I Was Unreasonably Dumped By My Girlfriend And Had My Heart Broken. When I Rescued A Beautiful Girl Who Was My Former Classmate And Idol In My Class From A Group Of Yarisa, My Gray College Life Started To Shine - Chapter 52

Episode 52: A Long Night Call.

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To be honest, my days at home were quite boring.

Perhaps that’s one of the privileges of being a university student. Unlike high school, there were no assignments to do, and every weekday felt like a holiday sandwiched between weekends.

There wasn’t much to do except for some occasional cleaning of my room, which had accumulated some dust from disuse.

There weren’t many plans either. The only definite ones were the class reunion and the mountain climbing with Aoba.

The idea of meeting up with high school friends came up, but since we’d see each other at the class reunion anyway, it eventually got postponed.

But unlike when I lived alone, there was no need for me to busy myself with chores like laundry, cleaning, or cooking. My mother took care of those without saying a word.

Normally, things wouldn’t have been this way. If I had stayed holed up in my room, I would have been ordered to help with housework frequently, and during my junior and senior high school years, if I dared to play games, I’d be forced to stop after an hour.

She wasn’t the kind of person to spoil me like this.

But this time, I was allowed to lead a lazy life. For the past three days, I hadn’t done much of anything. Just eating and sleeping.

Perhaps my mother was trying to be considerate of me. The cause of this was undoubtedly the conversation we had at the dinner table on the day I returned.

“Are you getting along with Asuka-chan?”

“…No, we broke up.”

My mother knew we were dating. There were times when she met Asuka, especially when we rented a house in Tokyo, and she quite liked her.

But now, her son came back with news of a breakup, just a month after making the big decision to go to Tokyo.

My mother seemed to think I was quite down and tried to cheer me up. Thanks to that, my life has become quite comfortable.

Especially the meals. Two days ago we had shabu-shabu, yesterday we had fried chicken, and today we had roast beef. They were all luxury items that didn’t usually appear on our dinner table.

But it’s not like I was still feeling down. Thanks to Aoba, I had completely recovered.

“You don’t have to go this far for me.”

I tried saying this, but…

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Just take it easy. You can rest now.”

My mother wouldn’t listen.

And so, three days had passed.

Tomorrow, there’s a class reunion from my high school days, starting in the afternoon.

That night, I was lying on my bed early.

However, I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t moved much, so my body wasn’t tired.

As a result, I immersed myself in manga that I had bought during my high school days.

It was during this time that something happened.

A little while after the date changed, my smartphone suddenly rang.

And when I answered, I heard a voice saying, “Ah”.

“You picked up! Keito-kun, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I can. What’s up? Why are you calling at this time of night? Did something happen?”

I couldn’t think of anything in particular.

If it were about our planned mountain trip, we had already decided on it through messages, and I couldn’t remember any other appointments.

Thinking about that…

“If there’s nothing wrong, is that not good? I just wanted to talk.”
She said this with a slightly lowered tone, and its effect was tremendous.

Moreover, it was unexpected and came right to my ear, so it was frightening.

Cute. It made my heart race.

Various thoughts rushed in, and I felt like my bed was swaying with my heartbeat, but I suppressed them all.

“…Sure, it’s fine.”

But saying it like that made my voice muffled.

“If that’s the case, it’s fine, right? It feels like something middle schoolers would do, having a long phone call late at night!”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any sparkling past of talking with girls late into the night.”

“I don’t have one with boys either. It’s just that it seemed like that kind of thing.”

Well, I guess I can understand that.

“…Ah, if you were about to sleep, should I hang up?”

“There’s no need to worry. I couldn’t sleep, so I’ve been reading manga.”

“Oh, what were you reading?”

“A fantasy romance. I used to be into it.”

There really wasn’t any business to discuss.

It turned into a casual conversation about manga content, similar dramas, and nothing significant.

And so, the conversation didn’t end easily.

Since there wasn’t much to talk about, there was no clear ending to the conversation.

Before I knew it, time had passed, and it was around four in the morning.

At that point, Aoba suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, sorry. That’s right, tomorrow is the class reunion, isn’t it?”

Her voice was mixed with a yawn, clearly indicating how sleepy she was.

I was also only half awake. Because of that, I responded a little late.

“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”

“I met up with some middle school classmates yesterday. Among them is a classmate from your high school. They said they’re going to attend.”

I attended a public high school located on the outskirts of the city.

Come to think of it, there were a few girls from the same middle school in my class.

“Today, I talked a lot about you.”

“…Seriously?”

Well, that’s not surprising. In topics like “How’s university?”, we couldn’t avoid mentioning each other.

“Wasn’t there a lukewarm reaction?”

“Not really. There were other classmates who remembered you too.”

Then the conversation fell silent for a while.

It was already past midnight, and dawn was approaching.

I was hit by a strong drowsiness. The sound of a motorcycle running outside, probably a newspaper delivery, even sounded like pleasant background music. And then…

“…It would have been better if it were just me.”

I heard this.

But my brain, which was barely functioning at 10%, couldn’t understand what she meant.

“Yeah, it would have been better if it were just you.”

“Keito-kun, are you half asleep?”

“You too, Hikari.”

That was the limit for me.

My barely open eyelids drooped down. My consciousness swayed back and forth.

“You’re the only one I’m looking at right now.”

And so, I felt like I heard someone whispering that to me. It was probably a dream.

Yes, a convenient dream, probably.