Motivated to be lazy

Chapter 20

"Did I really just do that...?" Honami breathed.

"You did," I smiled proudly.

I was still holding her the same way, my face millimeters from her cheek. She turned to me and suddenly the situation hit her. She quickly separated from me and looked anywhere but me. After a moment, I handed her the second flash light and we both started moving toward where Class A would be waiting for us with Arisu.

The encounter took longer than expected and I hoped that Arisu wouldn't be mad at me for being late. Still it was worth it for what I witnessed. Honami took the flashlight looking deep in thought.

"...you kissed me." Honami finally said as we continued to make our way to the cave.

"Sure did," I agreed with a nod. What else was I going to say?

Honami stayed quiet for a while deep in thought. I wasn't sure what she was thinking about and was curious but let her think. Whatever she wanted to say, she should decide on it without any interruption from me.

"You know, that's the first time a boy's kissed me." Honami admitted.

"Ahh, how was it?"

Honami didn't say anything, I couldn't see her face with our torches pointing forward and I didn't want to be rude and shine mine in her face so I just waited for a reply. I could imagine it probably resembled some variety of tomato.

"You should know, I'm not the kind of girl to kiss or be kissed by someone who isn't my boyfriend." Honami finally said ignoring my question.

"Oh, right... Sorry about that, I should have asked permission or something. I was caught up with trying to taunt Kanzaki," I explained.

"So you didn't want to kiss me? You just did it to annoy someone?" Honami asked coldly.

"You should know me well enough by now to know I only do things that I want to do. It was your cheek, you realize that right? It's not like I kissed you on the lips."

I was starting to get whiplash. Was I supposed to kiss her or not? Women. Honestly.

"If you're ever expecting to kiss me again, don't you think you have something to tell me?" Honami asked expectantly.

Oh Honami. To think that she thought that it would be this easy. It was pretty naive but I could tell that this was all new for her. Still, I was a little concerned at the moment. There wasn't really a way to keep going like this without making her think that I wasn't interested in her. It was a worry of mine.

It was never as blatant as this, she never asked directly like this before. But I'd never let anything escalate to that extent before either. So it was easy to play the oblivious game but now I've opened Pandora's Box. Honami was probably going to be more aggressive in trying to make me confess.

How was I supposed to know this would happen? It's not like I planned this...

Still, there's only so long that you can drag things out before people start to lose hope. There's only so many times you can dance around before eventually things start to get stale. I committed myself, Honami would be confessing to me before this exam was over.

Just as we got to the edge of the treeline, I could see Arisu waiting with Hashimoto. With the flashlight on her, I could see Arisu was not impressed with how late I was. Seeing Honami changed that angry look to confusion quickly.

"Ichinose-san? Is everything alright?" Arisu asked worriedly.

"Everything's fine, don't worry. I just ran into Honami on the way here," I said as I grabbed the hammock from Hashimoto.