Am I being simulated by their love affair.

Chapter 435 Sweetness and Bitterness

The next day, Thursday, the empty second-year classrooms at Haneoka High School were once again filled with people.

"Thank you for your hard work, here are some snacks for you~" Kominato Shoko handed the bag of cookies on the table to the boy and girl in front of her.

"Class is about to start, you should go back to the classroom and hand out the parent-teacher meeting notices."

"Okay." Jun Matsueda and the girl next to him nodded in unison and left the classroom office.

The corridor was unusually lively. The newly elected student council members were posting notices about this year's cultural festival on the bulletin board. Several girls were gathered together, discussing the recently concluded national wind instrument competition. The yellowing leaves outside the window seemed to have no effect on bringing the bleak atmosphere into the teaching building.

"Even though I was only gone for three days, it feels like Tokyo has entered autumn in the blink of an eye." Tomatsu Yuka handed the boy the cookies in her hand.

"It's that time of year again when you can easily gain weight if you're not careful. I'll leave these cookies to my friend Songzhi."

Jun Matsue didn't say much, but reached out and took the biscuit and put it in his pocket. "I'm going to have to worry about what to do for this year's cultural festival again."

"We can just let everyone vote," the girl said with a smile. "We'll be responsible for motivating everyone."

The two walked out of the stairwell and back to the third-floor corridor. The girl walking towards them made Tomatsu Yuka's smile fade.

"Good morning, senior." Jun Matsueda greeted her immediately.

"Good morning, Matsueda-san~"

Yamami Maki looked surprised. After greeting the boy, she looked at her junior standing to the side, her expression somewhat bewildered.

"Good morning, senior." Tomatsu Tomohana smiled at her, "I'm going back to the classroom now, so as not to disturb your conversation."

She watched the girl walk past her nonchalantly, then cast a bewildered glance at the boy.

"Yuka?"

Jun Matsue nodded. "Although I don't know if Tomatsu has come to her senses, she's accepting it for now."

"If that's the case, then that's great," Yami Maki said, her voice filled with relief at surviving a disaster.

"Is today's schedule the same as usual, senior?" Jun Matsue glanced at the figures in the hallway. This wasn't a private place, and class was about to start.

"Yes!" The girl nodded more forcefully than before, her long black hair swaying as she did so, revealing a clear joy.

"I have to go to the office now." She waved her right hand slightly, half-hidden in her sleeve, and her rosy lips parted and closed, silently speaking to the boy in front of her.

See you at noon!

So Jun Matsue continued walking toward his class, recalling his senior's expression on the way—although he seemed to have accumulated a lot of negative emotions during the days when they could only communicate through mobile phones, most of those emotions dissipated when the living girl appeared in front of him.

The boy hoped this wasn't just his imagination.

The so-called usual arrangement was the lunch break time every Thursday. After the lunch break bell rang, Jun Matsueda found the girl holding the lunchbox on the rooftop.

After sitting down next to Maki Yami, Jun Matsueda immediately noticed the band-aid on her left hand.

"Senior, did you hurt your finger?" He immediately took the girl's left hand in his arms.

"Yes, I accidentally cut myself a little while chopping vegetables. The cut isn't deep."

Looking at the boy in front of her, who was bowing his head and looking focused, Yamami Maki felt as happy as a parrot in the house welcoming spring.

To be honest, the girl was quite nervous before meeting Jun Matsueda today. She was afraid of seeing his cold face, which is why she was so absent-minded when preparing lunch last night that she hurt her finger.

"Was it disinfected? Did it get wet afterwards? Will it leave a scar?" Jun Matsueda was still a little worried.

"It's not that serious," she said with a smile, waving her hand. "It's just a cut."

The boy then opened the bento box with a sense of relief. The first thing he saw was a golden-yellow tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelet). Although the shape wasn't very appealing, it was still quite unexpected. Even Jun Matsueda himself didn't know how to make tamagoyaki.

"I've already tried a little bit, and it tastes pretty good!" The girl's tone was a little smug.

"A senior is a senior, she's good at everything she does," he said with a smile.

As before, after lunch, the boy and girl did not leave the rooftop. They leaned against the outer wall of the stairwell, their shoulders and arms pressed together, looking at the exceptionally clear and refreshing autumn sky.

"This is a Mount Fuji amulet for my senior."

Jun Matsue reached into his pocket with his right hand and first felt two small bags of unopened cookies, and then the packaging bag for the amulet.

"What a beautiful amulet!" The girl held it up to the sky. The translucent light blue mountain seemed to blend into the sky, with a thin piece of gold foil in the middle shimmering with dazzling light.

Matsueda Jun looked at Yamami Maki's fair profile. The light reflected from the amulet shone on her face, flashing and dazzlingly beautiful.

"Senior, I've already told Aya and the others that we have another scheduled performance. After that performance, I'll leave the band."

The moment these deliberately avoided topics were brought up, the sweet and passionate atmosphere that had been lingering between the two vanished instantly.

Yamami Maki's right hand, holding the amulet, froze in mid-air. Even her eyelashes seemed to freeze, trembling slightly in the wind blowing across the rooftop.

After a long few seconds, she blinked, lowered her head, and looked at the ground in front of her.

When will your farewell performance be?

"This Sunday, at the Shibuya livehouse, there are 300 people, the biggest one ever." The boy's tone was as if he were talking about an ordinary performance.

The girl lowered her head even further. "We're going on our school trip this Saturday."

She couldn't watch his last performance.

"It's okay, you can watch the recording of the performance." Jun Matsue took the girl's hand and gently rubbed the band-aid on her fingertip.

"Then the school trip is definitely more important. It's the last one in three years of high school, so don't leave any regrets."

“I’m sorry.” Yami Maki’s shoulders trembled. She lowered her head and pressed her face against the boy’s chest.

"It's all because of me, I'm sorry."

The girl's voice trembled, reminding Matsueda Jun of the fallen leaves he had stepped on in the Forest of Literature, which crumbled at the slightest touch.

"Alright, alright, it's not your fault, senior." He comforted Yamami Maki. "If anything, it's just that your elders are unreasonable. It has nothing to do with you, senior."

He stroked the girl's back; her back was thin and narrow, unable to support much weight.

They ended up spending the entire lunch break on the rooftop before Yamami Maki finally calmed down. After wiping away her tears, the girl nestled in the boy's arms for a long, long time until the bell rang to signal the end of the lunch break. Only then did she reluctantly wave goodbye to him and leave the rooftop first.

As for Jun Matsuoka, he sat on the rooftop for a few more minutes, watching the distant clouds slowly approach, stealing the sunlight and casting gray shadows on the rooftop.

Actually, the senior student is really nice, he thought to himself.

The only good thing about my senior is that she treats you well in every way while adhering to the rules she follows.

If it were a boy whose emotions were as pure as a blank sheet of paper, he would probably have already fallen for the girl's gentleness, even finding sweetness in her vulnerability.

But Jun Matsueda had already seen many emotions that went beyond that, so without even realizing it, he too became greedy.

If possible, he hoped she would go beyond those rules.

Just like he did.

(End of this chapter)