[Sad News] Living Together with the Unattainable Beauty—Her Overwhelming Affection Is Way Too Calculated - 7

Chapter 7: Fujigaya-san’s ‘Kindness’ Scares Me

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Kanoko Fujigaya’s excessive “kindness” expanded its scope and intensity day by day, gradually eating away at my heart. It was like a sweet poison with a high mortality rate.

Morning. Just a few minutes before I awoke to the inorganic electronic beeping of my smartphone alarm…

knock knock knock

My bedroom door was tapped on, hesitantly, yet firmly.

“Miyazuka-kun, it’s morning. If you don’t wake up soon, you’ll be late, you know?”

From beyond the door came a gentle voice, like little bells tumbling together. It was the very same cliché event where the childhood-friend heroine in a light novel comes to wake up the protagonist. Bad for the heart. Far too bad. My heart was being forced into a full sprint first thing in the morning, and it screamed in protest.

And when I went to the living room, a perfect breakfast was already waiting for me, steam rising. Some days it was Japanese style, others Western. The sheer variety surpassed that of any family restaurant around.

At school, she sent me off each day with a homemade, extravagant lunchbox. When I opened the lid, side dishes sparkling like jewels greeted me, colorful and nutritionally balanced down to the smallest detail. Sometimes even a tiny octopus sausage assassin had slipped inside.

“Whoa, Gen-chan, your bento’s amazing again today!”

“Is that one of those ‘lunchboxes made with loving care by one’s wife’? Woohoo!”

“Wh-what are you talking about, I don’t even have a girlfriend! No way it’s that!”

At lunch break, my otaku friends Kimura and Satou peered into my bento, heckling irresponsibly.

Girls in class whispered from a distance too, saying things like.

“Kanoko’s lunch is incredible!” “She made that herself? No way!”

Each time, my face went up in flames, and I stuffed my bento—seasoned with the bitterest spice called guilt—down my throat. And then, when I came home… The T-shirts and socks I had left lying around in my room were somehow already washed, perfectly folded, and quietly placed in front of my door.

The room itself was tidy. Even the trash bin…

Wait. The trash bin? What about the tissues from… Those nights? 

I always stuffed them into a convenience store bag and tied the opening as tight as possible. She didn’t notice, right? Right? No, she couldn’t have.

After my bath, if I went to the living room, there was always cold barley tea waiting on the table, drops of condensation clinging to the glass. Was this how the super-maids of medieval Europe treated their lords?

It was as if she were playing some kind of life-simulation game where the goal was to raise a hopeless human like me. She was the perfect player, and I was the weak slime, endlessly being handed items named “kindness.” A pet slot, really.

My twisted, self-deprecating brain couldn’t process this perfect over-care properly. And the only conclusion I managed to reach was this.

『Kanoko Fujigaya is simply a saintly person who is kind to everyone.』

She was the type who could never ignore someone in trouble. If she saw a kitten drenched in rain on the roadside, she would no doubt give up her umbrella without hesitation. On the train, the moment she spotted an elderly passenger, she would surrender her seat at the speed of light.

All this devoted care she gave me was simply one extension of that “kindness.” She only extended a hand because she couldn’t bear to watch a pathetic, incompetent otaku with zero domestic skills and no ability to live alone suffer. There was absolutely no way she had any special feeling directed toward me personally.

The more I thought about it, the more miserable I became. Her perfection, and my uselessness. Her beauty, and my lameness. That cruel contrast only stood out sharper.

Every time I received her kindness, my already pitifully low self-esteem was shaved away, scraped down like sandpaper grinding against wood. It was like being exposed to the blazing midsummer sun, forced to confront just how dark and ugly the shadow of my warped self really was.

At this rate, I couldn’t last. My mind wouldn’t hold out. One night, after dinner. Having just finished the very last bite of the exquisite nikujaga she made, I summoned all the courage I could and spoke with a trembling voice.

“Um, Fujigaya-san.”

“Hm? What is it?”

She tilted her head slightly, smiling gently. 

Don’t do that—that move hits me too hard.

“Uh… You don’t really have to go so far. With the lunches, the laundry… I can just buy food from the convenience store, or go to the coin laundry myself…”

I couldn’t burden her any further. I had no right to let her waste her precious time on someone like me. Hearing my desperate words, she lowered her beautiful brows ever so slightly, as if saddened. Then, with her eyes glistening, she looked up at me and said.

“It’s not a burden. I do it because I want to.”

Her voice was so fragile, it seemed like it might vanish at any moment.

“…Or could it be…”

She continued,

“My cooking… Doesn’t taste good?”

That one line was the ultimate weapon that shattered the last of my pitiful courage into dust. Of course that wasn’t true! I shook my head frantically, with all my might.

“N-no way! It’s insanely delicious! Every day, I’m so moved that I soak my pillow with tears!”

The last part was a lie, but the first part was nothing but the truth. Seeing my desperate face, she smiled softly, like a flower blooming.

“I’m glad.”

That relieved, genuinely joyful smile once again crushed me completely, leaving me in utter defeat.

Fujigaya-san’s kindness was like the warmth of sunlight, but at the same time, like a sharp double-edged sword. Between the part of me that found peace and wanted to drown in that warmth, and the part of me being slowly cut to pieces by its blade, my heart was churned into a chaotic mess.

This space where unease and strange comfort coexisted frightened me. I was simply terrified of Kanoko Fujigaya’s “kindness.”

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