class, but she’s certainly around third place, and she is undeniably pretty.
On the other hand, Shinya Takafuji is a bit of an average-looking guy with a slight otaku vibe.
He barely reaches 160 cm in height.
His hair looks like his parents cut it for him—nothing special about it, just a plain, ordinary hairstyle.
His eyes droop a bit, his mouth is somewhat large, and his nose is of average height.
If someone called him "monkey-faced," well, they wouldn’t be wrong. No one has said that to him yet, but he thinks so himself.
Yes, Shinya Takafuji is unmistakably ordinary.
Even though they’re childhood friends, he doesn’t seem like a match for the third-most beautiful girl in class.
But he’s liked her since they were little.
So much so that he proposed to her back in kindergarten.
Ah, those were the days.
They built sandcastles together in the sandbox and played house, where he took the role of the husband.
In the summer, they’d hold hands and go to festivals, and they even danced the Bon dance together.
Yes, it was then—he proposed to her back then.
Amid the festival music, Shinya swore eternal love to Yuki.
Yuki accepted his feelings, and they became a couple... or so he thought...
But it seems she’s forgotten such a sweet episode. Lately, she’s even been avoiding him.
For Shinya, who at least wanted to remain regular childhood friends, this was unbearably painful.
Shinya decided to make a fresh start at the beginning of March, right after his entrance exams were easily completed with a recommendation, and graduation was just around the corner.
They were going to attend the same high school starting in April, but at this rate, walking to and from school together would be impossible.
Well, actually, they hadn’t walked together since the third year of elementary school anyway.
On the flip side, they used to walk together up until the second year.
The happy feelings from those times... and the despair when, at the start of third grade, she told him:
“Let’s stop walking together, okay? It’s embarrassing if people talk about us.”
He still hasn’t forgotten that moment of despair.
Seven years have passed since then. He’s tired of always feeling gloomy.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to confess his feelings and try to reclaim the happiness of those days with an all-or-nothing approach.
If she rejects him, well, that’s that. It could be a good opportunity to finally give up on her.
For Shinya, this was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
But for Yuki, it was just another typical moment.
She’s the third-most beautiful girl in the class.
Even if she’s third, she’s still a beautiful girl.
She’s been confessed to so many times in middle school that she can’t even count them on one hand.
Well, she didn’t expect the confession to come from her childhood friend who lives next door.
To Yuki, Shinya was someone from her past.
Memories of him were far off in the distance, and a confession from him now was nothing but an annoyance.
In fact, they hardly ever even saw each other, so there was no problem rejecting him coldly.
Yuki quickly did the math and told him flat out, “No,” and then left, right in front of him.
Though Shinya hung his head, knowing the chances of rejection were high, he surprisingly recovered fairly quickly.
However, a week after starting high school, he found himself downhearted again.
That’s because Yuki had started dating a senior from the tennis club, one year ahead of her.
The senior, as one might expect from a tennis player, looked pretty cool in Shinya’s eyes.
Still, shock is shock.
Yuki hadn’t dated anyone during middle school.
Perhaps, deep down, Shinya thought:
“Yuki won’t go out with anyone.”
Of course, that wasn’t the case.
Yuki is cute. While her cuteness is the kind you might find in a few girls in class, to Shinya, she was like a goddess from the heavens.
So it wasn’t like other guys would leave her alone...
Looking back, maybe he shouldn’t have confessed at all.
It’s no wonder Shinya thought that.
Whether he confessed or not, their relationship wouldn’t have changed one bit, but confessing took a huge amount of emotional energy.
That massive amount of energy ended up being completely wasted.
Just think about it.
If he’d waited a little longer, Yuki would’ve found a boyfriend on her own, and Shinya could’ve had his heart broken without ever confessing.
“Well, I guess that’s just how reality works...”
In the end, a plain guy is just plain.
There’s no future where a beautiful girl would date him.
And that’s only his own assessment of himself.
To others, he might be just one step away from being ugly.
After a rejection that came with only a single “no,” Shinya’s confidence was shattered, and he became endlessly negative.
His already gloomy personality had now become completely dark.
Even his minimal attention to his appearance had dropped to the bare minimum.
At this rate, it was only a matter of time before he fell into the dark side of otaku culture.
But one day, as Shinya was browsing the usual online novel forums, something lifted his spirits a little.
The protagonist of a random short story he read, though of a different gender, was in the exact same situation as Shinya.
The protagonist, a girl, was in love with her childhood friend next door, who was a soccer player.
She was a plain-looking girl who wore glasses, and upon entering high school, she confessed her feelings to her neighbor, only to be told:
“Who’d ever want to date someone as uncool as you? I don’t even want to be childhood friends with you anymore, you ugly pig! Stay away from me!!”
Devastated, she fell ill, but at the same time, she resolved to make a fresh start when she entered high school.
She went to a beauty salon to fix her hair, started doing light makeup, and began taking care of her skin.
She switched from glasses to contacts, expanded her interests to different fields, and worked to open up her introverted personality.
Of course, it turned out that without her glasses, she was a real beauty. In the end, she proved her worth to the boy who rejected her and ended up dating someone far superior to him.
Let’s be clear.
If Shinya had been in a normal mental state, he never would’ve read such a shallow, predictable, and immature short story.
But in his current state, it acted like a miracle cure.
Of course, the idea that Shinya would turn into a handsome guy by taking off his glasses was utterly impossible… Not to mention, Shinya didn’t even wear glasses in the first place.
Besides, all that had happened was that he’d been rejected. It wasn’t as if she’d said or done anything particularly cruel.
Although the word “no” had hurt, the reality was indeed “no,” so it couldn’t be helped.
In fact, the clarity of her response made it easier for him to give up on her.
Rather than feeling vengeful, he started to feel as if he had burdened her with unpleasant feelings and began regretting that instead.
However… nonetheless.
It might be a good idea to try a self-transformation like the protagonist of that short story, rather than continue moping around.
0 Comments