Takamine Nagi Doesn't Want to Be Confessed To

I’d succeeded in exchanging contact information with Arai, as planned. All that remained was to invite him to the group chat. That was right—all I had to do was invite him.

All I had to do was invite him, but……

‘Ugh. I don’t have a pretext.’

A day after exchanging LINE IDs with Arai, I grumbled to myself as I made my way to school early in the morning.

It was because solving one problem right away only led to new ones cropping up one after another.

‘If I invite him out of the blue, he’ll think it’s weird.’

Everything has its proper flow. If you act outside of it, people are bound to get suspicious. I wasn’t ignorant of something so obvious.

Not that my mental age was exactly―――

“Ahem.”

Anyway,

For that reason, I decided to put my original plan on hold for now and focus on coming up with a pretext instead.

Fortunately, thanks to Arai’s little sister, Yuki, I’d arranged to meet him again this Sunday.

I decided to use that meeting as an opportunity.

After spending some time around him lately, I’d realized that Arai was the type who had trouble refusing people.

So if I kept chatting with him like I had yesterday, I’d somehow be able to come up with a pretext.

……Probably.

“………Ah.”

While I was still turning the matter over in my mind, a faint groan escaped my lips. I’d spotted something sitting on top of my indoor shoes in the shoe locker.

‘Ugh. No wonder I hadn’t seen one in a while.’

What I’d found was, unfortunately, a confession letter. I hadn’t opened it to check, of course, but I was still certain that was what it was.

My past experiences had led me to that conclusion.

“Sigh.”

I didn’t bother hiding my sigh. Annoyance welled up, and unlike usual, I irritably rubbed my face.

Being confessed to by another guy was such an ordeal.

‘Who the hell is it?’

My teeth ground together.

I scowled and looked around. Tsk, I couldn’t see the male student who seemed to have left the letter.

Just what kind of idiot had dared to do this?

I didn’t know who it was, but I was sure he wasn’t right in the head. Ever since the start of the semester, I’d been cutting down every guy who confessed to me with razor-sharp words.

I hadn’t hidden my disgust, and I’d rejected them in even harsher terms. I’d done it to prevent this revolting situation from happening again.

…It hadn’t worked, though.

‘Is this guy into getting insulted?’

Or maybe he was full of himself. You know the type: people whose overflowing self-love makes them think far too highly of themselves.

Someone like that might have done this without knowing his place. Yes, the outrageous act of leaving a confession letter in my shoe locker—a letter that was no different from a challenge to me.

‘Good grief. What am I going to do with this?’

The useless thing was getting on my nerves. I’d read the letter, at least, out of pity, but…

‘What a pain.’

Just thinking about having to stand around on the rooftop or behind the building at lunchtime or after school out of basic courtesy made me feel weighed down. It would waste my time, and I couldn’t be bothered.

‘Should I put a note on my shoe locker later?’

I respectfully decline your confession. And honestly, this is a nuisance. Please just take it back.

Something like that.

If I wrote that, would he give up and go home?

Hmm. Now that I thought about it again, it probably wouldn’t work.

In the first place, anyone trying to confess to me even now was consumed by his own feelings, wasn’t he? There was no way a guy like that would readily respect the opinion of the person being confessed to—me.

“Ugh. I guess I’ll just take it with me for now…”

My shoe locker wasn’t a trash can. I couldn’t just leave it there because I didn’t want it. For now, the right thing to do was take it with me and deal with it later.

“Takamine. You’re here early today.”

As I walked down the hallway with the letter in my hand, a familiar voice sounded nearby. I turned around.

The voice belonged to a guy I’d grown accustomed to lately: Arai Shota.

I never thought Arai would be the one to speak to me first.

…Could exchanging LINE IDs yesterday have made a difference? There was a peculiar sense of familiarity in his voice.

‘This is a good sign.’

Thinking about the future, it was absolutely the right thing to do to build up my closeness with Arai. The closer we were, the more easily I could get him to actively pursue meeting Kaede without any real resistance.

“Hi, Arai-kun.”

So, hoping to make a friendly impression, I greeted him and waved.

“?”

As I waved, I felt a strange resistance through my hand. The sensation seemed odd, so I stopped waving and looked down at it instead.

“Ah.”

No wonder something felt off. I’d been waving the hand holding the letter. I’d ended up showing him something I didn’t need to.

Depending on how he saw it, I might even look like I was bragging about having received a confession.

Embarrassed, I hurriedly hid the hand holding the letter behind my back.

＊＊＊

The way Takamine had been walking, looking somewhat displeased before Shota spoke to her, and the letter loosely gripped in her hand. The clues were far too obvious to miss.

Shota realized what Takamine had hidden behind her back. It seemed she’d received one of those—a confession letter.

“Hmm.”

Noticing Shota’s gaze fall to her waist, Takamine twirled a lock of her hair with her other, unhidden hand. It was a sign of embarrassment.

At Takamine’s reaction, Shota finally realized he’d been rude. So,

“Ah. Sorry.”

He hurriedly apologized and looked away.

“It’s fine. …It’s not like I need to hide it. I just hid it for no reason.”

Takamine shrugged. Then she brought the letter she’d been concealing back into Shota’s view.

“It happens all the time. Not that I’m bragging, but I get these pretty often.”

Takamine spoke before the awkwardness could settle in. She even gave the letter a little wave for emphasis.

Since she’d brought up what was happening herself, she no longer seemed intent on hiding the fact that she’d received a letter.

Shota looked from the letter that had appeared again to Takamine’s sheepish expression. Then he answered her.

“I know. You’re famous.”

“...I guess you would’ve heard about it, Arai-kun, considering I’ve turned down more than one or two people.”

Takamine wore a sheepish expression at Shota’s answer. Shota’s expression turned just as odd. Then he lowered his gaze and looked at the letter in Takamine’s hand.

After a moment of that,

“What are you going to do with that?”

The question suddenly left Shota’s lips. Looking at the letter in Takamine’s hand made him feel strangely uncomfortable.

“This?”

Takamine pointed at the letter. Shota nodded at her gesture.

“Hmm.”

Takamine seemed taken aback by Shota’s direct question. She looked into the air and thought for a moment, then said,

“I suppose I’ll have to show up at the place we agreed to meet?”

She answered the question Shota had wanted answered, but her response was so unexpected that it left him bewildered.

“Huh? You’re going? Why?”

As always, he’d assumed she would turn the person down without a second thought. In truth, he’d asked because some unconscious part of him wanted confirmation that she’d reject the confession.

But Takamine was planning to go to the meeting place. Shota was confused by the unexpected answer.

That confusion didn’t last long, though.

Takamine added the missing explanation in response to Shota’s question.

“…Well, if I’m going to turn him down, I have to meet him first, don’t I? It’d be kind of sad if he just kept waiting there, not knowing he was about to be rejected.”

“Ah… I see.”

She found it repulsive, but that didn’t mean she had no reason to feel sorry for him. That was what Takamine thought.

That was why Takamine intended to honor the invitation, even if she didn’t want to… unless it was someone who’d confessed to her before.

“You have it rough. …Isn’t it exhausting to turn them all down one by one?”

Hearing Takamine’s answer, Shota felt relieved, though he didn’t know why. He scratched his cheek as he spoke.

“It’s a lot to deal with… It definitely gets tiring. It’s not just once or twice—it happens about once a week. Honestly, I could use all the help I can get.”

Takamine gave a wry smile as she said that. Then she looked at Shota, and their gazes naturally met.

Takamine stared silently at Shota for a while, then finally asked,

“Arai-kun, would you go in my place and turn him down for me?”

She said something so inexplicable that Shota turned her words over in his mind. In other words, he seriously considered the request.

Turn down a confession in her place?

……What right did I have to do that? Did I have any grounds to?

I didn’t even know what kind of relationship Takamine and I had yet. Well, we’d exchanged LINE IDs yesterday, so did that make us friends?

Shota’s eyes darted around as he continued thinking. Then a thought suddenly occurred to him.

Could Takamine have some other intention behind asking him this―――

“I’m joking.”

Takamine’s brief words pulled Shota’s consciousness back from his thoughts.

“I can’t leave something this important to someone else, can I?”

Takamine smiled as she said it. Seeming quite pleased with her own joke, she even let out a soft laugh.

Shota stared blankly at Takamine’s smile.

In his mind, he turned over the meaning of ‘someone else.’