At Least Let Me Say Something!

Exusiai also leaned forward, her long fingers gripping the edge of the desk as she lowered her voice. “I want to know what happened to my little lovers, too. Before, I was a guy, and I’d even… done it… with them. Now that I’m a girl, they can’t have all turned into lesbians, right? The relationship flags would all need to be reset! I’ll go find them after my morning classes to confirm!”

Compared to the two of them and their active investigation plans, my tone was much more melancholic. “I’ve already arranged to meet the girl I like after my morning classes. I was originally planning to confess to her, but now, even though my body is male, my socially recognized gender has been changed to female. Sigh, what am I supposed to do?”

After I sighed, the three of us simultaneously turned our gazes to Saber, who was dressed in her navy blue vest. She was the only one who hadn’t shared her plan.

She looked a little lost under our stares, as if she was an NPC who had just been given a quest she didn’t understand. “…Your topics and plans are all so ‘normie,’ they feel a bit distant from me. After my morning classes… I can only go back to the dorm, draw the curtains, lock the door, and play with myself.”

Her tone was flat, even a little helpless, but it left me, Exusiai, and Yukino completely dumbfounded. A critical hit of pure, unadulterated shock.

You see? Only posers play with other women. Real tough guys, true masters of their domain, play with themselves!

I play with myself!

Exusiai gasped in admiration, her eyes wide. “That’s ballsy!”

Yukino looked at her as if she were a god, her usual calm demeanor shattered. “It can’t get more ballsy than that! A true solo player!”

Of course, I couldn’t be left out. “The ultimate steel balls! Unbreakable!” 

This topic brought up Saber’s painful memories again. Her eyes welled with tears, her heroic face crumbling. “My balls… has well and truly been shattered…”

Our exclamations must have been too loud, because they attracted the attention of the prim and proper female teacher on the podium, who was lecturing us on broadcasting knowledge.

She looked completely exasperated, her voice vibrating through the classroom with the force of a tactical nuke. “Exusiai, Yukinoshita Yukino, Kiriko, Artoria, you four. Even if you’re going to chat during my class, could you please not use such vulgar language? Are you trying to create some kind of ‘gap moe’ with your beautiful appearances and your delinquent personalities? It’s not working!”

This teacher. She always got it.

Being called by these anime-heavy names so unexpectedly, and in front of the whole class, made me cringe with embarrassment. It felt like meeting an online friend on a crowded street, and he shouts from a distance, “Are you [I Will Always Love Bronya]?!”. I really didn’t want to acknowledge him, so I could only reply, “No, I’ve changed my name to [I Will Always Love Exusiai] now!”

I gave the broadcasting teacher, with whom I was on good terms privately, an embarrassed smile and waved discreetly at my roommates to keep it down. The teacher, who had always been easygoing, just sighed and shook her head, returning to her lecture.

Because I was so worried about the upcoming confession, the next few classes were pure agony. When noon finally arrived, I went to the cafeteria with Exusiai and the others, barely managed a few bites of rice, and then rushed to the appointed place, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

It was a garden at the very back of our school. The area was small, and the flowers were nothing spectacular, but in the hearts of many young couples, it was a secluded paradise, a hidden event stage undisturbed by others.

I went to the designated cherry blossom tree. The cherry blossoms, a rare sight on campuses in this country, had not yet bloomed and shyly shielded my head with their bare branches.

I didn’t have to wait long. Even before the agreed-upon time, the girl came running over. She had twin pigtails, big eyes, a small frame, and a large… no, that’s not the point. As I told Exusiai before, I wasn’t just lusting after her body; I loved her for her like-minded soul. We liked the same anime!

The moment I saw her running towards me, my heart felt like it had been overwound, and it started pounding. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. In One-Punch Man, this would be the Emperor Engine; in JoJo, it would definitely materialize as onomatopoeia floating in the air around me.

I watched her run up to the cherry blossom tree, slightly out of breath, and stand before me. She looked so cute that I was momentarily at a loss for words, my brain blue-screening.

Instead, she stared at me with her large, anime-character-like eyes and spoke first. “Kiriko, you’re going to… confess to me, right?”

In her memory, my name had also become Kiriko.

So now the person I’m confessing to has learned to answer before I even ask, I thought. The speech I had prepared, the whole plan, was thrown into disarray. All I could do was nod dumbly, like a broken NPC.

She bit her lower lip, a flash of pity in her eyes, but she steeled herself and said, “I’m sorry, Kiriko. I really can’t accept being in a relationship with someone prettier than me…”

In an instant, I was petrified, just like the students and teachers who had seen us that morning. The difference was, my feeling wasn’t one of amazement, but of being DIO at the peak of his power, getting punched in the head, and waking up to find that I wasn’t DIO, but Kira Yoshikage hiding under an ambulance. I had fallen from heaven into hell in a single, brutal moment.

My throat moved, my vocal cords trembled, but I couldn’t say a word. I silently watched the girl I admired bow her head, whisper “I’m sorry!”, and run away. My heart plunged into an ice age.

From the moment I saw her running towards the cherry blossom tree to the moment she ran away with her head down…

…I hadn’t even said a single goddamn word!!

Without saying a single word, my confession had ended in complete failure. So… this is what you all call ‘youth’? This bitter, soul-crushing tragedy?

I tilted my head back, letting the tears well up in Kiriko’s beautiful eyes, refusing to let them fall. I couldn’t help but tremble slightly, my slender ponytail swaying behind me like a flag of surrender.

…What was her reason for rejecting me again? “Can’t accept being in a relationship with someone prettier than me”?

Doesn’t that mean that if I hadn’t transformed, if I still had my original appearance, this confession would have been a success?! How could I—the pre-transformation me—possibly be prettier than her…

This System. It gave me the body of an anime character, but it turned my long-awaited romance into nothing but a pipe dream. A cruel joke.

I sat dejectedly under the cherry blossom tree. Many passing couples were startled. Seeing my androgynous, delicate features, some even thought an idol was filming a sad love song music video. This wasn’t a sad love song; this was a sad reality…

I don’t know how much time passed. The clear sky was stained with the brilliant colors of sunset, and then the sun sank below the horizon. The goddess of the night drew the curtain of the starry sky with her chariot, and countless stars twinkled next to the round moon.

I had been sitting against the cherry blossom tree from noon until night, replaying the rejection on a loop in my head.

What pulled me out of the recurring nightmare of my failed romance was the crisp notification sound from my phone. I pulled my phone out of my pocket with a stiff arm and saw that the message was from Exusiai. Her nickname in my phone had also been changed by the great power of System-Hime to [Exu].

She said in our dorm group chat to meet at the old spot tonight.

The “old spot” was a restaurant next to our school. Since the school was in the suburbs and the surrounding area was desolate, it was the only place that could truly be called a restaurant, and it was built from a shabby shed. The restaurant had no name, but the four of us in our dorm called it the old spot.