[Sad News] Living Together with the Unattainable Beauty—Her Overwhelming Affection Is Way Too Calculated - 29-30

Chapter 29: That Guy Is Miyazuka-kun, Right? (Misaki Tanaka’s POV)

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My name was Misaki Tanaka. I was just a plain otaku girl, always living as if I were holding my breath in the farthest corner seat of Class 1-3, in this flashy and noisy high school.

I was someone with thick black-rimmed glasses, two neatly braided pigtails and a hunched back radiating gloomy aura.

During breaks, I never spoke to anyone. I either read a slightly obscure isekai reincarnation light novel at my desk or doodled little chibi sketches of my favorite characters in the corner of my notebook. That was my boring, peaceful daily life.

I hadn’t even memorized half the faces and names of my classmates. Surely nobody even noticed I existed. Air. That was my standing in this classroom. And yet, even in my colorless days, there was one person in class who caught my eye.

Genji Miyazuka-kun.

He was one of “our kind,” just like me. I always secretly listened from afar when he talked happily with his friends in the corner of the classroom.

He laughed at the same late-night anime I did. He got fired up over the same light novels I did.  He was obsessed with the same games I was.

Without permission, I felt a one-sided sense of closeness with him. I thought of him as one of the few “comrades” who shared my world.

But, of course, I never had the courage to speak to him. Unlike me, he had fun friends to talk to about all those things. And for some reason, he often spent time with the class’s brightest, most radiant girl—Fujigaya-san.

Fujigaya-san was a well-known reader model who appeared in magazines. She lived in a world that was a completely different dimension from mine. Miyazuka-kun and Fujigaya-san. When the two of them stood together, it looked like another world entirely, one where I had no place to step in.

So I was content just watching him from afar. That was enough.

…Or so I thought, until that day.

That day, the classroom door slid open, and Miyazuka-kun entered while greeting us in the morning. I doubted the lenses of my thick glasses.

…Eh? Wh-who’s that person…?

For a moment I thought some stranger from another class had walked in by mistake. But when I looked closer, there was no doubt about it—it was Miyazuka-kun.

His hair was different. It usually stuck out in every direction due to his bedhead, but today it was casually styled, almost fluffy, in a fashionable way.

His clothes felt different too. The shirt peeking out from under his uniform wasn’t stretched-out or wrinkled like usual. That alone made him look surprisingly neat. And his back, which usually slouched a little, somehow looked straighter today.

He was just gazing absently out the window and yet, his profile looked strangely refined, almost grown-up. My quiet heart gave a small but certain thump.

The boy I had always seen as a “fellow kind” suddenly appeared before my eyes as a “boy.” During break time, he was laughing with his friends. That smile looked far more attractive than usual. Fujigaya-san spoke to him. He still looked a little nervous, but unlike before, he didn’t run away.

…Miyazuka-kun has changed.

That small but undeniable change gave my timid heart just a little courage. The transparent wall between us, one I thought I could never cross… It suddenly seemed just a little lower. Or maybe I had finally started preparing myself to climb over it.

Maybe… Maybe I could talk to him, too…

Inside my chest, a tiny bud of hope began to swell. Of course, I could never become someone dazzling like Fujigaya-san, who shone like the sun. But still. There was this one thing we had in common—liking the same things.

If I use that as my weapon…

I took a newly purchased light novel out of my bag. It was the latest volume of a slightly niche dark fantasy series—one I was sure he was also reading.

I will use this as my chance.

After school, if I had the opportunity, I would gather my courage and try speaking to him. As I made that decision, my hand grew damp with nervous sweat. It felt like the gray monotony of my daily life was beginning, just slightly, to take on color.

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Chapter 30: Talking About Anime with Tanaka-san

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I adjusted my hairstyle a little, changed the T-shirt under my dress shirt to a plain one without anime illustrations, and made an effort to keep from slouching. Just those small, really trivial changes and yet, the world looked completely different.

No—strictly speaking, it wasn’t the world that changed. It was the way people looked at me that had clearly changed.

Until now, I thought I was nothing more than part of the classroom’s background, like the air itself. But now… When I walked down the hallway, my eyes met those of girls I didn’t even know (or at least it felt that way). Even in the classroom, I felt like I could sense glances coming my way (or at least I thought I did).

Of course, most of that probably came from my own typical gloomy self-consciousness. There was no way people’s evaluations of me could really change from something so minor. But the way Fujigaya-san, sitting diagonally in front of me, kept staring at me so intently—there was no way that was just my imagination.

Every time I felt the heat of her gaze, my heart pounded noisily, and I felt just a little more certain that my decision to “change” wasn’t a mistake.

One day, carrying that slightly buoyant feeling, I faced another recess. As usual, I was sitting in the corner of the classroom with Kimura and Satou, passionately discussing the late-night anime The Chronicle of the Otherworldly Knight, which had just aired the night before.

“Man, the fight scene in episode 3 yesterday had god-tier animation! Especially the way they directed the protagonist’s awakening! I got chills!”

“Totally! They perfectly recreated that hopeless situation from the original! The voice actor’s scream was so full of soul too!”

As the three of us were getting all worked up in our usual rapid-fire way, ignoring how annoying we must have been to everyone else when…

“Um… Miyazuka-kun…?”

A faint, bell-like voice suddenly called my name. When I turned around, standing there was my classmate, Tanaka Misaki-san. Thick glasses, neat braids. The quiet girl who always read alone.

Being spoken to by a girl—aside from Fujigaya-san—was something that had never happened to me in my life, and for a second my brain practically froze.

“Uh, Ta-Tanaka-san? Do you need something with me…?”

When I stammered out the question, she hesitated a little, but looked straight at me and said:

“S-sorry, for interrupting your conversation… But just now, were you talking about Chronicle…?”

Her words shocked me. Chronicle was good, but it wasn’t some mainstream hit that would dominate the season. It was more of a niche, cult favorite beloved by hardcore fans. That a quiet girl like her, always in the corner of the classroom, would be watching it…

“What!? Tanaka-san, you watch it too!? Chronicle!?”

I couldn’t help blurting it out in surprise, and she gave a small but firm nod.

“Y-yes… I’ve been a fan since the original novel… I look forward to it every week…”

From that moment, an unbelievably natural and deeply engaging conversation bloomed between us.

“Yesterday’s episode was amazing! Especially the protagonist’s final line!”

“Yes! Yes! It was just like in the original—it was so moving! Like a single ray of light shining in all that despair…!”

“Exactly! The voice acting was perfect too! I rewatched that scene three times!”

“I did too!”

I found myself talking without hesitation. Not stuttering, not looking away.

Tanaka-san listened intently, her eyes shining behind her thick glasses, nodding deeply again and again. I could feel it—she really, truly loved this series. Kimura and Satou just stared back and forth between us, mouths hanging open, completely left behind by the conversation.

Wait… I’m actually talking to a girl… Like, normally?

It was nothing like when I spoke with Fujigaya-san. With her, my heart always felt like it was going to explode, my head went blank, and I had no idea what to say.

But with Tanaka-san, it was different. We were “comrades” who shared the same passion, and I could relax and talk to her without any nerves at all. That feeling was so incredibly refreshing, and it made me happy beyond words.

Ding-dong, ding-dong.

The chime mercilessly announced the end of recess.

“Ah, s-sorry! I kept you way too long…”

“No, no, not at all! I had so much fun! Let’s talk again!”

She bowed deeply and returned to her seat. As I watched her slightly hunched back, a warm sense of accomplishment spread through my chest.

Maybe I really could change. Who would have thought that just paying a little attention to my appearance could open up a brand-new world like this?

Wrapped in exhilaration, I hadn’t noticed at all… From the seat diagonally in front of me… Cold, dark eyes, void of emotion, piercing into me. And that the perfect smile of Kanoko Fujigaya, the owner of that gaze, had completely vanished.

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