Romance Novel "Next Time I See a Rainbow" Episode 2: The Second Button I Couldn't Get

[Episode 2]

After that, we didn't start dating, but we continued to interact just as we had before.
However, it might just be my imagination, but

I felt like Rei had become
just a little bit kinder than before.
Without being able to ask him myself

what he thought of me,
we became third-year students.
Since we never talked outside of club activities anyway,

once we retired from the club, we
completely lost touch.
It was nothing special.

It was just a matter of me
talking to him normally when we met at school.
But back then,

I was afraid that if I spoke to Rei myself,
he would be cold to me,
so I couldn't find the courage to do it.

The new year arrived, and high school entrance exams drew near.

Information about who was applying where
spread from out of nowhere.
I knew it already, but
Rei and I were not applying to the same high school.

If we go to different high schools,
I might never see Rei again.


Thinking that made me suddenly feel lonely.

I'm sure this will just end as an unrequited love.


The day of the exam was a cold morning mixed with snow.

What came to my mind as I headed to the exam venue
wasn't English vocabulary or math formulas,
but the image of Rei,
who was likely heading somewhere else at that moment.

The distance that I couldn't do anything about
seemed to be quietly separating the two of us.

Once the entrance exams were over, graduation day arrived quickly.

Among the girls in my class,
the talk was all about
confessing on graduation day or
getting the second button,

and things like that.

"Sara, aren't you going to confess to Rei?"
My childhood friend Natsuko asked me

on the way home from school.
Natsuko was in the same class as Rei, and
among our friends,
she was the only one who knew I liked him.

"I already confessed."

"What! When? This is news to me."

"Last summer."

"No way! So, how did it go?
Don't tell me you two were actually dating?"

"We weren't dating."

"Oh, I see. So? What was Rei's reply then?"

"He said, 'Oh, thanks for that.'"

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean? So, what happened after that?"

"What happened, you ask... nothing changed from before."

"And it's been like that ever since? Does Rei not say anything either?"
"Yeah."

"...What are you two doing?"

Natsuko laughed in disbelief.

"Come to think of it, Harumi from Class A

seems to be aiming for Rei's second button."
"Huh?"

My heart skipped a beat at Natsuko's words.

"Is that okay? Even if

Harumi takes the second button?"
Even after parting ways with Natsuko,


I couldn't get the second button out of my head.
But if I went to ask for the button

and Rei was put off by it,
I definitely wouldn't be able to recover.

"What should I do..."

Without reaching a conclusion, graduation day arrived.

The ceremony ended without incident,
and we lamented parting ways
with friends we would no longer see.

The second button I couldn't get because I lacked the courage
seemed to have already
fallen into Harumi's hands.

Natsuko, unable to watch anymore,
snatched my graduation album away,
had Rei write a message in it, and returned.

"When you're super bored,
if we happen to meet somewhere, please say hello."

At the very end of the page where he wrote the message,
it was written in green ink.
A nameplate with
Rei's last name was tucked inside.

"'Please say hello,' he says. That's great!
He even used polite language. Hilarious!
Oh, by the way, Rei put the nameplate in on his own.
I didn't ask him to!"
On the way home from graduation,

Natsuko said that while we were walking together.
But that clumsy Rei

would never give me a nameplate on his own.
Natsuko must have been thoughtful enough to do it for me.
"I think

Rei likes you, Sara."
Natsuko muttered that as if to herself, then

"See you later!

Even if we go to different high schools, let's meet sometimes!"
she said, waving her hand broadly as she went home.

While I was walking alone, feeling like I was going to cry
at the message Rei had written for me,
I saw a familiar school uniform a little ahead.

It was Rei.

In a moment, Rei would go inside his house.
If I missed this chance, I might never see him again.

"Rei!!"

Before I knew it, I had shouted at the top of my lungs.

Rei turned around.
As expected, the second button was gone.

It didn't have to be the second button.
Even just one thing would do;
I wanted a memento of Rei.

I ran up to Rei's side,
wiped away my tears,
and said with the best smile I could manage at that moment.

"Will you give me a button?"

Then Rei, without a word,
but with a very gentle smile, unfastened his third button
and gently placed it in my palm.

"...Thank you."

When I said that,

"The second button
was asked for by some girl I don't know,
so I gave it to her,"

Rei said while scratching his head.

I felt relieved that to Rei,
Harumi was nothing more than "some girl I don't know."

"I know. But this is enough for me."

When I said that, Rei smiled shyly.

Since we hadn't talked in a long time
since retiring from the club,
we both felt reluctant to part,
so we stood there talking for a long time.

About the entrance exams, our classmates, our homeroom teacher,
and the high schools we would be going to separately.

"I wish time
would just stop like this..."

It's a cliché phrase,
but I had never wished for anything more than I did at that moment.

"...Well then. Take care."

"Yeah. You too, Rei."

Saying that, we parted ways.

We might never
talk together like this again.

Thinking that makes me sad, but
the time we spent talking at the end was happy,
and I felt a little proud of myself
for having found the courage.


The third button and nameplate I received from Rei,
and
the message written in green ink,
became my treasures.

To be continued.

✨Click here for the next episode✨

Romance Novel "Next Time I See a Rainbow"
Episode 3: The Foggy Railroad Crossing and Chocolate

🌈 "Next Time I See a Rainbow" Full Series Summary (Magazine)