After Being Dumped With the Insult, “You’re So Clingy!” and Finding Her in Despair, I Kept Encouraging My Beautiful Classmate and as a Result, That Beautiful Girl Started Directing Her Heavy Emotions Toward Me Instead, but Since I Like Emotionally Heavy Girls, It’s No Problem - 2

Chapter 2: That Beautiful Girl Was Crushed by Grief

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“…You’ll catch a cold.”

I gently held out my umbrella over Jujoji as the rain poured down on her. She had already been standing in the rain for dozens of minutes, and her uniform was completely soaked, but it had to be better than nothing. When I approached, she gave a small start and lifted her face. She must have been crying the whole time, since the area around her eyes was bright red.

“Who are you?”

“Kokonoe. We’re in the same class.”

“Kokonoe-kun…?”

“Sorry. I saw you running off while crying, Jujoji.”

“I see…”

After saying only that, she lowered her face again.

“Could you at least move somewhere else? If you stay here, you’ll catch a cold.”

“Please just leave me alone. …Someone like me would be better off disappearing.”

It seemed she was in far deeper distress than I had thought. If I didn’t persuade her somehow, she wasn’t going to move from here.

“Alright. I understand.”

I sat down beside Jujoji. The ground was, of course, soaked from the rain. Water seeped in through my uniform pants, reached my underwear, and made my backside cold, but I ignored it. If she wasn’t going to move, then I would settle in for a battle of endurance. As a great figure from the past once said, “If she will not move, then move her.” Or something like that. As I did so, I angled most of the umbrella over toward Jujoji, making sure she wouldn’t get any wetter than she already was. My unexpected action made her widen her eyes in surprise.

“What are you doing? Kokonoe-kun, you’re going to get soaked too.”

“I’m already soaked. I’ve decided I won’t move until you do, Jujoji. If I’m here, you’ll at least have the umbrella, right?”

“That’s…”

“Well… if you’re okay with it, I’ll listen to you. Sometimes talking helps. You can complain about anything. If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine too. We can just sit here together in the rain until you feel better. I’ll stay with you.”

“……….”

Jujoji lowered her eyes again and fell silent. For a while, silence flowed between us. Only the mournful sound of the rain echoed around us. There was a certain principle when listening to someone’s troubles: match their pace and patiently wait until they were ready to talk. You mustn’t rush them. Following that principle, I quietly continued waiting for her to speak.

Since I was holding most of the umbrella over Jujoji, the entire left side of my body was exposed to the rain and completely drenched. …A chill crept up my back, but I steeled myself and endured it.

…After waiting for about five minutes, she slowly opened her small mouth.

“He… his name is Reiji Senkawa. He’s my childhood friend.”

By “he,” she must have meant the male student she had been arguing with earlier. Now that I thought about it, Senkawa had referred to Jujoji as a “lousy childhood friend” or something like that.

“Our parents were close, our houses were near each other, and we used to play together all the time. We went to the same schools from elementary through high school…”

Being together since childhood, that was the textbook definition of childhood friends. To end up fighting with someone like that… the pain must have been immeasurable.

…I once had someone I could call a childhood friend too. Unfortunately, because I lacked courage, that relationship no longer continued. It was the saddest event of my life. That was why I could understand her grief so well.

“Rei-chan… ah, I mean Reiji-kun. …We’d always been like that, but around the time we entered middle school, I realized that I liked Rei-chan.”

“Yeah.”

I gave small responses while silently listening attentively to her story.

“He’s pretty popular, so I panicked. I tried a lot of things to get his attention, even just a little… but it seems everything had the opposite effect. He said I was ‘clingy’ and ‘annoying.’”

“That must’ve hurt. If someone I liked rejected me like that, I think I’d be pretty depressed too.”

I didn’t know what exactly she had done. But I thought the way he had insulted her was cruel. Even if she had been bothering him, couldn’t he have said it more gently?

“And then… he dumped me… so now I’m here with a broken heart. Since it’s raining, I thought it was perfect. The rain would hide my tears. Ugh… ugh…”

After finishing her explanation, Jujoji began crying again. She said the rain would hide her tears, but it wasn’t hiding anything. Her tears were so large they rivaled the pounding raindrops. I could glimpse how deep her sorrow ran. Without a word, I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and held it out to her.

“Thank you… I didn’t know… Heartbreak… hurts… this much… Ugh… ugh… I just… I just don’t care about anything anymore. I want to disappear from this world.”

“I’d be lonely if you disappeared, Jujoji. And not just me. Everyone in our class would feel the same.”

“It feels like… there’s a hole… opened up in my heart… such an empty feeling… Sniff… sniff… If Rei-chan has abandoned me… what am I supposed to live for starting tomorrow…? Ugh… ugh…”

“Maybe… Maybe you could find something new to live for. Of course, you might not find it right away. But that’s okay. You can take it slow. Spend time with friends, talk with your family… Within those everyday moments, you might gradually find something.”

She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief, which no longer had a single dry spot left, and spoke again.

“…Kokonoe-kun, you’re kind. You’re even letting yourself get soaked in the rain just to encourage someone like me.”

“I’m only doing what anyone should do.”

“Then… may I rely on that kindness just a little longer?”

“Of course.”

She cried out loudly. She cried so much that it seemed impossible she still had that many tears left. Fortunately, her sobbing was drowned out by the heavy rain, so no one but me could hear it. I gently patted her head. I thought that for someone who had been verbally abused and left heartbroken, the best remedy was kindness to soothe that sorrow.

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“Whew… I feel a lot better after crying my heart out.”

“I’m glad.”

“Thanks to you, Kokonoe-kun, I feel like I’ve regained a little bit of hope to keep living. I’m sorry for the trouble… Achoo!”

Jujoji let out a loud sneeze. After being out in the rain for so long, her body must have completely chilled.

“Achoo!”

Catching her sneeze, I let out one of my own. At this rate, we were both definitely going to catch colds. We needed to dry off and warm up quickly.

“Hey, Jujoji. At this rate, it’s obvious we’re both going to catch colds. So I have a suggestion…”

“…What is it?”

“I live alone, and my boarding house is about five minutes from school. Why don’t we go there and warm up for a bit? Of course, I promise I won’t do anything. If I try anything, you can call the police.”

“Honestly, I can feel how cold my body has gotten too. May I accept your kindness?”

“Alright. This way.”

After somehow managing to persuade Jujoji, I took her to my boarding house so we could warm ourselves up.

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