After I Confessed to My Childhood Friend and Got Rejected, I Threw a Game Offline Meetup to Cheer Myself Up, Only to Find Out My Long-Time Gaming Buddy Was Actually the Quiet, Silver-Haired Swedish Beauty Who's the Cutest Girl in School - Chapter 11: Visiting the House of a Super Extrovert

Chapter 11: Visiting the House of a Super Extrovert

Can a person really change that easily?

Maybe body shape could be fixed with effort.

But the face is impossible to change.

It is decided from birth whether someone is handsome or not.

Here, you have no choice but to give up to God’s whim.

In front of the mirror in the boys’ restroom, Amamiya brushed up his bangs.

(Yeah, it does not look good.)

It was a face that Karina had called “cute,” but he would rather hear “handsome.”

He absolutely wanted to avoid having a baby face even as an adult.

“I want to become as cool and manly as Ken the Fist from Fist of the North Star…”

He put strength into his arm and checked the bulge of his biceps.

–It is small.

Since he was an indoor type with no connection to weight training, it was only natural.

He might start training from now on. But he did not know where to begin.

Even if he started, he had no confidence in keeping it up.

“Sigh… I am the type who does not last long and gives up.”

Amamiya imagined his future self.

In his twenties, holed up in his room, wearing a creepy smile as he immersed himself in games, the NEET Amamiya Takaaki.

(No way, no way! I have to avoid that at all costs!!)

“You, you have been doing something funny for a while now.”

“Hya aaaaaah!?”

Addressed from behind, Amamiya let out a pathetic scream.

“K-Kumagai…!?”

“You always mumble when you talk, but you sure let out a loud voice. You have a play coming up soon or something?”

The blond playboy who sat in the seat in front of him, Kumagai Toshimitsu.

Contrary to his name like a warrior general, he was a typical young guy, and for some reason lately he had started picking on Amamiya.

It had been since before he became friends with Karina, around the time he got rejected by Tojo.

“No, this is… um.”

Amamiya’s face looked like he was about to cry as he struggled to come up with an excuse.

But Kumagai just placed a hand lightly on his shoulder.

“I get it. You are worrying about your looks, right?”

Sharp!

Amamiya felt shocked inside.

No, anyone would think that if he stared at himself in the mirror for twenty minutes.

“You are probably thinking something like ‘your face is decided from the moment you are born,’ right?”

No, this guy might be as sharp as his little sister Anna.

Amamiya, who had given up, raised a white flag in his mind.

“That is right. There are as many people as stars who cannot change their faces no matter how hard they try. If you pay a fortune for plastic surgery, that is a different story. That is one of the choices too.”

Amamiya quietly listened as Kumagai spoke in an uncharacteristically serious tone.

“But listen, not everything others expect from you has to be about your face. No matter how good-looking you are, if your personality sucks, I pass. Well, there are guys who are not like that, but if you really want to be happy, I choose the former.”

“W-What… about things other than face…”

“…Then, hey.”

Kumagai removed his hand from Amamiya’s shoulder and pointed toward the hallway.

“Come to my house.”

Amamiya was stunned by the sudden suggestion.

It was not like he had no friends, but he had never once gone to a friend’s house.

On top of that, the one inviting him was Kumagai, the ace of the soccer club who ruled at the top of the school caste.

For Amamiya, who had lived in a world unrelated to this guy surrounded by girls who fawned over him and his flashy friends, it was a shock on the level of when he met Karina.

“Hm? It is not like I am forcing you. I just thought I might give you some various advice.”

“A-A-A-A.”

Karina had been asked by a friend to “please walk home together no matter what,” so the visit to the game research club had been postponed to another day.

Amamiya’s head was in confusion as he tried various things, but he reached the conclusion that if he seriously wanted to change, he should use a popular person close by as a reference.

“I will go!”

“See, you can raise your voice after all.”

The introverted Amamiya ended up visiting the house of the super extroverted Kumagai to get some advice.

———

“Onii-chan, welcome home–!”

“Welcome back–!”

“Aniki–!”

“Big bro!”

Kumagai’s house was a small, rundown single-story home.

As soon as he entered the entryway, three boys and one girl came rushing out to greet him all at once.

The inside of the house was cramped, and it was obviously too small for so many people to live in.

“Yeah, I am home. You guys–.”

“Huh, who is that guy!?”

“Who–!?”

Behind Kumagai stood Amamiya, looking like he might collapse any moment.

It was his first time entering a house that was not his relatives’ or childhood friends’, and he was tense to the point of death.

The children approached the suspicious-looking Amamiya with full curiosity.

“Hm? He is a buddy, my buddy~.”

“B-Buddy…”

Hearing “friend” said so naturally, Amamiya’s face showed disbelief.

(Since when did we get that close!?)

“Buddy! Buddy!”

“Play with us!”

The children, with mouths bad for their age, climbed onto his arms and shoulders.

While confused, Amamiya supported them so they would not fall to the floor and entered the house.

“Sorry, Amamiya. I am going to make dinner now, so can you play with those guys in the meantime?”

Kumagai, who had put on an apron hanging on the wall, said it apologetically and disappeared into the back of the living room without waiting for a reply.

Amamiya, who was not used to children, backed away in front of the kids whose eyes gleamed.

“Play, play.”

“Play with us–.”

They circled behind him and blocked his escape.

Amamiya, who had fallen into a “checkmate” state like in shogi, let out a pathetic voice in front of the approaching children.

“Gya aaaaaah!?”

It goes without saying that until dinner was ready, Amamiya became the children’s plaything.

When Kumagai returned carrying the food, instead of being surprised, he smiled warmly at the sight of Amamiya sprawled on the floor like a ragged cloth.