“May I cherish you?”
A sudden confession.
I looked at the President with a dazed expression.
Then, with lips barely parting, I asked,
“Does that an you want to date ?”
The President slowly nodded in response.
“Yes. That’s right.”
“…Firstly, I appreciate your feelings. But, honestly, it’s a bit confusing.”
I never thought soone as accomplished as the President, or even my junior, Minato, would like .
Moreover, she wasn’t even the heroine of the original work.
In a way, it was undoubtedly a confession of pure affection for .
Seeing my hesitation, the President asked with an anxious face,
“Do you dislike ?”
I quickly gestured with my hands.
“No, it’s not that I dislike you. I just never thought you’d see in that way. Um, it’s hard to say this myself, but I know I can be quite imposing.”
As I joked and scratched the back of my head, the President leaned forward, suddenly getting angry.
“No! Not at all! You’re not imposing, you’re dependable!”
“What?! Oh…”
Overwheld by her assertiveness, I found myself agreeing with the President’s rebuttal.
It was definitely not because her chest was suddenly thrust in front of .
“Really… Yu-seong, you rate yourself too low.”
“…I’m sorry.”
Hearing the President’s scolding, I reflexively responded with an apology.
The President, with her arms crossed, imdiately retorted.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“I apologize.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“……”
Having all options taken away, I eventually fell silent.
About a minute must have passed like that.
In the midst of the strange silence between us, it was the President who spoke first.
“Yu-seong, you are more attractive than you think. So, don’t underestimate yourself. I fell for your confident yet kind nature.”
Hearing these complints from soone else made my skin tingle.
“Also, I don’t judge people solely by their appearance. No matter how Yu-seong looks, I am more than willing to love you. All Yu-seong needs to do is quietly accept my affection…”
Sitting still, listening to her praises, I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling awkward, and struggled to speak.
“President.”
Then, the President stopped speaking.
“What is it?”
I looked straight into the President’s eyes and said,
“Honestly, I think it would be okay to date you, President. We’ve known each other for a long ti and get along well.”
Objectively speaking, if the President beca my girlfriend, she would be an incredibly outstanding partner for .
Hearing this, a blush spread across the President’s face.
“Then…”
“But.”
I cut off my sentence there and pointed out a realistic concern.
“As you ntioned earlier, won’t your family oppose it?”
We weren’t characters in a children’s fairy tale, so just dating wouldn’t lead to a ‘happily ever after.’
Moreover, the President’s family owned the Saionji Group, one of the top five conglorates in Japan.
If things went wrong and we got on their bad side, it wouldn’t be strange for my ordinary family to be torn apart.
Understanding the aning of my words, the President bit her lip.
Then, she countered.
“I can persuade my grandfather regarding that issue. All important decisions in the Saionji family go through him.”
“President… you know better than anyone that’s too haphazard a plan, right?”
As I spoke in a placating tone, the President finally burst out, her face filled with frustration.
“What’s with that attitude?! I mustered up the courage to confess!”
“I’m being serious too; that’s why.”
I said that, revealing my true feelings to the President.
“I know you didn’t ask out on a whim. But more than that, we don’t have much ti left.”
It was the end of August now, so there was only about half a year left until the President would graduate.
And the President was the top student in her third year.
“You’re planning to go to university, right?”
“…Yes.”
“Then, from the second sester, you’ll be incredibly busy preparing for the center exams. Even if we really start dating, we’ll hardly have any ti for it.”
“What if I refuse to give up on both studying and dating?”
“Then I’d have to force you to focus. I don’t want to hear that you failed your exams because of .”
“Really, you don’t give in even a bit.”
With eyes brimming with tears, the President spoke as if she was annoyed.
“If you don’t want to date , just say it outright. It would be more relieving that way.”
“No, I didn’t an it that way… Wipe your tears first.”
I took a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her.
At first, dabbing gently, the President soon began to sob heavily, sniffling.
“Waaaah! You’re so eean!”
I looked at the President, bewildered by her reaction.
It seed she misunderstood because I beat around the bush, too embarrassed to answer directly.
So, I quickly added,
“Just wait for half a year! Half a year!”
Then, the President, with tears and snot running down, stopped her loud crying and looked at .
“Half a year?”
“Yes. If we’re really going to date, let’s do it after the exams in half a year.”
I said this and took my handkerchief from the President’s hand.
Then, holding it to her nose, I said,
“Now, blow. Blow.”
“Blow!”
After helping her blow her nose, I looked down at her tear-streaked face and said,
“As I said before, I don’t want your grades to drop because of a relationship. So, if you still feel the sa after graduation, could you confess to again?”
Then, unlike now, I will accept it properly.
Then, the President, with eyes red like a rabbit’s, asked,
“What if I confess now?”
“I won’t accept it.”
Then, the President, stifling her sobs and suppressing her voice, replied,
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
After crying her heart out, was it just my imagination, or did the President seem to have regressed in maturity?
I gently patted her back until the exhausted, crying President fell asleep.
Sure enough, after a while, the President, who ca to her senses, was incredibly embarrassed by her behavior while crying.
“Forget it, please! Everything I said while crying!”
“Really? Is it okay to forget your confession, too?”
“Except that!”
The President, with a flushed face, muttered, “Ugh… What have I done?”
She didn’t realize it while crying, but afterward, it seed to feel like a dark history.
I asked the President,
“President, can I ask you one thing?”
“What is it?”
“What about made you confess?”
“…I won’t tell you.”
The President said that and playfully stuck out her tongue.
It felt like the President’s attitude toward had beco more open than before.
It seed I had dozed off while on guard duty.
When I woke up, feeling the cold sea breeze, the bonfire that had been burning all night was out, and the sky was already showing a faint color.
It was the twilight just before dawn, as they say.
“Uhmm…”
Feeling quite cold, I saw the President wrapping herself in a blanket behind . I put so branches into the extinguished ashes and lit them again with a match.
“Phew! Phew!”
Working hard to revive the fire and getting ash on my face, the flickering flas that seed about to go out were revived in the pit.
As I looked down contentedly at the fire, the President, who had been tossing and turning in the hut, slowly opened her eyes.
“Uhmm… What ti is it now?”
I glanced down and checked the ti on my smartphone.
“It’s 6 a.m.”
“…Haven’t Shinji and Minami co back yet?”
“No. It seems they stayed overnight in the mountains.”
Both being ninjas, they were probably fine, but being human, I couldn’t help but worry.
“*Yawn. *Then, I’ll sleep a bit more.”
“Yes, you should.”
As the saying went, ‘Beauties love to sleep,’ the President, who had briefly opened her eyes, fell back asleep as if nothing happened.
Seeing this from the side, sitting in front of the fire, I decided to prepare breakfast before it got any later.
Not like yesterday’s foraging in the wild, I planned to heat up so retort pouch food from the yacht with hot water.
Just as I stepped into the sea to go to the yacht anchored on the coast…
A loud sound echoed.
A cruise ship, cutting through the white waves, was approaching from a distance.
“It’s a rescue ship!”
Although we had only stayed on the uninhabited island for a day, I exclaid that with relief without even realizing it.
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