a/n: thanks to Chaos in a Box for beta-reading the rough 2am-writing-result draft i wrote when i was in hyper modo.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
She smiled at me dazzlingly. Her grey-blue eyes shone bright, reflecting the light of the summer sun. Her cheeks looked a bit red, probably because of heat and embarrassment.
She was a very cute girl. My first love.
"Umm…," she said while she ducked her head bashfully. "I want to be Conan-kun's bride."
I felt my own face went as red as hers in a second. I involuntarily grinned back at her. A big, teeth-baring grin. How cute. Very much so.
.
.
What did you think I was supposed to do when my first love said she wanted to be a bride? I think it was a nice dream. And I personally quite liked a down-to-earth girl like that. You didn't have to dream big to be happy. Simple things were the best things in life. Normal was always okay. Not everyone had to be a Superman.
…
Yes, I knew I was trying to escape from reality. But what could I say when my name wasn't Conan and he was the ideal guy she wanted to marry. Not me. I was pretty sure the thought of me as a man never even crossed her mind at all.
But I didn't mind. Really. It was just like what they say, "first love rarely comes true".
She wasn't going to be mine. But there was plenty of fish in the sea. I could always find another girl to fancy, wooed her, and made her my bride.
My name is Mitsuhiko. And this was how my romance story going to unfold.
.
.
I fell deeper the second time.
I had to admit, at first I only liked her because she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. She had perfectly shaped face, not unlike a doll. Her reddish-brown hair, cut very neatly above her shoulder, looked soft and silky. Her green eyes felt pleasantly cold like a douse of water on a very hot summer day. In my head, spring was coming again.
My delusional mind stopped instantly when I saw her taking a seat beside Conan. Our teacher didn't even have a chance to tell her where she was supposed to sit before she made herself comfortable.
She was a mysterious girl… and breathtakingly beautiful. My second love.
.
.
Unlike with Ayumi (oh, she was my first love if you hadn't guessed it), my feelings for Haibara went deeper and longer. There were quite a few reasons to it. But if I had to choose only one thing about her I especially adore, it was probably her mind.
I was proud to say I was one of the smartest guys in our year. But after Conan —and now Haibara— transferred, my grade felt like a joke compared to their vast knowledge and sharp analytical skills. Conan's test scores were more or less like mine, but while he could play soccer skillfully, I was scrambling with my life trying to not be the last guy in a marathon.
Total result, I was unsurprisingly placed below him in ranking.
Haibara's grades… were weirdly just above average. If I didn't really know her, I would probably think nothing of it. I would assume that she was smart but not that smart. And my train of thoughts would just end at that point.
But I knew her, at least a little bit, so I knew that she was smarter than her grade suggested. Sometimes I even caught her reading a thick difficult book I had a hard time to just read the title. Moreover, she could win an argument against Conan without much effort. And it wasn't Conan losing on purpose like I suspected he did to us a number of times. She was truly winning —if his unamused expression after one of their banters told me anything.
I realized then that she was out of my reach. Haibara was still a mysterious girl even after I'd known her for a year. Even though she hung out with us, it was clear she didn't really hold any interest in our activities. And I didn't really want to say this… but I had a feeling she was only playing with us because Conan was there.
I wasn't sure, of course, since she never blatantly showed any romantic feelings for Conan, but I could see her eyes lingering on him longer than when she looked at any of us. It was subtle —like the way they often walked behind us while being engrossed in their incomprehensible discussion— as if they were the only ones in the world… I felt my heart break for the second time.
And I was escaping reality once again, stubbornly holding on to my feelings for her. I didn't want my story with Haibara to end like this! I wanted to scream that on top of a cliff.
To my luck, Conan never showed any interest in both girls I'd crushed on. If there was a girl he seemed like… it was probably his Ran-neechan. I didn't really understand the appeal, honestly. Older women, they always treated you like you were a kid, never took you seriously and often would pinch your cheeks for no reason. To be fair, Ran-neechan wasn't really like that. If she was our age, I probably would like her too.
.
.
The day my heart got completely shattered by Haibara was the day she was leaving. Both her and Conan, actually. We just went up to fifth grade when they unexpectedly announced they were going to transfer again to another school. We asked them where but they didn't tell us the exact location. Conan said he was going abroad to be together with his parents, while Haibara, the ever-mysterious Haibara, didn't really give us anything except "going to faraway place".
I didn't really know whether my eyes playing a trick on me or not, but she looked lonelier than ever when she said that. Conan, in contrast, obnoxiously looked excited and happy. It was the only time I ever thought of him as insensitive and dense. The girls-Ayumi clearly tried to hold back her tears-were probably sad because of him leaving, but not only he didn't realize a thing, he couldn't even bother trying to mask his happiness. What a jerk.
I won't admit that it was because I was rather sad too.
.
.
Ayumi won't be Conan's bride and I won't get to be with Haibara too. Logically, I could always fall in love with her again and try to be her ideal man to-be-husband. However, I couldn't shake my feelings for Haibara as easily as the time I was letting my love for Ayumi go.
The only reason I still called it as my second love was that I didn't want her to be my failed first love one. If it wasn't first, then it was still possible to become reality, right?
I laughed hollowly at my logic. And they said I was the smartest in my year. But that position was only given to me because Conan (and by extension Haibara, because I knew she was smarter than me by a long mile) wasn't here anymore.
.
.
My third love happened when I was in my last year of high school. It was a time when we were really busy with various exams and studying. You could say it was definitely not a time to fall in love.
But there I was, falling like an idiot, stumbling without any preamble or safety net as if I hadn't learned a thing from my past experiences. And in the back of my head, I thought I could hear Conan laughing at me from afar.
I didn't understand the appeal of older women, my ass! People liked to say karma is a bitch. But I didn't really expect it to catch me in its trap too. I honestly felt like crying the first time I realized what happened.
But unlike the previous two, I spent longer in denial of my feelings than in denial of their nonexistent feelings. If both Ayumi and Haibara were out of my reach, how could this woman be different anyway?
I didn't want to get hurt so I pretended my feelings were completely platonic while we interacted. I didn't put her on a pedestal or tried to make her fall for me. I forced myself to reign the urge to give her flowers or other presents like I often did when I had a crush on Ayumi or Haibara.
But I couldn't deny that the more I knew her, the more I fell for her. I knew she was a friend of Professor Agasa, and they were both scientists (on different fields). She was working at Tokyo University —the place I aimed to enter— and was acquainted with the famous detective Kudo Shinichi and Ran-neechan. She was in her late twenties and she used to have an older sister she seemed to love a lot.
What screwed me more was how different she was from my stereotype of older women. She always took me seriously. We talked as if we were equal and she never treated me like a kid. When I asked her about that, she only smiled a bit, and replied with a vague statement, "oh, I just know how much I hated it at that time."
I stopped denying my feelings when I saw her waiting for me in front of the gate to my exam place. I was understandably nervous that day. Even though I had studied a lot with Professor Agasa (that was the only reason I spent times in his house, not because I hoped I could take a glimpse of her when she would come to visit him) and my grade from the last mock exam was good enough to be able to secure a seat in any University, I was always a bit weak mentally when it came to the real thing.
"Mitsuhiko-kun," she said as she looked in my direction and waved her hand to tell me to come closer. My feet obeyed her call automatically as I turned my body around. "How is it? Are you going to be okay?"
I grimaced slightly as I remembered the reason I was going to this place. Entrance exam. To the most popular university in Japan. Stop. It sounded scarier when I phrased it like that.
"I guess? We won't know until we try, right?" I tried to reply as casually as possible because there was no way I'm going to admit my pathetic fear to the person I like.
She shook her head and smiled slightly. "I suppose we won't. Good luck, Mitsuhiko-kun."
My chest felt a bit lighter when I heard her encouraging words. Nodding my head, I started turning around to pass the gate. I could do this. Everything was going to be okay. I only took a step forward when she spoke again.
"You are going to be fine. You are smarter than you think you are."
…
I never realized how much I needed to hear that from someone.
.
.
Today was Ayumi's wedding day. 25 years old and she was finally going to be a bride like she had always wished. Not to Conan-kun, no. That boy hadn't even visited us once since the day he left. The nerve of him, really. But I honestly couldn't get mad at him. Not anymore, anyway.
The most important thing was for Ayumi to be happy. Like the way she looked right now, dressing in a white gown, with a bucket of flowers in one hand, as her father walked her to the altar. I held my breath when she came in front of me. Her cheeks looked a bit red, probably because of make-up and excitement.
"I think I'm okay not being his bride," she whispered bashfully as she gave me a slight smile. I grinned back at her in reflex. A big, teeth-baring grin.
She raised her head as she continued to walk toward the waiting man she would marry today.
Ah. As always, Ayumi was a very cute girl. My first love. It had ended very quickly like it was nothing. But for me, she always held a special place in my heart as my first and only girl friend.
"You better treat her right, Genta-kun."
I threatened my best friend as I looked at both of them softly. Genta was a nice man and he became quite good looking as he grew up. Undoubtedly, he was pretty average compared to Conan. But you didn't have to dream big to be happy. Simple things were sometimes the best things in life. Normal was always okay. Not everyone had to be a Superman.
And I was pretty much not in denial.
"What are you thinking? Regret not snatching your first love when there was a chance?"
I shook my head slightly before taking her hand into mine. As the groom gave his oath, I traced the ring wrapped around her finger and calmly stated my honest feeling.
"Of course, not, Shiho-san. My heart always belongs to you."
.
.
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Extra
"You know I can't say it back, right?"
"It's fine. I know I'm the only lucky one who can get his first love somehow."
"I don't remember raising you to talk back like this."
"You didn't raise me!"
a/n: almost forgot to post it cause im so lazy... i want to sleep for hundred years.. .-.