Chapter 7: Complete Change

──Kobayashi Yui.

The person who was my first love. Runa was staring at her.

Her gaze was so intense that Yui glanced over for a moment.

Then Runa, still unable to contain her excitement, turns toward me.

「It's Yui-chan, right?! So nostalgic!」

While she sparkled with excitement, I hold my head.

Because I had blocked all of Yui's contact information and decided not to chase her anymore.

I suddenly notice. Huh? Runa isn't here.

When I looked at Runa who had been sitting next to me, she was gone for some reason.

Where is she? I looks around frantically.

Then she was in the place I least wanted her to be.

「Yui-chan! Do you remember me?」

Eh, those two. Are they acquaintances by any chance? The surroundings buzzes with such whispers.

Even from a distance, I could tell that even composed Yui was troubled.

Tension runs through the entire classroom.

However, in that brief moment, Yui bloomed into a smile.

At that instant, the tension dissolved and vanished.

Yui's face seemed to say she had remembered.

「Ah, you're Runa-chan! I remember youー We often played together, the three of us, Yui, Runa-chan, and Rei. So nostalgic.」

「──Let's play together again, all three of us. Just like back then!」

Once again, Runa led us toward the worst development I had imagined.

The scab covering the hole in my heart felt like it might peel off at any moment.

I wanted things with Yui to just naturally fade away. Why is she trying to reconnect us?

Ahh, how will Yui respond? She has a boyfriend, so she'll surely refuse...

「Sounds good, let's play! Rei. You heard what we just said, right?」

Suddenly Yui said that and turned toward me.

Perhaps drawn by that, the entire class's attention focused on me.

I was stunned by this unexpected answer.

「Ahh, yeah. Let's play.」

In the end, we decided to hang out after school today.

I thought about using a fake illness to escape.

But I realized that would be the same as the old me.

Clumsy at sports, stupid, introverted.

I don't want to go back to who I was then.

──So this time, I'll face it head-on.