I Just Wanted a Girlfriend, But Now I Have Three Fiancées! …Even Though I Don’t Remember Proposing to Any of Them - Chapter 02: I Drank Coffee… and Now My Childhood Friend Is My Fiancée

Chapter 02: I Drank Coffee… and Now My Childhood Friend Is My Fiancée

While I was still frozen in shock from what Mitsuki had just said, she suddenly glanced at her phone and gasped.

“Ah! Look at the time!”

“Time?”

“I have to get to school early today for something! I’m so sorry, senpai! I’ll head out first!”

“O-Okay…”

“Let’s walk to school together tomorrow, okay?”

And just like that, Mitsuki zipped out of the house at hurricane speed.

“…W-What just happened?”

I turned to look at the breakfast she’d made.

White rice and miso soup.

Plus tamagoyaki and natto.

Just your classic, proper Japanese breakfast. Nothing fancy.

“…It’s good.”

I took a sip of the miso soup and couldn’t help but say it out loud.

It had been a while since I’d had a real breakfast like this.

Lately, I’d just been munching on plain toast like some kind of sad toast gremlin.

“No, no, wait—this isn’t the point!”

Yeah, Mitsuki’s cooking was great. So good I’d almost forgotten everything else.

But that wasn’t the issue here.

“Mitsuki… she said we’re dating with marriage in mind… right?”

I repeated her words, trying to dig through my memories of yesterday.

But no matter how hard I tried, everything after I drank that coffee in the clubroom was a complete blank.

“Did I seriously get drunk off coffee and lose my memory?”

Getting tipsy from caffeine was rare—but not impossible.

And I was living proof of that.

Still…

“…No way that actually happened, right?”

I mean, come on. Let’s be real here.

I pulled out my phone and started googling stuff like “caffeine memory loss” and “caffeine drunk like alcohol,”

But nothing helpful came up.

Well, yeah.

Caffeine and alcohol aren’t even close, chemically speaking.

“But I did lose my memory, didn’t I…”

Which means… I must’ve gotten so out of it yesterday that I somehow ended up in a relationship with Mitsuki—

With marriage on the table.

“…Can that even happen?”

Mitsuki might be playful and a little mischievous, but she wasn’t the type to make something like that up.

If she said it happened, it happened.

“This is bad… Like, seriously bad…”

Even though I’d never been in a relationship before, I knew one thing for sure—

If you’re the one who confessed and you don’t even remember it, that’s just plain awful.

And this wasn’t some casual “Wanna go out?” kind of thing.

It was the “We’re dating with marriage in mind” kind of thing.

“…I can’t believe she didn’t think I was joking.”

If some adult said that kind of stuff, sure—maybe.

But I’m still a high school student.

And yet she took it completely seriously when I casually dropped the word marriage.

Lost in a spiral of panic, doom-scrolling through my phone like I wasn’t internally screaming—

That’s when I heard the doorbell ring.

“Who could that be?”

Maybe Mitsuki forgot something and came back…

That’s what I was thinking as I opened the door—

—And was immediately greeted by a massive pair of boobs squished against a school uniform.

Then came the short hair.

And finally, a ridiculously cute face straight out of an idol magazine.

It was a face I hadn’t seen in forever.

“…M-Mei?”

“You were taking too long, so I came to pick you up.”

She let out a sigh, like she’d been waiting ages.

Mei was a girl I’d been close with ever since we were kids.

But once we hit middle school, we started drifting apart.

Guess that’s just how puberty works—everything gets awkward real fast.

Still, when I heard she was coming to the same high school as me, I was seriously shocked.

Mei had always been super cute.

Of course she was popular—insanely popular.

Back in the day, it was chaos.

And now, even in high school, that hadn’t changed.

I kept hearing rumors about people confessing left and right, only to get rejected just as fast.

So… why was she standing in front of my house?

Just as I was asking myself that, she answered like she’d read my mind.

“Pick me up…?”

“We’re walking to school together, remember?”

“Wait, what…?”

Walking to school? Me? With Mei?

My brain couldn’t keep up.

It had been years since I’d heard her say something like that.

“Yeah, ‘what?’ That’s all you’ve got?! You’re the one who invited me yesterday!”

“D-Did I…?”

“Yes, you did! Don’t tell me you forgot?!”

Mei shot me a glare so sharp, it could probably slice through steel.

She never used to look at me like that…

While I quietly mourned the loss of our innocent childhood days, I scrambled to cover my tracks.

“N-No way! Of course I didn’t forget! I just, uh… just woke up, that’s all…”

“Hmph. Still not a morning person, huh?”

That “still” definitely referred to our childhood.

Back in elementary school, Mei waking me up in the mornings was basically part of the daily routine.

“I’ll wait. So hurry up and get ready.”

“G-Got it!”

I rushed back inside like my life depended on it, inhaled the breakfast Mitsuki made like I was in a speed-eating contest, and bolted back out the door.

“S-Sorry for the wait!”

“…Haru. You think you’re ready like that?”

Whoa.

She just called me by name.

It had been forever since I heard her say it like that.

While I was frozen in that little wave of nostalgia, she sighed and gently reached out to fix my hair.

“You’ve still got bedhead. Go fix it—now.”

“Ah—sorry…”

I ran back inside, halfheartedly tamed the disaster on my head, and came back to the entrance.

She let out a quiet sigh, like she was finally satisfied.

“Close enough.”

Uh… close enough to what, exactly?

“We’re going.”

“R-Right…”

And just like that, Mei and I started walking to school—together.

But along the way… we didn’t say a word.

It was awkward. Painfully awkward.

Standing-in-the-middle-of-a-family-fight awkward.

And to make it worse, the closer we got to school, the more students we passed—and they definitely noticed us.

So many stares. Way too many stares.

I wasn’t used to being in the spotlight like this.

Unable to take it anymore, I finally turned to Mei and asked:

“H-Hey, uh…”

“What?”

“N-Nice weather today, huh?”

“It’s cloudy.”

“I-I meant… it might clear up later.”

“…Fufu.”

Wait—did… did Mei just laugh?

That was rare. She never laughed like that.

“But seriously, yesterday really surprised me.”

“O-Oh. Yeah… yesterday…”

There it was again.

That cursed word—“yesterday.”

What the heck even happened yesterday?

Then it hit me.

If I didn’t remember, I could just ask someone who did.

“Hey, do you remember what I said yesterday?”

“What, are you testing me now? You, of all people?”

She puffed out her chest—seriously, those things defied gravity—and gave me a smug little smirk.

“Obviously I remember. You said you were coming to keep our promise.”

“P-Promise…?”

“Wait. Don’t tell me… you forgot?”

The air instantly dropped to arctic levels.

“N-No, no! It’s just—we’ve made so many promises, right?”

“…That’s true.”

Mei muttered that softly, almost like she was touched I remembered. Then she continued:

“Remember? We promised we’d get married when we turned sixteen.”

…Did we?

I searched my memory.

And sure enough, a few fuzzy bubbles started to rise to the surface.

Yeah…

That might’ve actually happened.

Maybe.

“But that was just a promise between kids, right? Besides, you can’t even legally get married at sixteen.”

“True.”

Girls could get married at sixteen, but guys had to wait until eighteen.

(Thanks, weird legal system.)

“That’s why we made a new promise—just the two of us. Since we couldn’t get married at sixteen… we’d wait until eighteen. And until then, we’d date.”

“…………”

What the heck was I doing yesterday?

Was I really the kind of guy who’d confess to a junior and then turn around and propose to his childhood friend like it was nothing?

I couldn’t even look myself in the eye anymore.

I covered my face with both hands in pure, boiling shame.

“Fufu. You looked the same way yesterday, too—face all red, flustered and adorable.”

That was probably the caffeine… or a full-on shame hangover…

“I guess I’ve only got two more years left with this name.”

That line hit me like a punch to the gut.

I clutched my stomach with my left hand, trying to soothe the imaginary pain.

“…What’s with that weird pose?”

With one hand on my face and the other gripping my gut, Mei casually tossed out a deadpan jab.