It was Thursday, another school day for Takashi Komuro. He found himself in that spot within the academy grounds where he could be alone with his thoughts, a place where he now sat with the new notebook Yuriko Takagi had brought him on her last visit home. It was a gift purchased by the woman's daughter for him, meant for his birthday.
As a child, Komuro had been orphaned after losing his parents on a flight that suffered an accident over the open ocean. No survivors had been recorded despite the efforts of international forces to locate the wreckage.
The news had struck the boy hard; on the very day his parents were meant to return from a long work assignment abroad to celebrate their son's birthday, the authorities delivered the tragic report that they were among the dead.
Though he had been taken in by the Takagi family due to the friendship ties between Saya's parents and the Komuros, the pain still weighed on him despite being welcomed into a new home.
Only two things had saved him from spiraling into deep depression: the hobby of writing stories—part of a psychologist's therapy to cope with his loss—and a certain woman from the Takagi household who tried to give him the motherly love he had lost.
"Yuriko-san..." Komuro sighed, sitting against the wall of the astronomy club room on the rooftop during hours when the club didn't meet, skipping more than a few classes.
In that notebook with yellowed pages—reminiscent of parchment from centuries past—he was sketching the silhouette of the woman's naked curves exactly as the image was burned into his memory.
Only the face remained to be drawn to finish the picture when suddenly…
"There you are, idiot." The pink-haired girl who always managed to shatter the brief peace he sought outside of class appeared.
"Takagi?" Taken by surprise, panic made Komuro snap the notebook shut and lower it.
While Takashi sat there, Saya was leaning forward right in front of him when he moved the new notebook down, and he was met with two immediate observations about this childhood friend of his.
First, her face was far too close to his own. Second, thanks to the angle of her body's inclination, Komuro could see the small gap created by the unfastened top buttons of Saya's uniform—a gap that barely concealed the cleavage of a girl blessed with a very generous bust.
"What are you doing here?"
"That's what I should be asking you, Komuro." The annoyed expression on the pink-haired girl's face said it all.
"Skipping class again? At this rate, you're going to end up repeating the year."
"Relax, that won't happen. Besides, it's just Shidou's classes," he declared as he stood up.
"Even so..." She hated how much of a slacker Takashi acted like, though it was part of his roguish charm. Then her eyes fell on the object she had intended to give him in person some time ago.
"Wait, is that...?"
She snatched the notebook from Takashi's hands—though he made no real effort to stop her—and examined the crafted cover before flipping through the pages one by one, noticing Komuro's writings, notes, and private thoughts.
"Yeah, um... Yuriko-san brought it over the weekend. She said it was a gift from you." He gestured toward the notebook, and the pink-haired girl couldn't suppress a wave of frustration, hearing that her mother had been the one to deliver it.
However, she didn't know the truth about why he had stood her up that day.
"Hey." Saya's somber tone made Takashi shiver; he knew that voice. "I didn't buy this for you so you could draw things like this." She shoved the indecent sketch in his face—the body of a naked woman posing, detailing every curve of her flesh, her moist cunt, her heavy tits... only the face was missing to complete the figure, and that missing detail was the only thing keeping Saya's anger from turning into homicidal fury.
"Who the hell is this supposed to be?"
'I'm dead,' Komuro thought. He had to come up with something to avoid his premature demise.
"Who is this supposed to be—"
"It's you." The words silenced Takagi, freezing her in place.
"It's... what I imagine you look like under the uniform." It was a lie, one that might make his already complicated relationship with her far more tangled.
"Huh...?" She stepped back after dropping the notebook, her arms and hands instinctively trying to cover her body despite being fully clothed.
'Does he... does he see me as a woman?' The thought raced through her mind. Could it be that the idiot she loved so much finally saw her the way she desperately wanted him to?
"Takagi, thank you." That surprised the academy's smartest girl. "Your mother told me everything, and... I want to apologize for standing you up that day."
Takashi's words caught her off guard, but she should have expected them. After being left waiting by the dark-haired boy in front of her, she hadn't cared much about handing over the gift she'd bought for his birthday, having been unaware of the grief Komuro associated with that date.
"Yes, you'd better apologize, you jerk. I waited for hours, and you just never showed up." Saya spoke without dropping the tsundere façade she had forged to keep others from seeing her true feelings, crossing her arms and turning her back to him in feigned indignation.
However, ...
"But..." Slowly, she glanced back at Takashi, her face flushed with embarrassment.
"I'm an idiot, too. I should have known you wouldn't show up. It's not every day you meet someone whose birthday falls on the exact same date their parents..." She stopped herself before finishing that cruel, empathetic sentence.
She didn't want to hurt Komuro more than he already was. "...If you want to make it up to me, you have to take me on a date one of these days." Her cheeks burned red at her own words.
"A date?" The dark-haired boy looked perplexed. "Why a date?"
"It's..." The blush on Takagi's face deepened. "It's what I expect from you, idiot."
"Alright then, I'll take you on a date," he said with a resigned sigh. Takashi had no other choice.
"Fine. And... you'd better do something about that long hair of yours." Saya couldn't see Komuro's eyes with that hairstyle he'd chosen, but...
"Although you know, I think you look more attractive with it." She realized her slip of the tongue too late.
Mortified, she turned to leave. "I'm going back to class. You'd better do the same soon."
This was going to get complicated. Takashi had just lied to Saya with a very direct implication that he was into her. That wasn't entirely accurate.
He cared for her, but after living with her and her family for so long, he had come to view her more like a spoiled little sister than a romantic interest, even if he certainly noticed the feminine assets she was born with.
'This is bad,' Komuro thought to himself.
To be continued…