If I Can't Have Senpai

Chapter 35

The letter was recent and looking back at Taro it seemed he had been unconscious for a while. She walked back over to him and noticed the recent newspaper at his bed stand, she had recognized it with that familiar cover of her and Budo embracing behind the flames of the restaurant. The nurse had brought one for her early that morning and Ayano only spared a glance at it. But now as she looked at it she noticed another story underneath it, its title was "Judge spares teen in akademy high's poisoning case." On the cover it showed Osana walking with her parents away from reporters trying to shove their microphones at their faces. The article briefly goes on about how the public was outraged by the judge's lenience on the suspect, the writer theorizes that that judge was paid off or pitied the suspect because she was a pretty girl.

Ayano had forgotten all about Osana and her own hand in the poisoned cookie that was originally for the tsundere. But by some twist in events it lead Osana to being the main suspect in the poisoning of Saki Miyu. It wasn't what she had originally planned but Ayano still took advantage of it. Now a new wave of guilt flooded within her she truly had been a despicable person.

"I'm so sorry..." Without thinking her hands had grasped Taro's tightly. She felt her heart sink as the guilt overwhelmed her. Her love for him caused so many problems especially for the people around him who had also loved him from friends to rivals.

"If-...if only I didn't leave you that night in the nurses office...." She whispered as she pressed her forehead to their grasped hands. She had caused his comatose by messing with the wrong people. They had involved him in their ridiculous fight of love and pride and it had cost Taro's consciousness.

"I knew there was something wrong with you!!!" Taro says looking at her with shaking eyes and then at the passed out body of the delinquent. "Osana...was right...you....you are a monster!"

Ayano tighten her grip on his hand as tears started to run down her face, in the end she had failed him and her true colors were revealed. That face of fear and pain as he had gazed at her before running off in the rain. 

"If only I was a normal girl....then maybe..." Ayano says her voice cracking in anguish. "Maybe everything could have been different..."

Their first meeting was like a start to a love story, where two strangers bumped into each other, where their gazes meet and their hearts start to bloom with new feelings. When he helped her up that first morning of school she had felt a new array of feelings that colored her dull life. Her mother had always told her she would fall in love during a fated meeting and she believed that. She had waited since middle school for it and finally it had happened and she didn't want to let him go.

"I could have introduce myself to you..." Ayano smiled through her tears as she gazed at him, her feelings in shambles. "Maybe we could have been friends and then.....then...."

They could have fell in love, she wouldn't have to worry about rivals or any horrible thoughts in her mind, she would just be, and love him. A normal Ayano in love-

"Osana...."

Ayano stood motionless as Taro breathed Osana's name, the hand that Ayano held slightly gripped back before it went limp as if it never happened at all. Ayano was silent her tears had stopped and her hand went slack, dropping Taro's hand. 

"Thats right..." Ayano whispers taking a step back as the cherry blossom's petals danced once again in the breeze. Her charcoal eyes stared at the floor and the remaining tears she had dropped to the dusty floor before ceasing entirely. "Even if I was a normal girl...even if I had approached you....she was always on your mind..."

She rested a hand to her beating heart and to her surprise it didn't hurt, it wasn't racing like before and she didn't feel rage or heart break. She looked at him briefly to see if she could feel anything now instead of what she had in the past but her heart was steady and her mind drew a blank and then it suddenly didn't.