The Blackmailing - I

“Hey, I need to talk to you about something.”

The doors closed right as she finished her sentence, preventing me from escaping in the nick of time. The train was packed and I was standing near the door and when she now stood in front of me imposingly with my back against the door, I had nowhere to run. With my escape route sealed, I had no choice but to deal with her.

To be honest, right when I heard her voice and saw her stoic face, the system in my brain was blaring warning signs at me. Her usual cheerfulness and the smile she always had on were nowhere to be seen. She looked at me in utter indifference.

I looked at her and gave some sort of response to get the conversation underway. I had no choice to not participate in this conversation so I figured the faster I finish, the easier it will be for me.

“Yes, what might that be?” Actually, I was pretty sure that it was about the confession that happened in class today but I didn’t want to be the one to breach that topic first so I tried leading her.

“Don’t play dumb. I am talking about what went down in class today.” Her voice was harsh and rude, and her eyes were glaring at me. Looking at this changed atmosphere around her, I found myself questioning whether she was the same Komatsu Ai that was so effervescent and charming.

“About what you did in class, right?” I still didn’t touch upon the subject.

“Yes. Why did you turn me down?” She was staring so hard at me that I thought she would bore a hole in me with her eyes. “Am I not beautiful enough?”

“You are. There is no denying that.”

“Then why? I think most boys would probably say yes immediately were I to propose to them.” She sure had the confidence to say that aloud to my face though that confidence wasn’t unwarranted. With superiority oozing through her whole body, she directed a strong gaze at me.

I didn’t take my eyes off her strong gaze and answered her.

“People do consider facial attractiveness when it comes to dating but that’s not all. The reason I turned you down is because I barely know you.” For a moment I thought a hint of sadness crossed her face, but it was soon replaced by her stoic expression.

“Care to explain?” She prodded.

“I mean, it has been two weeks at most since you arrived at school and I do not think we got to communicate a lot, much less have a deeper conversation to know each other better. Without knowing you decently, there is no way I could accept your confession out of the blue. Even if you are beautiful. And following that very logic, I find it strange that you started developing feelings for me in such a short span of time.”

Komatsu-san’s head bent forward once again and she murmured something under her breath though I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

When she looked up, there was resignation in her face. She shrugged her shoulders and folded her arms in front of her. I hadn’t noticed before but when her hands pushed up against her chest, I saw something humungous jiggle slightly. I don’t think I have ever seen something that big before.

“I never expected that I will have to do this.” She said and this time I heard it clearly.

“What do you mean?”

“If only you had just accepted my confession, I wouldn’t have had to go through such hassle. Gruh.” She completely ignored my question and grumbled to herself.

“Lsiten here, Hiragi-san. Did I ever say that I love you?”

Her question caught me by surprise. “Huh? Didn’t you confess to me in class today?”

“Think back to the words I used back then. ‘Please go out with me, Hiragi-san’. I didn’t say ‘I love you’, now, did I?”

“Sure, you didn’t. But doesn’t asking to go out mean the same thing?”

“They might, yes. But I used that phrase exactly because I didn’t want you to have any wrong ideas.”

Wrong ideas? What wrong idea was she talking about? About her confession? She did confess to me so what was all this about the wrong idea? I was confused.

“Wait a minute.” I held up my hand in front of her. “You are losing me. Explain it clearly. From the beginning.”

“I asked you to go out with me not because I loved you, but because I wanted to take your assistance.”

“Assistance in what?”

She sighed at that question.

“You are probably aware that in just two short weeks I have been confessed by eight boys already, right?” I nodded my head.

“It’s a hassle for me. Every day I come to school, I have to pray that nobody comes up to me to confess their feelings. I don’t want to keep rejecting them over and over and build up a bad image of me where people start dubbing me ‘The Ice-Hearted Princess’ or the like. So I was trying to think up of a way to stop this series of confessions and that is why I asked you to go out with me. If people know that I am already going out with someone, then they should stop chasing after me.”

I took some time to process everything she had told me and spoke them aloud to confirm with her whether or not I was on the right track.

“So you are getting confessed to by a lot of unwanted boys. It is troubling you. So you want it all to stop. And that is why you want to go out with me so others will give up thinking you are already taken.”

“That’s about it. And to be more clear, I just want you to pretend to be my boyfriend. Not for real.”

I thought about her words and the meaning behind them. A question suddenly popped up in my brain.

“Hey, what if I had accepted your confession?” What if I had really fallen in love with her and accepted her proposal? Would she then isolate us from the rest and tell me the real reason why she confessed and ask to pretend for her sake? Wouldn’t I have been hurt? That thought enraged me. All those things that happened in the past were resurfacing in my mind in huge waves. In the pretext of love, she too was thinking of hurting me. Unforgivable!

Before I could say anything more in my anger, Komatsu-san spoke, “I asked you out precisely because I knew you would never accept my proposal. There were two reasons and one was what I mentioned just now.”

I put a halt to my erupting emotions.

“You knew that I would deny your confession? How?” How can she know what my or anyone else’s reaction would be to her confession?

“I knew because you hate love, don’t you?”

I felt as if all the air from my lungs was expelled at that instant. With my wide eyes and shaking body, I tried to question her, “Wha…How…?”

She gave me an ambiguous smile, the intent of which I couldn’t discern.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Maybe it is your personal philosophy or something in the past that triggered you to have that skewed perspective, but you despise love. You hate the idea of love and the likes of it. That is why you try to stay away from such connections and I figured if I were to confess to you, you would probably say no. You don’t even have many friends. Kensuke-kun is the only one who is close to you. So that meant if I made you agree to fake-date me the possibility of the word spreading to others is much less compared to other candidates. I have figured all that out after watching you and your behavior closely for the past two weeks.”

She explained the reason why she chose me specifically. The smile she had on right now was scary. Her words had shaken me to my core and the trembling just wouldn't stop.

Is it possible? Is it possible for someone to figure out all this about a person just by watching them closely? What sort of psychological trick allows a person to do that? I haven’t heard of any such thing! Maybe it’s her supernatural ability? She could be a witch who used a crystal orb to peek into my past and figure all that out about me.

Calm down! Calm down, me!

Trying to think of all that won’t get me anything here. I have to think of how to deal with this situation.

I took in a few deep breaths to calm my nerves.

“So that’s the reason why you selected me for this fake scenario you wanted to be created?”

“Yup. Pretty logical and convincing, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it damn is.” I curled my fingers up in a ball and suppressed my shaking. “But agreeing to it is a different matter altogether.”

The smile vanished from her face. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is simple. I am not agreeing to your request and there is no changing that.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what!”

There is no way I would agree to fake-date her. For one, I feel scared. 

The way she listed off all those emotions and internal thought processes that I haven’t revealed to anyone except Yomiuri-senpai was suspicious. There is no way Yomiuri-senpai will rattle off about someone else’s private life to others. She is sensitive and considerate when it comes to delicate matters like these so I am sure Komatsu-san hadn’t got any info out of her. And since there was not anyone else who knows about it, she couldn’t have obtained all this from other sources. 

That meant, although I was still suspicious, her reasoning of her observational skills was the only satisfactory explanation right now. That meant getting close to her would only reveal more of my cards to her. I didn't want that.

Secondly and most importantly, there is no way I would agree to be someone’s boyfriend, even if it is fake. Even a fake love has the word love in it, and I am sure this would come to hurt me at some point. I do not want to get hurt again. This whole pretend thing wouldn’t have passed from the beginning.

“You chose the wrong person for the job. Sorry, but you have to find someone else.”

“Others won’t do.” I felt like she said something in response but the announcement from the speaker about the next stop prevented me from hearing what she said.

“What did you say just now?” I asked after the announcement was over.

Right then, the train jerked and she fell forward on me.

Her face was right next to me and a pleasing scent wafted extremely close to my nose.

“I didn’t want to do this but you leave me with no choice.” She spoke right next to my ear so it felt as if a voice had been planted inside my head. Her voice carried a hint of sadness and resignation and at the same time, it sounded foreboding.

Her body was resting completely over me. Her huge breasts were pressed tightly against my body but at that moment, it didn’t arouse me or made me fret. After all, my mind was obliterated by her words.

“Hey, what if I reported about your part-time job to the school?”

“!”