Redo of a Romanceless Author's Life Devoid of Love; Another Chance at Youth

Chapter 58. A Peaceful Day Together with my Girlfriend. (2/2)

When she noticed my bizarre actions, she raised a brow, tilted her head, and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Paying tribute in advance for this feast you’re preparing.”

“It’s just breakfast, it can hardly be called a feast.”

“I didn’t mean my mouth.”

Trying to decipher my meaning she looked down at the frying pan over the stove in her hands thoughtfully.

“Oh!”

It seems she’d understood.

“Jeez, you could just be more honest, you know.”

“If you ask me, I am being quite honest though.”

“Well, more direct. Just say it directly~ directly, you got that~?”

“Then… please don’t mind me while I take a front-row seat to watch you continue with your work.” I walked behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist then looked over her shoulder while she busied her hands cracking eggs in a bowl, adding salt and seasoning in it, before finally dumping it in the frying pan with some oil

She started humming happily to herself while her body swayed a bit in my arms.

I was just watching the eggs fry in the pan, yes, that was all. I wasn’t watching anything else at all.

I definitely wasn’t peeking at the region between the unbuttoned shirt she had on. It definitely wasn’t overwhelmingly erotic or suggestive or anything either.

I had no such stray thoughts. There were only eggs. Yeah, the soft, supple, fluffy, delectable-looking eggs.

Damn it, I’m slowly being corrupted by this sly woman. I’ll become a sinful man because of her; definitely. I’ll probably become useless too. She’s always feeding me my food, right?

I can’t help it. If given the option between saving and expending energy, I’m the lazy type to save it. Will I really be okay at this rate? Will I even want to work for a living anymore if I have this girl?

Ah… I really think I might be screwed.

The old me definitely, definitely, would never be caught dead doing the things I’m doing with this girl. 

When I’m together with her, I keep getting drawn closer and closer to her. If she was a black hole, I probably already passed the event horizon. I likely had no hope of returning. It was too late for me.

I’m becoming a degenerate. Well, in all honesty… who am I really trying to fool? Have I read the shit I’ve written as an author? I’m long past degenerate and approaching a term that has yet to even be invented yet. A degenerist piece of scum. A hybrid cross between a degenerate and a terrorist. I spread degeneracy to the masses. 

Wait, does the term really not exist yet though? It shouldn’t, right? I don’t think it was around yet.

It was a term from the future after all.

Curious, I pulled out the phone and did a search for the term online. Nope… it seems it doesn’t exist just yet.

“What are you doing now?”

“Sorry, I just thought of something and I needed to confirm it wasn’t a thing.”

“At least put your phone away when you’re holding me like this, I only want you to look at me when we’re all alone together like this. If you don't, it feels like I’m losing to your phone. My womanly pride will be greatly hurt and I may never recover. Would you like to leave me scarred for life?”

“Haha, sorry, sorry, my bad. But a scar for life? Hmm… what if I said I did?”

“Oh? And how would you scar me?”

“How does a man usually scar a woman?”

“Cheating on them?”

I nearly fell over.

“C-Certainly… I suppose that is one way. I can’t deny that. I wouldn’t… ah… the toast is burning.”

“Ah! You’re right! You distracted me and I forgot! No, it’s going to smell like burnt toast in here now.” She had an anguished expression on her face when she thought about it.

I released her then quickly popped the toast out of the toaster and tied it up in a bag to prevent the smell from spreading further.

“Can you put some more up?”

“Sure, I can at least do that.” At the very least, I hadn’t become completely useless yet.

“Can you open the balcony window to air out the place a bit?”

“It’s pretty cold though.”

“Ugh, I forgot it’s winter because of how warm it is in here.”

“Well, we could open it for a bit. It gives me the excuse to stick close to you and keep you warm, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, true, true. Do it, do it.”

I entered the living room area and slid the balcony window open a bit in hopes of getting rid of the smell of burnt toast.

It was seriously chilly though. Just standing near it for a second I was hit by a gust of cold wind and a shiver ran down my back.

I retreated back to the kitchen where the heat from the pan provided me a sense of relief. I wrapped my arms back around her to ruthlessly steal her body heat for myself.

A small yelp escaped from her as she gasped in unexpectedly when I embraced her this time, “Hya! Your hands are cold.”

“The wind shows no mercy in this city. A single gust here and you end up like this. It’s really the worst. What kind of awful city even has such unreasonably extreme weather conditions like this? Minus 50 with the windchill in winters and plus 50 on the hottest summer days. Who was the bastard who thought it was a good idea to build a city in this hell hole?”

“Agreed. It’s absurd, isn’t it?”

“Out of curiosity, since your parents travel to so many different places, why’d you choose a place like this?”

“Well… I guess you could say it was for the extreme temperatures, more specifically, to build up a resistance to them. But… now I probably don’t need to worry about that I guess.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“The eggs are done. Pop the toast out, it should be good enough.” She dodged the question and didn’t answer. Well, she might have just wanted us to eat while the food was hot rather than dodging the question. It might have just been a long story.

We returned to her room and closed the door. We ate our breakfast together, her feeding me as usual. She’d tear off bits of the toast, wrap it around pieces of the egg then push it into my mouth.

Honestly, it made me want to start eating breakfast more often if it would be an enjoyable experience like this. Once the plate was empty, we closed the balcony window in the living room and let the place warm back up while snuggling together on the couch with the TV on in the background.

Overall, the day went pretty great. I went to work and returned back to her place afterward where I was greeted by another home-cooked meal made fresh and still hot.

By the end of these two weeks of cohabitation, I was genuinely concerned as to whether I’d be able to go back to living alone. Had this been her plan from the beginning? It was all just a ploy of hers to ensnare and trap me here? So I could never live without her again. This woman was... truly nefarious, I couldn’t help but think that.

Still, I’d already agreed and I was the type to follow through on my words. I wouldn’t go back on them. That was the excuse I came up with to not care about it and allow myself to indulge in this pleasant, foreign warm feeling engulfing me. I was drowning myself in it headfirst and forgetting about the potential repercussions for once.

If it turns out that way… is it really such a bad thing? That is… to allow myself to change? To fully embrace this irrational thing called love to which I don’t understand?

They often say love changes people, don’t they?

Having finally experienced it first hand, I guess this was what they really meant.

Change is… scary. It is a scary thing. That is, not knowing whether the change will be a good or bad thing. It makes me anxious. 

Wait. Anxious? Me? Anxious... since when? Since when did I have true anxieties? In the past, I feel like I didn’t. I just mindlessly ran ahead full speed on the path in front of me while never looking back. 

Was it since I met her? It might have been. The first time I knew of true anxieties was her stare that followed me everywhere which had me constantly on edge. Before that, nothing ever entered my world. My eyes were always on the ground ahead of me. When I reached a dead end, I simply took a branch and started something new.

I never looked back though.

She forced me to look back with that gaze of hers always on me.

Haaaah. What does this even matter?

It just leads me back to the fact that the root of all evil, my problems, was her.

KiraMinoru

Well, I got a bit curious to see who everyone thinks is best girl so I made a poll for it. From now on I'll make it a tradition to do these at the end of each volume and add any new characters introduced in the volume to the list for each poll. This way we can track and see which girl wins the volume. Keep in mind, the results could lead to a character getting a volume with a significant amount of time centered around them after the end of the second semester when school is out. It would become a trip alone together somewhere for a max of two weeks. I have a natural unforced way by volume 6-7 for any of the five current characters listed in the poll to end up in that sort of position.