Chapter 18: CH 18

If you want to remove it, you can.

Translated by Dawn

If you want to remove it, you can.

The morning after a holiday weekend was just plain hard.

It had been a long time since school, work, home security, and many other things.

Everyone wanted to throw those responsibilities away and sleep at home to their heart’s content.

Needless to say, if bad things happen on top of that, everyone would be in a state of tears.

Now, what I wanted to say was….

Right now, I was in that “adding insult to injury” situation.

“Hee, Mizutani’s lunch looks delicious. Did Mizutani’s mother make it?”

“…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, huh? Hey, give me some of that sausage.”

“Why are you here?”

When I spoke to Yamamoto, he gave me a glare.

Then, without saying anything, he returned to his conversation with Mizutani.

“…that sausage, share one with me. You can have some of my broccoli too.”

“…I don’t like broccoli.”

“Oh, I see. Then, have this omelet instead—”

“I don’t like omelets either.”

“…Really, you don’t like omelets?”

Yamamoto opened his mouth.

Well, I wouldn’t blame him for being surprised.

It was a lie, to begin with.

I exchanged omelets with Mizutani the other day.

Wait, that’s not the point.

“I said, why are you here?”

“…Ah? Why are you here?”

Yamamoto was getting a little too aggressive, so I looked away.

I could feel Mizutani staring at me, but it wasn’t that Yamamoto was freaking me out. It was just that the stain on the wall suddenly caught my attention.

Well, this was the empty classroom.

Yamamoto might have made a comeback during Golden Week, and today he came to the classroom many times from this morning to talk to Mizutani. It was getting annoying, so we took refuge in this empty classroom during lunch break. But Yamamoto followed us here, and here we are now.

…damn it, why?

This guy was totally disheartened before Golden Week.

It had been over a week since then, so did he just forget about it?

“You remember, don’t you? You remember that Mizutani and I are dating?”

“Oh, of course, I remember. That’s why I’m here to interrupt you. I’m sure there must be a secret behind your and Mizutani’s relationship.”

“……”

Mizutani glared at Yamamoto sullenly and then made some eye contact with me.

I watched her behavior carefully and suddenly started to put away my lunch box.

I figured out what she meant.

I quickly put away my lunch box, too, and Mizutani stood up.

“Bye-bye, Yamamoto. We’ll eat lunch somewhere else.”

“Really? Can I go with you?”

“No, you can’t. …Let’s go, Aizawa.”

“Y-yeah.”

I followed Mizutani’s back as we left the empty classroom.

I heard the sound of Yamamoto hurriedly putting away his lunch box behind me.

Mizutani and I looked at each other.

“Should we run?”

“Yeah.”

As I dashed to the stairs at the end of the hallway, I heard a door open behind me.

I hurried around the corner and was just about to climb the stairs when

“…!?!?”

Suddenly, I felt Mizutani pull my hand away from hers, and we were completely wedged into the hollowed-out space beside the stairway. Unlike sitting next to each other on the train, I felt Mizutani’s whole body touching mine. I smelled softly like flowers and felt somewhat dizzy.

As we held our breath, Yamamoto dashed past right in front of us.

He continued up the stairs.

I wonder if he thought we were headed to class.

Mizutani and I looked at each other again.

Both of us burst into laughter.

“Fufufu.”

“Hahaha.”

After a short laugh, we left the hollow.

The destination, of course, was that empty classroom.

It was dark under the lamp.

Yamamoto would never think we were back where we were.

“I’m sorry, Aizawa. For troubling you again.”

Finally, the laughter subsided, Mizutani said, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

“That’s fine, but…hand.”

“…What?”

“What? No, the hand. I don’t think we have to hold hands anymore.”

I looked at the hands that were still connected between Mizutani and me.

As usual, her hand was as cold as ice.

Mizutani looked away and shook the connected hands.

“If you want to remove it, you can.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to…”

“So you’re saying you don’t want to remove it?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t care either way.”

“Then so am I. I don’t care either way. So it depends on you, Aizawa.”

“…Isn’t that kind of unfair?”

“Why? I’m saying you can do whatever you want.”

“…that’s not fair, is it?”

I mutter, and Mizutani giggles.

She’s teasing me, isn’t she?

We returned to the empty classroom and resumed eating our lunches.

My brain naturally started thinking about Yamamoto.

In case you’re wondering, it’s definitely not love.

I was simply planning countermeasures against him.

But, rather seriously, how should I deal with this?

Tell the teacher?

But I couldn’t rely on Kano-chan, my class teacher.

That said, I wonder if other teachers would bother to help us…Yamamoto stood like a privileged person in this school, didn’t he? Ogura said something like that too, which meant there was a good chance they would turn a blind eye to it.

…Huh? Maybe this is a dead end?

“Aizawa, are you thinking of something difficult?”

Were my eyebrows naturally furrowed?

I noticed that Mizutani was looking at me with a worried face.

Shaking my head, Mizutani said.

“I see. …Then let’s exchange side dishes.”

“…aren’t you using the wrong conjunctions?”

“No need to worry about the details. Which one do you want, Aizawa?”

“…sausage.”

“Okay. Can I have your broccoli?”

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

“Until just then. Now I like it.”

“…I see.”

It was a convenient like/dislike.