I Reincarnated as a Mob Character in a Romcom Manga—After I Kept Comforting the Third “Fanservice” Heroine When She Got Dumped and Cried, I Feel Like She’s Started Directing Some Seriously Heavy Feelings at Me - Chapter 07: Side — Chloe Mitsushima ①

Chapter 07: Side — Chloe Mitsushima ①

I—Chloe Mitsushima—was, to be honest, popular.

Because my mother was from Northern Europe, I was born with silver hair that grabbed attention anywhere, sharp features that didn’t look Japanese, long limbs, and breasts and hips that were way bigger than average.

Basically, I had most of the things people wished for when it came to good looks.
I won’t lie—I was a little proud of that.

So yeah—getting what I wanted was usually just… normal for me.

Especially with boys.
All it took was a small smile, and they’d fall for me right away.

My looks—pretty rare in this country—got noticed, and before I knew it, I’d been pulled into the entertainment world, a place only a chosen few could enter. With my naturally competitive personality, my popularity shot up before I could even blink.

These days, no matter where I went, I saw magazines with my stupidly smiling face on the cover—half-naked and posing—multiple times a day. That was how far I’d climbed.

And yet—I’d never once imagined that I’d end up this deeply obsessed with a guy that plain.

Nayuta Yaohara.
The guy who became my once-in-a-lifetime first love—and the guy who rejected me.

At first glance, the only way to describe him was “unremarkable.”
Average looks, average ability—yet for some reason, he stirred my maternal instincts like crazy. A strange guy, really.

He didn’t treat me like a celebrity, even though I was a gravure idol at the peak of my career. He treated me like just another girl his age.

And honestly, it didn’t take long at all for me to start taking a special interest in him.

But that was where the suffering really began.

For someone so unbelievably kind that I honestly wondered if he might be an alien disguised as a human, he was also unbelievably dense, indecisive to a fault.

Because of that overly nice personality, even when multiple girls were clearly in love with him, he just kept drifting—wandering this way and that, never choosing anyone.

No matter how many times I made advances, he always responded with half-baked reactions, and my heart was constantly tossed around because of him.

And to make things worse—by the time I started falling for him, there were already two other heroine candidates by his side.

Unlike me, both of them had solid, well-rounded personal appeal.

One of them was brilliant in both academics and sports, strict with herself and others alike. Even though she loved him, she never lowered herself or tried to flatter him—she kept steadily working to be chosen.

The other was gentle, domestic, and warm. The kind of person who could take his hand when he was feeling down and listen to his worries all the way until morning.

Compared to those two heroine candidates, the only things I had—my overly mature body and the title of “hugely popular gravure queen”—felt painfully inadequate as weapons.

So I had no choice but to go extreme.

If I couldn’t stand out from the other girls by personality or ability, then I had to use what I did have—my position as a gravure queen, and this body that had grown a little too much.

I stuck close to him whenever I could, pressed my chest against him, showed off my cleavage, and sometimes even wore string-like bikinis I’d never touch during my actual gravure work.

I knew it was shameless, even to myself.
But I didn’t have a single other way to stay in his line of sight except by tempting him.

But—that way of fighting wore me down badly.

Every time I crawled closer, trying to overwhelm him, he’d always turn bright red, awkwardly look away, and gently scold me—saying it wasn’t right to tease a guy who wasn’t even my boyfriend like that.

I wasn’t teasing him.

I wasn’t playing around.

I was doing it because I wanted him to choose me.

But every time he rejected me like that—so vague, so gentle—my desperate feelings, the ones that forced me to put my body on the line, were brushed aside again and again.

And then came the final blow—yesterday.

After nearly a full year of “I want some time to think,” everything ended with a single word: “Sorry.”

He officially told me I couldn’t be his girlfriend.

That one word finally shattered something inside me—something that had already been scraped thin, worn down to almost nothing.

Even after trying so hard.

Even after shamelessly throwing myself at him again and again.

Even when people watching whispered behind my back, calling me a slut or a pervert—I could pretend I didn’t hear them.

No matter how much I tempted him.
No matter how hard I tried to be chosen.

Was it all pointless from the start?
Was I never meant to be chosen by him in the first place?

Then what was this whole past year even for?

I spun my wheels endlessly, got turned off again and again, and played the role of a miserable clown over and over.

And still, the goddess of fate never once smiled at me.

I thought I’d never be able to stand up again.

I even thought it might be better if everything that made me “me” just melted away into tears and sobs and disappeared completely.

But—

As I crouched there, beaten down by my misery, crying in nothing but shame, someone gently placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Just like how I couldn’t give up on living, you couldn’t give up on Nayuta Yaohara. You really believed it would all end in a happy ending. So don’t call yourself pathetic.”

When I heard those words, just how much was my heart saved?

That’s right. I wanted to be chosen. I really did.

No matter how miserable it was.
No matter how much others looked at me with disgust.

If, in the end, he had taken me as his girlfriend—that alone would have been enough.

He took in those desperate feelings of mine and comforted me with words that couldn’t have been more perfect.

We’d only spoken for the first time yesterday, and yet, strangely enough, talking with him didn’t feel painful at all.

To be blunt, just judging by first impressions, he was as plain as Yaohara—maybe even more so.

But his past, having once been so sickly he didn’t even know if he’d see tomorrow, and my own situation—fighting even though I knew from the start I might never be chosen—felt oddly similar.

Before I realized it, I had buried my face into his chest and was crying my heart out.

Because I was sure of it—that he would understand the misery and sense of defeat I’d been carrying all this time.

Despite being someone who was supposed to be strong-willed and fiercely competitive, that day, for the first time in my life, I laid bare my completely broken self in front of someone else.

I learned something new then—that pouring out everything you’ve piled up inside to another person can make your heart feel so much lighter.

The sadness and frustration inside me weren’t completely gone yet.
Even so, by borrowing his chest, I could tell that one or two of the heavy weights crushing my heart had finally been lifted.

When you’re weak, it’s okay to rely on someone—that thought felt unbelievably calming, and reassuring, to someone like me who had always fought alone.

And now…

I was lying on my bed in my room, staring at the LINE message he had just sent me.

《This is Reiji Jeromiya. If possible, I’d like to try eating something called karaage tomorrow.》

So he’d never even eaten karaage before…
That oddly impressed me, and at the same time, I started picturing a karaage recipe in my head—the payment I’d feed him tomorrow in exchange for listening to my complaints.

Normally I just microwaved frozen food and called it a day, but tomorrow, I’d wake up earlier than usual and make proper karaage for him.

“Hehe…”

I heard myself laugh softly without meaning to, and then sent back this reply.

《Got it. But you’re gonna have to work for it.》