Secrets of a Childhood Friend

“I have a confession to make to you, Yasu,” she said

What? No, no… wait! Confession…  Just now when I asked her to take the exam with me, she called me a “Coward” and encouraged me for the exam.

Maybe Ichika-chan likes me.

I tried to think back on my previous actions, and I can’t find a single clue what it is about me that makes her fall in love with me. Even so, I want to tell her I like her first. 

“Yasu-kun… I’ve always loved you, Yasukun, since my previous life,” she said to me.

The joy of being confessed to by my beloved girl Ichika-chan and the frustration of being played by her mixed. But the joy is a hundred times greater and the frustration naturally disappears.

“Oh, I’ve always loved you from my previous life too!”

I’ve heard before that a confession is a confirmation of a favor.

 Earlier, I hesitated because I was afraid of being rejected, but I still wanted to tell Ichika-chan that I love her.

That’s what I’m talking about, from your past life… hmm? From the past life?

“‘… Huh? Is it possible Ichika-chan has her previous memories of her previous life too?’

“Yeah, you didn’t notice?”

I hadn’t noticed.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Ichika is very mature for her age. She doesn’t say or do anything that you would expect from an elementary school student, and the books she’s reading next to me look a little difficult for an elementary school student to comprehend.

Still, I just thought to myself, ‘She is a precocious kid.’

“Well, then, when did you die? Or rather, did you die and come back? In the first place, the previous life is… no, more importantly, you like me even from the previous life?”

◇

***Change of POV***

There is no one with eyes as direct and clear as Yasu-kun.

I, Ichika Kobayashi, had such an impression of Yasushi when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school. We were together at a children’s club once a week.

But to be honest, at first, I rather disliked Yasu-kun.

From the unique skill of the “Wise Eye,” I have been able to see through many people’s emotions and the bull’s-eye of things since I was a child in my previous life.

Even from my point of view, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I thought Yasu-kun, who seems to think of most people in this world as nothing more than roadside stones, was creepy.

No, no.

In a previous life, when I was around ten years old, I had discovered my father’s infidelity with my own insight. Since then, our family relationship has been terrible.

My dad hates me, and my mom is always mad at me.

I don’t like ballet that much, but my mom told me to do it, so I did. And in my own way, I was trying to be liked!

Because I was in such a complicated environment, I might have envied Yasu-kun who seemed to be carefree and not thinking about anything.

Then, in the sixth grade, when I saw Yasu-kun was bullied by both his classmates and teachers, I honestly thought, ‘Suck it up.’

All that time, maybe it was because the teacher was in charge, maybe it was because Yasu-kun didn’t like it, but even girls with a strong sense of justice didn’t defend Yasu-kun.

If it were a normal situation, I’d be heartbroken; all my classmates are against me, and the leader of the group is my homeroom teacher.

But, Yasu-kun did not care about such bullying!

Then one time, Yasu-kun said “No, I don’t need to talk with you guys.” 

He was studying happily all the time during the break. When someone said “I’ll quit being your friend if you don’t do something for me.” 

Yasukuni replied “What? You were my friend?”

So the bullies in the class started physically bullying him, hitting him, putting their feet on him, breaking things, etc.

I thought about stopping it, but it’s normal for people who stop bullying to be the next target. So, all I could do was look.

Then, one day, Yasu-kun said something like this to the bullies. “I don’t want to go to junior high school with you guys, so I’m taking the entrance exam.”

Yasu-kun was originally a person who didn’t seem to look at others, but he actually was more unconcerned about others.

In class, he studied differently from the teacher’s class under the pretext of “studying for exams.” He also reduced his participation in daily morning practice of long rope to once every two days under the guise of, again, “studying for exams.”

He was insanely rebellious to the teacher, but did nothing to get back at his classmates who were involved in bullying him.

In such a way, Yasu-kun, who went against the teacher with the alibi of “studying for the entrance examination,” attracted people, especially the naughty boys in the class.

I personally didn’t like that homeroom teacher either, and it was quite refreshing to see him always getting a hundred points on tests. It was also funny when he used the “studying for exams” cover up to shut the teacher up if anything happened.

I talked a little about other people, but I couldn’t help talking about him. “Yasu-kun is so good at studying, isn’t he?”

Everyone was probably also attracted to Yasu-kun. 

He became the center of the class in no time. And I had been following Yasu-kun with my eyes for a long time, too.

I can see a lot of things even without the “Wise Eyes.” Because I can see those, I am very sensitive to the malice towards me.

The daily strained family relationships, the typical elementary school mounting of who’s friends with whom and how many friends, and the massive amount of ill will that comes with it. I was troubled by it.

However, I was stirred when I saw Yasu-kun, who did not care about everything, and just swallowed everything with only one point. Just so, he could “be enthusiastic about studying.”

Thinking about it, I think I liked Yasu-kun at that point.

Perhaps I could not tell it because I felt guilty for being part of the bullies because I wasn’t a person who would actively try to get involved with others. We didn’t talk much, and we naturally drifted apart when we moved to different junior high schools.

Since then, my life has been very unpalatable.

My parents divorcing and my mother taking it out on me, my friend’s friend confessing his love to his senior and our friendship falling apart. It’s a common story with a typical problem, but every time it happens, I think to myself, “What would Yasu-kun do?”

I wanted to meet him, but I didn’t know where he lived. Even if I did, we weren’t that close, so I didn’t have the courage to suddenly go to meet him.

However, as the years went by, the courage given to Yasu-kun faded away.

I summoned up the courage I had lost and helped a child who was being bullied, but then I became the target and stopped going to school.

After a year or two of seclusion, I slipped on the stairs of a pedestrian bridge and fell to my death, probably due to lack of exercise.

It was a boring life, deep down.

So, honestly, when I found myself back in kindergarten, I despaired. I wondered why I had to live my life for the second time with those parents again.

Then one day, my mother took me to a park, and I saw a boy who looked familiar to me.

‘What?! Why is Yasu-kun here… No, I happened to see him on the school route, does he live around here?’

With such thoughts, my feet were naturally running to Yasu-kun. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I-it’s a pull-up but…”

With that one word, somehow, I could guess that Yasu-kun is also ‘reincarnated’ as I am. The Yasu-kun I know from my previous life was one with an image of just studying. He was not bad at exercising, but I felt like he didn’t like it either.

I think this life is muscle training, isn’t it? 

Yasu-kun remained the same even if he was reborn with his direct and clear eyes. I still like Yasu-kun as much as ever.

It surprised me when he said he was going to do a big wheel but he fell on his head.

I guess it’s a good thing he got injured, because that’s how I became childhood friends with Yasu-kun. And that made me love him even more.

I am not sure, but maybe because of my entanglement with Yasu-kun, I wasn’t exposed to malice. Maybe it’s also because of Yasu-kun’s frequent visits to my house, but in this lifetime,my father did not cheat on Mom. 

Most of all, I’ve come to look at too much in my previous life because of my unique skills in this world, but Yasu-kun is still strong and white. He is so absorbed in self-discipline that he doesn’t think about things.

Nevertheless, he sometimes gives me an easy-to-understand favor. Maybe a favor that no normal person would notice. So I wasn’t too sure, and I thought that the favors that were being directed at me were the same as the favors that were directed at my childhood friends.

I couldn’t confess because I felt like I would kill myself if he rejected me saying, “I think of you as just a childhood friend.”

But I was convinced when Yasu-kun asked me to take the exam with him just now.

Yasu-kun likes me, and I love Yasu-kun even more and more. I couldn’t be more happy.

So I made a confession—that I’ve loved him since my previous life.

I’m going to tell the story of my past life later, and more than that, I like to hear the story of Yasu-kun’s past life, especially after junior high school when we became estranged.

Anyway, I have now my first boyfriend in 24 years of my life, combined with my previous life.

Yasu-kun and I became lovers.

The only complaint I would raise is…

“I should have confessed in a previous life if this was the case.”

My first round of life would have been more glamorous and fun. Even with that trivial complaint, the joy of becoming lovers with Yasu-kun is something I can’t contain.