v1c7: A Nerd in Love

I wonder when my first love was. I think it was in elementary school. She was an older girl in the same cleaning group as me. Her skin was pale and smooth, and she was a cheerful girl who liked to smile a lot. When it came to cleaning up at the elementary school I used to attend, areas were divided, with each area being assigned a different cleaning group.. The groups were made up of students from grade 1 all the way up to grade 6, evenly distributed to “encourage more interaction between grades.” However, because children loved to play around, it was common for the boys from each grade to get into a huge brawl during cleaning time. I didn’t feel comfortable with the commotion, so I just flatly continued cleaning with a cloth, at which point a girl suddenly spoke to me. “Yacchan, you’re always working so hard, huh.” From that point on, she’d frequently strike up conversations with me during cleaning time. “I really don’t like boys. They’re so childish. But, Yacchan, you’re different. You have an older sister. How nice… I’d also love to be Yacchan’s older sister…” When she told me that, I unknowingly began to faintly yearn for her. Even when our group was assigned to a different cleaning area, she’d still smile at me whenever she saw me. But, she graduated before me, and as I saw her less frequently at school, my feelings began to fade naturally. I couldn’t even discern when my first love had ended. My second crush was during junior high. She was a slightly mature girl in the same class as me. We were probably learning how to use question words at that time, because we were playing a game in English class where we had to ask the people around us questions written on cards. 【TLN: All direct sentences starting and ending with『』are spoken in English. The author wrote them in English along with their Japanese counterparts, so I will do the same.】 『What kind of men do you like?（どういう男の人が好みですか？）』 When I asked her that question, she bluntly answered without any change in her facial expression at all. 『It's you.（あなたみたいな人）』 【TLN: My Japanese knowledge is telling me that this should be “Men like you”, since she didn’t explicitly state that she liked Yasuki. I might be misunderstanding though.】 I got confused as I asked her once more. 『Really?（ホントに？）』 『I never tell a lie.（嘘なんかつかないよ）』 She answered with incredible fluency and pronunciation considering the fact that she was a junior high student. She looked me in the eye and smiled suggestively. Looking back on it, I think that I was a simple and naive person, because that alone was enough to make me fall in love with her. However, my happy mood was short-lived. 3 days later, I was changing into my jersey for my club, the track and field club. That was when a friend of mine who was also in the same club whispered to me. “Did you hear? That girl is going out with Imai from class A” At the time, I couldn’t believe it at all. But later that day, on my way home, I saw the two of them heading home together, just as my friend had told me. That was how my second love abruptly came to an end. She’d just been playing around with me. That was when I realized something. I had several female friends, both in my club and in the class. However, none of them seemed to be aware of me as a member of the opposite sex. At the time, I was one of the shortest and skinniest people in class, and my face was, and still is, vaguely androgynous without any trace of manliness in it. In addition, I was a quiet, docile kid who was averse to fighting. I never went against what other people said, and I didn’t actively try to approach girls. I was far from being masculine, both in appearance and in personality. “Messhi is a good guy, isn’t he?” “I like Iijima-kun because he’s not boyish, and that makes him easy to talk to.” I've heard those kinds of remarks dozens of times before. But those weren’t compliments at all, and I've learned the hard way that being a "good person" doesn't necessarily make you a love interest. The truth is, I also have a disagreeable side to myself, and even I have obscene fantasies about the girls around me at times. ─Someone like me would only suffer if I fell in love. I subconsciously put a lock on my heart so that I wouldn’t carelessly fall in love with anyone ever again. I did my best to avoid any sort of interaction with girls, and somewhere along the way, I lost the key to that lock. Then, after a very long time, that very same person fell in love with a girl once more. She was a girl who, up until that point, was definitely not my type at all. She was all about looks and she was cocky. A cynical girl with a sharp tongue who lacked any semblance of ladylike grace or consideration for others. I felt like she’d been toning down on her makeup recently, but she still stood out a lot. In fact, I think that the less gaudy and flamboyant she was, the more she brought out her natural good looks. This, in turn, would make her even more popular with the boys. ...Kitaoka probably didn’t see me as a member of the opposite sex, just like the girls I had been close with in the past. Even though she had another boy she was interested in, she chose to go home alone with me, and although she may have done it unconsciously, she leaned her body on me when she fell asleep on the train. Speaking of which, she said that she and Kimura were "just childhood friends", even though they really looked like they were dating, so maybe she thought that being alone with a man wasn’t anything special. Once I recognized and accepted my feelings for her, I became more conscious and aware of Kitaoka Ema than ever before. While in class, I noticed that my eyes would follow her around subconsciously. I hurriedly averted my eyes so that people wouldn’t notice that I was looking at her, but when I did, my ears would start doing the same thing, focusing on her voice among the clamor. When she walked up the stairs in front of me, I couldn't help but notice the back of her short skirt. On the way home from prep school, I got strangely nervous to the point where I didn't even know what I was saying. Even when I studied in my room, I found it incredibly hard to concentrate because I got so distracted. I wonder what she’s doing right now… Those kinds of thoughts were the only things going through my head. (This is no good…) This is the most important time of the year for me, so what the hell am I doing? I admonished myself once more. This was no time to be indulging in love. Besides, it was bound to be a fruitless love anyways. Geez, I don't even know what I was hoping for at this point. She was popular and she even had her eyes set on someone else, so it was obvious that no matter how long I waited, Kitaoka would never be mine. And yet, I found myself inadvertently falling in love with her. I couldn't help but be attracted to the weak and sad expression she showed me when she was depressed. But still, the girl I chose to fall in love with was just too messed up. I felt like beating myself up, wondering why of all people, I had to fall for a girl like her. In the English grammar reference book I happened to be reading through, I came across the idiom "-was supposed to be". This was never supposed to happen. That was exactly how I felt. Falling in love with Kitaoka was something that was, until recently, absolutely impossible. I slammed my forehead against the hard desk, to no avail. My mind was already occupied with the image of Kitaoka that I had seen earlier that day. 【TLN: The idiom he came across was ～のはずだった (Romaji: ~no hazu datta). This is the same type of grammar used for the title of the novel.】

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A short one. Next one is moderately long, so I won't give an exact estimate. Maybe in 1 week. No editors here yet because I'm rushing this. Please suggest any edits or corrections in the comments. Unu-san will edit this chapter in 1 or 2 days. Also, I might not be able to TL v2 because I'm running real low on funds. If you are a translator willing to pick up v2, then please DM me just so I know.

Edit: Thanks Unu-san. All edited up.