Vol 2 Chapter 5 – Confession【Vol 2 — Youth in the Midst of Calamity】

“I was actually about to head to your place, Will.”

Aria stopped in front of me, slightly out of breath. The air she exhaled turned white in the cold and faded away.

I looked at her smiling face and said:

“Oh. Well, I’m heading out for a walk right now, but Elena’s home if you need someone. See you.”

“Hey, wait! No, that’s not — obviously I came to see you, Will. So I’m coming on the walk too!”

She said that and latched onto my arm. I couldn’t help but scratch my cheek.

It had pretty much gone exactly how I’d expected, but hearing it said that directly still left a faint, embarrassing warmth in my chest. This kind of thing — I never got used to it, no matter how much time passed. Was experience really irrelevant here? I genuinely wasn’t sure…

And so, just like always, I ended up walking with her by my side, swept along without any real decision being made.

◯

Something was off about Aria.

It didn’t take long to notice.

The same path as always. And yet Aria, who normally plastered herself to me without a care in the world and chanted “I like you” and “I love you” like a broken record, was instead trailing a half-step behind me, oddly quiet — almost reserved.

I glanced back to check on her. Our eyes met.

Whether it was the cold or embarrassment — probably both — her cheeks were flushed red. When our eyes met, she moved her lips like she was about to say something, but in the end she looked away.

…This is throwing me off.

The silence stretched on. It was awkward in a way it almost never was with her. We’d never really had a strange silence like this between us…

Did I do something…? Come to think of it, Elena was acting weird earlier too…

This walk was supposed to clear my head, and instead I’d just picked up a new headache.

“Ahh…”

The sound slipped out before I could stop it. I raked a hand through my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I checked on Aria again — she was staring at the ground, muttering something under her breath. Lost in her own thoughts.

I stopped walking, and a light impact hit me in the back.

“Mmpff—”

Aria looked up at me, one hand pressed to her nose, eyes a little watery.

“Gosh, Will, don’t just stop like that! What is it?”

“I should be the one asking that. What’s going on? You haven’t been yourself back there.”

“Eep.”

She actually said the word out loud. Aria started to look away, but caught herself right at the edge and held my gaze, tilting her face up to look at me from just below eye level.

Something about that gesture looked unexpectedly… alluring compared to her usual self, and for a moment I was the one about to look away.

“…”

“…”

The silence settled back in.

Just as I was about to say something — anything — to break it:

“U-um… hey, Will.”

Aria’s voice came out a little louder than expected, and it caught me completely off guard.

“Yeah, what?”

“Will… today is your birthday, right?”

“……………?”

…

………

…………Oh.

Right. Today is my birthday!!

Fifteen years ago to this day. The day I died and was reborn.

I’d completely forgotten. At this point in life, birthdays had a way of losing their urgency, and it had simply slipped my mind.

With that firmly back in my head, I looked at Aria, who was watching me with a careful, tentative expression.

“Oh… yeah, you’re right. So?”

Maybe she has a present for me. The thought crept in before I could stop it, and I couldn’t honestly deny that some part of me was hoping.

“See, the thing is… I’ve been thinking for ages about what to get you for your birthday.”

Aria fidgeted, looking at me shyly.

“But I wanted it to be something really good, because it’s for you, Will, so I got stuck… and just couldn’t decide…”

She trailed off, rummaged around in the bag she was carrying, and pulled something out.

It appeared to be a scarf.

“In the end, this was all I actually managed to prepare.”

“Oh, thanks, Aria.”

“Wait!”

“…Hm?”

I’d reached out to take the scarf when she pulled it back a step.

I blinked and looked at her.

Aria clutched the scarf to her chest, hugging it tightly, her face going red.

“What I had in mind wasn’t just this. Not something like this at all. Something more… what I actually want to give you.”

“…?”

“…Will, today is your birthday, right?”

Why is she asking me that again all of a sudden… Aria was the one who’d remembered it in the first place, while I, the person whose birthday it actually was, had forgotten entirely. I didn’t really understand why she needed confirmation, but I nodded.

“Right. Which means… Will can get married now, can’t he?”

“————”

In that instant —

As I looked at Aria, who tilted her head with an uncharacteristically earnest expression and gazed up at me, a bolt of lightning shot straight through my brain.

I understood exactly what was about to happen.

I wasn’t oblivious, not even slightly. If anything, back in my previous life I’d been the sensitive type — the kind who’d convince himself that a girl was into him just because she talked to him. That particular stretch of memories was deep in black-history territory and I’d rather not dig it up, but…

Anyway. The issue at hand was what was right in front of me —

“Will. I like you.”

“…Ah, uh, yeah, I kind of knew that—”

Wait. Wait, wait. Did I just say something stupid?

That response had just implied I already knew how Aria felt — which would expose the fact that the whole “oblivious” act I’d been pulling was exactly that, an act.

But Aria seemed to interpret it differently, because —

“No, it’s not like that. I know I always say stuff like ‘I like you’ and ‘I love you’ all the time, so maybe it seems like it doesn’t mean much… but this is real. This isn’t the kind of ‘I like you’ that means we’re childhood friends and I’m used to you. …You might not have known, Will, but I… I love you so much I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you.”

…Well. I knew that too.

Not that I’d ever say something that tactless out loud.

This was a problem.

I’d braced myself somewhere in the back of my mind for the possibility that a moment like this would come eventually — but I hadn’t expected it to land this suddenly.

Aria, apparently mistaking my shock for the impact of a surprise confession, took one small step back from me.

“Sorry for being so sudden. You’re surprised, right…?”

“…A-ah. Yeah.”

Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on. What do I do.

This was nothing like the situation with Elena, where I could keep “marriage” and “like” separate in my head.

“I’d do anything for you, Will. If it means being with you, I can do anything. That’s how much I love you. That’s how much I want you.”

Face burning red, Aria couldn’t seem to stop the words from pouring out, one declaration after another.

And with those words hitting me head-on, my face was equally red — that much I could confirm.

“Ahaha, Will, your face is so red…? Mine too, though…”

Ah. She’s cute.

That thought came to me on pure reflex at the sight of Aria pressing her hands against her flushed cheeks.

No, no, no. That’s not the point right now. The question is what to do about this situation.

“But I’m so happy… that Will is getting flustered over my feelings… just that alone is… so, so happy. …………If you’d shown no reaction at all, I think I might’ve killed myself.”

Aria laughed, still red-faced, with a small “eheh.”

— That’s not funny!!

There was a very real pattern with Aria of acting on her most genuine impulses, no matter how extreme they got.

While my brain was spinning faster than it ever had before, Aria had somehow closed the distance and was standing right in front of me. A few centimeters closer and our noses would touch.

“Will… I like you. Like you, like you, like you, God I like you, I love you so much, I don’t know what to do with myself… okay, Will? Do you get it?”

Do you get it? she asked — but before I could answer, Aria sealed my lips with hers again.

She wrapped her arms around me and held tight. There was nowhere to go.

My brain couldn’t keep up with the sudden ambush and had essentially stopped functioning.

“…Mmm— anyway, Will… the thing is, I spent so long trying to figure out what to get you for your birthday, and in the end all I could actually prepare was this scarf.”

“…W-what, uh—”

“But there’s something else I can give you right now.”

Still holding me with both arms around my back, Aria drew her face away just enough to speak.

As for me — I was completely, utterly flustered.

“Will said just now that he likes me, right?”

“…Ah, well, but—”

“You said it, right?”

“…Y-yeah.”

“Really? Really, truly?”

“…Y-yeah.”

“Ahh, I’m so happy… that Will felt that way about me… ahh, I feel like I’m going to lose my mind…”

With a dreamy, dazed expression, Aria ran her tongue slowly over her already-moist lips. For some reason I instinctively tried to pull back — but with her arms wrapped around me, there was nowhere to go.

“Ah, wait, Will. Calm down… I’m just as embarrassed, trust me… yeah, same, okay? Ehehe. Ahh, Will, I love you so much.”

In that instant, a sudden weightlessness came over my body. I only registered that Aria had pushed me down when my back hit the hard ground.

She kissed me again.

A length of time passed that could have been minutes or hours — hopelessly vague and impossibly long — before Aria finally lifted her lips from mine.

The position hadn’t changed at all. She was still on top of me.

“For your birthday present, Will… I mean, only if you want it, of course… I wanted to give you myself.”

“…What… does that…”

“Exactly what it sounds like. If Will is willing to accept it, from that moment on, I’m Will’s and Will’s alone. But in return, I want Will to be mine and mine alone. Will might love Sophia-chan and Elena-chan too, but… I want all of that set aside — and I want Will to say he loves me and only me. …Will… what do you think?”

Haa, haa — a warm, ragged breath reached me in an unbroken stream. Between each exhale, Aria’s voice came to me in quiet, earnest, heat-soaked fragments.

That voice, sweet and burning, carried its warmth all the way into my ear and further still — until something inside my head started to feel hot too.

My mind went blank. Hazy.

Put plainly: my reason was approaching its limit.

Something close to this had happened once before with Sophia Onee-san, but unlike that time, the only thing restraining me now was my own willpower, and nothing else.

“…Aria.”

I reached up and touched her cheek. It was startlingly warm. Which meant she was just as nervous as she appeared.

“Will… hey, do you like me?”

She whispered it, and then closed her eyes, her face drawing slowly toward mine.

Her soft, pale-pink lips came closer, and closer, and closer still —

And then, I —