Challenge: The Fool with the Surname Okayamine

Interlude Chapter 177: "May this moment last forever"

—After his soul lost its vessel, it slumbered as if it had fallen into water, and fell as if it had died.

It fell slowly, as slowly as if it were falling into heaven.

His soul disintegrated, and a tiny bit of substance called memory within his body was washed away by a faint bitter liquid and floated out of his falling body.

Whether it was painful memories or cherished beliefs, everything began to drift away from him, leaving only an empty, nameless shell.

Each element is deconstructed and transformed into tiny points of spiritual light, like stars falling from the sky, yet their color is so black.

"My head hurts so much... Who am I... What am I? What am I searching for...?"

Black spiritual light drifted in the night and reached the door of the building that seemed to stand alone in the wilderness, where it reformed into a black-haired man who had fainted on the ground.

The man's face was very thin, and his skin was extremely pale. He was only wearing a thin white shirt that looked as if it had just been made, giving it a very fragile appearance.

He couldn't wake up or open his eyes, but his bodily functions and senses were surprisingly sharp; he could even hear the jumbled noises from a great distance.

"A young girl's singing voice?"

For some reason, he murmured something he couldn't understand, but even though he couldn't understand it, he could still find a clue in his missing memories.

His fingers and limbs were immobile, and he could barely lift his eyelids. He could only listen to the sounds through his surprisingly clear ears.

Well... it's singing. There's a lot of emotion in the singing, but most of it is just forced, emotionless singing. Only a very few are genuine singing.

He couldn't understand it, nor did he want to listen carefully. He was just trying to search for his past in the torrent of memories.

"Nothing. I'm describing an empty shell with no past; the past is nothing."

He murmured to himself, for reasons he didn't know.

Perhaps so. Memories are impossible to retrieve, but for an empty shell, how difficult that is.

'Crunch~'

He could only hear the sound of the door unlocking beside him, and he could barely open his eyes, but his vision was still so blurry.

When he opened his eyes, what he saw was the girl who had looked at him after he had forgotten, with a very puzzled expression.

"Ugh...whoa! What's going on! Hey...can you hear me? Don't do this! If you're going to die, don't choose to die here! It'll bother me a lot..."

His blurry vision was fixed on the girl kneeling down and staring at him. He found it difficult to move his facial muscles to make an expression, but the girl was so flustered and was shaking her body very violently.

That face was particularly cute; that was the first impression of the girl. Then came her messy, bright golden hair and the thin clothes she wore, which looked like something a homebody would wear.

If you disregard the girl's current tearful and screaming expression, she looks like an idol.

"Is she...crying for me? Is she someone important to me...?"

That was his first thought, but as he shook himself more and more angrily, his attention returned to the present moment.

"Damn it, whether it's true or not, I feel like she's shaking me. I don't care if I'm okay now or not, I'm going to pass out soon!"

He couldn't complain because he couldn't open his mouth; he could only furrow his brow and clench his teeth tightly.

But looking at the anxious face, he seemed to be able to find a very small and vague part of his own memories in the emptiness of his mind.

Slowly, he became lost in his memories of the past.

It seemed to be an evening I can't quite recall, when the sunset glow fell upon the school building called Anzakura Girls' Academy, and cherry blossoms drifted romantically down from the cherry trees.

"Tokisaki-san! I...I've liked you for a long time! Please go out with me!"

A boy with a buzz cut called out shyly, his hand holding the love letter trembling, his head down, not daring to face the black-haired woman who had just been barely managed to get his female classmates to call him.

The woman was slender and petite, with easily recognizable features including snow-white skin, short black hair, and wine-red eyes. Coupled with her pure and innocent demeanor, she was incredibly beautiful.

After a moment of silence, a hint of distress appeared in the girl's eyes. Some boys had confessed their feelings to her, but she felt guilty every time she rejected them.

"Uh... your name is Hirota Momota, right?"

"Yes, Tokisaki-san! I've liked you for a long time! So, will you go out with me?"

The black-haired girl's expression became even more troubled, while the two people hiding behind the cherry blossom tree not far away simply watched quietly.

"Sawa, what's so interesting about this? Why did you suddenly ask me to come along? This shouldn't be important, right? Who Kurumi will like in the future, that's not important..."

"Shh, [?] classmate, shut up~, this is important! It's the time when Kurumi gets asked out to confess her feelings!"

"I don't think Momota will succeed, so is it really worth it? Sawa, is it because she's coming to your house with you today to keep Kuriko company? Should I pretend to be her boyfriend and help her out...?"

Sawa's expression, which was originally a mixture of worry and concern, twitched slightly, followed by her hair standing on end, and finally a shout that was out of character for her usual gentle and shy voice.

"Huh? Ah? Ahhh! No...no!!"

The sound was so loud it almost echoed throughout the entire campus. When Sawa finally realized what was happening, her face flushed, and she covered her mouth with her hand, trying to make the two people who were still confessing their love pretend they hadn't heard anything at all.

However, both Momota Kota and Kurumi were already looking towards the cherry blossom tree, which was quite awkward for Sawa, a girl who had also received some education on how to behave like a young lady.

Embarrassment is nothing to worry about, but what's important is that she unintentionally lost her composure in front of her best friend and [?], and even turned around to look at [?]'s expression.

But Kurumi, who was not far away, saw Sawa and heard her shout just now. It was as if her best friend had come to help her solve her problem and even gave her a way out.

"Ah, I'm sorry, Momota-san. Although I don't have any negative feelings towards you, I'm really sorry. Sawa also asked me to leave her, so I don't plan to accept anyone's confession before graduating from junior high school. So I'm very sorry."

After saying that, Kurumi immediately ran over to the steaming, blushing woman kneeling below, her back resting on the [?] foot of the veil.

Watching Kurumi's graceful figure disappear into the distance, Momota lowered her head slightly in disappointment, but quickly rallied and shouted loudly in Kurumi's direction:

"Then...then I'll come back after I graduate! I'll work even harder! So you'll look up to me!"

Ming watched all of this with a detached indifference, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. For some reason, he felt a strange sense of comfort after Sawa's loud shout.

But his face remained expressionless, his eyes vacant as he lowered his head and spoke in a flat, unchanging voice:

"Uh... Sawa, could you please not sit like that?"

"Oh! Oh, sorry, classmate, I hope you didn't hurt yourself sitting there?"

"Nonsense, it would be a miracle if I didn't feel pain if you just sat right on my feet."

"Oh! I'm so sorry!"

In Ming's eyes, Sawa is usually gentle and kind, but unfortunately a little silly. However, only Sawa herself knows this. She only acts this way towards [?]. Hei is still quite ladylike, isn't she?

This might be what is called love, a strange emotion that can make a person panic.

"Okamine-san! Sawa!"

Kurumi ran happily to Sawa's side, her face full of affection as a close friend.

"Thank you so much, Sawa. I would have been in a difficult position to back down without you."

Sawa blushed and stammered, "I...I didn't mean to be so loud."

[?] He sighed and rubbed his forehead, then suddenly spoke up to remind him:

"Alright, alright, stop standing here. Didn't we say we were going to Sawa's house to play with Kuriko? I can't wait."

The three of them walked together on the path to Sawa's house, the setting sun casting long shadows on them.

Along the way, Kurumi kept talking about interesting things at school and topics of romance that were typical for girls, making Sawa giggle.

[?] Although he remained expressionless, he would occasionally chime in with a word or two.

The memory remains frozen in this moment, like a dream, yet incredibly real. Gazing at the two girls chatting idly on the road, I ask myself one last question about the girl named Yamada Sawa.

“Hey classmate, I’m a little curious, what are your views on love? Can you tell me?”

"Huh? I refuse."

"Huh? Speaking of which, Kurumi, you must also be curious about [?]'s views on love, right? Why don't you help me persuade him?"

Seeing Sawa's pleading look, Kurumi's eyes lit up. For her, still a cheerful and optimistic girl, this was indeed some interesting gossip, and she was also curious about this aspect:

"Yes, yes, classmate, tell us about it, satisfy our curiosity."

Unable to escape the two's persistent pestering, Ming sighed helplessly and said:

"Okay, in my opinion, liking and loving are not the same thing."

"Oh! What do you mean! What would someone like [?] think about love?"

"First of all, let's put it this way: liking someone is because we like their appearance, so we want to share happiness with them; it's a broader kind of love."

[?] He scratched his head and then gave a simple analogy.

"For me, love is exclusive and comes from the heart. It's not just about appearance. It's about accepting her ugliness, accepting her beauty, accepting everything about her, and choosing someone who can go through thick and thin with you. That's what love is. So, Kurumi, you have to be careful when it comes to love."

Kurumi rested her chin on her hand, seriously considering Ming's words, her eyes sparkling.

"Oh, I see! I'll definitely be more careful when I date in the future, thank you!"

After that, the three of them went to Sawa's house and went into the room to play with Kuriko. Although most of the time they stood by as observers and occasionally touched Kuriko, they still felt that Kuriko was a bit transparent.

Then, Kurumi went home first because she had to eat. When Mei was also about to go home, Sawa suddenly called out to him [?].

As the sun set, its afterglow bathed Sha and her chestnut hair, which cascaded down like a waterfall, as if draping her in a golden veil.

Her expression was somewhat shy, like that of a bashful young girl, her cheeks flushed a faint blush, like the sunset on the horizon. Then she spoke shyly:

"So... [?] Do you like me... or..."

The fragments of memory froze, and a small crack gradually appeared, like a mirror about to shatter. Suddenly, it broke, and he didn't even know how to answer Sawa.

The faces that appeared in her memories were all so blurry; the only things she could remember were Sha and the girl's name, and her graceful figure whose face was indistinct in the sunset.

Gradually, he opened his eyes again and found himself lying on a narrow sofa, his whole body still feeling the pain of being dragged along.

"Ah...where am I...?"

Staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, he tried again to find relevant information in his memory, but to no avail.

Just as he was about to get up to take a look, he suddenly felt a strange sensation on his lower body, as if someone had gently tapped him with a slender hand.

"Ok?"

Startled, Ming sat up abruptly, looking at the person who had just knocked on his head with a puzzled expression. The person's face was flushed, and they looked at him with a panicked expression when they saw that he was awake.

The girl recalled the strange sensation of the protruding tentacles on the guy's lower body as she tapped him, her face flushed and her fingers trembling as she pointed at him.

"You...you are...a man!"

The blonde girl's sudden shout made Ming's expression gradually become puzzled.

"Huh? What's this?!"

Before he could react, a pillow slammed down on his face with an inhuman force, slamming his head heavily onto the sofa.

"Ugh... Ugh ugh ugh!"