Can I brag about my very devoted wife to you? - Chapter 0 Prologue Part 1

Prologue Part 1 – I was reverse proposed by the most beautiful girl in school

TL: Chaos

ED: Riciel

It was a very cold February.

We were alone in my apartment, watching the snowfall when she proposed to me.

“Niiyama Minato-kun…! Will you make me… your bride, please?”

I couldn’t understand what she meant and thought I misheard her. But the way she stared at me, I could tell she meant it seriously, and the small hand clasped in front of her chest was slightly trembling.

“W-what are you saying-”

“Wait…! Please don’t say no yet…”

She stared at me with pleading eyes, and I couldn’t reply back. It wasn’t that I was trying to refuse her. Rather, the reason was that I didn’t understand the situation at all. I couldn’t tell whether the proposal was beneficial for me or had a catch. But she seemed to have assumed that I would reject her, and appealed to me with a desperate expression on her face.

“I’ve been cooking Japanese, Western, and Chinese food, and I’m ready to meet any of your requests! I also like to clean, so you can trust me with any kind of housework.! I also have a passing knowledge of DIY. It might come in handy in some way. And! I’ll also do my best to take care of bugs when they appear! I’m not very good with spiders, but I can put up a fight against them to protect Niiyama-kun…  I’ve taken correspondence courses in mental care, lymphatic massage, self-defense, nutrition, Chinese medicine, and even candle-meister! And if there’s anything else you need, I’ll learn it as well for you!”

[EN: DIY = Do-it-yourself: The activity of decorating or repairing your home, or making things for your home yourself, rather than paying someone else to do it for you.]

She sobbed and whimpered pitifully. Finally, after a single short breath, she tearfully begged me with a muffled voice.

“So…, that’s why…, please… Niiyama-kun, please… marry me, please…!”

“…!”

I no longer know where to begin.

Is this some kind of joke?

Or a punishing game by any chance?

As a person with a hardcore communication disorder, I couldn’t even smile back and just shockingly stared back at her with my mouth gaping open.

“For now…”

“Yes, yes!”

“….What’s a candle-meister?”

The room was so quiet that you could almost hear the snow falling outside the window. I felt like I was going to be swallowed up by the beating of my heart, which was getting louder and louder.

◇◇◇

With my unnoticeable appearance and average education, even my classmates would say “Niiyama? Who’s that?”. I wasn’t very good at communicating with people, which is probably why I’ve never had a girlfriend nor even a female friend. The only people I hung out with were guys who, like me, were lurking at the corners of the classroom. During break time, I would look at the back issues of Eiga Hihou and get excited about the zombie specials, and the girls would loudly say things like, “I don’t understand why the guys get so excited about zombies.”, which would make me feel even more annoyed.

[TN: Eiga Hihou is a Japanese magazine.]

So, I don’t think even God could have predicted that I, Niiyama Minato, would get married as a student in high school.

What’s more, the person who became my bride was…

“Oh, it’s Princess Hanae Riko!”

Sawa, who had been chatting with me in the classroom before the start of the fourth period, looked out the window and shouted excitedly. I had also been thinking about Hanae Riko, so I followed Sawa’s gaze to cover up my awkwardness. The April breeze sweeping through the open window smelled of young leaves.

On the ground, a group of girls who were about to take a physical education class was chatting. Usually, the class was held in two groups, and there were mostly about fifty of us in the class in total. However, Hanae Riko was so special that you could easily find her among the girls.

Hanae Riko.

She was a beautiful girl with light brown shoulder-length hair, large, lustrous eyes, a lovely nose, and small, pouty lips. And above all, she had a sense of transparency that would look great in a soft drink commercial.

From the time she entered the school, she has been praised as the most beautiful girl in the school, but despite her appearance, she had a reserved and rather quiet personality.

She was always surrounded by girls and giggled in a small voice with her hands over her mouth. She was smart and athletic, but she never boasted about it. That’s why she was liked by everyone. 

Nowadays, students of both sexes looked at her in admiration and envy, and there were many who added the ‘Princess’ title to her name like Sawa.

“She’s really eye-catching, isn’t she? Princess Hanae.”

Sawa muttered in a sincere tone as if he thought the same thing as I did.

“What’s that? Don’t you think of her as eye-catching? A girl like that will probably become a celebrity. Don’t you think so too, Niiyama?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s with that unenthusiastic reply?”

I did think of Hanae Riko as a cute girl. However, as a pessimistic person who was usually met with cold stares from girls, I now had a strong dislike for them.

“You seemed harmless, so I’ve befriended you, but you’ve misunderstood me and that’s disgusting.”

A traumatic line that a girl once had told me came back to me, and remembering it made me shudder.

After that incident, I began to feel uncomfortable with girls. To be honest, sometimes I even was scared of them. Even Hanae Riko was no exception.

Personally, I didn’t want to be in any girl’s sight as much as possible, nor did I want to get involved with them. If I were to accidentally catch their eye, they might look at me like somebody filled with dirty thoughts, or if I was unlucky, they might even slander me behind my back, making me want to crawl myself into a hole. That’s exactly the reason why I didn’t want to do anything with girls.

If you have this mentality, you’ll never get a girlfriend.

But I’m fine with that.

It’s not that I’m trying to be tough or anything, but I think it’s better to be alone than to try to get close to girls and get hurt.

I don’t want a girlfriend at all.

Even if I die without knowing the happiness that couples are experiencing, it’s fine as long as I’m living peacefully.

As I was pondering this, Sawa slumped his shoulders and looked at me with a straight face.

“…Hey, Niiyama.”

I’m not sure what you want from me by staring at me like you’re looking at some poor guy.

“Niiyama, you talk even less than usual when it comes to Hanae Riko. Don’t tell me you’re not interested in girls? Do you find them so unattractive that your interest in them has  withered away?”

“Withered?”

It wasn’t about whether I’m interested or not. I just didn’t consider it as a good topic. That’s why I tried to divert the conversation, but it seemed to have backfired. Being troubled by his words, I accidentally looked outside the window at the ground again as if to escape.

At that moment, for some reason, my eyes met Hanae Riko’s, who was the only one looking up at the school building – or so I thought.

“…Oh! Hey, Niiyama! I just made eye contact with Princess Hanae!”

“Oh! … Oh, right, good, good for you.”

Hanae Riko met eyes with Sawa and not with mine. I felt embarrassed to death for jumping the gun.

“No, but I’m really surprised. Because Riko doesn’t usually look at boys at all, right? It’s such a miracle…”

As Sawa said, while Hanae Riko was a quiet girl, she didn’t want to talk to men despite being very popular.

For example, In the early days of high school, there were boys who confessed to her every lunch break, but none of them were able to have a proper conversation with her. The third-year senior who was famous for his popularity, the ace of the soccer team, the captain of the basketball team and the rookie of the baseball team, no matter who challenged her, she always shook her head with a frightened expression.

The more she rejected these handsome guys, the more popular she became. Of course, to a man, she seemed like an unapproachable flower, but perhaps she thought it was better than being the property of just one person. Gradually, everyone began to think about protecting the princess’s quiet school life, and now there were no more people who would confess easily.

“No one will ever be able to win the heart of the most beautiful girl in school. In fact, it’s unlikely that anyone of the opposite sex will even be allowed to talk to her.”

Such a rumor had mistakenly been spread around. That was also the reason Sawa began to make a fuss just by simply making eye contact with her.

“What should I do, Niiyama? I just looked out the window and Princess Hanae has fallen in love with me at first sight!”

“… I admire your positivity, you know.”

“Is it possible that she likes average-looking guys because she has all the good-looking guys on her sleeves!?”

Sawa’s high-tension shout was so loud that the girls in the nearby seats all turned to look at us.

“What are you talking about, Sawa? There’s no way Hanae would like a sensitive guy like you. This is why guys are so unattractive.”

“How terrible. Girls are too harsh…”

Sawa’s shoulders slumped.

I, who was aware that my imaginations were stronger than Sawa’s, was also hit by a stray bullet and lost my vigor.

◇◇◇

– At least I’ll have a dreamy happiness waiting for me when I get home.

It was 6:30 in the evening. Even after a month of living here, I still couldn’t get used to the tension I felt when stepping out of the elevator on the seventh floor of my apartment building, which was a five-minute walk from Ofuna Station.