"I want to go out with you."
"No."
"I see..."
At 8 AM, I confessed while walking along the school route.
As a result, I was rejected without hesitation.
From an outsider's perspective, it would seem like I, Akitsu Yukinori, was simply turned down after confessing.
However, what’s different from usual is that Suzume Kushigeta, my childhood friend from middle school, has heard this confession many times before…
...and yet, here we are, holding hands tightly while walking.
Not just any hand-holding, mind you—our fingers are interlocked, just like a couple.
"Hey, Suzume," I called out to her, the very girl who had just rejected my confession.
"What?" she replied, her expression unchanged.
"So, why are we holding hands on our way to school?"
"Because I want to."
"Well, yeah, if you want to, of course, we’d hold hands..."
I stopped counting the times we’ve had this same conversation after the twentieth time.
◆
In fact, walking to school hand-in-hand wasn’t something that started overnight.
It began when she was in her first year of middle school, two years younger than me.
Why did we start holding hands in the first place?
I think it was Suzume who initiated it, saying something like, "Because it's cold."
The connection between my family and the Kushigeta family, who lived three houses down, started when Suzume moved in during her first year of middle school.
I happened to catch a glimpse of her back then during their greeting, and I noticed that her grandmother, who was apparently from Europe, had given her naturally light chestnut hair.
Because of that, she faced issues regarding her hair at school when she first transferred.
The school demanded she dye it black to "set an example" for other students.
Even though she complied and dyed it, the head of the grade would constantly pressure her to re-dye it every time her roots started showing.
On top of that, they targeted her with all sorts of pressure that no other students experienced, not just about her hair but also in various other ways.
I happened to witness one instance when the head of the grade was persistently checking her skirt length with a ruler. I couldn’t help but think it was going too far, so I spoke up. This made him furious.
"Who are you to interfere with student discipline? I'll report you to your homeroom teacher!" he said angrily and stormed off.
Later, it seems he spread some lies about me, and I ended up being scolded by my homeroom teacher because the head of the grade was supposedly a "trusted authority."
I was really frustrated by the absurdity of it all.
So, I started gathering stories from other students like Suzume who were subjected to similarly extreme discipline measures. I wanted to know what was being said to them.
I passed on the stories I’d collected to my father, who was the PTA president at the time.
As a result, things escalated, and the head of the grade was effectively transferred in what was essentially a demotion.
To be honest, I wasn’t motivated by some sense of justice or to protect Suzume. I just used my parents' influence to get back at someone who had pissed me off.
I had almost forgotten about all of this until one day we received sudden news: a bear had been spotted nearby.
We live in a reasonably developed town, but if you drive for about half an hour, you’ll reach mountainous areas. Every five or six years, a bear might wander into town.
Whenever that happens, students are required to walk to school in groups.
People around here are pretty used to it by now. Most just say things like, "Oh, a bear this year, huh? Gotta be careful."
However, the Kushigeta family, having moved from an area without bears, was completely frightened.
Even after the group school commute was lifted, it seems Suzume was still scared. She would say things like, "I'm afraid to go outside."
Seeing this as a problem, Suzume's father, who had become friendly with my dad due to the earlier incident, sought advice from him. The conclusion was that I would escort Suzume to and from school until she felt more at ease.
At first, I thought she’d calm down in about a week, so I agreed, lured by the promise of some extra allowance. But then it was, "I'm still scared, maybe another month," and, "I'm still scared, maybe two more months," until I ended up escorting her all the way through to the end of middle school.
On days when events or other plans conflicted with my schedule, she would apparently commute alone just fine. Thinking about it now, it made me wonder—wasn't she not actually scared anymore?
Finally, I was about to move on to a high school in another town.
On the way home on the final day before graduation:
"Suzume, tomorrow I’m graduating. You’ll be fine going to school on your own starting in the spring, right?"
"...Why?"
Suzume is generally not very talkative, and her facial expressions rarely change.
In the beginning, I would initiate conversations, but I eventually realized she was the type who didn’t mind silence.
After that, I only talked to her when I felt like it.
So, when she looked at me with a surprised expression, it caught me off guard.
"What do you mean, ‘why’? I’ll be commuting to high school by train, so I have to go to the station."
"Our route is the same until a certain point."
"Yeah, but I’ll be leaving earlier than before because it takes longer to commute, so our schedules won’t match."
"I’ll leave earlier, too, so it’ll be fine."
"Won’t the school building still be closed by the time you get there? Besides, when our times didn’t match before, you were able to go alone, weren’t you? You’ll be fine."
"Do you not want to go to school with me anymore?"
"It’s not that I don’t want to, but, well, there haven’t been any bear sightings for a while, right?"
It’s not like I disliked walking to and from school with her. In fact, I liked it.
Sure, my friends teased me about it, and I didn’t really know how to talk to girls younger than me, so I would get flustered sometimes.
But as time went on, I grew comfortable enough to talk to her without overthinking it, and the thought of parting ways felt a bit sad.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if my constant escorting was limiting Suzume’s chances to hang out with other friends.
"Why..."
Suzume muttered again, looking down.
"Suzume?"
We had been walking hand in hand since winter, but when she stopped, our hands slipped apart.
"..."
She stood a couple of steps away from me, facing me.
"I don’t want to."
"...!?"
With just that one whispered phrase, Suzume closed the distance between us and slipped into my arms. She wrapped her arms around my back.
"Let’s keep going to school together. I’ll give up on the way back, but I want to walk with you in the mornings."
"I don’t want to be alone... I want to be with you... It’s lonely..."
Her face was buried in my chest, and her voice shook at the end. She was probably crying.
Meanwhile, my brain was thrown into complete chaos, overwhelmed by the sudden soft sensation, the scent of her shampoo, and Suzume’s tears.
Wait, what’s the right answer here? She’s crying, I need to comfort her somehow. But we’re not dating! Hold on, this is bad... she feels soft... No, wait, focus! We’re in the middle of the road, and if our neighbors see us, it’ll be embarrassing.
"Then, why don’t we go out?"
That was the conclusion my brain spat out in the midst of its frantic debate—to confess my feelings.
She lifted her face when she heard those words.
"No."
Her face, though, was beaming with happiness.
◇
"So, that’s what happened about three years ago."
"No way, seriously?"
Now it’s summer of my third year of high school. It’s been a while since Suzume and I parted ways after walking to school together.
During our fifth period self-study session, I shared this story with Tanaka, who was sitting in front of me.
"So, you walk to school with such a cute girl, huh? And here I was thinking you were already dating her. Turns out, she rejected you?" Tanaka looked at me with a sympathetic expression.
"That’s exactly right, damn it," I answered with a wry smile.
"But isn't it a mystery? Even though you changed schools, she still wants to be with you. Isn't that basically a confession? You’re being kept on the hook, man."
"I thought the same... but the answer’s still no."
Even looking back now, it's truly a mystery.
"For example, could it be that she doesn’t even realize she’s confessing?"
Tanaka raised his index finger and suggested.
"Doesn't realize?"
"Yeah, like, maybe she thinks 'I want to go out with you' means something like 'I want to go to a shop with you.'"
"In a classroom, with the sunset streaming in, I clearly said, 'I like you! Please go out with me!' How could that be misunderstood? That was a flat-out 'no.'"
I even tried changing the setting, thinking maybe my intention hadn’t gotten through.
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