[1-Minute Story] The Love of That Day
Important things are always whispered in a low voice.
"Why don't we end it now?"
Aoi-kun said, dropping the words with a straight face.
The student cafeteria had finally cleared of the crowd.
He and I were in a corner of the table.
The tray holding my empty plate made a clattering sound.
The words "Why don't we end it now?" spoken by Aoi-kun as he stood up with his tray,
descended upon my head very quietly, like a resolution that had already been adopted rather than a proposal.
"...End it?"
"Yeah, let's break up. It's about time."
The 2:00 PM sunlight streamed in from the large window facing the courtyard.
Rare for the rainy season, where rain would fall and stop repeatedly, the light that shone in illuminated him softly from behind.
I, who had been about to scoop up the soup from my set meal at that moment,
lifted only my head like a turtle and froze in that position.
...End it?
...Break up?
No
No
No
No
Absolutely not.
"Understood."
I said quietly, catching his unreadable expression.
"Yeah. Well, let's go with that."
Having said just that, Aoi-kun walked away from the spot, along with his empty dishes.
・
It was an ill-matched love from the start.
Aoi-kun, whom I fell in love with at first sight upon entering university, was clearly a standout presence even among the new students.
At the trial joining of the astronomy circle where we happened to meet, he said, "My family is bourgeois, you see."
Naturally, the girls surrounding him were already buzzing that day over Aoi-kun, who could breezily say such a declaration—neither joke nor truth—upon first meeting.
Tall and slender,
with a well-defined nose and a slightly sweet face—Aoi-kun,
I secretly confessed my feelings to the owner of such looks, who inevitably drew everyone's attention, at the new student welcome party for the trial members.
Unlike the upperclassmen, we new students couldn't drink alcohol yet, but,
I felt a bit drunk myself in the chaotic mood created by the "drunken upperclassmen" I was seeing for the first time.
And then,
thinking "It's now or never," I took advantage of the confusion and
said,
"I like you, Aoi-kun."
The reply to those straightforward words
arrived after a short pause: the three characters, "That's fine."
・
"That's fine."
That was all I was told,
and I was never told "I like you too" or "I love you."
"Saying 'That's fine' sounds like it's by permission," a friend once said.
"By permission"—only one side holds the authority. The one giving it was, of course, Aoi-kun, and I,
certainly had no rights or choices at that time.
It was that kind of love from the beginning.
I remember Aoi-kun saying this when a month had passed since we started dating in form:
"You know, you look kind of unlucky."
At that moment, the depths of my heart twisted with a "Why would you say that out of nowhere?" but, powerless as I was, I could only vaguely muddle through it by saying, "Do you think so?"
I, who appeared to Aoi-kun as an "unlucky woman"—
During the three months we were together, the voice calling my name might have only had a formal ring to it.
Perhaps there wasn't even a shred of affection there from the start.
Large drops fell from the corners of my eyelashes, making a sound as they
landed on the tray.
"But—"
I think.
"Even so, it's okay. Because you made me happy."
Behind my eyelids, the back of Aoi-kun as he walked away is still burned into my mind.
I think I will continue to live on, knocking only on the doors to the past from here on out.
Soaking in tears of misery and loneliness, I will live on, thinking of Aoi-kun forever and ever.
— In a corner of a world covered in gloomy rain,
I did not yet know that outside the window, a pure breeze was blowing to announce the arrival of early summer —.