The School’s Top Idol Is Acting Like She’s My Childhood Friend for Some Reason and Just Keeps Closing the Distance on Her Own…?! ~Stop Getting All Gloomy on Me Just Because I Turned You Down!~
To put it simply, my room was a mess.
Crumpled tissues and convenience store bags were scattered across the floor, and a hoodie I’d taken off was half-draped over the back of a chair. On my desk, manga and card game boxes had boldly taken over the space, pushing textbooks to the sidelines, while my smartphone, placed right in the center, kept streaming anime with an oddly serious expression.
The show playing on the screen was School Romantic Comedy Doesn’t Need Youth!!, a romantic comedy anime that, judging by the title alone, was going all out to evoke the spirit of youth.
[Taking all of that into account, I like you.]
[U-un. I… like you like that, too.]
A classroom bathed in the evening sunset. A seat by the window. The sound of the curtains fluttering. After school, with everyone else gone, only the protagonist and the heroine are facing each other.
This is unfair.
This is just unfair.
Here I am, sitting in a dimly lit room, wearing a pilled sweatshirt and sipping flat soda, yet the world on the other side of the screen is just too vibrant. The concept of “youth” is flooding in at a concentration my room’s air purifier can’t handle.
“……”
I clenched my hand around my smartphone.
And the moment the ending theme for the second season finale started playing, the emotions that had been swelling to their limit deep inside my chest burst out all at once.
“Gwaaaaaaaah! What the hell is this anime?! It’s too good! It’s too good, but… the heart-fluttering moments are so intense my heart can’t take it!!”
As I writhed around on the bed, the pile of manga at my feet collapsed. A few volumes fell to the floor, and the heroines on the covers looked up at me as if accusing me.
It’s not my fault. It’s the fault of an overabundance of youth.
My name is Takahara Seita.
I’m a guy who, the day after tomorrow, will officially become a high school student.
Incidentally, I’m also a guy who barely went to school from the middle of my second year of junior high until the latter half of my third year.
From the outside, the term “shut-in” probably sums it up best. But for me, those four characters don’t do justice to a time that wasn’t nearly that simple.
Mornings when just slipping my arms into my uniform made my stomach sink. Days when I made it to the front door but couldn’t bring myself to put on my shoes, so I went back to my room. The way my heart would skip a beat every time my mother’s footsteps stopped at the bottom of the stairs. All of that should be in the past, yet in fleeting moments, it still lingers somewhere inside me.
Still, as time goes by, people get used to things.
The residential neighborhood was quieter than I expected during the day, and as long as I kept the curtains closed, I felt cut off from the world outside. I scrolled through my streaming service’s anime list, watching romantic comedies, dark fantasy, and card game videos. If my real school life wasn’t going well, I at least wanted to watch the youth unfolding on the screen.
“Ah, it’s over. What anime should I watch next?”
Talking to myself is reassuring because no one can hear me.
I swipe my thumb across the smartphone screen. The options lined up were mostly romantic comedies or dark fantasy. Either a bittersweet story that tugs at your heartstrings, or a tale where the world falls apart in a way that’s far more straightforward than reality. The fact that I’m choosing between those two suggests my mental state might be pretty simple.
High school starts the day after tomorrow.
If I were a normal person, I’d probably feel a mix of anxiety and excitement about a new uniform, a new classroom, and new classmates. I’d be wondering which club to join, hoping the kid sitting next to me would be easy to talk to, or maybe even dreaming of a fateful encounter.
In my case, the biggest feeling of all was anxiety.
The dirt I picked up in middle school isn’t the kind that washes off just by changing my uniform. I wasn’t the kind of person who could still believe in the nice-sounding idea that time would make me forget.
“Seita! It’s almost time for dinner!”
My mother’s voice came from downstairs.
I turned my phone face down, gently kicked the scattered manga into a pile with my foot, and stood up. Just as I reached for the doorknob, I realized the protagonist’s lines from the screen were still ringing in my ears.
If there’s anyone out there who could honestly say they love all of that—the good and the bad—in real life, they must be incredibly strong.
At least, I couldn’t do it.
I still haven’t come to terms with all of who I am.
Maigetsu