If You Cheat, Just Don’t Tell Me - Chapter 11

Don’t cheat on me, okay?

The classroom after school was empty as usual. In the room bathed in red light, the only things I could feel were my own breathing and Freya’s.

“Hey…”

I sat at my desk, while Freya sat facing me from the chair in front of mine.

While I was hesitating about how to start a conversation facing Freya like this, she ended up speaking first like she always does. Well, let’s just say people don’t change that easily. It’s not like I was too scared to speak up.

“What is it?”

“…Well,”

Even as she replied, Freya somehow lacked her usual sharpness. The usual Freya would clearly state what she wanted to say without hesitation, but today she seemed somewhat reserved.

How unusual. I’d never seen Freya like this before.

“This is rare. You not speaking clearly.”

“…Even I have days like this. I am human, you know.”

Saying that, Freya fell silent. Her eyes darted around the classroom as if searching for words.

If this were the old me, I’d probably wait silently like this until Freya found her words. But I’d decided to face Freya properly.

It should be fine for me to start the conversation at times like this.

Thinking that, I opened my mouth.

“Hey” “So…”

…

…Why do we always end up speaking at the same time like this?

“What? If you’ve decided what you want to say, then say it.”

“If you have something you want to talk about too, you can go first.”

Even when I urged her to speak first, she pushed the conversation back to me. When she does this, I don’t know what to do either.

Should I speak first? But honestly, while I did start the conversation, I didn’t really have any particular topic in mind. My feelings just rushed ahead and I spoke up on impulse.

“No, my thing can wait. You go first.”

“It’s rare for you to initiate conversation, so I’m curious. You go first.”

“It’s nothing important. You’re the one who decided what you wanted to say, right? Go ahead and say it.”

“My thing can wait. I’d rather hear what you have to say.”

“No, my thing—”

“Really, my thing—”

This back-and-forth continued for a while, getting us nowhere until we both found it somehow funny and burst out laughing.

“Heheh… What is this? We’re getting nowhere like this.”

“Fufu… That’s true. So, what should we do?”

At this point, I had no choice but to steel myself and start talking. It’s not like I need to have some specific topic prepared. I can just say whatever comes to mind, whatever I’m feeling. That’s all there is to it.

“Yeah… In that case, I’ll start.”

“Oh my, so you’ve made up your mind?”

Looking into Freya’s eyes, I spoke exactly what was on my mind. Something like this, the usual me would never say it. Only now. Only here in this classroom where it’s just the two of us.

“I… I think I want to seriously consider things between us—our engagement. Until now, I’ve just been going with the flow, but I realized that won’t work.”

“…Huh?”

“I can’t say I’ve reached any conclusion about what to do right now, but well. At the very least, I don’t want things to turn out badly. My feelings about wanting to leave home, about actually leaving—that hasn’t changed.”

As I spoke, I realized how selfish this sounded.

My engagement with Freya is a matter between our families, not between us as individuals. Freya once said she wanted it to be about us as individuals, but realistically, that’s not how it works.

While saying I want to think about our engagement, I’m also saying my desire to leave home hasn’t changed—that doesn’t make any sense.

But both were my true feelings right now. Unchangeable true feelings.

“…What’s wrong?”

“…Huh?”

After my words ended, Freya’s face had turned redder than I’d ever seen before.

Seeing her face like that made me feel embarrassed too. I was already aware that I was saying something embarrassing.

“Y-you saying something like that… Well, I never expected it at all.”

“Even I have times when I speak seriously.”

“You said it wasn’t important!”

“Did I? Well, it’s not like how we’ll live from now on will change, so it’s not important, right?”

“That’s not true!”

Well, that… I know myself that what I’m saying doesn’t make sense.

So please end this topic quickly and move on to the next one!

“I’ve said my piece, so now it’s your turn, right?”

“After that, my topic has completely flown away!”

“Huh? You make me say such embarrassing things and you’re not going to say anything?”

“You’re the one who started talking on your own! I never expected you to say something like that either!”

We continued this fruitless argument for a while.

By the time we calmed down, the sun had almost completely set.

“…Sigh”

I couldn’t tell which of us had let out that sigh. We’d both been talking so much.

Then our eyes met again. Freya’s eyes softened with a smile.

“If you’re saying you’ll seriously think about us,”

“Yeah”

“Don’t cheat on me, okay? Even if your eyes wander to other girls. If you do cheat, don’t tell me, okay?”

“Idiot. As if I would.”

That might have been the true beginning for Freya and me.

The real moment when the feeling of not wanting to let Freya go was born in me.

“Let’s do our best from now on, Freya.”

“Let’s do our best from now on too, Dicca.”

A few days after that conversation between Freya and me.

My frequency of attending school remained unchanged, but that day I felt somewhat motivated and went to school.

Lately, Freya had stopped nagging me as much about skipping school. Whether she’d given up or changed her mind… well, in a way, she might have been using it as an opportunity to talk with me.

The time I spent talking with Freya when I did go to school had definitely increased compared to before. Both necessary conversations and casual chats. As usual, Freya initiated conversations more often, but I was making an effort to start conversations too.

So that day too, I planned to talk with Freya. Nothing important or special, just casual conversation. About some trivial thing that happened yesterday.

—That day, Freya was absent from school. It was her first absence since transferring here.