COTE: Starting Over

Chapter 5

* 30 *

So that was another day of doing nothing still.

When I returned to the apartment and opened the door, the smell of a tasty dinner like only my sister could make… is what I hoped for, but instead I was just told “I’m hungry, make something.” She again added “Right now.”

I’m really not much of a cooking person, so I just warmed up some apple pie from the fridge and scooped some vanilla ice cream.

She looked at the apple pie and asked “What about veggies?” “Got none,” I told her, and after some thought, she said “That’s no good.”

She probably meant to say “Are you stupid or what?”, but being a freeloader in my care, she must have decided to hold back for once.

After drinking some coffee after the meal, she stared right at me. Her eyes told me “I want to talk, but I don’t want to start.”

So I started. “What’s up?”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend, big brother?”

What a thing to ask out of the blue, I thought.

“Nope. Unfortunately.”

“…Sorry to push it, but have you never had a girlfriend?”

I had an ideal one in my first life, I wanted to tell her.

“Yeah. Never.”

“Why?”

Why, she asks… That’s got to be the worst way to talk to someone loveless.

In my second life, I couldn’t help finding it odd how everyone else was able to find love one after another.

The first time I thought nothing of it, just having my ideal girl right there next to me, but now I was like, how dare everyone find someone perfect for them?

Yes, in my eyes, people with lovers are much more of an oddity than those without them.

Honestly, sometimes I kinda want to say “Is that really gonna be alright?” Not that anyone wants to hear this, but it seems to me that two people hitting it off for their whole lives would be a really rare occurrence.
Suppose there are lots of such a people who that happens to frequently. Aren’t they hollow, in a sense?

The way your values get shaped over the course of your life, it’s like painting a picture. That picture gets filled with what makes you you, so everyone’s is different.

So if you and someone else’s pictures match up perfectly, that’s gotta mean you’re just both blank canvases.

Or else you’re so unimaginative, you just painted the most boring pictures ever.

I’m not convincing anybody of anything from where I stand, of course. Just an idle complaint, I suppose.

I’m just a fussy, bored, lonely self-analyticist who never thinks of anybody but himself.

Right, where were we… My sister asked me “Why?”

Well, the number one reason was that I couldn’t possibly consider anyone but Nanase as my girlfriend now. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell her that, of course.

“Not sure there’s a good reason why,” I said.

“So you haven’t even had a crush on any girls or anything?”

I shook my head.

“You can’t think of a single one?”

“I guess not.”

“Then… I dunno, an agreeable girl, at least?”

An agreeable girl, huh.

That did bring something to mind.