Say I Love You Chapter 13
Title: Say I Love You
Authors:
jlrui and
ranguren_chan
Pairing: UmiChii
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Umika decided to confess to Chinen but end up being rejected. She tried to move on but he didn't let her, and made her his girlfriend. Will Chinen manage to really love Umika and say "I love you" to her?
Confessions of the Lonely Kind
“Where do you go when you're lonely?
Where do you go when you're blue?
Where do you go when you're lonely?
I'll follow you”
- lyrics from When the Stars Go Blue
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Jingi
Yamada finally opened the door after Yuto’s ringing of the doorbell.
How do I get myself in these situations?
The next thing I knew we were both looking at Yamada Ryosuke’s bewildered face.
“Yuto! What the heck are you guys doing here so late?!” He then just realized a few seconds that Yuto was not alone and said, “Oh, Jingi! You’re here too?” There was a hint of confusion at the edge of his voice.
Yamada Ryosuke was one of the few members of HSJ who got himself a nice bachelor’s pad in the city. The owner was now looking at both Yuto and me back and forth trying to figure out the reason for our visit. Then as if realizing something, he quickly turned to face me and had put on a concerned look by the time he said something to me.
Johnny’s idols rarely socialized with other talents from other agencies unless they were working together on some project. I’ve still yet to get another opportunity to work with any member from HSJ. He especially had become a fine actor in the last few years even landing a minor role in a Hollywood production like his senpais Ninomiya Kazunari of Arashi and Akanishi Jin who went solo and was formerly a member of KAT-TUN.
“How’s your dad, Jingi?” His eyes told me that he had expected the worst and was genuinely concerned.
“Uh... He’s fine, Ryosuke. But that’s not exactly why we’re here.”
I never meant to tell a rather white lie in the restaurant… but I began to think that it may not be a bad idea for two reasons. For one, these two guys would hear me out and understand me better than anyone else. And secondly, my circumstance had something to do with Umika and their fellow band member after all.
“Well, I found him just a block away from the restaurant. He had a car so he offered me a ride and then I thought that’s it’s been a while and we should hang out,” Yuto said all that with a smile. I thought that they could see right through me but something about the ‘hanging-out-with-old friends’ put me at ease.
“Come on in,” the host gestured and opened the door widely to usher us to into the rather spacious pad. Yuto was naturally first through the door but the host held me with one hand on my shoulder which stopped me from taking another step inside.
“And you,” His expression had turned serious all of a sudden as he turned to look me in the eye.
“You have some explaining to do,” he finished and let me in without so much as an elaboration.
Oh crap! I didn’t think he’d figure it all out so soon. Since when did he become so perceptive?
If there was one thing that Kawashima Umika and Yamada Ryosuke had something common back in our Horikoshi days it was this: they had the tendency to be aloof and spaced out a lot in class. The teachers would usually scold Yamada of this habit but Umika was spared from being scolded because of a certain seatmate who looked out for her in class. I would have never guessed how much the three of them had grown from their high school selves.
Especially Chinen and Umika.
I knew this was coming. Yuto deliberately landed me here. And he had to bring me here - to Yamada’s place of all places! And he had somehow figured things between Umika and me. What Yama-chan lacked in academic fiber more than made up for his ability to be able to get along well with people at an almost professional level. Sure I’ve had heard stories from my agency about Yamada Ryosuke being such a pleasure to work with. But when I finally got the chance to work with him in “Risou no Musuko” he was every inch as the stories depicted him. It was amazing how this guy could easily turn his playful side on and off between takes. He did it so effortlessly that I couldn’t tell if he was really going to punch me in the face as Wanikawa in the second episode.
In that scene, he really did have me convinced that he was going to punch me into next week.
This was Ryosuke Yamada after all - he had this uncanny gift for making people like me spill the beans. Plus, the guilt that I was slowly feeling in the last few weeks only made it worse. He had this aura that made you want to confide stuff with him. I had seen this effect on other people even with people who you thought had something to hide. Mirai nursed an attraction to Yamada since our freshman year in Horikoshi. If fans thought that she was better off being paired to Miki and that their onscreen chemistry extended into real life, then they were sorely mistaken. Miki had long since realized and stepped aside to make room for the pair since Mirai did not reciprocate any of his advances in the last few years. It was only when I turned 20 that I learned that the Johnny’s idol had indeed entered into an open relationship with Mirai. Their mutual attraction was what enabled them to bide their time until the legal age of majority. It came as no surprise then that they were caught holding hands in their Disneyland date by the paparazzi. And in what may have been an unprecedented move in the history of the Japanese entertainment industry: both of their agencies gave their blessings and were even quick to confirm that the two were in a relationship.
For a guy who lived alone in the pad, he stocked up his fridge like he had a family living with him.
Well, that was about to change soon. Correction: Shida Mirai was going to change all this soon.
Ryosuke Yamada enjoyed cooking as much as he liked eating. And man! He could cook up a feast if he wanted to. He was pretty much an elegant host too: he had a delicious homemade chocolate cake out in no time along with a pitcher of iced tea. I merely followed Yuto’s lead - we devoured our slices after thanking them for it. The cake was a gastronomic delight. No surprise there. Yuto was already starting on his second serving of the cake when I had just finished mine. I like to savor treats like these so I was in no hurry to get seconds. I took a sip of the tea drinking it slowly. But I could already detect Yamada’s eyes on me so I set down my cup after emptying its contents. Yuto had immediately refilled the cup sensing a long talk. Plus, it was nice to have a drink on hand to make the conversation go smoothly.
“Would you mind levelling with us now?” He asked. He had already fixed me with a probing stare. Apparently, Yamada’s idea of ‘cornering a person into confession’ involved first stuffing them into submission with sweets. The human brain did tend to work better after the body had had its fill of sweets.
I exhaled slowly this time around before speaking.
“I must as well come clean seeing as it is you guys. And you’d never let me leave here… unscathed, right?” I answered somewhat mockingly. They were already grinning back at me.
“Unscathed?! More like alive?! Hah! You’ll be lucky if we even let you leave with your sanity intact!” teased Yuto while devouring another chunk of cake.
It was Yamada that set the tone of this ‘interrogation’ when he said with all sincerity,
“And besides, this is long overdue.”
“Okay,” I paused to collect and organize my thoughts. Then I began, “The truth is…”
I basically backtracked to how Yuto found me a block from the restaurant at first and then I slowly worked my way up to my ‘secret’ from high school.
“I didn’t really rush to the hospital like I told you earlier. But it also wasn’t a lie. My mom called me back when I was half a block from the restaurant telling me that she and my dad had gone to the hospital just to get my dad’s results. And that his test results turned out well.”
I pressed on with my story.
“And then it hit me. As I was finishing up on my phone call with my mom, I suddenly thought that it was the best opportunity for them to talk.”
And by ‘them,’ Yuto and Yamada clearly understood who they were.
“You know that he’ll never talk to Umika especially when I am there beside her. But he’ll also never let Umika go home by herself. So I did the only thing that first came to my mind in my half-baked plan: I lied. But you have to understand that with this opportunity, they’ll be able to fix their friendship and talk things out. Even say the things that they couldn’t tell each other back then.”
As Umika’s current boyfriend, it was hard for me to decide on letting her mend fences with her ex. Yuri Chinen will always be more than just an “ex” in her life. He was instead an “X” that had been left as an indelible mark on her heart, one that she had carried with her in secret all through these years. I guess I loved her damn too much to care for her well-being which is why I finally decided to go through with this. Whatever happens next… if it was meant to be then it was meant to be. I ended my explanation only to stare back at the surprised faces of Ryosuke Yamada and Yuto Nakajima. They were speechless for a moment. I suppose the confession was something that they did not expect to hear from me.
But they quickly recovered and the first words that came out of Yamada’s mouth was,
“You know you’re baka, right?”
I could only feebly nod in assent. This guy knew how to go for the jugular too.
Yuto suddenly slapped Ryosuke at the back of his head. It was accompanied by an admonishing “Yama-cha-an!”
Yuto was always the reserved one among the HSJ trio in my Horikoshi class. He was also quite sensitive to people around him and rarely displayed callousness especially with the girls. Not bad for a guy who grew up with no sisters. They were both trying to lighten the mood by acting like a manzai pair. Yamada was already pretending to massage the back of his head and grinning back at me.
It was Yuto’s turn to comment, “I understand why you did it, Jingi but if you let those two fix things between them, they might…”
“I know, Yuto,” I replied with somewhat a defiant edge in my voice. As far as I was concerned, I’ve had no regrets up to this point.
“But… aren’t you afraid to lose her?” Yamada’s concern was one of sincere concern and I think he was drawing from his past experiences with Mirai - especially in the years that he “nearly lost” her to Miki or to some other male co-star.
Fortunately for him, Mirai had already realized her feelings for him way back in high school.
I shook my head and smiled at both of them.
“I love her, and if she’s happy then I’m happy as well.” The words were, more or less, the same promise that I had been saying to myself these past few years as a mantra.
“Wow, Jingi,” was all Yuto could muster. He understood. The host was still half-torn between talking me out of it and respecting my decision.
“Ever since high school, I always liked her. The ‘like’ slowly evolved into love. I had always wanted to confess to her back in high school but you know what happened. She beat me to it by confessing instead to Yuri on our senior year. Obviously, she got hurt in return. But still, I thought that it was perfect timing to step in, be the shoulder to cry on for her, and ultimately confess my feelings for her. When I was going to do just that, I saw her going into the girl’s bathroom and overheard her crying. It was quite painful for me to execute my plan to go on the rebound knowing that she was hurting. So I simply buried my plan and my feelings along with it. I really meant to confess to her on that day but both fate and my heart decided otherwise.”
I had always wanted to tell Umika about this but I ended up telling it first to these two guys instead.
I felt strangely relieved and somewhat pathetic of what I just did. But I was grateful for the relief it brought me. It was as if an annoying thorn had been plucked from parts unknown granting me some release of all the things that had been kept bottled in for quite some time now.
“In senior year, I remembered how worried I was when I saw Umika return to the classroom. It was as if she had been crying on the way back. Back then I didn’t know that she had confessed to Chinen and got rejected. It was only at the end of the day that I saw her alone in the room. She was waiting for Mirai. It was at that time that I saw her crying in front of the desk beside hers. I thought she was practicing for some drama but I realized that the desk beside hers was Chinen’s. It was so heartbreaking to watch that I just quietly walked away, narrowly evading Mirai on the way down.”
I paused to take a sip of tea and then continued.
“I had always been silently watching her from the sidelines. It made me feel like a stalker but I just couldn’t help myself: she was someone that you had come to love and want to protect. I remember Chinen acting strangely around her for about a week. Even after all that, he was genuinely concerned for her well-being. She was all smiles again. I was really jealous that they were able to remain friends after all that.
I let a few more days pass by quietly watching how the two were back to being just friends. So I decided to man up and finally confess my feelings for her. If Chinen couldn’t enter into a relationship with this wonderful girl because of his agency and other professional reasons then it was his loss. I made my move and planned on confessing to Umika inside our classroom. And just when I thought that everything came into place, she quickly bolted from the room before I could enter and corner her into hearing my confession. She looked quite spooked and would always glance back as if someone was following her. I decided to follow her as she left campus - almost lost her too since boy and girls took different paths going to and from Horikoshi. It was Yuri who helped me pick up her trail again. The guy ran passed by me without noticing me as I was deciding on the direction that I thought where Umika was possibly heading. I was curious why the guy was in a hurry so I followed him instead since we happened to be going in the same direction anyway.
And sure enough I saw him catching up to Umika. She apparently recognized him or she wouldn’t have stopped and turned around. What happened next was the stuff you commonly see in romantic movies. Umika was the first to hug - somewhat catching Chinen off-guard as he slowly hugged her back. It was there that it hit me that these two were already in a relationship. And quite secretly too, it seems that they cleverly disguised their relationship with their supposed ‘friend-zoned’ statuses. I had to strain my ears a bit just to hear snippets of their conversation. I got another dose of surprise in doing so since I realized that I was the one - the stalker - that Umika was trying to run away from. I was scaring her.
Who was I kidding with all my secretly following her all this time?! My love for her was already clouding my judgment. If she knew who was causing her to look over her shoulder in the last few days, then she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
I finished downing all the remaining tea that was in the glass before continuing again.
“So I walked away. I walked away quietly never hinting once that I was there when they were all so lovey-dovey - lost in each other’s thoughts and comfortable in each other’s company. I never let on that I knew their secret. I already decided right then and there to step aside and let the one person that I liked be happy. But it was hard to let go of her. I wanted to confirm her feelings for the guy. So I got her number from Chinen - and he just gave it to me and never bothered to ask why I was asking for it.”
Yuto and Yamada both remembered that time since they were there when I asked the phone number from Chinen.
“That night, I called her and we ended up talking to each other for quite some time. I never thought that she would get her heart broken that same night.”
I wrapped everything up at that point. The two HSJ members looked surprised at the deep history that existed in my relationship with Umika. I wasn’t always much of a storyteller but I guess my ‘love story’ struck a chord with the two.
When they found their voices again, it was Yamada who broke the silence and it was with a hint of frustration.
“So what happens now? I mean… after all the effort that went into stepping in to fill in that romantic void in her life… you’re just going to ruin everything?”
I shook my head a bit while trying to come up with a better analogy to make him understand my logic.
“You still don’t get it, Yama-chan. Look at it this way: if Mirai started to like someone else while you are still together. I think you’d most likely end up in my position.”
“She’d never do that! She loves me and I love her. Even if we quarrel from time to time, we’d still make amends and still love each other,” he defensively blurted it out.
“I know. But what if? What if she ended up being in the same situation as Umika? Will you still keep her by your side or would you set her free and let her be happy?”
I had just posed a most challenging dilemma. I could see it in his eyes that she loved Mirai Shida like I loved Umika Kawashima. Correction: Still love Umika Kawashima.
“If that were to happen, I’d most likely beg kami-sama that she be happy with me. I wouldn’t want to decide on our relationship using the options you have because all I want is…”
He had stopped mid-sentence. It finally dawned on him that he knew where the statement was leading him and that he understood my position.
“Because all you want for her is to be happy. That no matter what choice she’ll make you know in your heart that that was the one she will end up making her happy,” I finished for him and concluded whatever else he was trying to make sense of in his thoughts.
He merely nodded in return, letting his back rest on the sofa cushion behind him.
Then just as the silence started to settle on, all three of us let out very audible sighs.
Everything fell apart right then and there. It had been quite awhile since we had laughed and enjoyed each other’s company.
I left Yamada’s place at past 11 PM. But I didn’t go straight home just yet and was soon making the last emotional stop for the night: her place. I ended up just standing there somewhat leaning back on my car. I searched for her room and was somewhat disappointed that she had already called it a night. I sighed and told myself that I was being baka just being here hoping something miraculous would happen.
I said a mental prayer to wish her well and ask the gods to keep her safe while gazing at his window before driving off.
I did somewhat confess to Umika on the phone that night… the same night that they broke off their relationship just months before graduation. So why do I feel like I’m the one at fault? Why do I feel that I only have myself to blame for this wavering relationship? It was too late to start regretting things and I have always faced the consequences head on.
The gods know this.
I have waited all these years to love you Kawashima Umika and damn it all if I have to follow you to a place where the stars go blue just so you’d say you love me back!