Side story 1: Red Monologue

Posted on April 1, 2022by Soafp

Translator: Soafp

[Yuuhi PoV]

“Good morning.”

　First day of summer vacation in my sophomore year of high school. I get up and smile at the pictures on the wall. The sight of him smiling in the picture soothes my heart.

　There is someone I cannot forget.

　He is my childhood friend, my first love, and the person I have still been thinking about since I can remember, even now that I am in my second year of high school —- Sho-chan.

　Sho-chan is my prince.　

　I was born with a complex about my red hair. I was always bullied because of my hair. Whenever I was sad and shed tears, Sho-chan would always run to me, hug me and say kind words. He was not tall, but he had a well-defined face and beautiful eyes.

　It was impossible not to fall in love with him. He was good-looking, athletic, and kind, and he was my very ideal.

　I always thought that I was in love with him.

　Sho-chan was the perfect match for me.

　In elementary school, I was always tormented by jealousy and a sense of inferiority. I was neither pretty nor athletic. I had a good face, but because of my hair complex, I was timid and didn’t have many friends.

　Sho-chan, on the other hand, had many friends besides me. He had many girl friends, and I always felt a thorn in my heart. That’s why I couldn’t confess my feelings to him.

“Yuuhi is cute, so you should always smile like an idol. If you do that, everyone will become your friend.”

　Sho-chan casually said these words to me.

　I was so happy that I was soaring. I didn’t need friends as long as I had Sho-chan, but Sho-chan complimented me on my cuteness.

　That day, I decided to become like an idol.

　I became a junior high school student with my determination and love inside.

　Somehow I managed to improve myself to match Sho-chan. Thanks to my efforts, people around me began to tell me that I was cute. I became proud to say that I was good at studying, and I could do sports to a certain extent. Little by little, I began to have confidence in myself.

　Then one day.

　I was talking with Renji Inuyama, another childhood friend of mine, when I saw Sho-chan with a frustrated look on his face. The expression on his face was similar to the one I had once seen on my own.

　–jealousy.

　I thought there was no way the prince of my dreams would have such feelings for me, but I decided to find out for sure. I went out of my way to make friendly chats with Renji-kun when Sho-chan was around.

　I glanced at Sho-chan.

　He was looking at me with an expression that was a mixture of irritation and anxiety. No doubt about it. He is jealous.

　It was a revolutionary event. The prince is jealous of me. I felt my whole body fill with a kind of superiority.

　I continued. It felt so good to have that feeling directed at me that I became intoxicated with pleasure of dopamine.

　Feeling better, I opened the distance between me and Sho-chan for further pleasure.

　Sho-chan looked more and more pained. When I changed the way I called him, he looked like a discarded cat, which also aroused my emotions.

　The comparison, Renji-kun, was convenient.

　For me, he was just a childhood friend with whom I had no special feelings, but Renji-kun is said to have a good face. He is also known for his interesting stories. I know he is smart. He is also good at sports. He was popular with many girls.

　But from my point of view, Sho-chan is better than him.

　I did not ask him to be that smart, Sho-chan is more handsome when it comes to face, and from my point of view, his stories are the most interesting. If it’s personality, Sho-chan is by far the best. He always praises Renji even though he’s the one he’s jealous of. If he has a bad personality, he would talk about him behind his back, but he always praises Renji-kun.

　Do you know that you are a good guy?

　Sho-chan is a prince, you know?

　In hindsight, this was the turning point in my life.

　I should have been honest about my feelings. I should have told him how I felt and what I was thinking and bowed to him and asked him to go out with me.

　…… but I took a grand wrong turn.

　I couldn’t escape the pleasure of having the prince of my dreams being jealous.

　I humiliated Sho-chan to the point where I could clearly see it. Every time I humiliated him, I got excited and was relieved to see Sho-chan waiting for me at the usual place when it was time to go to school. I thought that Sho-chan was interested in me because he always came to school with me.

　Those days continued.

　However, one day in my second year of junior high school, something happened that brought me back to myself.

　A friend of mine had a boyfriend. As I listened to her love story, I began to think that I wanted a boyfriend too, and my body and heart yearned for the love of my life.

　What was I doing in the first place? I realized that my actions were too trivial.

　By the time I realized it, it was too late.

　One morning, Sho-chan did not show up at our usual meeting place. I was anxious and stumbled to school, but Sho-chan was already there. I tried to approach him to see what was wrong, but my friend stopped me.

　I had heard that rumor.

“Shota Mukawa is stalking Yuuhi Akazawa.”

　I had no memory of it.

“I heard that Shota Mukawa was stalking Yuuhi Akazawa.”

“An ambush is said to be waiting at the school gate after school.”

” I heard he’s been hanging around in front of her house during the night.”

“I heard he’s been taking a lot of spy photos with his phone.”

　Rumors with tails were spreading. It was nothing but a lie, since Sho-chan does not have a smartphone in the first place.

　Moreover, it was extreme.

“I heard that Yuuhi Akazawa admitted to being stalked.’

According to the rumor I admitted him being my stalking.

　Sho-chan became the hated person at school.

　I tried to clear up the misunderstanding, but Sho-chan would run away from me. The reason is simple: just being around me makes him look bad. It was also because I had been acting like an idol and had become well-liked by many people.

　I am the worst.

　I am a disgusting woman.

　I hated to hear rumors that would bring Sho-chan down, but most of all, I was shocked that Sho-chan thought so.

　Even though I tried to explain the situation, I couldn’t meet Sho-chan on campus. I tried to meet him outside of school, but no matter how many times I headed home, he wouldn’t see me.

　Impatient, I decided to hurry up and tell people that I and Sho-chan had been childhood friends and had been good friends since we were little. But the rumors didn’t spread well, probably because I had been undermining Sho-chan up to that point.

　In the midst of all this, rumors about Tsukiyo Kuromine began to circulate as if to follow up. No matter how much I tried to fix it, the bad reputation that I could not wipe out hit Sho-chan.

　Then came Sho-chan’s birthday.

　As I was preparing a gift and looking for an opportunity to apologize, I received the news that Sho-chan had fallen down the stairs and injured himself.

　After that day, Sho-chan stopped coming to class. I visited his house again and again, but he never came to see me.

　During the spring break just before I entered the third year of junior high school, I was unable to apologize. Sho-chan transferred to another school.

　He was transferred to a new school without me being informed of anything.

　At that time, I did not know the circumstances of Sho-chan’s breakdown and was just grieving. I was tormented by a sense of guilt, thinking that the stupid thing I had done might have contributed to it.

　I had committed a crime, and a number of punishments awaited me.

　I was unable to recover from the damage of losing someone I loved. I was in shock for a while and couldn’t go to school.

　When I finally recovered and went to school for the first time in a while, my classmates welcomed me, but Renji-kun was the only one who looked at me as if he was going to shoot me dead. He knew the whole story.

　Since then, until that day in my first year of high school, I never spoke to Renji-kun again.

　I lost two childhood friends at the same time.

　The punishment was not over yet.

　My younger sister, who attended the same junior high school, found out about the rumor. My sister, after filling me with her hate-filled eyes, reported everything to my parents.

　I confided in her what I had done.

　My mother is best friends with Sho-chan’s mother, Yurie. She strongly condemned my actions.

　That was the first time I learned about it. Sho-chan did not like me, but had no choice but to go to school with me because my mother and Yurie-san had asked him to protect me.

　I still remember my parents’ stunned eyes and my sister’s mixed look of hatred and disdain. In fact, she stopped thinking of me as her sister after that. We no longer spoke to each other in the house.

　For about two years, the relationship between us sisters has been cold.

　My mother took me to Yurie to apologize to her as well. Yurie-san, who had been told about the situation by Sho-chan, knew everything. The only thing she didn’t know was that I loved Sho-chan. She accepted my apology, but I don’t know how she felt inside.

　When the season turned to summer, I learned another truth.

　To atone for my sins, I spread rumors about how nice Sho was. I guess I wanted to recover as much as I could at that time. Kuromine denied the rumors about herself, and steadily Sho-chan’s image was restored.

“……Eh, Yuuhi and Mukawa were childhood friends?”

　It was while talking with my best friend, Hazuki Nekoda.

　By chance, I learned that Hazuki-chan was the one who spread that rumor. Moreover, Hazuki even lied about me, saying that I had admitted to the stalker rumor and told that to Sho-chan.

“I’m sorry…….. I thought Yuuhi didn’t like him.”

　It seemed that my attitude that was fueling his jealousy made her think i hate him and she did that for my sake.

　It was my fault to begin with. But still—-

“F**K YOU!”

　For the first time in my life, I hit someone.

　It’s disgusting to treat someone like a criminal. On top of that, she even lied about me admitting that Sho-chan was a stalker. I wonder how much those words hurt Sho-chan.

　I broke off relations with Hazuki.

　In doing so, I lost the trust of my family, my best friend, my childhood friend, and my beloved.

　…… But the real punishment was still waiting ahead.