“Hey Yagami, who’s the stunning beauty?”
“This is—”
“I’m Ryouya-kun’s girlfriend, actually.”
Before I could explain, Reona had linked arms with me and said that. Reona, what are you casually declaring?!
“Wait — Yagami’s girlfriend?!”
“Reona isn’t—”
“We’re so in love we bathe together and sleep together.”
I was trying to dismantle the misunderstanding; Reona was pouring gasoline on it. Worse, what she’d said was technically not a lie, so it was hard to deny.
“Hard to believe Yagami — full loner since middle school — landed a girlfriend this pretty.”
“That—”
“Sure, Ryouya-kun’s been a loner since starting high school, he’s deeply jaded, twisted in interesting ways — I get it, it’s hard to believe.”
The “ally” had pivoted a hundred-eighty degrees and was now delivering friendly fire. Stop describing me factually. Reona ignored me and continued.
“I’m just the one who saw the appeal nobody else saw — so I generously deigned to be his girlfriend.”
“Why the generously deigned phrasing—”
While Reona and I argued back and forth, Matsuyama-san was watching with a small smile.
“Yeah, on looks I figured no way, but you actually kind of work.”
“That cannot be right, what are you looking at.”
“I’m a childhood friend, so I know what Yagami used to be like. I’ve never once seen him this comfortable with another person. And — your girlfriend looks like she’s having a blast with you.”
That was completely off-script. Reona and I froze. We do not work. We absolutely do not work. But Matsuyama-san did not seem to be joking.
“Anyway — you upgraded from loner to boyfriend, so don’t screw it up and get dumped. I’m out.”
Matsuyama-san finished her one-sided exit speech and walked off, leaving us frozen.
”…Oh no — I completely forgot to ask her not to talk—!”
Matsuyama-san loves to talk. She was going to broadcast Yagami has a girlfriend to anyone who’d listen.
Despite being a loner I wasn’t invisible — middle-school classmates would absolutely recognize Yagami and connect dots. Chasing her now was too late, so I let it go, but the cleanup was going to be brutal.
“I was cautious because childhood friend, but she was actually a nice person.”
“Yeah, I’ll grant that Matsuyama-san is a decent person.”
I don’t know what Reona had been cautious about, but Matsuyama-san is genuinely kind and the looking-out-for-others type. Which is exactly why I’d fallen for her in middle school.
“Reading her, though — she’s clearly not seeing you as romantically viable, so even if you had confessed back then, you’d have been rejected.”
“Hey — could you please not casually probe the wound while smiling.”
“It’d be sad to leave you hung up on first love forever, so I made you face reality.”
Reona stuck her tongue out playfully. The fact that this was outrageously cute and short-circuited my will to retort is between me and you, dear reader.