That Half-Finished Drink Was Lethal— What Happened When I Left My Bottle Behind in a 1:4 Male-to-Female World - 8

Chapter 8: That Rejection Is Lethal

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Miya Akutsu was sought after for her money and fame. Rin Asami was deprived of devotion and time. Reika Otori was bound by the rules of the Otori family. As for Aoi Mimori… Even her very “existence” was not acknowledged.

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Mimori’s POV

“…I like you. Please… go out with me.”

“…Sorry. I want to focus on my club activities right now.”

I had honestly believed those words. It hurt to be rejected, but I convinced myself that he was just stoic and hardworking. Until the day I overheard the “truth” in the hallway after school.

“Ah, Mimori? …No way. She doesn’t have the specs to date me. At the very least, she’d need to be Rank A. If we’re talking rankings, she’s about an E-minus.”

“Whoa, that’s harsh (laugh). Also, don’t you already have a real girlfriend? (laugh)”

“A plain girl like that just lowers my value by being next to me. People with low ranks don’t even deserve to exist in this class.”

I heard the sound of my heart freezing solid. Ranking. Whether it was born from a skewed society with a 1-to-4 gender ratio or not, ranking women had become standard among many men. For men in the position of choosing, women were not human beings with “hearts,” but merely “trophies” to prove their own worth. Of course, not all of them were like that.

To him, my existence was nothing more than worthless junk measured by numerical values like “specs” and “rank.” My despair wasn’t directed at him alone. Starting the next day, the entire class accepted his words as the “correct answer” and began ignoring me. No one pointed out how abnormal it was. As if processing a simple system error, they treated me as something that didn’t exist.

(…This makes me sick. Him, the classmates who agreed with him, this entire world… I hate it all so much it makes me want to vomit.)

From that point on, I shut myself away from the physical world. And just like that, a shut-in was born. I rejected the outside world, blocked out sound with noise-canceling headphones, and spent my days tinkering with computers and machines in a dark room.

(I don’t want to see real people anymore. Men are all defective products who only see others as numbers.)

But the air in my sealed room grew stale, and my heart felt like it was suffocating. If I could erase my own existence and become nothing more than a “viewpoint”—a drone—I felt like I might be able to tolerate this suffocating world just a little. So I fled, releasing my homemade drone into the sky.

Today as well, I sent my drone flying into the sky.

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The pale blue glow of the multi-monitor setup filling my room burned my skin white. What I saw through the goggles was a live feed from my drone, thirty meters above the ground. The sound of the rotors cutting through the wind synced with my heartbeat through my wireless earbuds.

(Found him.)

What the lens captured was a young man walking through the crowd: Yuu Yuuki.

(Found him… my “bug.” The system error in this ugly world.)

Ever since I had accidentally spotted him with my drone before, I couldn’t stop thinking about his behavior. So whenever I had time, I followed him. One day at a terrace restaurant. A timid-looking female customer kept trying to call over a busy waiter, only to be ignored each time like she was invisible. Just as she looked like she was about to cry, Yuu, sitting at a nearby table, raised his hand.

“Excuse me, can I order? Oh, and that person over there has been waiting for a while, so could you take her order first?”

He made it seem like part of his own order, but he was shining a light on her. Another day at a park. He stopped and bowed deeply to an elderly man with a bent back who was quietly doing volunteer cleaning when no one else was around.

“Thank you for always keeping this place clean. It makes walking here really pleasant.”

The cleaner’s face lit up as if he had been touched by magic.

And the decisive moment was in front of the station plaza. A street musician, not particularly skilled, was singing desperately, his voice hoarse. People passing by looked at him coldly, and even those walking with Yuu laughed mockingly.

“Wow, he’s totally off-key. All he’s doing is showing how untalented he is. It’s embarrassing just to watch.”

The moment someone in the crowd spat that out, Yuu stopped and listened to the young man sing. After listening to the whole performance, he reached into his pocket and dropped a coin into the musician’s empty guitar case. Yuu didn’t say anything directly to those men, but it felt like he was silently refuting them.

(…There are men like him… even if I didn’t know it before…)

With trembling hands, I operated the controller.

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Today, I had my drone arm grip an empty can that had been lying around my room. In the direction Yu was heading, I gently dropped the can onto the asphalt where he would step in a few seconds.

Clink. 

A dry sound rang out. Yuu stopped. He looked around, then picked up the trash without hesitation, even though he had no idea who dropped it. He picked it up. And headed to the nearby trash can… Through the screen, my fingertips traced over his hand.

(…He picked it up. Does this count as our first joint effort…? Ahh… I’m so happy…)

My cheeks felt hot. My chest thumped so hard it felt like it might break. Beyond the digital signals, he had “acknowledged” me. Through the drone and the empty can, for the first time, I felt like I had become something more than a transparent existence, something that shared the same world as him.

“…Just once more. Just once more, maybe I can believe in men again.”

That was when it happened. My elated fingers slipped, and the drone suddenly dropped in altitude. The rotor wind ruffled Yuu’s bangs.

“Ah…! I messed—!”

(I’ve been found out. Definitely found out. What if he thinks I’m a stalker? Will he call the police? Will he despise me? Will he look at me like I’m filth? Ah, ah, ah, ahhh…!)

Frozen in panic, I watched as Yuu lifted his face as if peering into the lens. And instead of being startled, he broke into an innocent, boyish smile.

“Oh, you’ve been flying around here lately, right? You’re really good at controlling it. Bye!”

Yuu waved broadly at the camera.

(…Ah! Yuu’s smile… so cute… so cute…)

Through the monitor, I writhed as if delirious with fever. Without a hint of doubt, he accepted that there was a “me” on the other side of the drone. My heartbeat surged faster, hotter, more violently than anything before, pounding against my chest.

“I want to meet him. …Seeing him through a screen isn’t enough…”

I turned off the monitor. Silence and suffocating air returned to the room. I changed into a large hoodie meant for going outside, one that had been gathering dust. I pulled my noise-canceling headphones over my head and put on my smart glasses. I shed the safe shell of being a shut-in. For me, it was like stepping into the vacuum of space without a suit.

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The outside world was full of weapons. The sunlight pouring down scorched my retinas, and the voices of others gouged my eardrums. Only the soundproofing of my headphones kept me sane.

“Ah… uh…”

Relying on the drone’s GPS, I headed toward the plaza where he should be. My legs stopped again and again, and I nearly fell into hyperventilation. Still, the feel of the controller hidden in my chest pocket reminded me of his back.

(There he is.)

I executed the plan I had carefully prepared. It was a strategy to deliberately drop a decorated spare memory card—one that mattered to me—onto the path he would walk.

Plop.

I managed to drop it as naturally as possible. Just as calculated, he picked it up.

“Oh, is this yours? It looks important.”

Yuu was right in front of me.

“Ah, ah… uh…”

(Ah, ah, ah… internal meeting! Emergency brain meeting! Yuu is right in front of me! I have to talk, I have to say something! But my voice won’t come out, there’s not enough oxygen, my brain is overheating and about to explode, tens of thousands of simulations all go blank…!)

“Ah, ah… uh…”

What came out of my throat was an incomprehensible squeak. I snatched the memory card from him and bolted away at full speed. Reality was cruel.

Back in my room, I dove under the covers and screamed.

“I want to die! I want to die, I want to disappear, I can’t do this! What was that ‘ahh’? Am I a baby!? Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! I’m such an idiot!!”

But the memory card in my fingertips felt faintly warm, as if it still held his touch. That warmth slowly but surely rebooted my despair into “courage.”

“…Next time, I won’t run. …I’ll say it properly.”

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Three days later, I stood before him again. The place was the plaza where he always read. Yuu sat on a bench, reading a paperback. Bathed in sunlight, he looked far more dazzling and warm than he ever had through the lens. With the feeling of opening the gates of hell, I took off my headphones. The world surged in as a muddy flood of noise.

“Uh… um!”

Yuu looked up. My clouded eyes collided with his clear ones.

“Oh, you’re… from the other day.”

(…He remembered me.)

That alone was enough to make my mind feel like it would burn out. Specs, rank, E-minus… those awful words swirled in my head, making me want to run. But—

(I’ll say it. I’ll say it. I’ll say it. If I don’t say it now, while I’m overheating like this, I’ll stay nothing but junk inside a screen forever!)

Forgetting even who I was, I forced my trembling throat to speak.

“I… I like you! P-please go out with me!”

It was the greatest confession of my life, staking everything I had. If he denied me here, my life would end on the spot.

Silence.

The noise of the plaza faded away. A single moment felt like a lifetime.

Gulp.

Yuu lowered his brows slightly, looking troubled, and gazed straight at me.

“…I’m sorry.”

(Ah.)

The colorful world rapidly faded. The warmth that should have remained from his touch turned ice-cold, erasing my outline.

(I shouldn’t be here. I really am just worthless junk that shouldn’t exist. This is the punishment for trying to have color, even for a moment.)

The fear of not being acknowledged crushed me like suffocation, stealing the air from my lungs.

“Ah, ah, ahhh…!”

Letting out a wordless scream, I ran. I heard him call out behind me, but even that sounded like a blade meant to kill me. Shoving my headphones over my ears, I fled back to my room.

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Crash!!!!!

I slammed my computer keyboard onto the floor.

“I want to die… I want to die, I want to die…!”

In the dark room, the world was still full of poison. Men were all the same. They didn’t see me. It was like I had never existed to begin with. With a tear-soaked face, I turned on the drone like an act of self-harm. One last time. One last time, to “curse” him.

(I’ll observe him laughing at me like the other men, and end this love completely. Then I’ll be able to give up…)

The drone was still near the plaza. Yuu was at the same bench, talking with a friend. A live feed. A real-time, cruel truth unfolded.

“Sorry, Yuu, I saw you getting confessed to earlier. That girl was seriously cute, though.”

Yuu’s friend teased him.

(Yeah, go ahead and laugh. Say it was annoying to be confessed to by an E-minus girl…)

“…So you saw that.”

Yuu’s quiet voice.

“Why’d you reject her? Wasn’t she your type?”

“Honestly, she was really cute. The way she trembled and tried so hard to tell me how she felt… I was grateful, and it made me happy.”

(Huh?)

My thoughts froze.

“Then why did you reject her?”

“Since she worked up all that courage to confess, I just wanted to give her a proper answer. I want to know what kind of person she is before answering… I guess I want to treat her with care.”

Yuu looked up at the distant sky. The same sky where my drone was flying.

“…You’re as seriously earnest as ever.”

The live feed blurred with tears.The man who once rejected me had decided my rank and made me invisible. But Yuu—

(He didn’t give an easy answer because he wanted to value my courage, my existence. Yuu saw me. Not as something transparent, but as a single “girl”…!)

“…Ah… ugh… uuu…”

My sobs wouldn’t stop. But these weren’t the tears of despair from before. I was glad I trusted him. In this world, there was at least one person who valued my existence more than his own.

I picked up the headphones I had thrown on the floor. I didn’t need armor to block out sound anymore.

“…Ah… ugh… uuu… Yuu… you’re the only one I have…”

I stared at Yuu on the monitor, smiling faintly with a hint of loneliness.

(There’s still a chance. He doesn’t hate me. He even said I was cute. …Wait for me. Right now, I’m still not someone worthy of you.)

So that I could value myself—the self he said he wanted to cherish—more than anyone else. So that instead of the scenery inside a screen, I could walk beside him in the world he sees, with this real, living heart.

I threw open the curtains of my room. The light pouring in made me squint.

“…Wait for me, Yuu. Next time, I’ll come see you as myself, not through a screen.”

I called the drone back. Embracing my returning other half, my eyes, for the first time, looked upon the vivid world not through a lens, but with my own.

Aoi Mimori

A lethal dose of rejection had begun to give color to the girl who had been considered as invisible. Her love, now, took its first step toward the real “light” beyond the monitor.

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