I Chose the Plain Girl Instead of the Class’s Top Three Beauties, and Somehow She Became the Heroine - 70

Chapter 70: My Body Feels Hot

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《Hiroko Anno’s POV》

When I came home from school and was eating dinner, my phone made the grain of the table tremble lightly. On the screen were the words, 『Can we meet now?』 The sender was Sora-kun!

It was rare for him to contact me, though back around the school festival we used to message often. But it was the first time he contacted me on a normal day, especially after seven at night. In the room there were only the thin threads of steam and the kitchen light. At this hour, getting a message from him made a mix of surprise and a little confusion beat fast inside my chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sora-kun said he wants to meet now.”

“Go on then! Go!”

From behind my back, Onee-chan’s voice reverberated. She placed a teacup in front of me and smiled with just her eyes.

“Eh…?But it’s late.”

“Precisely because it’s late that you need to go now. You’re going to wear your scarf and switch to contacts, right?”

She saw right through me. I nodded and went to the sink. I set the thin, plate-like lens on my fingertip. One deep breath. Plop— and the world became one layer clearer. I brushed my bangs, adjusted the angle of the hairpin just a little. I traced a colorless lip balm across my lips, then put on a white knit sweater, a gray coat, and a navy skirt. A thin scarf adorned my neck.

“I’m heading out.”

“Have a good time. Should I come pick you up at the station later?”

“I think I’ll be okay.”

The sound of the door closing was surprisingly light. My footsteps melted into the night road. The shadows of the street trees already had their winter shapes, and my breath turned into white puffs that dissolved quickly into the sky.

The place we agreed on was the rotary in front of the station. Taxi roof lights blinked on and off, and the electronic clock at the bus stop showed “19:24.” The conversations of people waiting to meet someone bounced against the glass doors and turned round.

He was the one standing there first. It took me a moment to recognize that it was Sora-kun. He didn’t look like he usually did. His hair was lightly styled up, the nape neatly trimmed. His eyebrows had clean lines. His charcoal coat fell straight at the shoulders, his gray slacks predicted a clean stride. His white sneakers glowed faintly for an instant in the blue of the traffic light.

If he hadn’t told me he’d be standing there, I probably couldn’t have called out to him. But the quietness in his eyes was a quietness I knew.

“…Sora-kun?”

My voice when I called him was smaller than I expected. I wasn’t very confident. He turned toward me.

“Hiroko-san, thank you for coming.”

His voice was as calm as always, and just that made strength return a little to my knees. I wasn’t mistaken. But seeing him looking different from usual made my face hot. My chest ached. I couldn’t breathe right.

“No, um… It really suits you.”

My words stumbled a little forward. He lowered the corners of his mouth as if embarrassed, then lifted them again.

“Does it look weird?”

“It doesn’t look weird at all. Um… I think you look cool.”

Cool was a pitch my throat still wasn’t used to. After I said it, I felt heat spread through my whole body. The world through my contacts shimmered just a little.

“…I’m glad.”

Even though he looked incredibly cool, he smiled in relief, and somehow that felt cute. He lightly adjusted the front of his coat with one hand. That gesture was quiet, careful, and suited the wind tonight.

“Will you walk with me for a bit?”

“…Yes.”

We left the rotary and walked under the lights of the arcade. The amber light gently blurred the edge of early winter. When we walked side by side, our coats sometimes brushed, and only the distance where we pretended they didn’t touch remained between us.

“Sorry for calling you out so suddenly. I wanted to show you.”

“Wanted to show me?”

“Yeah. Today, I thought I wanted to change my appearance even just a little, so I got some help. That’s why… This is the proper me and I wanted you to see me, Hiroko-san.”

The winter decorations hanging from the arcade ceiling made a faint swaying sound. His wanting to show me was aimed at me, and that made me feel incredibly embarrassed. Somewhere inside my chest, a signal light clicked on.

“Um… I think you look really wonderful.”

As we walked, I said the words I wanted to tell him one more time. They reached him a little later than usual. As if he were waiting for that delay, he matched his steps to mine. We stopped at a traffic light. Red. Our shadows reflected on the show window across the street. His neck was a little long, his posture straight, the line of his shoulders clean. The lines of the body he trained and the lines of the clothes he chose today spoke the same language.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“A little, but I like how winter is getting closer.”

“Me too.”

From the pocket of his coat, he took out thin gloves.

“Use one. Even just one side.”

“…Half and half, then.”

Our short laughs overlapped in white breath. I took the right one, he took the left. Even though only one hand was warm, for some reason warmth spread to the center of my body. His glove was big, and maybe because he’d been wearing it earlier, it was warm. The warmth from the day we shared a scarf half-and-half connected right to this moment. The light turned green, and we started walking together.

Gently, he took my cold hand and slipped it into his pocket. That was incredibly warm.

“How do I look today?”

I was surprised at how straightforwardly I could ask for his opinion. He paused for just a brief moment to think.

“I thought that Hiroko-san keeps getting prettier, like a heroine.”

“…A heroine?”

“Yeah. You know how our class has the famous Three Great Beauties, right?”

“Yes. Kiritani-san, Hino-san, and Yua-san.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know until Akira told me. But they shine, and I get why they’re called the Three Great Beauties.”

“I think so too.”

I didn’t know why Sora-kun suddenly brought up the three of them, but it made a faint haze in my chest.

“But I think Hiroko-san doesn’t lose to those three at all.”

“Eh?”

“You’re just as cute and just as pretty. That’s what I think.”

We left the arcade and stepped onto a tree-lined path. The branches, nearly bare of leaves, sliced the streetlight into thin pieces and laid tiny lace patterns of shadow on the ground. Each step unraveled the lace and rewove it again.

I was too embarrassed to lift my face. I had never imagined Sora-kun thought of me that way. But the world through my contacts was clear even at night. The version of him standing in the meeting place, the one who wasn’t his usual self, was definitely new. But the fact that he told me he wanted to show me,  that was the brightest light tonight.

Before I knew it, we had reached my house, and he was already walking away. The clock in the nearby park pointed to “19:50.” It should have been only a little while, yet it felt like time had passed in the blink of an eye.

But I heard the signal. We were standing together on a night like the wings backstage before the lights came up. I wrapped my fingers around his hand, the hand without the glove. It was okay. I could see. I could see today’s him, and tomorrow’s him too.

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