River of Stars

Chapter 5 - Glittering Gold

"What? You and Höjö-San are dating??" Nishikata said in astonishment.

"Y-Yeah..." Hamaguchi said, scratching his cheek.

Nishikata was currently having lunch with his friends, it was the first day after summer break, and they were catching up with each other after vacations. The others stared at Hamaguchi in disbelief, and Nakai was the first one to speak after that.

"Congrats man!" He said, slapping his back "How did you guys get together?"

"I... confessed to her during the summer festival", Hamaguchi said, blushing.

"Haaaah, why are all of you guys getting girlfriends" said Takao with a deep sigh, and looking hopelessly to the ceiling "It won't be long until we lose Nishikata too"

"M-Me and Takagi aren't like that" Nishikata said, still too embarrassed to talk about it with his friends. They obviously didn't buy it, but at this point they already knew better than to try and get him to spit it out.

"Whatever" Takao said "At least Kimura doesn't like anyone, right, Kimura?"

Kimura was going for a bite of his rice ball, he paused for a second before taking the bite, without saying a word.

Everyone looked at him.

"W-What?!" Takao almost got up "Who is it?!"

"... Hibino-San..." Kimura said while looking to the side and blushing.

They all stared at him for a moment, then they dropped their heads and sighed.

The next few days went by pretty normally, Nishikata and Takagi would attend class, then study together in the library, then go back home and study on their own.

In the last week of summer break, Nishikata had rested until he was fully recovered, and went back to studying for the remaining days. However, he had learned his lesson, and now he was not pushing himself to the point of being sick. Still, his schedule was almost as tiresome as it was before summer, and he still had little time to rest. He had renewed his motivation after talking to Takagi that night, so he was still studying really hard, just watching himself not to reach such a low point.

And now that Nishikata knew that Takagi liked him, he was trying to think of a way to confess to her. When he realized that he liked her, he wasn't planning to confess to her until they entered Sekai Eda High, so that it wouldn't interfere with his studies. But knowing that she probably liked him too, Nishikata had become anxious of the thought that she was waiting for him to confess to her. The more he thought about it, the more he felt convinced of that.

Even after Summer Break ended, Takagi was still acting strange in the past few days. Nishikata thought she looked sad and disappointed, and it was obviously because he was taking too long to convey his feelings. Up until now, he had never shown her any signs that he realized his feelings, at least, none that he was aware of. She probably expected something to happen on the day of the summer festival, and that was probably why she looked so disappointed.

Nishikata wondered what she'd say, but he tried his best to take it out of his mind. He tried to get his mind back to the questions he was solving, and he had been trying to concentrate for a while now, but he kept thinking about Takagi. More specifically, about his confession.

The truth was that in the few moments when Nishikata wasn't studying, he was thinking of how to confess to her. And this was actually stressing him out, since he didn't want her to wait long from now, but he also couldn't think of a way to properly convey the extension of his feelings. He didn't want to give her just some ordinary, generic, lame confession, he had to think well about it to make it something special for both of them, especially thinking that he had potentially made her wait for more than two years.