I’m an Introvert, but After Taking Care of the School’s Most Beautiful Girl Who Lives in an Apartment When She Was Sick, She Became Attached to Me and Started Inviting Me Over to Her Place! - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

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Kaon Natsuki’s POV

When I woke up, it felt like the world was different from just a little while ago. Outside the window, darkness had already fallen, and the orange-colored world where he had been was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a deep, hushed silence.

The quiet footsteps I had faintly heard while half-asleep, the gentle, comforting sound of a cutting board being tapped… No matter how long I waited, neither came. The dark room without a single light on felt cold, as if it were expressing my own emptiness. And yet, my body was somehow warm.

“…I don’t think I slept with the futon pulled over me… Did I?”

When I slowly sat up in the pitch-dark room, I noticed the warmth of the blanket wrapped around me. With a head that still ached, I focused on carefully organizing my thoughts. After warming both my body and heart with the rice porridge Suzuya-kun had made, I had relied on his almost motherly attentiveness and before I could properly thank him, I had gone back under the futon.

To be honest, even though I had recovered enough to walk, the fatigue hadn’t gone away, and every time I laughed, my throat tightened and I felt like I might start coughing. Still, Suzuya-kun had looked straight into my eyes, as if he had seen through my desperate attempt to put on a brave face, and he had given me so many words.

“Well, I’ll admit I was confused in a lot of ways, but I get wanting to rely on someone when you’re sick. For now, don’t worry about anything, okay?”

“Honestly, you shouldn’t push yourself, Natsuki-san. If you were feeling so bad you couldn’t even move properly, you should’ve told me when I rang the intercom! I would’ve gone straight home…”

“Well, if you say so… Anyway, you’re not completely better yet, right? Since you’ve eaten, go back to bed and rest. If you collapse again, I really will call an ambulance this time, okay?”

Every word had been nothing but concern for me. His polite, gentle way of speaking that was mixed with honorifics, still carried a slight awkwardness, but it was filled with warmth.

“…So then, maybe that wasn’t a dream either.”

At the boundary between shallow sleep and waking consciousness, when I had let myself drift there, those quiet footsteps had come closer than ever before, and he had gently draped a blanket over my body.

“…Haah… You’re too defenseless for your own good.”

Both the words he had said then and his actions were like mist about to fade away, yet they remained clearly etched in my mind.

“Sorato Suzuya-kun… huh.”

Honestly, I hadn’t known much about him. He was just a slightly long-haired classmate who was close with Natani-kun and Kudou-kun. Sometimes I wondered what kind of expression he wore beneath that hair, but it wasn’t like I ever went out of my way to talk to him. That was about the extent of my awareness of him. Even today, when I heard his name through the intercom, I had honestly thought for a split second, “Who was that again?”

And yet… I never imagined that in just one day, he’d become someone I couldn’t forget like this… I never would have thought that Suzuya, who didn’t have any prominent presence in my life, could shake something so large inside me.

Both of my parents worked, and ever since I was little, they rarely had time to play with me. I was often left at a neighbor lady’s house, and there were even times during elementary school when I stayed over there instead. I knew it wasn’t that they didn’t care about me. But it was only natural for dissatisfaction to build up as the flip side of genuine love from my busy parents.

I wanted them to play with me more. I wanted them to listen to me more. Those childish feelings that had sprouted back then hadn’t changed even now that I was in high school. I hadn’t been able to change them. I had always wanted someone to really see me.

In middle school, and even now, there were only a handful of people who saw me as Kaon Natsuki. In fact, I could count them on one hand. As for boys, it was out of the question. They were all people who approached me with nothing but words like “beautiful girl” or “beauty and brains,” dressing up their interest with compliments. I was already sick of seeing through their obvious ulterior motives.

But he was different. Or maybe I thought he was different. His reactions, his kindness, the way he spoke, everything about him clearly carried feelings of genuine consideration for me. Maybe that was just my own arrogance. Maybe I was feverish from my cold, overwhelmed by loneliness, and projecting too much onto him.

But… His kindness had pierced deeply into my heart.

I gently lifted the blanket filled with warmth and, carrying a faint sense of loneliness, made my way to the living room. The room was pitch-black, with no trace left of someone having been there just moments ago. And yet, when I softly turned on the light, there were faint signs left behind that someone had been here on the desk in the kitchen.

Among them, a handwritten note on a blank sheet of paper on the desk caught my eye.

〈To Natsuki-san: I set aside some rice porridge, so if you’re not feeling too bad, eat it whenever you want! The onigiri and energy drinks I brought are all together in the fridge, so if you can’t eat them, don’t worry about it and put your condition first! If you push yourself again, I won’t forgive you!? Everyone’s waiting for you to get better, yo~ (*^^)v〉

“Fufu… Ahaha. What is this… Your actual tone of voice is completely different.”

So unlike the calm, gentle image I had of him, the note showed a lively, almost childlike side. I couldn’t help but let out a small smile. The true nature of the words Sorato had desperately written was encouragement. So that even after he left, I could feel a little more energized. I knew it was basically self-centered to think he had done it because I said I was lonely. But there was no denying that this single note wrapped my lonely heart, just a little.

“Suzuya… Sorato-kun. I’ll remember it next time. Fufu.”

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