"Yohei, please sit here. I'll be away."
Currently, Hijiri is sitting in my seat. Perhaps feeling sorry for me for having to stand, Hime vacated her seat for me.
"Hime, are you going somewhere?"
"Yes. Um... I need to use the restroom."
"Oh, sorry."
"No, there's no need to apologize. Now, please excuse me for a moment."
Hime answered shyly, and a sense of guilt welled up inside me.
I saw her off, thinking that I should have been more considerate here, and sat in Hime's seat.
(...warm)
Hime, I guess your temperature is high.
While I felt the warmth of the chair lingering, I began to feel like a weirdo for thinking such a thing. I decided not to think about it too much.
"Yo-hee, you have to be aware when a girl gets up from her seat."
"Yeah. I'll be more careful next time."
I also understood why Hijiri didn't say anything to Hime. I just don't know enough about this.
"Yohei... you're not used to women after all."
You're absolutely right.
It seems that Hijiri had also vaguely noticed my behavior.
"He's really close with Hime-chan, but he still seems reserved towards me... and we never make eye contact."
"Is that so? I don't really think about it though."
Maybe our eyes don't meet?
I was trying to act natural, but deep down I was probably nervous. It seemed like Hijiri could sense that.
"Have you never dated a girl before?"
"No. I don't have the timing or the equipment to do that."
"Hmm. So, were there any girls you got along with?"
"...Does my niece count as a girl?"
"Not included. In other words, there aren't any."
Well, I think my interactions with the opposite sex are below average.
To begin with, I'm a rather unassuming person who doesn't really matter whether I'm in class or not. I rarely initiate conversations with others, and even when someone does talk to me, the conversation rarely gets exciting.
Most of the few friends I'd made up until then were similar to me, so we'd never even talked about the opposite sex... Also, everyone loved staying at home, so we never went out to play. We'd sometimes hang out while talking on the phone playing games. But even that hasn't happened once since we moved up to the next grade. That's how shallow our relationships were.
"I'm the type of person who can get along with anyone."
"...I was just trying to be friends."
It was a bit of a shock, as I thought we were good friends.
However, it seems that Hijiri and I have different perceptions of what it means to be "good friends."
"I think we're friends, but somehow it feels a little lacking. I want a little more physical contact."
"Skinship, huh..."
Sei's standards for friendship are too high.
If I could easily have physical contact with members of the opposite sex, I feel like I would be a more cheerful person by now.
"Well, I don't really have much physical contact with boys either."
"If you don't, then even if you're asked to do so..."
That's true. I thought it was odd that someone like Kiyoshi would casually get physical with a guy. If that's the case, I'm sure a lot of guys will get the wrong idea and confess their feelings to Kiyoshi.
No, I think he's actually still quite popular even now, and I just don't know about it.
To be honest, I don't really know the details about that.
"But I feel like I could get along with Yohei a little better."
Anyway, it seems that Hijiri is dissatisfied with the current state of their relationship.
"What is our relationship?"
I felt that the fact that I couldn't answer that question directly with my friend was proof of the complexity of the relationship.
They know too much about each other's circumstances to be just friends.