It’s new day and I’m walking to school, nothing noteworthy happened yesterday except for few things most of them included other kids asking us why she was waiting for me and are we dating etc.
Well to tell it truthfully, it wasn’t easy for us but we successfully avoided raising any more suspicion about the thing that she was waiting for me, after we got the time to talk to each other in peace, we prepared a plan of what to do and how to explain…er... no the correct thing to say would be how to fool them into thinking that she wasn’t waiting for me.
What we did was easy but for the listeners’ sake let me tell me specifically what happened and how we did it-
Yesterday, In Lunch Time…
What she did today was horrible, she would have blown our secret and the fact that we are preparing to sit near each other would also had been destroyed, so now I’m finding her to discuss how to fix the damage which we did today.
Of course I can’t let her take all the blame she wouldn’t have waited for me at the entrance like that if I had been on time, wait a minute… it was her fault to begin with but oh well here we are…
As I was looking for her unexpectedly I felt a little force like someone momentarily pulled my sleeve, I turned around to find her. Itsumi was standing but her head was hung low so I couldn’t tell what kind of expression she had. Before I could have spoken anything she gestured to go with her at a different place since here too many people were there and she was right who knows from where Itsuki would jump out from.
And she walked at a few metres of distance from me to avoid causing any problem, and obviously I had to act like I wasn’t following her, I don’t want to be called a stalker, and to tell about stalkers I have already seen too many of them following her everywhere she goes.
Seriously she came just yesterday, at least let her become comfortable behaving this way to someone who just came can cause a little hearted person to get scared and leave the school immediately but maybe I’m just overthinking it’s not like anyone would actually get so scared.
Well anyway we arrived at a quite spot but actually there’s a thing that definitely wrong here…
“Umm… Itsumi-san… may I ask you something?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Why the hell did you chose the couple’s spot of our school!?”
It’s our school couple’s spot where we were standing, it’s a place where the intense couples of our school comes to spend time.
And to explain how it looks like, there’s a large cherry blossom tree and from the two types of cherry blossom trees it’s the type whose flowers’ bloom all throughout the year, the tree has four beautiful wooden benches with flower patterns placed near the tree, and since it’s near of school’s garden there is an artificial pond nearby we students made ourselves.
And since it’s a couple’s spot no one wants to be seen here and hence, no one comes here so that then can avoid any sort of embarrassment.
It’s quite an elegant looking spot and we are proud that our school has it but that’s not the topic here…
“You didn’t know that this is school’s couple’s spot, did you?” I exclaimed with a little pity in my eyes while looking at this innocent cute thing curled up in embarrassment in front of me.
“O-Of… cou-course… I… I kn-knew!”
“Stop lying again, you obviously didn’t know, so what’s the reason you called me here?”
“You already know the reason, about what happened today…”
Well she is right, I already knew that she would come if I won’t be able to find her because thing would be uglier on her side regarding what happened. And I could fell a little hint of distress in her voice, whoever made her like that I really want to beat that person’s ass, seeing her like this is… it is painful…
“So…umm… I have already thought about that… about what we should do.” She said in a low distressed voice.
“Ok, go ahead. But before that… I want to you to first know that you are not the only one because of whom the situation turned out like this, you don’t have to blame yourself alone…”
After she heard me… I saw a sweet smile again coming back to life… like she was relieved from a burden maybe when what I said earlier in the morning [1], she took it the wrong way and thought that I was blaming her, now thinking about that I really feel ashamed for what I did.
“Well what you said did made me feel guilty and burdened…”
“Crap…” she again switched to normal mode. I’m glad that she is back to normal but she should stop that terrifying mind reading.
“…Thank you for what you said now.” she said while her head hung low
Maybe she said thank you but since the voice was too low voice I might have misheard, why would she say thank you anyway.
For few minutes there was an awkward silence, we both had nothing to say, then the main topic suddenly flew back into my head.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked to keep the conversation flowing.
“Uh!” she got surprised maybe she was thinking something when I interrupted her thought “You already have shown that it is easy to fool others when they think highly of you, so keeping that in mind we can just use whatever excuse we like and they would agree…”
“Well what you said is true but what do you want to say to others? Since if we both used different excuses they will still doubt.”
“That’s why I called you so that we can discuss what we should say to them.”
“……………………”
“We will say that I was just checking out other students and teachers and was waiting for our homeroom teacher to ask what are the clubs our school offers since I had actually asked him about that earlier today.”
“Ok pretty simple that even a nursery student use and so what about my part.”
“Yeah it’s pretty simple but still better than your excuse that you thought for us sitting together…”
Well can’t deny that because she has even included sensei [2] and if others ask him about that he can support us with that.
“And… what about my part when we talked.”
“That’s easy just say that you said “Hi” and “Good Morning” and told me to move a little so that you can enter into the classroom, of course in your ‘gentleman’ like way or should I say ‘fake’ way. Anyone would believe that since we didn’t talk much in the morning and the duration we talked was equal to a normal basic introduction.”
“That even way simpler than I expected but since it’s a lie too simple to detect, there are few things you should do to make it look like a truth.”
“What are those?”
“Since it’s you, you might already know about the ways we can use to detect a lie.”
“Yes I do remember a few of them but can you repeat please.”
“Ok fine, first: don’t include too many or any sort of negative words, since humans say negative words to reinforce their lies and positive for truth so we have to avoid negative words.”
“That’s easy you already know me; I can easily avoid that.”
“Yeah I know, second: be confident, since we are telling a lie us humans fell guilty on a subconscious level and we tend to look away from the eyes of the person we are talking to, so be confident and look directly in the eyes.
“It’s subconscious thing that we do so to avoid that I have to keep full control of my body and movements, it might be easy for you since you already have that perfect persona you have built since all these years, I’m still a novice in comparison to you.”
“Well thanks and ouch those words hurt too, you know.”
“So any other things?”
“Well of course there are, third: use hand gestures, it’s simple use average amount of hand gestures not too much, nor to less. And fourth: avoid saying small sentence in a lengthy way, you don’t have to use to many words to tell them just use enough words that you believe are enough to tell the sentence and say it in the most straightforward way possible.”
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“Those are good with me too, anything else?”
“Those should we just fine to provide our lie a strong foundation and prevent any sort of troubles, anyone can use them to escape safely without any worries of their lie being uncovered.”
“As expected of a pro.” She laughed a bit and said in a mocking way.
After that we talked for a few more minutes about stuff like how stupid people can be before she walked away first before me to again avoid being seen together by our classmates, I however didn’t go.
Why you ask? Because who wouldn’t want to spend time alone in such a peaceful setting, cold breeze, beautiful cherry blossom tree giving you shade, pond nearby and if you listen carefully even amidst the noise of students’ voice you can hear the birds chirping.
But what beings have to end too, and the situation I’m talking about now is… lunch time. Unfortunately, the bell is about to ring in a few minutes so I have to go now.
And so after that nothing happened and my day went on, after school I had today 2 more part-time jobs, 3 in total since today is Tuesday. That went pretty peacefully too and after that I did homework, practised illustrations, ate dinner and went to sleep at normal time.
Present Time
And so here I’m, today thankfully I got ready on time as I was able to do everything on time yesterday and now I’m walking towards school with other students who also came from nearby area, I might have met Itsuki too but I on purpose took a different route to school to avoid him since his house is nearby to mine and so we sometimes meet each in the morning.
There isn’t any reason to avoid him but he is just annoying. I might see Aiya because she is in the other section of my class, I might want to see her since she calms me down a lot and it feels safe and warm when being with her, she is the type of person you always want to be with since she always knows how to cheer up your mood.
And as to why I’m feeling down, to tell the truth I don’t know myself, maybe it’s guilt which have been stacking up for quite some time, and now it’s have reached the point when it needs to be loosen up a bit, it happens to me every few months, just like a malfunction in a machine and now it’s time for a little repairing and maintenance.
But it’s not really necessary for me to talk to her now since I can do so afterwards and it don’t think that anything will put heavy load on me in such a short amount of time between the morning till the job… and it’s not like I will see her on this route since I’m going from the complete opposite route than her. But these feelings of guilt, hatred, etc. can make me do mistakes and can become an obstacle in my way of thinking and doing things. From it sometimes I become a stupid and act like an idiot at that time it would be really dangerous for me but most of the time I just feel excessive amount of tiredness and feel really sleepy, it’s just how my body works. And right now I can already feel like a lack of sleep, and it is taking a heavy toll on me.
Sure I can let off my steam of emotions by talking to Itsumi-san too but she still isn’t that trustworthy to me, I mean I met her just day before yesterday so how can I tell her about my weakness just like that, Aiya figured this thing out by herself and I’m thankful she did, otherwise who know just how many secrets of mine had been revealed by my idiotic self.
I reached school, half-heartedly wishing to see Aiya but as expected she didn’t show up, I walked up the stairs to the 1st floor of the building since 2nd year class rooms are on that floor, the ground floor holds 1st year and the 2nd floor hold the third year students’ classroom, and the 3rd and 4th floor are for club rooms.
I somehow dragged my body while fighting against the feeling that I was carrying a really heavy luggage and took a deep breath to get a better grip of my emotions and reduce the burden so that I can make my body return to the normal functional mode temporarily.
“Seriously what a shitty thing to happen in the morning.” I whispered under my breath
I entered the classroom which was still 80% empty since I live near the school, I always tend to come here before most of the class’s students and now I can merrily take a power nap [3] to make my body little bit more active in comparison to this sluggish body.
And hence, I took a nap as quick as possible…
When I woke up only 5% students were remaining out of 41 students and seems like nobody noticed that I was sleeping except for Itsuki who was sitting next to me but he already knows that I sometimes do tend to sleep, but it was unusual for him to have said noting to me after he noticed I woke up, and he had rather a sad look on his face, that was really unusual.
And slowly I had myself started to feel tensed up by just looking at him, I decided to ask him what’s wrong and so that I can lighten up his mood a little.
“So what’s troubling you?”
“Nothing just thinking…”
“Okay so let me change the question, what are you thinking?”
“What I might have done wrong that caused you to think of me as a pest and so you want to get rid of me and go sit with Itsumi-san.”
Hearing that huge wave of shock went through my body, how did he know? Who told him? Itsumi-san would not do such a thing, will she? A whole lot of questions started arising in my mind… however first I have to get to know the name of the person who told him that.
“Sorry but why are you thinking like that? Who told you that kind of rumour?” I asked in as much calm way as possible.
“It was… You.”
“Huh...” I exclaimed in confusion “I don’t get it why would I say that for you?”
When did I say something in front of him? Did he overhear it from somewhere when I was talking to Itsumi-san?
“I don’t have the answer to why you said that for me but you were saying it to Itsumi-san…”
His words were full of cold-hearted feelings, he words were showing extreme levels of agony and emotional pain and how harsh his voice sounded represented that he was being barely able to keep himself under control from hitting me.
When did I talked about him in front of her? No, wait… now isn’t the time anyway to think about that, I have to first handle the current situation, if he tells about that to anyone else they might start thinking that I talked about them behind their back too…
Before I could’ve said anything to defend myself from being charged guilty, he spoke.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your fake identity, I know you might have had your reasons. And as for the question you might be thinking when did I heard you it was yesterday when you talking to her near the garden at the couples’ spot.”
This time his you can see hints of guilt as if he was blaming himself that he might have done something to piss me off and cause of that I called him annoying and all the other things I did.
“I… sorry.” I don’t even have words left to say anymore.
Since when did I started thinking of him in such a lowly way? How did I, no rather how could I become so cruel to one of my most precious friends?
Yes, he is one of the people I can consider calling a friend, as to say how long we have been together, he was with me since elementary school, and he was the one who comforted me the most when my parents passed away, he had been supporting me in all the times. And here I am, looking down on the person whom I should have treated with nothing but absolute kindness.
As my train of thoughts was moving at full speed and with as it was crossing each platform, I was more and more reflecting upon my actions and with that realization also came huge burden of regrets.
As my thought was overflowing in the middle Itsuki interrupted me with an awkward voice-
“Hey… she is calling you.”
I looked over at the direction he was pointing at, which I had already expected who that might be, it was Itsumi-san.
Without looking back at Itsuki and even considering about his feeling if he was okay with me talking to her, cause of course it might have hurt that even when he knows that because of being with her I’m leaving him but even though with those feelings he still told me that she wanted to talk instead he could’ve ignored her.
Without any further consideration I asked to Itsumi-san.
“Why did you called me?”
“It’s maybe time that we asked sir since he is just standing outside. When he enters maybe it would be good that we just go to him before anything upsets his mood” She said while pointing at the doorway where our homeroom teacher was standing.
I didn’t notice he was there at all, I was too deep in thoughts that he come and maybe since a while he had been talking to the teacher in the next classroom, he seemed really happy, well I can see why since the next door teacher is a female in her twenties.
“Umm… ok” I said with uncertainty in my mind, like I was hesitating from this idea of being with her due to some reason.
She waved at me as if she was saying see you in she was saying see you in a few minutes again but next time the distance between us will be shorter.
I sighed and lied to rest a bit, the sleepiness I was already feeling since the morning was already enough but with all this going on now, I don’t know how long I will be able to keep functioning normally. The guilt I’m feeling right now is too overwhelming to bear.
I rested a bit keeping all my thoughts aside since I’m quite good at it because I like meditating so I do it quite often and just because of that I’m able to keep my mental condition under check and avoid having a mental breakdown.
And I think I can rest for a bit more since sir doesn’t show any signs of leaving their talk for the next 5 minutes or so, since there’s still 6 or 7 minutes left in the morning bell.
“Hey Haruto?” Itsuki said out of nowhere
“Y-Yeah”
“I know it’s rude to ask but you do know about that right?”
“About what?”
“Looks like you don’t.” he sighed “Then let me tell you or rather remind this to the part of you that already have figured it out…”
“Figured out what?”
“She and you… are the same, yet she is superior to you especially when you two are together.”
“………………”
I remained dumbfounded after hearing that, I don’t know what to say about that. He said it in a very straight forward way but I still don’t get it. What is he talking about? We are same, yet she is superior to me? I’m feeling like I’m unable to think straight… SHIT! It’s the mental state of mine, it’s hindering my thinking process. No! not now at this critical moment, come on it’s should be something simple why can’t I figure it out!
Ok I can’t think clearly now, then use the other way, use your feeling to figure it out. Ok, dummy course time…
Let’s see this straight what was the feeling I got after talking Itsuki? ‘Guilt and Regret’, ok first stage clear that was easy.
YAY!!! Nononono!!! Don’t celebrate yet and absolutely not like a child, think what is the next question…
Why did I feel guilt and regret? Umm… Yes! It’s because I broke his trust… no, not just his, I did something that would hurt everyone. I broke trust means… umm… that means that I lied about something, wait! Yeah! that’s right, I lied to them.
No it something more than a lie, something related to it… AHHHH!!! So frustrated! What is it that I did! No, don’t get worked up yet, think… what is it that like a lie and… yeah what is common between me and Itsumi-san.
I glanced over at where Itsumi-san was, and as usual she was smiling talking to her ‘friends’, she was a such a beauty it’s hard to believe she is real.
Wait! Real she isn’t real, opposite of real, she is a fake person and that means what Itsuki said meant
She and you… are the same, yet she is superior to you especially when you two are together.
it meant that we both are fakers, but when he said she is superior that meant she is a better faker than me we are both together…
“No… that means she was faking it since the beginning!?”
Translations & Notes
1. It’s related to the last chapter when Haruto mockingly taunted Itsumi.
2. Teacher in Japanese
3. A short sleep taken during the working day in order to restore one’s mental alertness, people like Einstein used to practice it since it restore a person to full energy for a short duration.