A Pretty Girl Has Her First Kiss Stolen By an Equally Handsome Classmate - Episode 1.7

Friday, January 7

“Wakamatsu, can I ask you again today?”

I was in the middle of packing when I was stopped.

“Well, I mean, I don’t really mind…”

“I’m really sorry. I just need to grab some papers.”

I waited for my teacher in the hallway outside the staff room.

Unlike the staff room, the hallway was freezing, and my toes felt numb. This cold reminded me of the entrance to Shizuku Mizuhara’s apartment.

Last Christmas Eve—Mizuhara and I still didn’t understand each other.

Was it okay for me to visit her again in this situation? I couldn’t decide.

“How are things with Mizuhara?”

Yamabe-sensei asked me.

I hesitated for a moment, then slowly began to talk about what had happened last week.

As I spoke, Yamabe-sensei kept nodding along, saying things like, “Yeah, yeah,” “I see,” and “That makes sense.”

He didn’t give me any clear solutions, but just talking about it made me feel lighter.

I’d never had counseling before, but maybe this was what it felt like.

“Listening is love,” the teacher had said.

After hearing me out, he even walked me to the main entrance.

“Wakamatsu, do you remember when you asked why I entrusted Mizuhara to you?”

At the entrance, Yamabe-sensei stopped and looked me directly in the eyes.

His gaze was unusually intense, and I instinctively braced myself for his next words.

“It’s because you’re a very loving person.”

Was I really? A person full of love?

I wanted to deny it, but there was something about the way he said it—it had a strange persuasiveness.

Stepping outside, I took a deep breath of the cold winter air.

What did Yamabe-sensei mean by “love”?

I thought about Mizuhara once more.

Thinking back, Yamabe-sensei had already given me answers.

If he considered me a “loving person,” then his definition of love was probably “listening.”

In other words, he wanted me to listen to Mizuhara.

And he had already told me exactly what to do.

I didn’t need to understand.

I didn’t need to do anything.

I just needed to listen to her.

That was all.

But what did Mizuhara want?

Wakamatsu Kaede thought it over.

There wasn’t much to go on.

She refused to explain why she stopped coming to school. She avoided her old friends, despite once being close to them.

But she didn’t seem to want to cut herself off from people completely.

She would still entertain small talk until the conversation naturally ended.

I knew I had upset her last time, but still, she had never outright rejected my visits.

Yamabe-sensei thought Mizuhara and I would get along because I was “optimistic” and “didn’t think too much about others.”

But how was I supposed to use those traits?

I stepped out of the station’s central exit and crossed the street to the convenience store.

Following a familiar path, I arrived at Mizuhara’s apartment complex.

She was standing at the entrance.

I blinked in surprise and ran over to her.

“Mizuhara!”

“Oh, Wakamatsu-san. I thought you wouldn’t come anymore.”

“I’m here. Do you not want me to be?”

I smiled, my breath turning white in the cold.

Mizuhara shook her head. “No, I don’t mind.”

Relieved, I handed her the papers.

Then, after taking a deep breath, I asked the one thing I had come to find out.

“Mizuhara, do you get tired being around me?”

I was too afraid to look at her face, so I stared at my feet instead.

After a pause, she spoke.

“…We barely talked before, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But from the very beginning, I’ve always been distant with you.”

Saying, Yes, you were, didn’t seem like the best response, so I kept quiet.

Maybe taking my silence as agreement, Mizuhara continued.

“You didn’t mind that, though. You kept coming anyway. That made me happy.”

“…You didn’t act that way at school, though.”

“At school, I talked a lot, I was always with someone, and I seemed cheerful, right?”

I nodded.

I pictured the Mizuhara from school—always with friends, laughing in the hallways, never looking troubled.

Was that what she meant by her “public self”?

“I feel like you and I are completely different.”

“…Yeah.”

“But ever since you started coming over…”

Her voice lifted slightly.

Sensing a shift in her tone, I looked up.

“At least, I don’t have to be bored on Fridays anymore.”

She smiled.

Her cheeks were red from the cold, her eyes slightly narrowed, the corners of her mouth turned up.

In that moment, she looked incredibly cute to me.

“…Then, I guess that’s good enough,” I murmured.

Taking her silence as agreement, I let it go at that.

Mizuhara wasn’t looking for answers or logical solutions.

What she needed was someone she could be around without having to put on her “public self.”

Someone who wouldn’t push her, who would accept her as she was.

Not Komazawa or Yamaguchi—because if it were an old friend, she would feel the need to put on an act.

Yamabe-sensei was right.

I was “optimistic.” I didn’t dwell on things. Even if someone said something to me, I usually forgot about it by the next day.

And I didn’t think too deeply about other people.

I might be curious, but I didn’t pry.

Now, I finally understood why Yamabe-sensei had chosen me.

And I understood how I should approach Mizuhara.

“See you next week!”

With that, we parted ways.

As I walked home, my heart felt lighter than it had in a long time.