I Confessed My Sexual Preferences to My Online Game Best Friend, and the Person Who Showed Up at the Offline Meetup Was the Cute Girl from My Class - 55

Chapter 55: Avoiding You Because I Like You

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At the beginning of July.

A piercing sunlight poured in through the classroom windows as if foretelling the end of the rainy season.

I—Kazuma Sato—sat in my seat, unable to turn even a single page of the physics textbook in front of me, staring blankly into “nothingness.”

……………… This is impossible. There’s no way I’m staying sane all day today.

Burned into my mind was the Saturday before yesterday. The torrential rain at the station. The internet café we had fled into. The cramped, two-tatami private room. The sensation of our fingers intertwining when we high-fived. Her trembling voice as she gripped my shirt and rested her head against my chest while she whispered.

『Is it okay if I widen the boundaries of being ‘best friends’?』

At that moment, my heart had definitely shattered the convenient framework of the word “best friends” and flown off into some unknown dimension. It felt like the warmth of her slender fingertips still lingered in the palm of my right hand, and deep in my nose, the faint scent of soap from her rain-dampened, slightly heated body clung stubbornly and refused to leave.

“—Hey, Kazuma. You’ve sighed ‘haa…’ at least three times a minute for a while now. …Did you eat something bad?”

Kaito, who sat beside me, leaned in with a genuinely puzzled expression. Fresh from morning basketball practice and pleasantly sweaty, I wondered how I must have looked to him right now.

“…Nah. …I just had an intense raid battle over the weekend. …My HP got shaved down too much.”

“Haha! You’re still such a gaming junkie. …Well, after that performance at the ball sports tournament, you deserve a break. …Oh. Speak of the devil! Here comes our ‘light’ for today.”

Kaito’s voice rose a notch. The classroom door opened, and at that instant, it felt as though the temperature of the room jumped several degrees.

“Morning! Kazucchi-kun, Kaito!”

Saki Ichinose entered with a skipping step. And right behind her… Smooth black hair flowing, a pale yellow summer cardigan, the “perfect beautiful girl” who made everyone stare. Rin Shinonome followed suit.

“……!!”

Every muscle in my body stiffened like steel in an instant. Shinonome-san chatted with her friends as she passed by our seats. Normally, we would either completely avoid eye contact to maintain the pretense of being strangers, or exchange a split-second glance only I could recognize and smirk at each other. That was our routine as the “strongest partners.”

But today…

“…Good morning… Kaito-kun.”

“O-Oh, morning, Rin! You look amazing as always!”

Kaito’s enthusiastic greeting echoed. Normally, Shinonome-san would reply with a poised smile and a “Hehe, thank you.” But just before passing my desk, she unnaturally shifted her gaze diagonally upward.

“…Yes. …Good morning. ……”

That was all. Her usually fluent voice cracked ever so slightly. And she avoided letting her skirt brush against my desk as if she were steering clear of a landmine, striding past in exaggeratedly large steps.

“…………”

As for me, during the few seconds she walked by, all I could do was hold my breath. Not only could I not meet her eyes, I felt that even turning my neck ten degrees would be the equivalent of a declaration of war against Rin Shinonome.

“Hm…? Hey, Kazuma. …Wasn’t that kind of weird just now?”

Kaito frowned as he watched Shinonome-san’s back.

“Weird…? What are you talking about?”

“No, Shinonome-san didn’t look at you even a millimeter. Actually, when she passed your desk, she dodged it like there was a bomb sitting there. …You didn’t do anything rude to her, did you?”

“—!? I-I didn’t do anything! I was just running errands for my little sister!”

“Haha! What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t suddenly raise your voice like that!”

I had raised my voice to cover my agitation. This was the worst. My poker face was completely falling apart. I thought I was handling things well in my own way, but right now, we must have looked either like an ex-couple who had just fought and felt awkward or a pair of teenagers on the verge of exploding because we were too conscious of each other.

During the break, I pretended to head to the restroom, trying to escape the hallway noise. But when I turned the corner, Saki Ichinose was waiting there with a sly grin.

“Nihihi! Kazucchi-kun, gotcha!”

“Whoa!? …Ichinose-san…”

She jumped on me from behind and grabbed my arm, refusing to let go. Her big eyes narrowed like a predator that had spotted its prey.

“Hey, hey, Kazucchi-kun. That torrential rain on Saturday was crazy, right?”

“…Yeah. It was.”

“You were running errands for your sister, right? …But you know, Rin-rin also went out that day. And when she came back that night, she was totally spaced out. Even when Saki called her, she muttered something like, ‘…My heart is lacking buffs…’ Totally incomprehensible.”

“………!!”

Buff.

The moment I heard that word, cold sweat ran down my back. That was a word she and I had shared in that sealed room.

“And this morning, the vibe between you two… You two had ‘we’re trying really hard not to make eye contact!’ look. Nihihi, it’s so awkward it’s hilarious. …Be honest, something happened on Saturday, didn’t it?”

Ichinose-san poked at my chest with her fingertip and leaned in close, blocking my escape. She didn’t know. She shouldn’t have any proof that we had met. But her perceptiveness was trying to reach the truth regardless of the available facts.

“…Ichinose-san. We’re just friends. Whatever you think happened over the weekend is just your imagination.”

“Nihihi! That’s a tough sell, Kazucchi-kun! …Fine, I’ll let you swim away for now. But if you’re the reason Rin-rin’s making that face, Saki’s going to support you with everything she’s got, okay?”

She patted my shoulder and said, “Ah, Rin-rin’s looking this way! Run!” before disappearing like the wind. When I turned around, down the hallway… Shinonome-san stood surrounded by the girls from our class, staring intently this way.

For a split second, our eyes met.

(—!!)

Her face turned red enough to boil. She raised the notebook she was holding to cover the lower half of her face. And in a way only I could understand, she blinked once. It was not her usual composed “Nihihi,” but she blinked with eyes so wistful they looked ready to cry.

『Kazu, you idiot… What should I do? My heart just won’t calm down at all…』

It felt as if her silent cry flowed directly into my mind.

Ever since that night at the internet café, what connected us was no longer just the pretty word “trust.” We had been infected by something hotter, something that wanted to monopolize the other. An exposed poison called “love.”

“…Pretending to be strangers: system malfunction, huh.”

I muttered self-mockingly and staggered back to my seat.

During the afternoon class, every time Rin Shinonome loosened the hair she had tied back and her smooth black hair cascaded down to hide her pale neck, the fingertips of my right hand kept tingling, remembering her warmth from that night.

That night… After I got home, I received a LINE message. The sender was, of course, “Rin.”

【Rin: Today, Kazu. You didn’t look at me even once. …I bestow death penalty upon you.】

“………………”

I started typing, 『You didn’t look at me either』, but stopped halfway. Through a screen, I could say it. But between us now lay the vivid memory of shared body heat, something that couldn’t be bridged by text alone.

【Kazuma: …Sorry. I’ll look properly tomorrow. It’s our little secret, right?】

The moment I hit send, the ‘read’ sign appeared almost immediately.

【Rin: Nihihi. …Yeah. It’s a promise, partner.】

My heart started abnormal combustion again from just that short exchange. Our days of being “more than best friends, less than lovers” had begun accelerating, under the hot July air, toward a place we could no longer turn back from.

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