Episode 6: Because I’ve Never Done Anything Before
“…………”
Kamijou Yuuto finished his meal and bath, and was now fidgeting at his desk in his room.
Today’s homework was relatively light. Usually, he’d be happy to have more free time, but now he felt restless and couldn’t settle down.
Even the gacha in his smartphone game giving him a disappointing result didn’t bother him as much as it usually would.
He had a TV and a laptop in his room, but he didn’t feel like turning them on.
He was mindlessly opening and closing his Bento Box.
Then,
“—What are you doing, you?”
A voice he had been longing for came from the open window.
Ichinose Ayano was leaning her cheek on the window frame, giving him a somewhat exasperated look.
“N-no, nothing really, I’m not doing anything weird!”
“Just playing with your Bento Box, huh?”
“She saw me…!” Yuuto’s expression stiffened as Ayano reached out her hand.
“Ah, yeah. Sorry to ask, but please.”
“I offered, so it’s no problem.”
They leaned towards each other slightly, and their hands met easily.
She must have just come out of the bath, as a faint sweet scent wafted from her hair.
“…………”
It was the first time in a while that he had seen her in something other than her uniform.
She was wearing an oversized T-shirt that hid her figure, and the swell of her chest wasn’t very obvious, but it couldn’t be called “large” by any stretch of the imagination.
He realized that what he had been seeing (E-cup) was an illusion.
—Well, not that he was dissatisfied with it, but Ayano was keenly aware of his gaze.
“…What? Are you just looking at my chest?”
“Ah, no…”
Ayano frowned at Yuuto, who was flustered by her accusation.
She covered her chest with her arms and pouted.
“Girls are sensitive to guys’ gazes, you know. You were probably thinking, ‘Her chest is smaller than I thought,’ right?”
“Ah… I’m sorry.”
Yuuto flinched at her glare and blurted out an apology.
“Eh, you apologized…? So you really were thinking that! You probably want someone with bigger boobs! You—you boob guy! You regret confessing to me, don’t you!”
Ayano raised her voice in annoyance, but hid her body behind the window curtain.
Yuuto, feeling wronged, couldn’t help but raise his voice as well.
“N-no, that’s not it! I like Ayano even if she’s ‘flat as a board,’ size doesn’t matter! I would never regret it…!”
Ayano was flustered by his slightly angry, serious eyes, but also happy.
“Th-thank you—but who’s ‘flat as a board’?”
She touched a raw nerve.
“I’m not that flat! I’m at least a B-cup! I can even make cleavage if I try! They jiggle when I jump—even if it’s just a little!”
Ayano came out from behind the curtain and leaned out the window, showing off by pushing her breasts together and shaking them up and down.
“No, I just meant it figuratively—wait, what are you doing!”
Yuuto turned away from her provocative gesture.
“Why are you looking away? Look properly! Here!”
Yuuto reluctantly turned his gaze back, intimidated by her fierce expression.
—But, alas.
“…………”
Perhaps because of the loose-fitting shirt, even when she pushed her breasts together to show them off—they weren’t very noticeable.
“—If you squeeze them too hard, it’ll hurt…?”
“Don’t pity me! I really do have them, okay!”
She glared at him, frustrated by his troubled smile.
Then, she came up with a solution to dispel the “flat as a board” image.
“That’s right, you can’t tell just by looking at them through my clothes. If you touch them directly, you’ll see how soft they are, so come over here right now! I’ll let you touch them as much as you want!”
“H-hey, what’s wrong!? What are you saying, Ayano-san!?”
“What do you mean? I want you to touch my breasts—”
She finally realized how bold her statement was.
“――――!!”
She immediately crouched down and hid behind the wall.
“…A-Ayano…?”
Yuuto called out hesitantly, and after a while, she peeked out from the window frame.
“—Well, um… maybe some other time, okay?”
“Some other time… eh? Some other time?”
Yuuto frowned, unable to fully understand Ayano’s words.
“Because I want you to know everything about me. If we’re dating… we’ll do stuff like that, right…? I’ve heard that some couples do it early on, so… so—”
Seeing Yuuto’s flushed face, Ayano also reached peak embarrassment.
“So—Yuto, here! Smartphone! Register our contact information!”
She forcefully changed the subject.
“Ah—ah, right! It would be too sad if we couldn’t even call each other at this point!”
He finished the operation with trembling hands, and now that he could hear the voice of the most important person on his Smartphone, the reality sank in.
—Looking at each other’s flushed faces, they both thought.
“We’ve been so close all this time.”
“And yet, we couldn’t even talk properly.”
“What were we doing, us?”
“We weren’t doing anything, us.”
“Indeed. Right?” They chuckled wryly.
“—We’re a couple now, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what’s going to happen from now on, but we’ll do all sorts of things from now on, to make up for all the things we couldn’t do before.”
“Like a Date?”
“Of course. Let’s go anywhere, let’s do anything. Anything is fun with Ayano.”
“That’s right, then—then, what should we do?”
Ayano realized that her heart was racing. But,
“…What should we do? There are too many options and I can’t decide…”
Due to her lack of experience, she couldn’t come up with a concrete plan.
“Then how about we go to the Shopping Mall next Saturday? There’s a movie theater there, so it’s perfect.”
“That’s a good idea. ‘A proper first Date with the person I love’—I’m looking forward to it.”
Ayano, in a good mood now that they had made plans, started operating her Smartphone.
She seemed to be writing the plan in her calendar.
And then,
“Oh yeah, what kind of Bento Box should I make for tomorrow?”
“Anything is fine.”
“Saying ‘anything’ here is no good. I don’t want you to open it and be disappointed.”
“I wouldn’t be, though. By the way, we’re having Karaage (Japanese fried chicken) for dinner tonight.”
“…That overlaps. I was planning to marinate it before going to bed, that was close.”
“It’s not a bad thing. I want to eat Ayano’s Karaage. By the way, you marinate it for quite a long time, huh?”
“My dad likes it strong. Men like things that go well with rice.”
“Men do like that.”
“Also, a safe bet is… Atsuyaki Tamago (thick Japanese omelet) or Octopus Sausages?”
“Men do like that.”
“It’s starting to sound like a menu a kid would want to eat at a sports day.”
“That’s what I like.”
The shallow conversation went on.
As if to fill the three-year gap, even if just a little.