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Today’s plan, like all the other plans An has made throughout her life, is flawless.
And if it somehow isn’t, she’ll force it to be flawless. That’s how important confessions are, especially when they’re given to cute girls with pigtails and funny looking hats. An has been waiting for this moment for what has to be weeks, or months- either way, for too long. She absolutely can not mess this up.
In her defense, though, it isn’t like it’s the first time she’s confessed to Kohane. She probably confesses to her at least once every few days, and tells her that she loves her even more frequently. It’s just that Kohane never, you know, gets it.
So the plan is to make Kohane get it. And the plan starts here: outside of the chocolate store in the local shopping mall.
First, An has to prepare herself. She takes deep breaths and counts sheep in her head (imagines them grazing, running around the hills, whatever else sheep do), shoving her hands in her pockets to make sure her wallet is still there (it isn’t, but she has loose bills). The store itself is dauntingly reddish-pink, from the colour of the entrance to the displays on the side.
‘It’s for Kohane,’ she reminds herself. Breathe in, breathe out. ‘Do it for Kohane.’
The sound of the doors opening is unnecessarily loud. There are two different bells that ring as she walks in, complemented by the variety of decor strewn across the walls and ceiling. The smell of chocolate has hints of flowers- when she looks across the room, she notices the pop-up shelf of flowers and bouquets for sale.
As much as she hates to admit it, it’s good marketing. She should pick one up before she leaves.
But that’s later. Right now, she needs to find the most romantic, non-friendly looking chocolate she can find, and then she needs to get out before she’s seen by somebody. Like Haruka, or her dad, or the professor whose class she skipped yesterday.
At the very least, the store is making it easy to do so. On her right side is a display marked in bold as ‘For the special someone in your life!’, lined with chocolates of all shapes and sizes. An crouches down (and puts her hood on) to comb through her options.
There are chocolates with gummies, chocolates with more chocolate inside, and some unsweetened snacks that aren’t chocolate at all. She takes a package of foil-wrapped hearts from the back of the shelf and lifts it up and down in her hand. While it looks like it would taste fine, she has doubts about its presentation, so she puts it back and keeps searching.
Thankfully, she finds something reasonable relatively quickly. Strawberry candy coated in chocolate, left in a glass jar with a ribbon and a message tag. The price tag looks like it would hurt her wallet, but hey: she doesn’t even have her wallet today, so it doesn’t count.
She picks it up and shuffles over to the register, keeping her gaze down at her sneakers. Even though she’s surrounded by lovey-dovey hearts and confetti and misspelled pickup lines on the walls, there’s still a silver lining in the fact that there are no other customers and the cashier looks beyond bored. Seriously, though- why anyone would go to a store like this is beyond her.
Strangely, she suddenly feels somewhat hypocritical. Or it could be the wind.
The checkout is fast, even with the additional bouquet of flowers added last minute. Unfortunately, the bag that her chocolates are put in is hot pink and covered in advertising, but she quickly covers it up with the bouquet. She turns on her heel and keeps her hood on her head as she walks out, holding her needlessly romantic flowers and her not-needlessly romantic chocolates in her arms.
The petals of the flowers cover half of her vision. She sticks to looking at the floor tiles to guide herself out of the store, which works for the most part, until she sees another pair of sneakers and bumps into somebody else in front of her.
“Sorry,” she says, checking that the flowers are okay in a panic. She looks up. “Are you okay-”
Beyond the flowers in front of her is Shinonome Akito’s face.
She stumbles backwards like she’s just seen a movie jumpscare. Out of everyone to see her right now, it had to be him. It had to be him.
It takes him a second to process who exactly she is, since it takes him time to process pretty much anything, but once he does, his eyes widen and he snickers in that annoying, terrible, no-good way of his. The root of all evil. The bane of An’s existence. “What’s that you’re holding?” he says, pretending to hide his smirk.
“Listen.” She closes her eyes and pats him on the shoulder. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
He crosses his arms and laughs. “Is that all for Kohane? You’re really trying hard, aren’t you?”
“Trip and fall,” An replies.
Damn it. Now she really needs Kohane to accept her confession, or at least understand that she’s trying to confess, or else she’ll hear about this for the rest of her life. She buries her face in her hand and sighs, pulling at her cheek in a weak attempt to muster up enough energy to simply bolt and run out of here. The door is close too, right behind Akito and his-
Wait.
An squints at him. “What are you doing in here?” she says.
Immediately, the smug grin falls off of his face. He stares at her blankly.
In her peripheral vision, she sees him holding his wallet in one hand, kept tightly to his side. Like her, his hood is pulled up over his face, and he’s wearing layers of clothes she’s never seen him in before. Her gaze drifts from him to the chocolates around them, and then him, and then the chocolates again.
She nods and smiles. “Ah,” she says, holding back a laugh. “So you’re here for-”
“Okay,” he says quickly. “Here’s the deal. I won’t mention it, and you won’t mention it. This never happened.”
An easy win. “Deal,” she replies. They shake hands and he walks past her promptly, into the depths of the chocolate-less chocolate and coffee-flavour section.
She’s lying, of course. As soon as she confesses to Kohane for one final time and tells her she loves her and romantically runs off with her into the sunset, she’s going to be mentioning it nonstop. But Akito doesn’t have to know that, so she rolls her shoulders and steps out of the shop with her bundle of merchandise.
‘You made it out alive,’ she thinks to herself with silent applause. ‘Good work.’
There are only three days left until game day. Later, she’ll check the prices for airplane banners. Kohane should get ready for the confession of her lifetime.