"My sister said she won't talk to me until I've made a friend."
The waiter came back over, balancing both of our orders on one tray. I could see the steam coming off the bento box and especially the ramen. I couldn't help but feel my mouth water as I looked at the food. He put our meals in front of us and wished us a nice meal. I separated the two disposable chopsticks and began eating the pork katsu, I didn't realise that my order also included a miso soup which was a nice surprise.
I took several bites, one bite of rice, a little bit of meat and a sip of the miso soup, the flavours combining in my mouth was truly quite enjoyable. I mixed some soy sauce with the wasabi and dipped my sushi into it. I wasn't exactly sure on the etiquette of sushi eating but this seemed about right. Tangy flavour of the wasabi combined with the salty yet rich flavour of the sushi really came together to make a mouth-watering meal.
"Are you enjoying your meal?" I hoped to continue some casual conversation with Yui, especially after hearing what she just said. "Yeah, it's nice." She didn't stutter as much any more which was good to hear. She was combining little portions of each ingredient of the ramen in a wide spoon, making a sort of 'mini ramen' in each one.
We were slowly getting into our meals and eventually I was pretty full. I had eaten about three quarters of the food and decided that I had had enough. I took a few last bites and slouched back into my chair. Wow that was really filling. I looked towards Yui and noticed that she was almost about finished eating her dinner.
"Do you want to go have a look in the book store nearby?" I asked her. I had wanted to buy some more romance genre books for research purposes anyways. "Yeah... I'd like to." and so it was settled, we were going to the book store. Yui offered to pay for both of our meals and after a little conversation, she insisted so I didn't continue arguing. We made our way over to the biggest bookstore in the shopping centre, it was called, 'Book Haven' which was a relatively generic name but it didn't matter too much I guess.
The bookstore was really big, like definitely the biggest in the entire city. There were rows upon rows of books, all separated into genre, age range and a variety of other variables. I had a quick glance at the 'recommended' section, there were a few vanilla romance novels which looked like just the thing I wanted. Although I liked reading romances with a bit more substance with them unlike these novels which were just trope after trope and cliché after cliché, made only unique by one arbitrary uniqueness factor like, 'falling in love with the cute boy but he's actually a secret pro basketball player' or something like that. There were even more shamelessly generic novels with convoluted twists like, 'I'm trapped in a time loop and I keep having to make girls fall in love with me', actually, that one didn't seem half bad.
I had a look at the blurb and flipped through a few of the pages, despite being somewhat 'unique' I suspected there were still many clichés which I could study. $5.99, it was pretty cheap considering the quality of paper it was made from and a pretty appealing cover. I picked it off the shelf and held onto it as I followed Yui. She looked through a few books in the romance section, I was beginning to notice a common denominator in the books she was interested in. They all seemed to include a popular boy falling in love with an unpopular girl, this sure did say a lot about her personality.
I noticed her face getting red after reading some of the blurbs and her trying to subtly slide the books into her pile which she was going to purchase. I decided to let her be and walked around, looking at some other books. Suddenly, someone caught my eye, turns out Ichika was just around the corner, also looking through some of the romance novels. I decided that I was going to approach her but as I walked towards her, I noticed her pick up the most generic novel I had ever seen in my entire life.
There wasn't even like an interesting concept or anything, it was just a straight self-insert, wish-fulfilment, cute-boy-meets-cute-girl school based romance novel. It was honestly frank to the point that I had to respect how plain it dared to be. It was the only novel Ichika picked up before walking towards the counter. I decided to also grab a copy just to see what it was like and quickly greeted Ichika.
"Hey, you're Ichika, from school right?" I initiated the conversation.
"Oh, you also go to Aston College?"
"Yeah, I'm Sachi, nice to meet you."
"Same here, I like your outfit."
"Thanks." I felt like that was kind of odd considering my 'outfit' was extremely casual.
She lined up behind a few people and waited for the cashier. She didn't grab any novels aside from the one she picked out before so I wondered what she was doing. "Are you just doing some window shopping?" I asked. She parted her hair in one smooth motion and turned back to face me... yep, she's the Main Character for sure. "Yeah, I was hanging out with some friends but they've just left and I wanted to get this book." As expected from an extrovert like her, "are you here by yourself?" She continued.
"I was actually just with my friend Yui, we came to look at some books together." I was trying to seem sociable but all this talking was beginning to take a toll on my mind. It felt like I wasn't having a conversation but more like I was doing an English oral where I had to demonstrate my best question and response flow. "That's nice, where is she now?" How can you keep this up all the time, Ichika? "She's just over there," I pointed to the romance section of the bookstore.
We continued the conversation for a decent amount of time before she arrived at the front of the line. After her quick transaction, I decided to pay for my two books as well. "I'll get going now, nice to chat with you, Sachi!" She waved goodbye and left the store. I went back over to Yui who seemed to be hiding behind some bookshelves. "How are you so good at talking to people?" She asked.
Well in truth I was not good at talking to people, but accentuating circumstances have led me into my precarious situation I'm currently facing. After a little while, Yui decided to pay for her books as well and the two of us also exited the book store.
On our way out, I managed to catch a glimpse of one of the boys from our school. When he saw me, he gave me a brief wave and swiftly continued on with whatever he was doing. I had known him because the two of us sat on the bus together on one of the trips to a soccer match. He was pretty athletic, playing for the state representative team. I looked beside me to see Yui, looking as if she had sparkles in her eyes. I was shocked to see her reaction.
"U-um... who's that boy...?"
What a predictable romance development...