Chapter 4: By the Time She Realized, It Was Already Too Late
Translator: Soafp
As autumn arrived and preparations for the school festival began, unsettling rumors about Sakura and Kurosaki's relationship started to spread around the school.
People whispered that Kurosaki had become cold toward Sakura.
Some said he was harsh with her during practice; others mentioned how he no longer smiled at her during breaks like he used to.
Ao felt nothing upon hearing this—no vindication, no joy.
All he did was quietly reaffirm what he had known back then: his warning had been right.
“Hey, Ao… Ichijou-san doesn't seem too well lately, you know?”
Hayato had noticed the change in Sakura too.
Ao simply nodded.
Sakura no longer had the power to shake him.
On the day of the school festival, the entire campus was filled with energy.
The smell of yakisoba wafted through the halls, and lively voices echoed from every corner.
Ao was helping with reception duty for his class's haunted house alongside Hayato.
During their break, the two walked around the school together, and at a dim landing on a rarely used emergency staircase, Ao spotted Sakura—huddled alone.
Her face was flushed red from crying, her shoulders trembling, soft sobs escaping her lips.
Unsure what to do, Ao slowly approached and gently asked, “What happened?”
When Sakura looked up and saw him, her sobs burst out in full force.
“Ao…!”
Her trembling voice began to tell the truth about Kurosaki's betrayal.
He had only gotten close to her for her body.
And once he got what he wanted, he grew cold—telling her bluntly, like she was trash, “You’re not needed anymore.”
It was only then that Sakura realized she had been deceived.
Her sobs wouldn't stop.
She couldn't believe the kind and gentle Kurosaki could say something so cruel.
“I… I let him… so many times…”
Sakura covered her face with both hands and cried harder.
The regret of doing something she could never undo, the despair at her own foolishness—
They gnawed away at her heart.
“If only I'd listened to you back then…!”
Overwhelmed with regret, Sakura looked up at Ao, her tear-stained face crumpled.
Only now did she truly understand how genuine Ao's warning had been, how deeply he had cared.
In her eyes were tangled feelings of regret toward Ao and despair toward herself.
But the Ao who now stood before her was no longer the same.
He looked at her not with anger or longing, but with a quiet, detached kindness.
There was no passion left—no attachment, no lingering emotions.
He gently handed her a tissue and simply murmured, “That must've been hard.”
His voice was soft.
But within that kindness was a clear, unspoken wall—
A message that they would never return to the way things used to be.
Sakura understood.
She realized that they could never go back.
And she finally grasped how foolish she had been—how much she had lost.
“What… what should I do, Ao?”
Reaching out for help, Sakura extended her hand toward him.
But Ao didn't take it.
He had realized he no longer needed to be by her side.
He quietly turned to leave.
“Wait! Ao, don't go!”
Sakura called out desperately to his back.
But he didn't look back.
And in watching him walk away, Sakura finally understood—
She was truly alone now.
Beneath the scarlet sky of the late afternoon, their paths were completely and irrevocably divided.
Ao never turned around.
Only the silhouette of his back, growing more distant, remained.
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