CH 110

Chapter 16 – Understanding and love (3)

Translator – Vodka

In the first place, we were both people of few words. A walk together was bound to be a silent affair.

Having left the elementary school, we proceeded to our next destination in silence.

I wasn’t uneasy about not striking up a conversation, but there was something I had to ask Kirasaka, no matter what.

She called this a date. However, I wanted to know her true motive for this outing.

Otherwise, there would be no point in giving up a holiday to come out like this.

I bided my time, waiting for the opportune moment and location. When the pedestrian traffic had dwindled to a certain extent, I broke the ice.

“Could you tell me already?……The reason for this outing.”

“Ara? Is there supposed to be something else other than us having a date?”

“Date or not, I don’t mind……You said you wanted to confirm something. What is it that you cannot confirm unless we are alone?”

It didn’t matter to me if it was a date or if we were out shopping, or if I only tagged along as the luggage carrier.

Call it anything you want. It’s a trivial matter.

After all, depending on how the person was feeling, it would have a different interpretation.

If she looked upon this as a date, then it would be a date for her. It would be shopping if I considered it so.

The very assumption that both parties would have the same perception of a matter was wrong.

However, Kirasaka had said beforehand that she wanted to confirm something.

In which case, would it be wrong to say that she wanted to use this opportunity to figure out the nature of the special feelings she held for me?

Wasn’t she trying to ascertain those feelings that she unprecedentedly held in her life for me?

She was, however, unperturbed at my question. Her gait registered no change. She didn’t turn to look back either.

She must have had expected this question.

She proceeded to reply.

“If you already know and are still asking me this, you must truly be a worrywart, Shinra-kun.”

“……It’s just my disposition. I need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

The answer that I have come up with was merely an assumption. It wouldn’t be a conclusion until I heard from her.

It was still better to ask straight-out like this than to act based on assumptions and regret making mistakes, even if that meant that I had to come under some fire.

Kirasaka continued uninterestedly.

“Please set your mind at ease……it is what you think. I want to understand the feelings I have for you.”

“……”

There was not a hint of emotion in her voice. It was as if she was reading it out from a book.

Having said so, she crouched on the ground and gently patted a flower that had bloomed roadside. Her pupils seemed desolate. She continued in a mutter.

“I have had girls turning hostile the day after they had acted friendlily. There were boys who always said they weren’t interested in me, but a short while after, they would confess……there wasn’t anything more untrustworthy than human emotions.”

I could nod to her words.

I held the same opinion, as in I too didn’t trust human emotions.

It wouldn’t do any good to have complete faith in human emotions.

It wouldn’t do to be thinking of it as eternal.

Since it was something that continued to change every day, it couldn’t be the same tomorrow.

I haven’t had the same experience as Kirasaka, but I have seen such situations unfold before my eyes on more occasions than I would have liked.

I have had to witness Shizuku Kanzaki and Yuuto Ogiwara suffer much hardship due to the complexities of human relationships.

A couple boasting about how they were meant for each other in the classroom was, in fact, not as fated as they had made their relationship out to be, evidenced by their break-up a few months later. They were people who simply got along well. I have seen such a spectacle many a time.

The fickleness of human emotions that I have experienced in the short number of years I have been alive was enough to turn me into a devout non-believer.

So, I could understand if she wasn’t any more of a believer than myself.

“But to think that I would develop such feelings.”

Curiously enough, a cheerful smile bloomed across her face.

I felt a tad bit relieved.

Even though I didn’t know what that smile heralded, at the very least, as the person whom she held special feelings for, I have not negatively impacted her in any way.

“Shinra-kun is special to me. I think I like you as a person……however, I still don’t know if that ‘like’ is of the romantic kind or the one that I would have for a friend……That’s what I want to ascertain today.”

Her words were clear, not a trace of ambiguity in them. It was very much like her.

However, it was also at this moment that I came to realize that she was just another high school girl in the springtime of her life.