Date Her Instead Vol. 5

Chapter Fourteen: The Night Before

It was several hours later by the time Itsuki woke up. Naturally, Mayu had already left, and now looking out the window, Itsuki saw it was dark outside. Checking her phone, there were several messages and missed calls. "Oops..." she let out. "That's definitely gonna be my parents." So, tapping her contacts list, Itsuki was just about to call when her finger stopped just short of pushing the button.

Mayu's words echoed in her head. "If the nurse had been here, she would've told my parents about me collapsing..." Itsuki remembered. She had no idea if her parents had really noticed her condition or not. Itsuki had felt like she had been doing a good job of hiding it, but based on Mayu and Jasmine's reaction, she wasn't really sure anymore just how well she had been keeping up the act. Now that she had collapsed, it would be even harder to keep it a secret.

Of course, people at school weren't the only ones to know about what had happened last year. Itsuki's parents knew too. If she told them she had collapsed again, there was no telling what kind of reaction they would have. "Last time was bad enough..." Itsuki thought. Her parents, for as kind as they were, could sometimes be a bit overprotective. When they had heard about what had happened, they had very nearly had Itsuki home-schooled for the rest of her academic career so they could have her avoid potentially dangerous events like the cultural festival. "Thank goodness I talked them out of it."

This time though, Itsuki wasn't sure if she'd get so lucky. It was already weird enough to be at school this late now that the festival had started, and on top of that, there was probably a decent chance that Mayu would've told her parents, who would've told Itsuki's parents why their daughter was so late. "And if Mayu-chan did tell them, then there's no way I'm getting out of whatever they have coming," she thought. Trying to avoid the potential punishment for as long as she could, Itsuki set her phone back down and let her mind drift.

Although, it didn't have to drift far. Aside from her parents inevitable reactions, there was another problem creeping up on Itsuki. Upon watching Jasmine and Mayu interact, a stabbing pain had hit her in the heart once again. This pain had started when Jasmine first started talking to Mayu more. In the beginning, Itsuki had just thought she didn't like how things were changing. Then, after talking to Jasmine on the school trip, she had felt better about their situation. As long as they were all friends, that was fine.

However, it was clear to Itsuki that while they may have called each other friends, they weren't all standing on equal ground. Watching Jasmine and Mayu was enough to tell her that much. What exactly it was either of them felt, Itsuki didn't know, but she felt like she couldn't really say they were all evenly friends anymore.

What she did know was her own feelings. She knew they were different from what Jasmine or Mayu were potentially feeling, but they still carried their own weight. And, with that weight came sense of... monopoly? Jealousy? ...Or fear perhaps? It was hard to place exactly which one best fit. Whichever one it was, it kept coming back to Itsuki each time she saw Jasmine and Mayu together. Worse yet, that feeling inside of her seemed to be getting stronger. "I just... don't like seeing them together," she thought.

It was the way they interacted with each other. That was what bothered Itsuki the most. At least, that's what she thought. Of course, if it turned out she was right, and the two of them were falling for each other, that wasn't really an issue. On the contrary, she'd actually be happy for them, or she'd try to be. Rather, Itsuki's qualms had less to do with that aspect and more to do with it feeling like she was being forgotten.

Mayu looked the same to nearly everybody, even Itsuki. And yet, for some reason, whenever she was with Jasmine, she would produce a myriad of expressions no one else ever got to see. It was bewildering, to say the least. Why was it that Jasmine was able to get her to look like that? Why didn't Mayu just act like that all the time? Did Jasmine have something Itsuki didn't?