Chapter 6

Turns out Ai lived just two streets way from me, in a house much like all the others in this neighborhood. How my mom hadn’t found out where it was was a total mystery.

When we entered the house, though, I immediately thought something was… off. Not necessarily wrong per se. Just off.

The house felt… cold. Empty, as if no one had lived here for a long time.

The blinds in every room on the first floor were closed, so the only light coming in was through the door. The house was blanketed in pure darkness, giving the feeling that it was staring right back at me.

“Please come in!” Ai said as she turned on the lights.

I took off my shoes alongside hers and entered the main hallway. The floorboards didn’t slightly give way or creak like my house’s did. As Ai turned on the lights, the darkness dissipated, but that sense of unease didn’t go along with it. That’s because the corridor was completely devoid of any decoration—no photos on the walls, no rugs, no random cupboards with trinkets. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, no personal items. Nothing. The place was like a the frame of a house encompassing that strange emptiness that the lights couldn’t penetrate.

Sure, they just moved in like two weeks ago, but shouldn’t things be a bit more… alive?

“My room is upstairs,” Ai said with a smile. “My name is on the door, so you can’t miss it! Feel free to go ahead while I grab us something to drink, okay?”

Ai trotted contently to the kitchen on the left. I just stood there, unable to move an inch, as if taking a single step in would stop me from ever coming out again.

What the hell am I so afraid of? It’s just a house.

I shook my head. I couldn’t just stand there, but I also didn’t feel like going up into the darkness. Instead, I decided to explore a bit, as if I was searching for that humanity absent everywhere else. That’s when my attention was brought to the door on my right.

That must be the living room, right?

I knew it was wrong to poke around someone’s house without their permission, but it’s not like I was invading someone’s private space any more than I already was. And I just needed to see it.

So I opened the door and flicked on the light.

It was a living room. That’s about as much as I could say about it.

It didn’t have a single distinguishing feature. It was a perfect object that didn’t do anything to dispel my unease.

There was a large flat-panel TV, two sofas, and a center table. But everything was generic-looking, and there wasn’t an ounce of personality anywhere to be seen. There was no indication that it was used every day by at least three people.

I couldn’t just leave it at that; like, surely this room couldn’t possibly be this sterile. So I stepped inside.

The decoration on the walls—framed paintings—were abstract and they made my eyes hurt when I looked at them too much. There were no photos anywhere. I opened cupboards—all were empty. The TV remote was exactly at the center of the center table. I noticed a bookshelf in one of the corners, so I approached it quickly, hoping for some ounce of personality. But the book spines all had the titles in foreign languages I couldn’t understand. It’s not that these were in English or anything—the script itself was completely foreign to me.

The more I looked, the more unsettled I became. It was like someone who didn’t know what a living room looked like tried to assemble one based purely on a vague description of it. Even model rooms in furniture stores had more personality than this.

Suddenly, I felt a presence right behind me.

When I turned around—

“Woah!”

Ai was just standing there. I hadn’t heard her come in, hence my shocked cry. She was but a few steps behind me, with two glasses of iced tea on a tray, with a strange look on her face. She wasn’t angry or happy or shocked or confused. It was a purely blank expression, like she didn’t know how to react to what I was doing.

A shiver ran through my body.

I had no reason to be scared of Ai or anything. She wasn’t looking scary, not really. But there was something about her that struck me as odd—and in this context, it felt even stranger.

Everything about this situation was odd.

But that expression on her face quickly dissolved, too quickly for me to really burn it into my memory.

“Oh, would you prefer to stay down here instead?” She asked with her usual liveliness.

“N-No. Let’s go upstairs.”

The less I stay down here, the better.

So I followed Ai up the stairs and into the 2nd floor hallway. It was exactly the same as down below, dark and cold. Empty, like a doll house, with only the doors marking any sort of variation in the bland corridors.

But then we stopped in front of Ai’s room.

That was the strangest place of all of them because of just how different it felt to the rest of the house.

Just like she had said, there was a cutesy pink plaque on the door with her name on it. That thing alone had more life than the rest of the house combined.

“Open the door for me, okay? My hands are kinda full, ah-ah!”

I did so, and what a breath of fresh air that was.

Ai’s room was exactly what I expected to see. It was filled with anime posters and cute plushies in every empty space, but still not cluttered in the slightest. There was a bookshelf filled with novels and manga. At the center of the room was a rug with a low table on it with two cushions. And at a corner was a large full body mirror with a bunch of photos stuck on it.

Thank god her room looks normal.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

Right, I chose to put all these strange feelings behind me. I couldn’t be jumpy at every single strange thing that happened.

And besides, it’s probably all in my head.

Ai deposited the tray with the beverages on the table and sat down in one of the cushions.

I did the same.

Ai drank a big gulp of the ice tea like she was absolutely parched.

I did the same.

Yes, this is fine.

“Phew, that hits the spot on such a hot day,” she said as she fanned her uniform. It revealed just a hint of her cleavage. Of course, Ai noticed me looking at her. She did not get angry or bashful. Instead, she smiled mischievously.

But I just couldn’t handle the embarrassment, so I found myself looking away in shame.

My gaze landed on her bed absolutely covered in plushies. Among them, I spotted one that was quite familiar to me.

A seal plushie.

The same exact one I had gotten for her at the UFO catcher—the one that she left behind when she ran away from me.

Wait, I never gave it back to her, did I? Did she get another one?

I was sure I still had it tucked away in my bedroom, waiting in shame for a time when I had the courage to return it.

“Hiro,” she said sweetly. “Why are you looking away?”

“Oh, I—I-I mean… I shouldn’t be staring,” I said as I looked her in the eye.

“…Dummy,” she said as she scooted over in my direction, our legs basically touching. “I’m your girlfriend. I want you to stare.”

Then she kissed me.

It wasn’t just the usual peck on the lips. It was an intense French kiss, the sort that made your heart beat out of your chest.

We kissed for a long time. I was too nervous to even move an inch, but Ai touched my hair without reservation.

Eventually, she leaned away from me.

“I love you,” she said, her voice dripping with sweetness.

I looked straight into her big eyes, so filled to the brim with love. Her face was flushed red, but her expression was determined.

“…I-I love you too.”

I just couldn’t believe my luck. A girl this cute saying she loved me and kissing me so passionately. Two weeks ago that seemed like pure fantasy.

I wanted to push my luck. I wanted to keep going.

As if she was reading my thoughts, Ai grabbed my wrist and lead my hand straight into her boob. Even through her clothes and underwear, I could tell how soft it was.

“What are you—”

“What is that face for?” She said with a giggle. “I know you’ve been staring at them all the time. And you love when I brush them up against you.”

“Wha—I’m sorry.”

“Dummy. You look like you’re over the moon just from this.”

“…Yeah.”

“Hey… take off my shirt.”

So I did. My hands trembling, I started taking off her buttons one by one until her entire torso was exposed. Her skin was so pale, her waist so thin, and her boobs framed by her red bra so damn big and enticing.

Ai took of her shirt fully and straddled me, kissing me again, her hair falling to the side of my face as I grabbed her impossibly thin waist.

My brain was completely overwhelmed by this point.

No wonder.

We were about to have sex.

That’s what this was all about.

But still, as Ai kissed me, as I felt her soft body pressed against mine, as my own body reacted to hers—

Some deep corner of my mind was screaming at me.

This couldn’t be happening.

Something was wrong.

I had no reason to think like this. It was purely instinct, a sort of primeval feeling, like seeing a snake in a bush.

As the alarm bells grew louder and louder, I stopped paying attention to what I was doing.

Suddenly, Ai stopped kissing me. She looked at me from up above with concern on her face. I let go of her hips, my hands landing floppily on my side.

“Hiro? What’s wrong? Suddenly you seem… worried.”

“I-It’s…”

“Am I… not good enough?” She asked. “But you seem turned on enough. I-I don’t understand—”

“That’s not it,” I responded immediately.

“Did I come off too strong, then?” She asked again. “Sorry, maybe you weren’t ready—”

“That’s not it, either.”

Ai was perfect in every way. She was charming, so nice to hang out with, we hared so many interests, and her body out of this world. I wanted to be with her so badly I could barely stand it.

But that was precisely the problem.

I couldn’t look at her pleading face anymore, so distraught at her apparent failure to get me interested in her.

So I looked away in shame, my head resting on the floor.

And that way just so happened to have a direct line of sight towards the large mirror in Ai’s room.

The scene I saw staring back at me wasn’t Ai straddling me.

Yes, Ai was there.

But the guy on the floor—

The guy who was supposed to be me—

Wasn’t me.

It was someone else.