My Ex-Girlfriend Who Dumped Me, the Top Student, Is at Risk of Failing and Repeating a Year—but I’m Too Busy Tutoring a Former Shut-in Beauty To Get Back Together With Her - 30

Chapter 30: The Ex-Boyfriend and the Ex-Girlfriend

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Chirp-chirp. 

The chirping of small birds could be heard. The morning sun, filtering through the gap in the curtains, gently knocked on my eyelids.

“……Mnh.”

I, Minato Kashiwagi, woke up while rubbing my heavy eyelids. A familiar ceiling. It was my room. It seemed that after returning home from the fireworks festival last night, I had taken a shower and fallen into a sleep like mud. Even though my body should have been rested, for some reason, the core of my head felt hot as if it were numb.

“……A dream, huh?”

Right, it was a dream. Developments like those in a drama couldn’t possibly happen in reality. Going on a yukata date with a beautiful girl who had been a shut-in, being confessed to under the fireworks, and doing that…… and that…….

In an instant… The “video data of last night” stored on the hard drive in my brain automatically played in 4K high quality and at full volume.

『 I love you. ……I love you more than anyone else in the world, Sensei.』

『I love you, too.』

The voice of Kotone Kisaragi vividly came back to life. The sensation of her slender body in my arms. The sweet scent. And…

『Mnh……』

The heat of our overlapping lips. A kiss that was just a touch? No, no, don’t correct my memory. It might have been that way at first, but after that, I should have wrapped my arms around her back, changed the angle, and kept our lips sealed many times for quite a long time. As if begrudging even the time to take a breath, as if devouring her.

“…………”

I pulled the futon over my head and curled up like a pill bug. And then….

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

I screamed inside the futon. My feet kicked the sheets back and forth. I pressed my face into the pillow and struggled in agony until I was on the verge of suffocation.

“W-wh-wh-wh-what on earth was I doing!?”

(Be calm. No, it’s impossible. A kiss all of a sudden!? It was right after we decided to start dating, you know? Normally there are stages, like a handshake or a hug of the “I look forward to being with you” variety! To skip over all that for a first kiss, and such a deep one at that!? N-no, technically we did the hug on the night of the typhoon…… No, what am I trying to hide?)

“It was the atmosphere…… I was completely drunk on the air of that place……!”

The finale of the fireworks. The tears of a beautiful girl. The killer line. The conditions had been too perfectly aligned. It was more than enough for the dam known as my reason to collapse. However, the problem was what came after.

(Does she think I’m a shallow guy?)

I sat up abruptly and held my head.

(The other person is a high-born young lady, you know. She’s like the incarnation of the pure-hearted type. To go at it so aggressively—what if she misunderstands and thinks, “Wait, is Sensei actually a playboy who’s used to women?” or “Is he just after my body?”)

No, since she told me she “loves” me too, she must have feelings for me. But the possibility that she was disillusioned isn’t zero.

“……Should I apologize? Say, ‘I’m sorry my reason flew out the window yesterday’? No, is that too vivid and creepy……?”

I was holding a solitary reflection meeting on top of my bed. Even with a brain that had a deviation score of over 70 working at full capacity, I couldn’t derive the “justification for last night’s kiss” or the “optimal solution for the aftermath.” My romance deviation score was far too low.

At that moment…. The smartphone that I had tossed by my pillow vibrated.

“Hieee!?”

A strange voice came out of me. I looked at the screen fearfully. The notification showed the name 『 Kotone.』

My heart beat like a fast alarm. What did it say? ‘I was surprised by yesterday’? ‘As I thought, it was too fast’? Or ‘I’m going to sue you’?

With trembling fingers, I opened LIME.

『Good morning, Sensei (Stamp of a cat peeking its face out from a futon)』

……It was normal. No, there was still more.

『When I remember yesterday, my face gets so hot I can’t get out of bed. ……What are you going to do about this?』

『Sensei, you idiot. ……I love you.』

BOOOOOOOM!! (The sound of my reason exploding)

I collapsed onto the bed again while clutching my smartphone.

Cute. Too cute. From the text, I could imagine her similarly writhing inside her futon. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t put off. She was just, in the exact same way I was, floating in “yesterday’s heat.”

“……Haha.”

A dry laugh escaped me.

(What’s with us? Aren’t we two of a kind?)

I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling. I held my palm up to the air. I felt as though the sensation from when I held her last night still remained in my fingertips.

“……We’re lovers, aren’t we?”

When I put it into words again, the reality began to sink in. The fact that Kotone Kisaragi was my girlfriend. The girl who told me, after I was dumped for “only able to study,” that she loved me more than anyone in the world.

At the same time the panic subsided, something warm welled up from deep within my chest. It was a feeling of happiness, similar to a sense of omnipotence, that I had never felt before in my life.

“……I have to pull myself together.”

I slapped my cheeks and stood up.

(I’ve obtained such a cute girlfriend. I just have to be sincere and cherish her so much that she won’t ever think I’m a “shallow guy.”)

Besides, I was the one who declared “we’re going to aim for the top” to the girl who said “it’s okay if I can’t study.” As a teacher, and as a boyfriend, I had a mountain of things I needed to do.

I picked up my smartphone and typed a reply.

『Me too. ……Be prepared for today’s lesson. Once I see your face, I might get so embarrassed I won’t be able to teach.』

I pressed the send button. It was marked as ‘read’ immediately. While imagining what kind of face she was making on the other side of the screen, I opened the curtains with the biggest smile I had today.

The summer sunlight was dazzling. Our “first day as a couple” began right here and now.

＊＊＊

Meanwhile, around that time. Under the same morning sun, there was a girl who was welcoming a completely different morning.

Rina Aikawa’s room was dim. The curtains remained tightly closed, but the relentless light filtering through the gaps illuminated the wreckage scattered on the floor.

The pink yukata she had worn yesterday had been cast aside. Because she had fallen asleep exhausted from crying without taking off her makeup, her face reflected in the mirror had black smears around her eyes, looking like a panda.

“……The worst.”

A raspy voice came out. Her head ached. Her eyes were swollen. The memories of last night circulated through her body like poison.

The events at the riverbank. Kashiwagi’s cold rejection. And the dignified eyes of Kotone Kisaragi.

『You weren’t looking at Sensei.』

That single sentence was stuck in her ears like a curse and wouldn’t leave.

“……So noisy.”

Rina stood up unsteadily and picked up her smartphone which had fallen on the floor. There were no notifications. Not from Hasegawa, not from Kashiwagi, and not from her friends.

(Right now, I have no one.)

She opened the smartphone’s folder. In there was a two-shot photo with Kashiwagi that she still hadn’t been able to delete. She, laughing happily. Kashiwagi, laughing in a troubled way.

Until yesterday, she had looked at this photo and believed that “we should be able to go back.” But now, it looked like nothing but the record of a ridiculous clown.

“……I wasn’t looking, huh.”

She looked at the photo again. She was looking at the camera, keeping the angle where she looked the cutest. But Kashiwagi’s gaze was turned slightly toward her, and he had eyes that seemed to be worrying about her.

He was looking at me. He was being devoted for my sake. The one who utilized that, sat back cross-legged, and trampled over it was me. I had lamented that my “convenient tool” was gone, but the one whose contents were truly empty was me, who had relied entirely on the tool.

“……So uncool.”

Rina laughed self-deprecatingly. 268th place. No boyfriend. No friends. During the previous makeup lesson, her homeroom teacher, Saejima-sensei, had grumbled that at this rate they would soon have to have her parents come in.

(This is my status right now.)

If the her of a few months ago, who acted like a big shot at the top of the caste, knew this, she would probably foam at the mouth and collapse.

Her fingertips trembled. She pressed the 『 delete』 button on the screen.

Deleted.

The photo with Kashiwagi disappeared. With this, everything was truly gone. She was completely empty.

“……Haa.”

Rina took a deep breath and pulled her school bag toward her, which had been tossed into the corner of the room. What came out from inside were crumpled summer vacation assignment prints and textbooks that were still like new.

She tried opening them. A page for Math II. A list of symbols and numbers. It looked like nothing but an unintelligible spell. Until now, the moment she saw this, she would have dumped it all saying, “Kashiwagi~, I don’t get it~.”

But Kashiwagi wasn’t there anymore. There was no one to teach her. She had to do it all by herself.

“……I don’t get the meaning at all.”

Rina muttered while gripping her mechanical pencil. Her hand trembled. She didn’t even know where to start. Just looking at the first page was so troublesome she felt nauseous.

But… If she did nothing like this, she would remain a “miserable ex-girlfriend in 268th place” for the rest of her life. She would end up having been looked down upon (or so she believed) by that Kotone Kisaragi.

That, at least, she hated even more than death.

“……Just you watch.”

Rina declared to no one in particular. Lingering affection for Kashiwagi? She threw such a thing into the trash can. This was a battle to take back her pride.

“I’m definitely going to show you……!”

Scritch.

In the quiet room, the sound of a mechanical pencil lead rubbing against paper echoed. It was the sound of a small but certain step—the sound of a girl who had lived by leaning on someone until now, finally planting her feet on the ground for the first time.

Outside the window, a new morning had begun. On the other side of Kashiwagi and Kotone’s sweet story, another story of “revival” quietly raised its curtain now.

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