Episode 96 – An old story

“….Hnnn? Huh….where?”

“Ah, Nagi kun !!”

When I awoke with the strange white ceiling in my vision, I felt a jolt in my chest with a familiar voice.

“Ugh~~, senpai, it hurts!”

“Aaahhh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Isn’t the tension strange?”

I was surprised to see senpai groaning with tears spilling down her cheeks.

It was the first time for me to see senpai in such a mess, so I couldn’t quite grasp the situation.

“Nagishiro san, you’ve been asleep for quite a while.”

As if reading my feelings, a quiet voice, in contrast to that of senpai, came to me, and I involuntarily turned my head in that direction.

“Harushita san?”

“Good evening. It seems like it’s been ages since we’ve met.”

“Why are you here……?”

Harushita san was sitting in a pipe chair reading a book in a position where she could see out the window.

The sunset was just half-lighting her face, and she looked somewhat mysterious.

“What ……, you look dumb…… Did you hurt your head too? Or are you dumb to begin with?”

“I know that last one is a simple abuse!!!”

I screamed loudly, but it quickly fizzled out with a keening sound in the room.

I felt like an idiot for shouting. No, just plain stupid.

“How are you feeling?”

But it seems that she did not intend to end the conversation with just a silly talk, and Harushita san asked me with a surprisingly serious face.

The condition of my body. So I raised my hands and twisted my body.

“…… hurt so much here and there, I don’t know where it hurts, I guess.”

“I see. ……”

Her eyes were downcast and her face was somber.

It didn’t seem that serious to me, but I guess it’s normal for the injured person to be more optimistic at times like this.

But that’s where my optimism was unexpectedly canceled.

“—-Takasaki!? Where is he?”

The person who had inflicted the wound, Takasaki, was completely oblivious.

“Senpai! Is Senpai injured somewhere……”

“I-I’m fine. Thanks to you, Nagi kun.”

“Oh, I see. ……”

Hearing this, the thread of tension that had been holding me for so long broke.

Even though I was unconscious, I was apparently still tense.

“Really, it’s all thanks to Nagi kun. ……”

But Senpai was spilling such mumblings with a look of guilt on her face.

“Nagi kun has always helped me …… now and in the past.”

“……the past?”

I caught the end of her sentence, and she looked at me with a determined expression on her face.

“I have to seriously talk about this”

Then senpai turned her attention to Harushita san.

Harushita san shrugged her shoulders and gave a look of disappointment, then put away her chair and walked out with her bag in hand.

“I’ll be back later. Let me know when you’re done.”

“Yeah.”

Harushita san walks out the door with a rattling sound.

Then it was just me and Senpai in the hospital room.

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“I wonder where should I start…”

“Where?”

What is senpai trying to talk about and why is she trying to talk about it at this point in time?

All I want to hear is what’s going on right now, and that’s not what Senpai wants to talk about.

“Well, I can’t move from here anyway, so talk all you want.”

“Thanks……”

From there, Senpai began to speak slowly.

The story of how we met, me and Senpai in high school.

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High school is already more than 4 years ago for me, isn’t it?

I met Nagi kun in the fall of my sophomore year, so maybe five and a half years.

…… not much, just a lot of memories I don’t want to remember.

I definitely don’t want to go back to my high school days.

Before I entered high school, I always dreamed about it. I thought there would be so many fun things waiting for me in high school, so many friends to meet, so many events to attend.

I imagined a rainbow-colored everyday life and was excited.

But after three months, I knew it was a mistake.

Because it wasn’t fun at all.

Maybe it was the fact that it was a higher education school.

Everyone was restraining each other, and they were only concerned about what others were looking at, what others thought of them, and so on.

When the tests came back, they would find a student with a lower score than them and feel relieved, or a student who couldn’t study would appeal in terms of athletics to affirm themselves.

I noticed that there was a pervasive atmosphere in which everyone had to feel superior in order to survive.

And worse, it became more and more pronounced as the exams approached, that is, as the school year went on.

By the time I reached the second grade, everyone’s mind already looked like a desert.

No one knew what they were studying for, what they were laughing for. I didn’t know …… what I was living for.

They lived kicking others to the curb just to quench their thirst.

And of course, me too.

I’ve had someone I’ve been dating since the middle of freshman year. You probably don’t know about this, Nagi kun, but I don’t think you need to be so surprised. ……

His name is Masato Shinkawa, and yes, he’s that handsome guy from the basketball team.

He confessed to me and I had no reason to say no, so we went out.

That’s all there is to it.

And like other students, he made a habit of kicking others down.

Whenever we talked together, it was always about boasting or complaining. He was always bragging or complaining about how he had beaten someone or how he had done something.

I listened to him with a smile. I could listen to what he said for as long as I wanted, even if the content itself was not interesting. Maybe it wasn’t because I liked him, but because I felt comfortable listening to other people’s stories of failure.

He seemed so accomplished, but I was a child too.

But I think it was the summer of my sophomore year.

Suddenly it all seemed ridiculous. I didn’t want to be walking down the road with someone else, I wanted to think that there was something decidedly different about me from others.

I also lost interest in him, as if he represented the mundane, and we soon broke up.

I noticed that everyone else had the same face, and I thought of myself as a special person who noticed that I was different.

So I started hanging out with my friends less and less, and by the fall there was no one around. I also quit club activities, so I finally stopped talking to anyone.

But I was content with that. I thought it was better to be a solitary person than to live with lowly people. I didn’t think I’d be lonely.

I didn’t like the Youtubers that everyone liked because they seemed kind of snobby in their own way, and I didn’t listen to famous Jpop. I started reading cool books and listening to Western music. I didn’t even realize that this was a behavior that was unique to adolescence.

Such a misunderstood woman who thought she was special is the “Hojo Asuka” Nagi kun met.

The woman you were longing for was just like that.

–And you, who appeared in front of me, were the ideal person I had in mind.

I know you probably don’t believe me when I say this, Nagi kun. See, I knew it.

But no matter what Nagi kun thought, you were my admiration.

The first time I saw you was in the library. I’ll never forget it.

I was looking for a desk to read at when I saw a strange boy.

A boy who was pointing an earphone at his cell phone and fiddling with it, grinning all by himself.

I couldn’t help but ask, “What are you doing?” I was so surprised that his face turned bright red and he started to make excuses that he couldn’t even tell me.

I thought he was a very strange boy~, so I teased him and asked him about various things, and he immediately tried to escape, saying, “I’m Nagishiro, a first-year student” It was really funny at that time~.

I thought to myself, “There is a boy like this in this high school?”

Because only the world Nagi kun sees is rainbow-colored.

There was definitely something around Nagi kun at that time that I had dreamed of. The view I had dreamed of before entering high school was there.

From then on, it was just as you know, Nagi kun. I wanted to see you, so I went to the library all the time, talked a lot, and got scolded by the librarian.

We always talked about hobbies of Nagi kun, what kind of music you like. What kind of music he liked, what he usually did, and so on. We talked about such trivial things for a long time until the sun went down.

Well, sometimes Nagi kun’s eyes were on my b***s, which seems to have been his habit since then.

So after school became more and more fun. Every day, I came to school looking forward to that time only. Even during class, I watched the clock all the time.

So sometimes when Nagi kun didn’t show up, I would get very unhappy and depressed. I even had the worst fantasy that he didn’t like me, and when I heard that he didn’t show up for some unimportant reason the next day, I would get a little irritated and hit a little harder.

That’s how much I only had Nagi kun in those days. –Unlike Nagi kun.

Nagi kun had my involvement as part of a fun routine, but I only had Nagi kun for real.

And as I found after-school with Nagi kun more and more enjoyable, I hated going to school more and more.

Some people say that having fun makes you work harder, but it was different for me.

The classes seemed more faded, the usual routine seemed more trivial, and the air seemed more gray.

Moreover, the more I looked forward to spending time with Nagi kun, the shorter the time we spent together seemed. Back then, going to school was a pain in the ass.

Nagi kun made it possible for me to go to school, but Nagi kun made it hard for me to stay in school.

I didn’t know what to do. But I couldn’t choose the idea of distancing myself from Nagi kun.

I knew how to solve the problem, but I didn’t choose it. I was such a cowardly woman.

This made me feel self-hatred and made me feel even worse about myself.

Then came your confession.

I bluntly refused the words of “I love you,” which you had the courage to say to me.

The reason was easy to put into words.

I was afraid that you would find out about me.

I was afraid that you would know that I am terribly empty, false, and mediocre.

I realized how childish I was and how mediocre I was by then, you know. Through you.

So there I was able to reject you for the first time.

It would be utterly terrible. Even talking about it myself, I want to laugh at how selfish I am.

Thus, I neglected your confession, and I had a certain satisfaction in doing so.

That I was now able to let myself through, even at the expense of what was most important to me.

—- and I regretted my actions. After I graduated from high school.