[oneshot] Kimi ni Todoke (part three of three)
Part Two is here.
~
Would it be best to forget about him and move on?
Suzuka blinks curiously as Mirai reads the latest text message.
“What does the guru say this time?” she asks teasingly.
Mirai shakes her head.
“Nothing much…”
~
Mirai is so distracted at the next home economics session that she ends up cutting herself.
Thankfully it’s not that deep a cut, and Mirai manages to wrap a plaster safely around the wound before getting Yamada to cut the rest of the vegetables for her.
I need to stop thinking about him, she tells herself firmly. I’ll do my best to forget him.
She doesn’t notice Yamada biting his lip and looking at her worriedly.
~
Are you okay? You cut yourself today, be more careful!
Mirai smiles slightly as she reads the message.
No need to be a mother hen, she replies, trying to keep her usual sardonic air. I’m fine.
She presses Send, and a couple of minutes later she gets back an indignant message on how he’s totally not related to avian creatures at all.
Unconsciously she breaks out into a smile.
~
I guess, comes a message a couple of days later, I can’t forget him, after all.
Whenever I’m around him I still feel irrationally happy.
~
Confess, then.
Indirectly, if you’re too shy.
~
“…Suzuka-chan?”
Suzuka looks up from where she is doodling in her notebook.
“Yeah?”
“What does it mean to indirectly confess?”
Suzuka blinks.
“Indirectly…confess…?
Mirai turns red but nods anyway, and Suzuka’s face suddenly splits into a grin so wide Mirai thinks she can see every tooth inside.
“You’re so cute! You’re going to confess to your crush?”
“How did you confess to Nakajima-kun?” Mirai asks instead, sidestepping the question.
Suzuka thinks for a while.
“I just said ‘I like you’ and then he went ‘Oh, I do too’ and that was that.”
Burying her face in her palms, Mirai sighs loudly.
“This is impossible,” she whines softly, and Suzuka laughs.
“I’ll support you!”
~
I don’t know how to confess.
What the heck did you mean by ‘indirectly’ anyway?
~
I meant not having to do it face-to-face.
Call him or something? Or write a letter, if you don’t have his number.
~
Mirai decides to bake heart-shaped cookies and leave them on Yamada’s table.
This fails, because Kamiki spies the cookies in her bag at lunch and asks, in a loud voice, if they’re for sharing.
“…Yeah,” she says in a small voice, passing the box to him.
I wouldn’t have dared to give it to him, anyway, she thinks to herself, watching as Kamiki and Chinen and Yamada fight over the ones with the multicolored sprinkles and chocolate icing.
~
Umika and Suzuka corner her a couple of days later.
“You have to confess, you know,” Umika says, getting straight to the point.
“…Confess?”
“To Yamada-kun,” Suzuka cuts in. “There’s no need to play dumb, I pretty much figured it out a while ago.”
Mirai winces.
“Was it the text messages?”
“That, and you kind of stare at him a lot,” Umika adds. “I notice it, even if nobody else does. You do that a lot in home economics.”
“But I’m totally scared of confessing,” sighs Mirai.
“You’ll never know until you try,” Suzuka says sagely, patting her shoulder. “You’ll never know.”
~
Oh god, it feels awkward even to think about confessing.
~
Yamada blinks stupidly at his screen, before typing a reply.
Awkward? Why?
~
The message comes, and Mirai hesitates for a while before allowing herself to type out what she hopes is a reply vague enough so that Yamada remains clueless.
Won’t you find it awkward if you had to confess to someone you already know quite well?
~
Yamada almost chokes on the strawberry he’s eating.
Oh god, he thinks. She likes Chinen.
This pretty much makes perfect sense to him, because he knows Chinen looks good enough to get girls to fall for him. Plus, he’s cute, which would probably score points with girls.
But to lose to his best friend…
That just sucks, Yamada thinks to himself, but dutifully types out a reply anyway.
~
You like Chinen?!
~
Umika stares, rather horrified, at Mirai, slumped over at the lunch table with completely deadened eyes.
“…What happened?”
“That blockhead Mirai’s crushing on,” Suzuka whispers to her, “thinks she likes Chinen-kun.”
“What?!”
“I know, right?” Suzuka replies, sounding rightly disgusted. “I have no idea what’s going on in that brain of his, to even draw such a conclusion. Any idiot can see that Chinen-kun only has eyes for one girl, and that’s not Mirai.”
Umika doesn’t get the meaningfully raised eyebrows, and instead adds in her own two cents.
“We need to do something about this!”
Blearily, Mirai looks upwards at the two of them.
“There’s no need, seriously.”
~
Umika ignores Mirai’s protest anyway, and whispers her plan to Kamiki during home economics.
“So, you in?”
“Definitely,” Kamiki says, grinning. “Yamada-kun gets so miserable over every single message because he thinks Shida-chan likes someone else. I’d like him to stop that, there’s this permanent cloud of depression hanging around our room now.”
“We’ll carry it out tomorrow night, then?”
“Awesome.”
~
By lunch the next day Yuto, Chinen, and Suzuka have been roped into what Umika terms the Great Confession Plan.
~
“Yamada-kun, I think you seriously need to stop moping around,” Kamiki says that evening, rolling over on his bed to stare at Yamada. “It’s annoying.”
Yamada mutters something inaudible and rolls over, stuffing his face into his pillow.
Kamiki heaves a longsuffering sigh.
“Get out,” he says suddenly, dragging Yamada off the bed. “You’re not allowed back in here until that cloud of depression is gone.”
“Hey- What-”
He is pushed unceremoniously out the door, along with his keitai, and the door slams shut in his face before he can react.
~
“You should call him.”
Mirai looks at her keitai uncertainly.
“But…”
“Look,” Suzuka says. “If you don’t confess to him you’ll have missed a chance to tell him your feelings. Get them off your chest, it’ll make you feel much better.”
Mirai smiles wanly.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” Suzuka nods approvingly. Standing up from the bench, she leaves the eco-garden with a cheery wave.
Letting out a small sigh, Mirai looks thoughtfully at her keitai. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and begins to type in a number.
~
Yamada is wandering the halls of the dorm aimlessly when his keitai rings.
Shida Mirai, reads the caller ID, and despite himself he smiles a little.
“Hello?”
There is silence on the other end for a while
“…Shida-chan?”
“I…like you,” a timid murmur comes from the other end of the line.
For a moment, just for a single moment, Yamada feels his heart skip a beat. He forces himself to calm down, hyperaware of Mirai on the other end.
“Good,” he says instead. “You’re calling to practice, right? Say it again, with more feeling.”
A sniff on the other end, then Mirai repeats herself, sounding more embarrassed and slightly fed up.
“I like you.”
“Good job! Now you can go say it to your crush.”
An awkward pause, then:
“I just did,” Mirai mumbles on the other end.
Time stops for Yamada, and he suddenly finds it hard to breathe. By the time he comes back to reality, though, Mirai is already talking again.
“I thought I’d just let you know. I know you already like someone else and all, but this is just to tell you that someone out there likes you-”
“Where are you?” Yamada cuts her off.
“…Eh?” A couple of sniffles can be heard through the line, and Yamada realizes with a sinking feeling that she’s crying.
“Where are you?” he says again, patiently.
“…In the eco-garden.”
“Wait there.”
Ignoring her noise of confusion, Yamada cuts the call and shoves the keitai back into his pocket. He breaks out into a run, sneakers screeching on the linoleum floor.
~
It is easy to spot Mirai, a lone silhouette in the shadowy garden.
“Shida-chan,” Yamada gasps, panting for breath, and she spins around, startled.
“…Ah,” she mumbles, voice obviously hoarse. Even in the dim moonlight, he thinks he can see her cheeks flush red.
They both fall silent, before she makes a move to turn away.
“I’d better go back, it’s getting late-”
“Wait.”
His hand shoots out and grabs hers, and time stops stock still.
~
And in that moment she can feel her heart beat, hear the blood rushing and pulsing, over and over and over again.
She bites her lip hard, but the warm grasp on her wrist remains.
It’s not a dream.
~
In another sudden movement he jerks his hand, pulling her to him. His free hand automatically comes up to wrap around her waist, as naturally as if they’ve always been like this.
“…Yamada-kun?” Mirai squeaks in a tiny wobbly voice.
“Since when?” he asks hoarsely, hardly daring to believe it.
“I…can’t remember,” she admits.
Yamada smiles, pressing his nose gently into her hair. The girl of his dreams is here in his arms under the moonlight and it’s so surreal, as if he’s living in a perfect dream.
If this is a dream, please never let me wake up.
“Me too,” he whispers eventually into the crisp evening air.
~
My feelings…
…they finally reached you.
Epilogue:
“Success!” Suzuka cheers happily, and Yuto grins at her.
“Let’s go find Chinen now,” he says, and the pair leave the spot where they had been spying on Yamada and Mirai.
Chinen meets them about halfway down the dormitory hallway, carrying a fast-asleep Umika on his back. It looks pretty ridiculous, but Suzuka grins.
“Can you feel the love tonight~?” she sings, shooting a predatory grin at Chinen, who rolls his eyes.
Yuto just laughs.
fin.