It’s Too Early to be Having Newlywed Syndrome! ~Childhood Friends Who Rekindled their Love for Each Other ~ - 5 - 8 - Doing Things with Everyone Like This
- Home
- All
- It’s Too Early to be Having Newlywed Syndrome! ~Childhood Friends Who Rekindled their Love for Each Other ~
- 5 - 8 - Doing Things with Everyone Like This
Doing Things with Everyone Like This
When Naoto’s group of four people arrive at a burger joint in front of the station, Aki stopped in her tracks.
“Sakurako’s calling. Go ahead inside.”
Being told that, the other three went inside the restaurant, but in there a new problem arose.
“Nagatomo-san, will it be easier for you to speak if you’re beside Morita-kun?”
“I’m fine with sitting last, you know.”
Hatsumi and Makoto are being reserved to each other about the seating arrangement.
“Well, Ninomiya-san and Sasahara-san are friends, so if I sit next to Nagatomo-san will make things balanced. May I sit next to you, Nagatomo-san?”
Thinking that the girls might not want to be the ones to decide who shall be seating next to the guy, Naoto himself proposed the idea he thought was the safest.
“I see, you’re right. Then I’ll do that.”
Makoto sat beside Naoto without hesitation.
“I’m sorry, I forgot that Hatsumi-san and Aki-san are friends. It just felt like they do their own things in class and such.”
“I get what you mean. When I joining a group whose people you don’t know much about, it’s easy to make such assumptions.”
“When I was writing my novel, I was worried that the scene about characters meeting for the first time was too awkward, but first-time meetings does go like this, doesn’t it?”
Naoto asked Hatsumi.
“It might not be as bad as my experiences. I just said it earlier, but I’m rather shy around people.”
“Certainly, hiding my true identity while we talked on the phone might’ve felt like that.”
“Ah—, that was really awful Morita-kun.”
Hatsumi glared at Naoto while speaking with a voice that was different from when she was talking with Makoto so much so that it seems like it’s from a different person.
“Please forgive me.”
“Well, you did write me an apology novel, so that I forgive you.”
“What’s this about an apology novel?”
“It’s a story about the main character having to chastise the girl he loves until she sincerely feels sorry in under 100 hours, else that girl he loves will die.”
“Eh—, that sound’s interesting. Let me read it, Morita-kun.”
“Eh? I see no problem not letting you, but involves scenes of lewd things being done to the girl and the girl crying, is it alright?”
“You also write stories like that?!”
“Yeah. The one I chose to show to Tachibana-san is the most peaceful of all of my novels.”
“But, everyone of your reader’s read that, right?”
“Ninomiya-san and Sasahara-san read them.”
“Is it scary?”
With an uneasy expression, Makoto looked at Hatsumi.
“It wasn’t scary for me. Rather, I laughed when I read it.”
“Is it something funny?”
“The boy protagonist is cute, you see.”
While there were no other customers inside the store, Hatsumi spoke in a small voice just to be sure.
“Although he’s thinking of doing terrible things, he couldn’t quite do it well no matter what. Even when he undressed her with the thought of doing lewd things to her to scare her, when the girl rubbed him back in the stomach, he ended up trembling while saying ‘You can’t’. Being made to laugh even though he’s trying to scare the girl, he was at lost on what to do in the latest novel release.”
“Eh— that’s cute.”
“It made me think that being rubbed in the stomach felt that good for guys. I end up wondering if Natsuki and Morita-kun’s past experiences they recounted are just like that, which made my heart beat fast.”
“Certainly, that’s a very Morita-kun thing to do, right—?”
“Which is it, Morita-kun?”
“Well, I like stories where the main character gets dragged around and teased. It’s because those people are being loved, after all.”
“I’m not talking about that, what I mean is if you actually felt good just like in the novel.”
“That would be a secret between just me and Natsuki. I don’t want Natsuki to hate me, after all.”
“Eh— tell us.”
“No can do. You can ask Natsuki and I won’t have any problem with her answer, but you can’t ask me. It would me it hard for me to write the novel. I can only tell what happened in the past.”
“When I ask Natsuki, is it okay if I explain to her that Morita-kun’s writing a pervy novel? Like asking her ‘Did this happen in real life?’”
“It’s okay. Or rather, it’s perfectly fine for you to talk about my novel to someone who knows I’m writing it.”
“Isn’t it bad talking about that to Haruka-san?”
“There wouldn’t be any problem if you don’t go into the fine specifics about the contents. She was reading my essay back in middle school, so it must have occurred to her about my perverted side.”
Naoto, who was smiling until that point, made a difficult expression.
“What’s with that?”
“Whenever I explain it, I always end up hating myself, so if you really wanted to know, please ask Nagatomo-san. Anyhow, it’s a story that might make you hate me once you hear it.”
“I’m bad at explaining things so I don’t want to do it. I might phrase it in a way that would end up showing Morita-kun as a bad person.”
“Me being a bad person is actually true. I did gave in to my sexual desires.”
“That’s not right. I’m sure that Morita-kun just love Natsuki-san very much that you couldn’t help it, and because of that, you became a bit strange for a moment.”
“Nagatomo-san’s really good-natured.”
Hatsumi, seeing the two laugh, felt a bit relieved.
“So it’s not that really serious of a story? How did Aki and the others reacted when you told them that story?”
“Even though I told them they’re free to go home if they couldn’t forgive me for what I did, everyone’s really kind so they forgave me. Though I don’t kow how they really feel about it.
How about asking Ninomiya-san how she felt once she returns?”
The exact moment that Naoto said that, Aki entered the restaurant with Natsuki and Sakurako in tow.
“——Then, right now you are getting along well?”
Hatsumi asked Natsuki while eating her hamburger with sunny-side up egg.
“He’s a very kind person now, and he cherishes me as well. The kind Nao-kun will even pay for this juice that I ordered, isn’t that right?”
While telling a joke, Natsuki was untiringly pressing her feet against Naoto’s under the table.
“Eh? My allowance might not be enough to cover it.”
“Why? Didn’t you still have money in your wallet yesterday? So who are you financing?
“I ain’t financing anyone!
On days we have gym class, I don’t like going to school with too much money in me. After we had our gym class before, the number of coins I had decreased.”
“Did someone steal it?”
“The first time it happened, I thought it was just my imagination, the second time, I thought there’s no mistaking it. So now, if I have coins, I would hide them, or if they’re not a lot I would just carry them in my person. Doesn’t that happen to the girls?”
“Didn’t happen to me.”
“I haven’t heard of such a thing going on.”
Said the girls that met his gaze.
Naoto sighed.
“As I thought, nothing’s being stolen from the girls. It was probably a guy who did it. A girl would stand out if she returns to the classroom, if a guy say that he forgot something and returned to supposedly get it, he has all the time in the world to steal stuff.”
“Are you talking about the guys in our class?”
Hatsumi asked with a surprised expression.
“I’m just being suspicious of them though, mind you. Between the guys in class and delinquents who would skip class or be purposely late in class, it’s harder to expose someone who just does whatever they want.”
“I don’t like it, that someone from our class can do something like that.”
“There are lots of people who looks composed but are actually committing some kind of crime, after all. You girls especially, you need to be careful of those who would sneakily take photos of you or those who would blackmail you into something.”
“You also talked about sneak photos in your novel. I wondered if there are really people who would take sneakily take an otherwise normal photo of a person’s face. Do guys really do that kind of thing?”
Hatsumi recalled the thing she read in the novel that she found dubious.
“I did write about that a short while before I started dating Natsuki.
While Natsuki was dozing off in the bed, I wanted to take a picture of her. I thought that if I let her sleep at that rate, I would be able to take one, but then I thought that if I made her have another frightening experience, then all of her goodwill left towards me will be used up, so I restrained myself. I burned the sight of Natsuki’s sleeping face into my mind for ten minutes, then I became so moved by it that I held back my tears that were on the verge of falling, after that I called out to her saying that it’s dangerous for her to fall asleep in a guy’s room.”
“You’re tears went out that fast?”
“It was a sight that I didn’t think I’ll be able to see just a week before that, so I was so happy. And I thought that she might not go into my room ever again. Natsuki sleeping peacefully in my room, it was like a dream.
In truth I really wanted to keep her asleep, I wanted to watch her closely.”
“And I did ask you if you want to sleep together back then, didn’t I? If you love me that much, you should have confessed your feelings to me without delay.”
“If I confessed to you, you might get frightened, so there’s no way I could have done such a thing as to confess my love to you.”
“If I’m that scared of you, I wouldn’t have held hand with you, isn’t that obvious?”
While Natsuki was astounded, she stabbed a potato fry in Naoto’s burger platter with her fork and put said fries in her mouth.
“——It’s tasty.”
“When you held my hand back then, it did give me courage, but my confidence immediately dissipated.”
Sakurako, who’s been listening to Naoto and the other’s conversations the whole time with a smile, suddenly looked serious, then she leaned forward on the table.
“Speaking of, some strange information reached me through Aki. About Iida-kun being scared and such.”
“Aah. It’s not like I believe that that’s the case myself, but he’s behaving like he might be getting cold feet. If Hirose-san’s not opposed to it, I wanted you to tell Iida not to worry.”
——Naoto explained how Iida has a complex with how his eyes look.
“For that reason, when it’s just the two of you, I want you to tell him that you don’t think he’s scary, or that he doesn’t need to worry about it. Of course, it’s only if Hirose-san is not actually scared of Iida.”
“I’m not scared of Iida-kun. I quickly learned that he’s far from being just a gaudy guy, after all.”
“If you tell him that while walking next to him, he’ll quickly cheer up, I think.”
“Am I capable to cheer him up?”
“You can do it. That guy’s probably just anxious about not making things a bother for Hirose-san. Once he knows that his companion doesn’t dislike him, he’ll just be his usual self.
Well originally, there’s no need for Hirose-san to worry that much about Iida, so it’s okay if you just leave him alone, though.”
“No, I want to tell him. If Iida-san’s cheerful then Health Land will be more fun.”
“Now that you mentioned it, there’s some information about Health Land that I want to share before I forget it, as expected, there are rather many baths that are 40 degrees in temperature, so baths for people like me who prefer 38 degrees temperature and stay in the water for a long time might be few. I already added it to the list of things to be aware of, but relay it to everyone as well.”
“Isn’t 38 degrees kinda lukewarm?”
“It isn’t lukewarm, right?”
Naoto looked at Natsuki.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“In the past, when we go in the bathtub together, you would adjust the water’s temperature to 38 degrees for me.”
“That’s many years ago.”
“How’s the temperature normally at your house, Natsuki?”
“We set it to about 42 degrees? Our bathroom is quite old, so I don’t really know that well.”
“You wouldn’t be able to leisurely play trump cards with a 42 degree temperature.”
“Like I will do that.”
“Let’s do that. Let’s play concentration again, then we’ll let the cards to drift over the water so we’ll lose track of what card they were. We took the trouble of buying an expensive set, so let’s get that value we paid for by having fun with it.”
“My dad’s the one who bought that set, so Nao-kun has nothing to do with it at all now, do you?”
“Let’s not trouble ourselves with the small details, it’s okay if you wear a swimsuit, so let’s play trump cards in the bath.”
“Don’t you mean ‘I want to see you in a swinsuit’?”
“Well, yeah”
“You know, I don’t have any swimsuits though.”
“Let me buy one for you. It’ll be a present from me.”
“Eh—, do you know how much one costs? It’s quite pricey, you know.”
“If anything, I need to pay you back for the pizza and that boxed lunch. On that note, if everyone had a favorable impression of Health Land, then we should also go with everyone to the beach or to the pool.”
“With everyone—? Who’s the person you want to see in a swimsuit, Nao-kun?”
“No, I-, it’s just that the thought of going to the beach with just the two of us is frightening in itself. I don’t like the prospect you being approached by other guys the moment I’m not looking after all.
That’s why I also made it so that it’s not just the two of us, but everyone going to Health Land, it would put my mind at ease a bit.
If by any chance, there would be no problem arises with the number of adults in our group, then I’m thinking if we could go to the beach with the same members.”
“Them first, we need to make our trip to Health Land successful.”
“That’s right. That’s why I thought it’s important to tell them that there’s a lot of hot baths in there.”
“There’s also lukewarm baths, right?”
“Certainly. However, there was only about one of two of them, so there might be none anymore right now. At the very least, the number of baths that we can enjoy staying in for a long time might have decreased. A group of four friends will probably have difficulty in entering the same bath at the same time, so it will be rough for those who have aversion to strangers.”
“Ah, I see. So it will be difficult to go in a bath together.”
“Yeah, that. Most likely, it will be just like the time when me and Natsuki were kids.”
Makoto looked up at Naoto with a worried expression.
“I also like lukewarm baths so I might be moving apart from the group. Morita-kun, are you virtually an expert on lukewarm baths?”
“Or rather, this person’s only half an expert, with the other half being on pools. He really doesn’t like hot stuff. Even though he couldn’t swim he would enter a pool and will cling on the pool’s walls. I was worried that he might drown, so without any other choice I pulled his hand and trained him on how to swim.
Because of that, until Nao-kun became able to swim, he wasn’t able to enter the baths that much.”
“That’s a very Morita-kun thing to do.”
“You really like taking care of Morita-kun don’t you, Natsuki?”
“Right now, you’re giving Morita-kun haircuts, aren’t you?”
“Eh—?! This isn’t from a salon? That looks so cool, though.”
“Right? It’s looks cool—”
“It really suits Morita-kun.”
“It does. Natsuki-sans hairstyle really suit’s her as well. That’s awesome.”
While the girls are getting lively, Sakurako remembered the information that she found out today.
“Speaking of, this is something that I heard from Natsuki earlier.
She said the reason she doesn’t change her hairstyle is so it would be easier for Morita-kun to find her. She does it so that Morita-kun who has a bit of a poor eyesight would be able to easily distinguish her. It was because Morita-kun would also find it hard seeing her that she doesn’t dye her hair as well.”
“Eeh—, that’s cute—”
“So cute, what’s with that reason?”
“The guys also told me something similar to that. They said that that hairstyle is so nice.”
“I get what they mean!”
Naoto watched the girls’ conversation with a nostalgic feeling.
When I just entered middle school, I would join in the girls’ conversations and would here conversations just like this. If only I had been honest faster.
Those were Naoto’s thoughts.