My Sex Friend Is My Childhood Friend? - 42-43

Chapter 42: The Prickly Blonde Girl

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The convenience store in my neighborhood was the strongest… As in, it was seriously lazy. Probably the laziest convenience store in all of Japan. And now, that ultra-lazy convenience store had installed the ultimate slacker tool: the self-checkout machine.

As a result, after evening hours, one of the two registers was always marked “Out of Service,” and the other was “Self-Checkout Only.” That meant anything that required a staff member—like hot snacks, cigarettes, alcohol, or heating up bento—was completely off the table.

So customers holding those kinds of items just wandered aimlessly around the register area, looking lost. The clerk was never around. They were probably goofing off in the break room.

Recently, a new employee had started working at that store. And she was… Something else. She was a little shorter than Mahiru, a blonde high school girl. Just looking at her, you could tell she was the prickly type. If you spoke to her, she’d respond with a half-hearted “Yeah” at best.

When she had no choice but to say something else, she was even more standoffish than she looked. But she was undeniably good-looking. Her almond-shaped eyes were big and sharp, and her features were striking. And she smelled nice too.  Not perfume—something else.

I remembered that Scum Senpai once said that high school girls gave off some kind of special pheromones and honestly? He might be right. This was the scent that made you want to sniff her and follow her around forever.

Her nails were flashy, and her skirt was hiked up to just barely cover her thighs. …To be honest, I couldn’t believe she even got hired. Still, even as I complained, I kept using that store—mostly because there were no other options nearby.

One day, while I was walking home from the station, I heard a man and woman shouting.

“I did you a favor talking to you, and this is how you act, you little brat?”

“Shut up. Get lost. You’re disgusting, loser.”

The guy yelled, and the girl shot back without flinching. It seemed the girl got hit on and turned him down in a pretty sassy way. I was about twenty meters away. Honestly, I didn’t want to get involved with that mess.

I hurried up, trying to walk past, but then, the guy grabbed the girl by the hair and started yanking her around. Eventually, she must’ve been in so much pain that she grabbed her own hair with both hands—and was dragged down hard onto the tiled sidewalk. The contents of her bag, decorated with a small plush keychain, scattered all over the ground.

Her knees were probably all scraped up from that. One of her keychains flew off and landed near me. A rhombus-shaped one—printed with a character I used to like back in high school.

I picked it up.

This is… Ahh… I can’t walk away from this.

If tomorrow’s newspaper had a headline like “High School Girl Dies in Group Beating,” I’d never be able to forgive myself for turning a blind eye.

Tch. There’s no other choice then. 

I ran over and pulled the girl away from the man. The guy grabbed me by the collar.

“What’s your problem, huh? This has nothing to do with you!!”

His eyes were flaring, completely unhinged. He was shaking his knees violently and letting out weird screeches.

Well, yeah, I guess if some random guy suddenly stepped in, you’d react like that. Honestly, I could understand his reaction, but still… 

Is this dude okay? 

He was way too angry for a normal person. Was he high or something? Yeah. I seriously wanted to get away from this walking hazard right now. I yelled to the girl.

“Hey, do you have a phone? Call the police!!”

She looked around for a second, then took off running. Ah. She ran away…

Well, I guess that’s still better than the two of us getting beat up together.

Then, another guy—probably the first one’s buddy—came back. He had a tattoo on his arm, and something jangly hanging from his pants. He gave off a total delinquent vibe.

He must’ve gone to the bathroom or something. Still, his ability to jump into the situation was insane. He didn’t even know what was going on, but the second he got back, he locked eyes with me and started glaring like he was ready to kill.

“…The hell you lookin’ at? Die, asshole!”

Yeah, nope. I’m dead. My luck is the worst. I’m going to die today for sure. It’s all because of that stupid cursed rock.

The first guy punched me in the cheek, sending me crashing to the ground. Then he pinned me down, and the other one kicked me in the stomach. Thanks to the adrenaline, it didn’t hurt as much as I expected.

Then the first guy backed up a few steps. He got into a running start, like he was about to kick a soccer ball and raised his right foot high, aiming straight for my face.

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Chapter 43: I Saved a High School Girl

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A pair of boots—like the kind used for safety work—closed in on me. I braced myself for the impact, clenching my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut tight. If I was lucky, I might just lose a few teeth and not die.

At that moment—

“Stop it!! You two!!”

A police officer stepped in between me and the guys. Just behind the officer was the girl from earlier.

Wait… That girl…

……

Apparently, I lost consciousness after that. When I came to, I saw her face and chest right in front of me. She was leaning over me with a worried look in her eyes. Her long, slightly wavy hair brushed against my cheek and carried a soft, pleasant scent. The back of my neck felt warm and cushiony. It seemed she was letting me rest on her lap.

“You’re awake. Thank goodness.”

As I opened my eyes, she relaxed and smiled with relief. I sat up slowly. My head was still spinning.

Ouch…

When I wiped my mouth, I found blood on the back of my hand. I had a cut—painful, too. Noticing I was awake, the police officer rushed over. He asked about the incident and whether I wanted to file a report.

Honestly, it was too much trouble, and I had no intention of turning this into a case, so I declined to file anything. I just sat there in a daze, listening to the officer explain safety precautions and future guidelines. But I had something else on my mind.

That girl… She’s the one from the convenience store, isn’t she?

Yeah. No matter how you looked at it, she really seemed like that aloof, prickly girl. The girl seemed to be done giving her statement, and she ran over to me. She stopped right in front of me, bowed deeply, and then looked up with a beaming smile that was completely opposite of how I remembered her. And in a bright, clear voice—again, nothing like her image—she thanked me.

“Thank you so much for earlier. Wait, huh? Are you the guy who comes to the store?”

So this is what her voice sounds like…

I gave a small nod and scratched my cheek. Seeing that, she smiled again and continued.

“Ah, I knew it. Um, my parents would like to thank you properly, so… Could you give me your contact information?”

I gently tried to decline, but she insisted that her parents were really set on it. So, I ended up giving her my number. Right then and there, she added me as a contact in her messenger app. A request popped up on my phone almost immediately.

“Please approve it. And… is it okay if I call you Nagi-san?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Aoi Mimura. Mi from the ‘deep’ character (深) and ‘mura’ from the ‘village’ character (村)! You can call me Aoi!”

Mimura? That name sounded familiar. Not everyday I met someone with the surname Mimura with the writing Mimura (深村) and that keychain…. Could she be… Could she be related to the Mimura-senpai? The upperclassman who helped me in high school?

The world might be smaller than I thought. 

The police finished their investigation, and the scene was cleared. The two guys who attacked me were put into a patrol car and taken away. They were probably going to get a serious grilling back at the station.

I walked home slowly, dragging my feet. Then Aoi-chan came running after me. She was unbelievably friendly—nothing like the girl from the convenience store.

“Um, Aoi-chan? I’m fine now, really. It’s late, so you should head home.”

Aoi stepped in front of me, looking up at me from below.

“Since I’m younger, just drop the honorifics. Call me Aoi. Also, here—”

She handed me a bandage with some sort of cartoon design on it. Then she pointed to her own mouth, adjusted her bag on her shoulder, and waved as she walked off. By total coincidence, I’d ended up getting to know a high school girl.

And that lap pillow earlier… It was so soft and she smelled really nice, too.

…Nope, nope. Gotta stop grinning. I have Mahiru. If I so much as think about cheating, who knows what kind of curse that damned stone might unleash on me. How terrifying.

Then, a message from Aoi arrived right away.

『Thank you so much for earlier. Also… Nagi-san, you were kind of cool back then.』

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