@badsaints: I DO update fast, don't stay away for too long!
Okay, here's a SUPER long chapter with the entrance of another character!
I also threw in some random extra characters, just for the hell of it
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Chapter 26 The turtle continuously poked her head in and out of the school gate. Various high school students wearing uniforms flooded out of the school. They all passed by looking at her oddly or just ignoring her. She sighed.
“
I hope I’m doing the right thing…” Eri thought. “
Get a grip Eri! You have to do this! Think of Tanaka-san. Think of Linlin! If you fail, that means you hurt Linlin for nothing. You can’t live with that!”
She finally straightened her back and started to watch the students coming out of the gate again. She noticed two girls walking out, talking to each other.
“Um, excuse me,” Eri said, slowly. The two girls turned around. One of them had a blue ribbon in her thick, shoulder-length hair. The other girl had her long hair in a ponytail.
“Yes?” the ponytail girl answered.
“Do you know a student named Mitsui Aika?” Eri asked.
“Hm… I don’t think so…” The pony tail girl rubbed her chin. “Do you know her, Risako-chan?”
“She sounds familiar…” Risako mumbled. Then, she clapped her hands. “Ah! Mitsui Aika-senpai! You know her too, Nakki! Second year, class 5? The one with the smile?”
“Ah! The one that’s obsessed with dogs!” the girl called Nakki exclaimed, also clapping her hands. “She’s pretty famous, isn’t she?
“Do you know where I can find her?” Eri asked.
“Oh, I see her coming out of the building now!” Risako said, pointing to the school across the field.
“Thank you very much,” Eri said to the two students, bowing. She then focused on the other two girls coming out the school, walking towards the gate. One girl was incredibly tall, and had long wavy hair. The other girl was petit with short hair. They laughed and talked until Eri caught them at the gate.
“Excuse me?”
The two girls turned to look at the stranger.
“Mitsui Aika-san?” Eri questioned. The shorter girl looked up at the taller girl, and then looked back at the stranger with a small smile.
“I’m Mitsui Aika,” the short-haired girl answered. “May I ask who you are?”
“My name is Kamei Eri,” the turtle introduced herself. “I’m High-Queen’s fashion coordinator.”
Aika’s smile dropped a little as her eyes grew wide. She looked down for a while, and then slowly smiled again, a little sadly this time. She looked back at her tall friend.
“Kumai-chan,” Aika said, “you can go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, Mittsi,” the tall girl answered. “Don’t forget the Siberian husky picture!”
“I won’t,” Aika reassured, grinning. She waved to her friend who walked away from her. She then turned back to face Eri with a smile.
“Well, I’m sure you’re not here just to visit me,” Aika said. “We can go talk by the swings, if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s fine,” Eri answered, smiling. Aika had a nice impression; her uniform was ironed and her overall appearance was neat and clean. Unlike other high school girls, she wasn’t wearing any make up.
The two girls walked over to the swing sets in the field. The school was almost empty by now, except for club meetings and such. Aika sat on one swing and Eri took the swing next to her.
“I read about Tsuji-san’s pregnancy in the paper,” the younger girl started. “You must be her replacement.”
“Yes, I am,” Eri answered.
“Since you succeeded in finding my school, I assume you know about me and Ren-chan. Right?”
“I know the basic idea, but not everything.”
So she calls her ‘Ren-chan’… “… How is she doing?” Aika asked, hesitantly.
“I won’t lie to you,” Eri replied. “She’s not doing so well. She drinks a lot and she takes sleeping pills too. She’s trying to forget about you but that’s not something she can force upon herself. She’s suffering, Mitsui-san.”
“… And she’s been like this for the last three years?” Aika asked with a sad smile.
“Yes… that’s why I’m here, Mitsui-san,” Eri said. “I’d like to know the full story, including the reason you left Tanaka-san. That’s the one piece of information she’s missing. That’s the one thing that keeps her in the past.”
Aika closed her eyes. She breathed out shakily. Eri could tell she was trying to hold back the tears. The younger girl opened her eyes again and sighed.
“I was a really big fan of High-Queen,” Aika started. “I would follow their schedule and make scrap books and sing their songs… I was one of the top members in the fan club too. I could only watch them from afar in concerts but I always dreamed of meeting them in person.
“One day, a fan club member got sick so she handed over her backstage pass to me. I was ecstatic; I would finally be able to meet my idols! So that’s how I first met Ren-chan. She stared at me for a long time, even when she was signing my autograph book. She asked what my name was. She whispered to me that she would remember that name. For the next couple weeks, all I could think about was whether Tanaka Reina would really remember me.
“The next live came around. I followed them after the recording, even to their van. I accidently dropped my autograph book in the middle of the crowd. I crouched down to pick it up but someone had already kicked it away. I crawled on the ground, looking for it. Then it got really quiet. I realized the people around me had backed away. I spotted my notebook right near the door of the van. Someone picked it up, walked over, and crouched in front of me...”
Aika paused for a while, smiling at the memory. Eri waited patiently.
“Ren-chan handed me the autograph book. She said, ‘Here you go… Mitsui Aika-chan’. I was so happy she remembered me that I didn’t even realize she was giving me a different piece of paper along with my notebook. I looked at it later; it was an advertisement for a pizza shop. I took a cab there as fast I could and… Ren-chan was there. We ate together and we talked. She said she wanted to get to know me better. Until then, I had only thought of Tanaka Reina as my idol. But from that moment, I started to think of her as… just a girl. We started to meet often and we would always talk like old friends.
“One day, she confessed to me. She said she knows that I’m still young but she also said she can’t imagine a life without me. I accepted.”
Aika smiled and turned to look at her listener. Eri smiled back and nodded in encouragement.
“We were together for three months. I was happy during our relationship. But I was also very uneasy. Ren-chan was an idol so she always had people around her. We did get privacy sometimes, but that was a rare occasion. I always had to watch other girls, fawning over her…”
There was silence. Eri looked at the younger girl to see what was stopping her. Aika was still smiling but the tears streaming down her face contradicted her happy mask.
“I… I was jealous. I was still in middle school, it was a natural emotion. But… just watching Ren-chan smile at other people… it wasn’t something I could take. I wasn’t mature enough to tell the difference between her smile for
me and her smile for her
fans. That’s why I broke up with her. I realized I couldn’t handle Ren-chan’s publicity so I left her.
“I know that I hurt her. I didn’t mean it when I said I hated her. I actually… I actually still loved her… so much. But I was too young to handle the stress, even for our love. That’s why I left her.”
Aika hung her head and let her tears drop in the sand box. Her curved-up lips trembled as she wiped her eyes with her sleeves. Eri reached out and stroked her back.
“Mitsui-san,” she started, “I’m going to ask you to talk to Tanaka-san. I think you need to tell her why you left her. ‘Hate’ is such a strong word; you can’t leave it in Tanaka-san’s heart like that.”
Aika nodded. “I’m willing to be honest,” she said. “But… Ren-chan probably doesn’t want to see me.”
“That’s not true,” Eri whispered. “This will help her, I promise.”
“… Kamei-san, can I ask you something?”
“Yes?”
“Are you in love with Ren-chan?”
Eri smiled and shook her head. “I’m just someone butting into her business.”
Aika smiled back. “But the fact that you came to see me like this means you care, right?” she insisted. “Kamei-san, please take care of Ren-chan. She’s a good person.”
“I’ll only keep that promise if you complete your side of the deal first,” Eri teased.
Aika laughed and nodded. “I’ll talk. I’ll do whatever I can to help her.”
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So most of it was kind of explanatory, huh?
Ah~ I had so many things imagined for ReinaxAika but I didn't want to make this too long
see ya next time~
Topic: Kokoro no Uta ~Mainly TakaGaki, TanaKame~ [COMPLETE - EXTRA: Ch. 101 - (12/1)] (Read 243844 times)