Chapter 62 Reasons for longing.
Emi Otomezaki’s first encounter with her best friend, Yuri Fujiyoshi, is a shocking one.
The high school Emi and her friends attend is located in a lush, natural area just outside the city. There is a beautiful stream flowing nearby, and in the summer the children of the neighbourhood play in the water. Although the area is less crowded than the city, there are few crimes or incidents.
There were very few houses around the high school, and the air was clean and sunny, without the dampness and stagnation of residential areas.
For Emi, who had lived in the cold concrete jungle of elementary and junior high school, the lush green banks lined with cherry blossom trees, which she had only seen in cartoons and anime, were the best way to get to school, turning a gloomy morning into a soothing one.
In fact, Emi chose this high school because of her grades, the distance from her home - and also because of the location, or rather the surroundings. Her parents and junior high school teachers advised her to go for a higher level high school, but Emi insisted to her parents that she definitely wanted to go here.
Emi’s parents were very shocked with her decision to go to this high school and her enthusiasm in asking for help. They were very impressed with her attitude and respected her decision, allowing her to choose this school.
It was such a touching scene that Emi was unable to tell her teachers or even her parents the real reason why she chose this school.
There is no doubt that it was because she liked the green and calm atmosphere of the school, but there was another reason that was the main reason.
It’s a common situation in anime and manga. At the start of high school or the beginning of a new school term, the protagonist, who is gloomy about her ordinary life, has a shocking encounter with a troublemaker who drags her into an unknown and unusual or sweet and sour coming-of-age story.
Emi looked up at the blue sky with its clear white clouds and squinted her eyes at the glare of the sun.
“What a boring - uneventful - life. I’m mortally ashamed to say my fantasies out loud.”
Emi mutters and shakes her head meaningfully and brushes her hair from her shoulders.
And then, as she mentioned above, she jumped into the world of the unusual, because she was hoping for such a thing.
Normally, if a person wants to change, it is more common for them to change their appearance and behavior by making their debut in high school or something.
She’s not ready to take such a high-risk gamble in a place where some of her classmates from junior high school might be there.
Emi is looking for someone who can change the way she is. That’s why she chose this high school, not in a city surrounded by reinforced concrete, but in a place where she can make a connection with people, a little bit away from the city, like in a great anime about “life” (the original is a game for men). She chose to go to this high school. The latter is just Emi’s prejudice, though.
That’s why Emi’s encounter with Yuri was a chance encounter with destiny - a chance encounter that she had been waiting for.
And what’s more, the encounter with her was in many ways a tremendous shock to Emi, who had spent her entire life in a sterile state, exposed to anime and manga content, but mostly healthy stuff.
[---]
In the background of the spring scenery of cherry blossoms dancing in the piercing blue sky, a girl - a schoolgirl in the same uniform as Emi - was standing in front of a cherry tree.
In the sideways spring breeze that blows through the air, her black hair, which is tied in a bun around her neck, flutters lustrously.
Her dark blue school bag, which she must have bought when she entered the school (for some reason, it was the one designed for boys), was slung over her shoulder, and she looked at the rain of cherry blossoms with a melancholy look in her eyes. Emi doesn’t know why, but it seemed to Emi that that girl had a perfect balance of beauty.
It’s almost as if she had been practising in front of the mirror for nearly a month just to get that one moment of pose.
In any case, Emi, who has a pure and unsullied heart, did not look at the scene unfolding in front of her with such rude and unrealistic glasses.
In the midst of the falling cherry blossoms, she closed her eyes and let out a bewitching sigh, and was genuinely fascinated by the gesture of the black-haired girl who slowly reached out her hand.
It is such a beautiful scene that Emi hesitates to call out to her.
She picked up a cherry petal from her hair and kissed it in a moment of meditation.
She kisses it and says:
“You are beautiful - and yet so lovely. Of all the countless petals, you are the most colourful - and above all, the most beautiful. Your beauty is a magical charm that sears the heart of every woman.”
The black-haired girl spins her voice, which is a little husky for a girl, while intertwining the word ‘beautiful’ several times, as if her vocabulary is insufficient.
She spoke with the dignity of a stage actress in the spotlight and grabbed a cherry petal with an exaggerated gesture.
“But I have to go. I’ll miss you, but more than that…”
“——”
“More than that-”
A black-haired girl holds a cherry blossom petal between her index and middle fingers and stretches out her arms, beaming. She tilted her face with that flushed expression and her face turned blue with a surly look.
“Wha…?”
A black-haired girl with a bewildered voice and an imposing expression twisted languidly. She stares at Emi, pale and trembling, oblivious to the fact that the cherry blossom petals she holds between her fingers have been blown away by the wind.
“Goo…go…Good morning…erm…I-”
“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!”
The black-haired girl who shouted with a high and cute anime voice, which was completely different from the previous husky voice, ran through the banks of the cherry blossom trees with tremendous force, turning her back and covering her red-dyed ears with both hands
“Eh?! Wait a minute…hyaan”
(Note: A knightmare huh…”)
With a high, clear voice that rivaled the black-haired girl’s scream, Emi tumbled beautifully on an empty floor.
Aside from the fact that the moment Emi fell, she had a delusion of something stupid, such as “Dojikko attribute flowering!”
(Note: Dojikko=clumsy girl)
While Emi is slightly disappointed that her newly purchased sailor suit has sand on it, she breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that no one saw what she just did.
But unfortunately. In the meantime, the black-haired girl from earlier had already disappeared from Emi’s line of sight.
“……that person from before.”
Swallowing the words “who was it?”, Emi tapped the dust from her uniform to remove it.
If Emi was an innocent and basically good person, She would have thought that she was practicing for the drama club, or that she was inspired by the drama she watched yesterday and was fantasizing about changing the lines in her own way, or something like that.
Emi, who had a very detailed understanding of that person, somehow understood what the black-haired girl was doing earlier.
It’s not just that she’s a pain in the ass, or that she’s got a bit of chuunibyou.
In junior high school, Emi never fell in love with “it”. Two of Emi’s few friends showed signs of being into it from the second year of junior high school.
Emi won’t go into what her tastes - or affection, - were at the time.
Emi doesn’t know which. Is she the reason that she reminds her of a friend she had in junior high school, or that she seems like a girl she could talk to.
The presence of the black-haired girl from earlier is deeply imprinted in Emi’s mind.
Was the encounter with the black-haired girl that impressive and shocking?
Or was there some kind of fate that drew them together, spinning between them?
Emi doesn’t know if the encounter with the girl, whose name she didn’t even know, changed Emi’s flat and uninteresting life into a fantastic one little by little, or if she dreamed up such a development, which is a royal road in creative writing.
What is the certainty that comes to Emi’s mind is,
Emi really wanted - no matter what - to see and talk to her again during her three short years of high school.
◇◇◇
Emi Otomezaki is a princess type of girl.
In the real world, Emi is a plain heterosexual hetero.
Not all men who like rose-coloured manga are into that kind of thing, just as not all women who like yuri-coloured manga are into that kind of thing.
Emi has always been in love with boys. When she was in junior high school, she once joined the chase of a senior girl who looked like a prince, but when she began to make slightly disturbing comments about taking turns carrying her senior’s luggage every day, Emi secretly left the group.
In the autumn of her first year of junior high school, Emi graduated from the typical adolescent girl crush on a senior of the same sex.
She has long black hair, tits, and glasses, which gives her a mature and innocent image, but she is still surprisingly precocious when it comes to her knowledge of sexuality and sexual acts.
The reason for this is quite simple. She had friends who had already reached puberty by the time she was in primary school, and Emi’s older brother was a rather careless person - he often left magazines and manga in the living room, so she was a little early to come into contact with such things.
So, even though she had a one-sided admiration for girls, she was aware of the fact that it would not lead to a heart-to-heart relationship in the end.
A good-looking male classmate stimulated the interest of Emi, a junior high school girl in the prime of puberty, more than a good-looking female senior.
In the real world, she never threw herself into the yuri world, and lived her school life purely as a heterosexual.
In any case, when it comes to creative writing, Emi prefers the yuri style and has even drawn a few herself, so she decided to join the manga research club, a club where like-minded people are likely to gather.
Fortunately, this is a rather relaxed club activity, and there are no members who are eager to participate in the Manga Koshien or anything like that, it is a relatively free club activity, so it is easy for the rather slow-paced and calm Emi to spend time, and there are many students who are somewhat similar in type. She was able to blend right in, even though she wasn’t very good at socializing.
(Note: Manga Koshien is a competition where high school students compete for the position of Number 1 by creating one-page manga.)
Thanking herself for entering this club, she was able to belong to a group of people in her class whose interests were somewhat compatible with hers, and she managed to avoid a grey high school life.
She has made some good friends and she has a place to go after school and at lunchtime.
Emi was enjoying her youth as much as anyone else, but she couldn’t forget the shocking encounter she had right after she started school.
She is a high school girl with black hair and pigtails who has been immersed in a world of her own creation, pretending to be a fictional character.
Emi thought she was a member of the manga research club because of her appearance and atmosphere.
She was nowhere to be seen at the welcome party for new members, where all the club members, from seniors to newcomers, gathered, and the black-haired head of the club with the braided glasses said he had no idea who the black-haired girl was.
Anyway, this is the manga research club - a place where many school students gather, from genuine otaku students to those who simply love manga.
There’s a lot of information about people with similar hobbies, and if it’s a girl who’s a bit of a pain, or a girl who stands out in a bad way, or a girl with a unique personality, there’s a certain amount of information - although it’s not certain - that she might be that girl.
The mystery of who and where the mysterious girl Emi is looking for is one that at first seems impossible to solve, but gradually unravels based on Emi’s testimony.
Although she is not able to meet the student again at the new school, she is able to get an important clue.
“I think it’s Fujiyoshi Yuri from Class 7.”
“She has black hair in pigtails, uses a boy’s bag, has a high-pitched voice, but usually speaks in a husky voice, right? I can’t think of anything but her.”
“The other day, she ran out in the rainy season without an umbrella and shouted, [This is the drop of life I’ve been looking for!] She shouted.”
“It would be a miracle if it wasn’t Fujiyoshi. If not I’d like to bring the girl here and take her to see Fujiyoshi”
Emi’s sense of overwhelming presence from the dark-haired girl was shared by the other students, and it wasn’t long before the name of one of the girls - a first-year student named Fujiyoshi Yuri - was mentioned. It wasn’t long before several of the new members of the club were convinced that she was the girl.
She is happy to find out the identity of the person she is looking for, but at the same time, Emi feels an inexpressible sense of unease at the real image of the black-haired girl, Fujiyoshi Yuri, who is probably more famous and unique (in both good and bad ways) than she thought.
It’s been a little over two months since Emi started her new life here, and at a time when she finally starting to recognize the names and faces of her classmates and getting used to the high school life she always wanted, She wonder if someone who is already well known beyond the confines of her class would make friends with someone like her. Would someone who is already well known beyond her class be friends with someone as uninteresting and dark as her? -And before that, would she even get involved?
From the first image Emi had of her, she assumed that she was an unusual schoolgirl with similar interests to those of her friends around her.
But now that she’s here, she’s afraid that she’s more distant than she imagined.
“Do you know what she looks like? Do you know what kind of person she is?”
“…… Well, all I know is that I heard the rest of the class talking about her shouting in the rain. ……”
“I know what she looks like, but I don’t know if I know what she’s like. If I had to sum it up in one word, …… I’d say she’s unique, for better or worse.”
Even though Emi has never actually met her, how can she be gossiped about by boys in places where she doesn’t belong, and how can she be remembered by people in different classes?
In Emi’s brain, poisoned by anime and novels, she is like a mysterious student council president character - a sacred presence.
“Seisa Misa was in group 7, right? You called Fujiyoshi [Yuri] earlier, do you know anything about her?”
“…… Well, I’m not really involved. I have a strong impression of her because of the way she introduced herself, but we’re actually in different groups. It’s a bit like a homecoming club.”
For a while, Emi was trying to join in the conversation and gather information about Yuri.
She didn’t get much information, and the conversation soon turned to other topics, such as her favourite anime and manga.
Emi would have liked to know something a little more in-depth, but she knew that if she tried to force the topic, she would end up burying herself in insidious name-calling and unsubstantiated innuendo, so she decided not to go the extra mile.
After all, is this what reality is like?
In a creative work, this event can be taken as a flag for a sweet and melting coming-of-age story, but in reality, there are plenty of situations where things don’t go so well.
She can fall in love at first sight with a handsome senior, but he already has a girlfriend.
Or she’s been bullied or punished by a quiet junior who seems to have the same interests as her.
If she cuts out the first half of the story, she is able to dream up any number of sweet twists and turns, but just by changing the second half of the story, it turns into a very real situation.
Neither of them is Emi’s experience, but both of them are the traps of youth that her friends in junior high school fell into.
The little devil in Emi’s heart whispered sweetly that she didn’t need to ask for more, because she had already made friends in her class and in her club.
But for some reason, she can’t help but feel that it would be a shame to let this encounter go unnoticed.
Until junior high school, Emi was often described in school report cards as shy and indecisive.
But in high school, a mysterious energy pushes her to try a little harder.
“The sooner you do this, the better. There is no need to procrastinate. Tomorrow, you’ll go to the seventh group and talk to them.”
◇◇◇
Emi went to class 7 and saw a group surrounding Yuri and similar classmates in the classroom, and she was desperately planning in her brain how to talk to them.
In an unusual female otaku group, which is probably a subspecies of the sober group in the class, the sight of Yuri making a lot of noise at a very high tension makes Emi feel fearful once again.
“And then I hugged him from behind and told him he’d won my heart!”
“This is why you can’t be a hot-headed idiot like Yuri …… You need to be calm and thoughtful like me. ……”
“Hugging, calmly? No way! Did you think that the herbivorous boys of this world would fall for such a far-fetched gesture? You see, boys are full of greed. The only way to get what you want is to do what I do, which is to thrust up from behind and boom! You can’t argue with that!”
The girls, all of whom are clearly of Emi’s ilk in terms of appearance and mood, are talking in voices that echo throughout the classroom.
The fact that they are deliberately using husky, thick voices suggests that they are serious about their feelings.
They are not fooling around with their sexuality half-heartedly. In a way, Emi respects them.
In any case, Emi didn’t have the courage to jump inside. She was looking for a time when Yuri would be alone or come out of the classroom to use the restroom.
“What do you want? I’m stuck in the doorway and it’s getting in the way.”
When she was approached by the blonde girl with the awkward makeup and thigh-high skirt, Emi threw away her enthusiasm and mysterious energy and ran back to her own class at full speed.
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