Ultimately, I ended up staying at Fuyunagi-san’s house.

No, to be accurate, it was more that I wasn’t allowed to leave, so I ended up staying.

And now, she is making dinner for us in the kitchen.

She has lived alone for a long time, so she is naturally good at cooking.

Today, she made curry, and with the leftover ingredients from it, she also cooked nikujaga.

While waiting, I tried to go into her room, but she stopped me.

Normally, she lets me enter her room, but apparently it’s messy, and I’m not allowed to go in.

So, I decided to wait quietly in the living room.

I had a terrible feeling about this, so the safest choice was to do exactly as she said.

Now then, I decided that I will stop pretending to be someone else when going out with her from now on.

It’s okay if we break up, and I don’t mind being dumped.

Having reached such a resolute conclusion, I no longer found any meaning in acting like the kind of person she would like in front of her.

So, what is the right thing to do?

When it comes time to actually deal with her as my real self, I can’t even tell what my real self is supposed to be anymore.

People say, “Just be yourself”.

But what even counts as myself?

I think everyone ends up asking themselves that at some point.

That’s exactly how I feel right now.

Normally, if she were cooking something, I would try to offer help and be considerate. But here, I decided to deliberately slouch on the chair and just look at my phone instead.

No, perhaps a more impudent person would stand behind her while she’s cooking and touch her butt or hug her?

No, that’s far too indecent.

More than anything, I don’t have the courage to do something like that.

So, it’s best if I quietly look at my smartphone…

I glanced through the class group chat on LINE, and the topics of conversation mainly revolved around Sado-kun and Sakurada-san becoming a couple, but there was an overwhelming amount about Fuyunagi-san and me.

No way, me being the center of the conversation? That’s impossible.

The development was so unbelievable that I had to look at my phone screen twice.

But even if I was the center of attention, it was obvious from the messages that no one was actually happy about me.

The conversation was full of insults and jealousy over the fact that I’d secretly been dating the pure, beautiful Fuyunagi-san.

Well, this was a fact I had already understood.

And there were also things written about Fuyunagi-san.

There were all kinds of reactions about the cheating incident—on one side, the people who still couldn’t accept the truth and insisted, “There’s no way the serious, proper Fuyunagi-san would ever do something like that,” and on the other, the people who were disappointed in her.

Then there were those who felt sorry for Sado-kun, and those who weirdly felt a sense of camaraderie, saying things like, “So Fuyunagi-san does that kind of thing too, huh.” It was all over the place.

As I was scrolling through the chat. it seemed Fuyunagi-san had finished cooking and was now heading toward me.

“What are you looking at?”

“Eh? Ah… the class group chat.”

“Huh? Are you laughing at my badmouthers?”

“I wouldn’t do something so tasteless.”

“I know… You’re unnecessarily kind, aren’t you?”

“Unnecessarily is a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“Your unnecessary kindness and sense of justice are what caused you to reveal our relationship, right?”

“Ugh…”

There was no way I could refute that.

“Fufu, don’t worry… I’m not blaming you, okay? Actually, I’m grateful.”

Once the curry was ready, she asked me to help set it out on the table.

Even as I was doing that, she kept talking.

“I was starting to find it troublesome to keep our relationship hidden from everyone around us… I thought that if people knew about our relationship, it would tarnish this sacred bond… But I also think it’s important to let people know about us, and I decided this was the right thing to do.”

“……”

Fuyunagi-san sat opposite me at the table after placing the tray with the curry and glass on it, and she looked into my eyes as she spoke.

“Earlier, you said that my love for you was a form of dependence, didn’t you?”

“Eh……? Yeah…”

“That’s true… I don’t deny there is a dependent aspect to it. But, I genuinely like you.”

“……”

“Sure, I admit that my feelings for you are a bit different—maybe even a little unusual compared to other girls… but is that really a bad thing? It doesn’t change the fact that I love you.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re not just projecting some fantasy onto me, Fuyunagi-san… I mean, my intelligence, my academic abilities, and even my face are all below average, you know?”

“I’ve said this before, but those superficial things mean nothing to me. Though… the part about me having a fantasy of you might be true.”

“Then doesn’t that mean you’ll end up disappointed in me someday?”

“Don’t worry. I’m confident in my feelings, and that frog prince phenomenon doesn’t apply to me.”

The frog prince phenomenon.

If I remember right, it’s that phenomenon where the feelings you had suddenly disappear all at once because of some trigger, and you stop liking the person.

She’s saying she’ll never lose her feelings for me.

Why can she say that with such certainty?

She smiles cheerfully and says:

“Because you are special to me.”

I still don’t understand what exactly makes me so special to her… and in the end, I guess I never really will.