I Do Not Dream Of Eating Your Pancreas (IWTEYP x Seishun Buta Yarō)

Chapter 1: August 19th Part 1

Six words. To the casual observer, they probably came off as a dark joke, or something sinister from a cultist. The first time I heard her say them, I thought something along those lines.

The me of the past would had this thought, entertain it for a short while, before discarding and wrapping myself up in a novel. But now, I let those thoughts linger just a little longer. The anonymous faces I'd observe became the faces of her friends, I tried to make the ones that looked like Kyouko-san go by as fast as I could.

Between her and I, those six words were something deeper than I could have anticipated. I could still recall her face when she first asked me that question. Or when she enthusiastically ate all of the horumon, telling me of beliefs that part of her hoped to be true.

"I want to eat your pancreas." I had debated and written and erased countless messages before deciding on what I should tell her. With a tap of my finger, the message was sent.

I placed my phone down, internally relieved yet terrified of what I had just done. How would she react? Would she understand the words I didn't say, or would she even notice them in the first place? I could feel the slight movement of a bead of sweat sliding down my back, even as the cafe I waited in was at a comfortable 70.

My gaze wandered out the window, seeing but not seeing. The faceless crowd of people outside the cafe existed in a whole different world than me. What would one of them think if they looked in now and saw me? A teen sitting alone at the window bar in a cafe, looking aimlessly at the outside world? Would they notice the subtle changes as he went from relieved to nervous, back and forth relentlessly?

I calmed myself slightly, enough to grab my coffee cup without the risk of spilling the warm drink inside, and took a small drink. The warm liquid warmed me up, and washed away any lingering emotions. As I savored the taste, I looked down to the novel in front of me.

The unassuming cover was quite plain, simply colored in red and yellow. The more I thought about it, I realized it was almost an exact copy of her diary, albeit without the orange block. I hadn't really looked into the book much, simply picking it up and checking the price before taking it to the counter. "Just another way she's affected me," I thought to myself.

I flipped it open, and began to read, losing myself in the words that it held. The soft music of the cafe, the smell of sweet, sweet coffee filling the air, before long I was completely zoned it. It took the server refilling my coffee to realize a noise I assumed was merely the air conditioning or a brew station was my phone, vibrating to inform that a new message had been received.