Chapter 41: The Beginning of the End

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Translator: Soafp

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Three days after the fake confession.

I had stopped going to school with Miko, and by now I wasn't even walking home with her anymore.

I didn't talk to anyone in class.

The classmates around me seemed to have filmed the rooftop confession, and they were laughing while bringing it up.

Especially Ayano, who went out of his way to spread it even to people who hadn't even been there, using it as a joke.

It would be a lie to say I felt absolutely nothing about that, but honestly, I didn't care.

If anything, joining the circle of people I looked down on and fighting them on their level would only annoy me more.

So I just left it alone.

The problem was Miko.

She kept trying to speak to me, but every time she hesitated and backed away.

In the end, the first real conversation we had was on the third day, Friday afternoon.

“W-Wait!”

On the way home from school, she ran after me and stepped in front of me.

“…Subaru, you're still mad, right?”

“Does it matter if I'm mad or not?”

When I answered that way, Miko's shoulders trembled fearfully.

I was honestly annoyed.

Did she even need to ask?

We had spent so long together, and then she betrayed me like that.

How could I not be angry?

“N-No. I didn't mean it like that.”

“Then why did you do something like that? If you weren't mocking me, you wouldn't have made a fake confession.”

“Ugh, b-because it turned into a punishment game where I had to confess to someone after losing… and I thought I could ask you, Subaru. I thought if it was you, you'd forgive me if I apologized, so it wasn't me making fun of you or anything—”

“Huh? That's exactly what making fun of me means. Do you think nothing can hurt me no matter what you do?”

“…I'm sorry.”

Miko muttered it with tears threatening to spill.

But nothing about it reached me.

Just like she had said, I could see through the whole thing—that she thought saying sorry would make me forgive her.

What I wanted wasn't a shallow apology like that.

What she had done wasn't something that could be erased with a few words.

It had shattered the time and trust we had built together into pieces.

“I'm going home.”

“W-Wait, that's…”

“You were the one who started saying you wanted to act alone because you wanted to seem more grown-up. See you.”

I left without looking back even once.

Even after the weekend started, my anger still hadn't cooled.

Messages from Miko kept coming in from morning onward.

When I looked at them, they were unbelievable things like asking me to go somewhere with her.

Was she trying to keep things casual and then apologize at some point when the mood felt right?

Of course, I ignored her.

I couldn't sense a shred of sincerity in her words, her attitude, or her behavior.

There was no way I could forgive her like this.

“Lately, you haven't been with Miko-chan. Did something happen?”

“Nothing, Mom.”

“Oh?”

I shook my head when my mother asked in concern.

This was a problem between Miko and me.

I didn't think my parents needed to get involved.

I didn't even feel like going out, so I stayed in my room, staring blankly ahead while Miko kept contacting me.

“Did you want to go to a different shop?”

“Did you maybe just oversleep?”

“Are you feeling sick?”

“Why aren't you replying?”

“Can I come over now?”

I only replied that she shouldn't come over because it would be a nuisance, then tossed my phone away.

---

Looking back on those days, I sipped my coffee.

Miko, sitting in front of me, still wouldn't meet my eyes.

Now that I thought about it, I figured she hadn't understood how serious the situation really was.

I was hurt far more deeply than Miko had imagined, and she had probably still been hoping, somewhere in her heart, that things would somehow work out.

Maybe that just showed how deep our childhood-friend relationship really was.

Besides, we were only first-year middle schoolers back then.

We had only been elementary schoolers a few months earlier, so it made sense that we were immature.

Even I would've struggled if someone had asked me exactly what kind of apology I wanted from Miko at the time.

I was that angry, and I couldn't stay calm.

“You said you didn't want to be forgiven, so you wouldn't apologize to me. But after separating from me, did that decision actually mean anything?”

“…I don't know.”

“Hey, Miko. Not asking for forgiveness and apologizing are two different things. That's just your own selfishness.”

“…I can't.”

There it was again.

If I had been the middle-school version of myself, I would have stormed out of here on pure anger.

But I had grown since then.

Thanks to meeting Nakina and the others, a lot of my thinking had changed.

So I would try to understand her properly.

I wanted to know why she was being so stubborn.

She must have been choosing the wrong option again and again all this time.

That day, too.

Miko had been keeping her distance from me, hoping time would solve everything, when the change happened on the day Ayano picked a fight with me.

Through everything that happened after that, she finally learned just how angry I really was.

But even then, she made the wrong choice again.

And while I was at it, I had socially erased Ayano from the classroom's group of people, hadn't I?