[Sad News] Living Together with the Unattainable Beauty—Her Overwhelming Affection Is Way Too Calculated - 21-22

Chapter 21: Studying for the Test and Getting Closer

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

『The me who’s with you is so much more like me… This is the real me.』

Fujigaya-san’s words, heavy with that earnest resonance, had echoed endlessly in my mind for days. I still didn’t fully understand her true intentions.

But the slightly embarrassed, slightly awkward, yet straightforward smile she had shown me that day—completely different from the perfectly constructed professional smile I had seen on the magazine cover—felt like the real Kanoko Fujigaya.

The unavoidable fact that we lived in different worlds hadn’t changed. Yet somehow, even if only a little, even if just a few millimeters, I felt the distance between our hearts shrink. For once, my heart felt unexpectedly light and fluttery.

And then, mercilessly, it was exposed to its first real test: the first midterms since entering high school. Particularly math and English. Two giants that had stood as insurmountable walls in front of me since middle school. The moment I opened the textbook, despair set in.

Sine, cosine, tangent. Non-restrictive clauses with relative pronouns. What was written there wasn’t Japanese. It looked like some ancient civilization’s indecipherable incantation.

“Ugh… I don’t get any of this…”

I spread my textbook and notebook across the low living room table, buried my head in my hands, and groaned. Then, Fujigaya-san, who had been preparing dinner in the kitchen, popped her head around.

“Miyazuka-kun, how’s your studying going?”

“My progress rate is zero percent… I can only see failing grades ahead… My future’s pitch dark…”

I answered weakly, and she giggled softly, looking amused as she removed her apron.

“Well, it can’t be helped. If you want, I can teach you.”

It was like a Buddha appearing in hell, an oasis in a desert, a saint in the living room. There was no way I could refuse such an irresistible offer from her—someone so academically excellent and beautiful. No, I’d even want to beg her on my knees to do it.

And so, from that night, a limited-time, one-on-one tutoring session with Kanoko Fujigaya began. At that time, though, I didn’t know it would mark the start of a new trial for me.

“Okay? You don’t use this formula like this… You substitute this number into x here…”

We sat side by side at the low table, Fujigaya-san snugly next to me. She leaned over my notebook, peering at it closely.

Naturally, the distance between us was nearly zero. No, with our thighs touching, it was already zero. Her glossy black hair brushed lightly against my arm. Each time, my heart jumped exaggeratedly. The faint scent of her sweet shampoo stole what little concentration I had left.

My eyes were involuntarily drawn to her bare chest, now almost taken for granted in this house. And today she was in a T-shirt. If she’d been in fluffy pajamas, it would have been thick enough to hide the shape. But a T-shirt? No good—the outline was clear. I might already be doomed for failure.

“Here, you don’t understand the subject and verb in this sentence, right? The S is this, and the V is this… So the true meaning of this sentence is…”

She pointed at the English sentence in my notebook with her mechanical pencil. Those white, slender, beautiful fingers… I tried to follow where she was pointing, but my gaze kept being drawn to her hand and wrist.

Her gentle, easy-to-understand voice, so close, made my eardrums vibrate comfortably, and the lesson’s content went in one ear and out the other—like water off a horse’s back.

No…! This isn’t studying…! It’s torture! Ah… it smells so good…

I desperately recited the Heart Sutra in my mind, trying to dispel my distracting thoughts and focus on the abhorrent formulas and mysterious English sentences before me. Yet every time she tilted her head slightly, looking puzzled with a soft “Hm?” Her long hair swayed lightly, violently shaking my already fragile rationality.

This was a sweet, sweet torture in the name of test preparation. Would I survive the absolute death of failing grades? Or would my reason reach its limit first, in a completely different sense?

The countdown to midterms was also a countdown to the collapse of my sanity.

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

Chapter 22: The Reward Is a Head Pat

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

Hehe… so cute. Really, just so cute…

Sitting tightly together at the low living room table, it was just the two of us in our little study session. For me, it was far more luxurious and blissful than any dinner at a fancy restaurant could ever be.

Gen-chan, struggling desperately with math problems he disliked, sat next to me. To be able to watch his serious profile so closely… I could see, without a doubt, that his heart was racing excessively at my presence and that he couldn’t focus on studying at all.

Every time I leaned in to look at his notebook, his shoulder jumped slightly. Whenever I pointed to a problem with my mechanical pencil, I could tell he was holding his breath. Those obvious reactions were so cute and endearing that I wanted to tease him even more.

But at the same time, I noticed how earnestly he was trying. At first, I thought he was just pretending for my sake, going through the motions. But that wasn’t the case. He was genuinely trying to avoid failing, facing the numbers on the page with all his effort.

He groaned softly at problems he couldn’t understand. At times he bit his lips in frustration. He muttered tiny curses under his breath when he made calculation mistakes. Seeing that clumsy, human side of him made me inexplicably happy.

“Miyazuka-kun, this problem is an application of the formula from earlier. Let’s look at the previous page in your notebook again, okay?”

“…Yes.”

The one he struggled with most was quadratic functions. He had been wrestling with a problem about finding the vertex coordinates for nearly an hour. I patiently continued giving him hints.

Don’t give up, Gen-chan. You can do it.

And then, finally, the moment came.

“Ah…! I-I got it! Could it be like this?”

His face lit up as if a thought had suddenly struck him. Then, with an incomparable speed, he began writing with his pencil. A perfect parabola formed on the notebook page. He hesitantly compared his answer with the solution at the back of the textbook.

A long, long silence. For some reason, my heart raced too.

“…I did it! It’s correct! It’s correct, Fujigaya-san!”

His face lit up brilliantly. Like the sun breaking through the clouds. A completely genuine, childlike, radiant smile. It was the most dazzling, coolest expression I had ever seen on him, striking my chest strongly, deeply.

You did well, Gen-chan.

At that moment, I couldn’t hold back my impulse any longer. Before I realized it, my right hand was naturally on top of his soft, slightly unruly hair. And I ruffled it a little roughly. But with all the affection I could muster, I caressed his head.

“Well done.”

I suddenly snapped back to reality, startled by my bold actions. Did I go too far? Had I made him uncomfortable?

As expected, he had completely frozen. His eyes were wide, his mouth half-open, frozen like a statue. His face quickly flushed all the way to his neck.

But…He didn’t push my hand away. He simply accepted my touch.

That made me inexplicably happy. My chest tightened, sweetly, painfully. I relished his adorably flustered reaction, and emboldened, pressed his head closer to my chest as I continued to stroke his hair.

I could feel him holding his breath. But I wanted to savor that soft hair a little longer. This reward was proof that he had worked hard. And it was proof of my own tiny bit of courage.

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー