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About three days after the infamous nickname “Enemy of Women” had started to take hold on campus, I was put in charge of buying supplies for the cultural festival. There were many items needed—paper plates for the café area, decorative ribbons, and construction paper for making signs—but since each one was something I could easily pick up at the shopping district near the school, I planned to go by myself after school.
“Well then, I’ll come with you.”
Shirasaki, who was checking the shopping list in the student council room, said this as if she were simply reading out a plan that had been decided from the start, and before I could refuse, she had already tucked the documents into her bag.
Himuro was attending another meeting, and Mishima was tied up finalizing the budget. Normally, someone would have definitely stepped in at this point, but the fact that no one was there to interfere today was probably part of Shirasaki’s plan.
“I’ll carry the heavy stuff, so you can stay behind, Shirasaki.”
“I’m not coming along because it’s heavy. It’s because I don’t want to miss the chance to walk home alone with you, Senpai.”
“You still don’t try to hide it, do you?”
“I don’t want someone else to snatch you away while I’m beating around the bush trying to hide my feelings.”
Shirasaki was smiling gently, but her words contained a passion that couldn’t be dismissed as a joke. While Himuro and the others used the pain of heartbreak as an excuse to get closer to me, Shirasaki had made her intentions clear from the very beginning.
It should have been easy to understand, but since I wasn’t used to having my affections expressed so directly, I still couldn’t tell how seriously I should take her words.
On the way to the shopping district, she didn’t walk half a step behind me—she walked right beside me. Maintaining a distance where we were almost touching but not quite, she matched my pace whenever I changed it.
It might have been a casual gesture for her, but to me, that meticulousness felt as though it had been carefully prepared for a long time.
“Shirasaki, why me?”
When I finally voiced the question I’d been meaning to ask but had left unresolved, Shirasaki’s pace slowed ever so slightly.
“So you’ve finally asked me,” she said.
“I heard I picked up your student ID. But it’s unnatural to remember me just for that, isn’t it?”
“I suppose that was all it meant to you,”
Although there was no reproach in her voice, a faint sense of loneliness mingled with it. That spring, when Shirasaki had just enrolled, she dropped her student ID in front of the library. All I remember is picking it up from the hallway and returning it to its owner; nothing else of note remains in my memory.
“Back then, I hadn’t really fit in with my class. I joined the student council right after enrollment, and since I rarely spent time in the classroom after school, before I knew it, people had come to see me as someone unapproachable.”
Shirasaki continued speaking quietly, her gaze fixed straight ahead. Her expression was as gentle as ever, but her profile betrayed a slight tension as she tried not to show her vulnerability.
“Even when I dropped my student ID, the people nearby realized it was mine. But no one said anything to me. I didn’t have the courage to go back and get it either, so I just watched from a short distance away.”
“Is that when I picked it up?”
“Yes. After you checked my name, you called out to me loud enough for everyone around to hear. When I didn’t come out, you even came to look for me in the library.”
Even after she told me that, my memory of it remained vague. To me back then, it was probably just a perfectly ordinary act—returning a lost item to its owner.
“If that had been all, I think I would have just been grateful. But after handing me my student ID, you said, ‘It’s amazing that you’re on the student council as a first-year.’”
That was when Shirasaki stopped walking for the first time and looked straight up at me.
“It was the first time someone had affirmed the choice I’d made—a choice I’d thought made me stand out from everyone else. Even if you don’t remember, I’ve watched you countless times since that day.”
Hearing those words, I finally understood that Shirasaki’s feelings for me weren’t just a passing infatuation. She hadn’t suddenly fallen for me. During that year I was unaware of, she’d been watching me from afar, repeatedly mulling over those same words in her mind, and steadily nurturing her feelings.
“But you never came up to talk to me.”
“Because Mizuse-senpai was always right beside you.”
Shirasaki’s smile twisted ever so slightly.
“I didn’t think I could break into that dynamic. So I waited. For the moment when you’d be alone.”
“That sounds a little scary.”
“It’s the truth.”
The fact that she didn’t deny it was so typical of Shirasaki.
By the time we finished shopping and left the store, a light rain had begun to fall outside. When I opened my folding umbrella, Shirasaki stepped under it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, moving close enough that our shoulders touched.
Since I was carrying our bags, I had no room to keep my distance, and under the cramped umbrella, enveloped by the sound of the rain, I could almost hear her breathing.
“Senpai.”
“What?”
“Please don’t think of my feelings as the same as those of someone who’s just gone through a breakup.”
Shirasaki’s finger gently grasped the sleeve of my jacket, which was holding my bags.
“I’m not seeing you as a replacement for someone else. Nor am I depending on you just because you were kind to me after I got hurt. From the very beginning, I’ve only had eyes for Yuto Kasugai.”
Her words were so direct that I couldn’t reply right away. Shirasaki didn’t reproach me for my silence; she simply kept walking beside me. However, the fingers gripping my sleeve were gradually tightening their grip, as if to make sure I wouldn’t wander off somewhere.
“I’m not asking you to give me an answer right away.”
She spoke quietly, her gaze fixed on the rain ahead.
“Just don’t forget this: when you’re ready to choose someone, I won’t allow you to exclude me from the list of candidates.”
Even though she said it wasn’t a confession, she had definitely cut off my only escape route. Yet, strangely enough, I didn’t find that weight terrifying. There was someone who saw me not as a substitute, but as myself from the very beginning. That fact seeped into my heart—a heart that hadn’t been chosen for five years—more quietly than the rain.
Maho Shirasaki is not a “losing heroine.”
That’s precisely why she’ll come to claim my side without hesitation, more so than anyone else.
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