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“Ayame-chan, why are you so handsome?”
At first, you don’t realize the mistake. That that was meant to be an inside thought. Ayame-chan doesn’t respond immediately, which briefly puts you under the illusion that no, you didn’t just say that horrifically stupid thing out loud with your own stupid mouth.
Her face responds, though. Her cheeks flush a dark, rosy color, and she suddenly looks quite nervous. She lets out a gutteral “Um,” and that’s when you realize what you’ve done.
“Ah! I—that wasn’t—um. I didn’t say that. That... I was thinking of. Something else.” You’re usually much more verbose than this, but something about Ayame-chan quite literally takes the words out of your mouth. Save me, you plead to no one in particular.
You stare at Ayame-chan, silently begging her to change the subject. For her to say anything instead of just...looking at you like that.
“Do you actually think that?”
“N-No! I mean, yes, um—I didn’t...mean for it to come out like that. Not, like. I think you’re pretty, Ayame-chan, I just...phrased it wrong.”
“Pretty?” she murmurs. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“Yeah. Pretty,” you echo, and it’s another lie out of your filthy mouth.
Ayame-chan is attractive, objectively speaking. For starters, she’s dressed like an Olympian. Watching her run makes you wonder if she was actually, literally handcrafted by the gods themselves. She’s gorgeous. Stunning. She has that kind of boyish, simple (and yes, handsome, you shamefully admit to yourself) charm that not even most guys have. Most guys wish they were Ayame-chan, you think. The point is that “pretty” doesn’t even scratch the surface. “Pretty” is something you say about a nice rug, not about Ayame fucking Hatano.
But you don’t tell her that.
“Oh,” Ayame-chan says, and she looks down at her lap, bunching up her bedsheets in her hands.
“I’m not lying,” you lie. “I really do think you’re pretty. You’re so pretty, Ayame-chan.”
“I believe you, I’m not... I’m not upset,” she lies.
“You are. I know that look.”
She looks up at you with something akin to shame. For what, you don’t know. You’re the one who just humiliated herself in front of her best friend. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at you like you ought to know what’s wrong with her. You don’t, but you do.
“I guess I am,” she mumbles.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t even know what you’re sorry for.”
“I don’t, but I know that I don’t like upsetting you. So I’m sorry.”
“...Akane-chan.”
“Yes?”
“What if I didn’t want to be ‘pretty?’ Does that make me less of a girl?”
“No,” you answer a little too quickly. “Of course not! You’re perfect the way you are, Ayame-chan.”
“You said I’m pretty.”
“...I lied.”
“You lied.”
Your face is hot now. “I think you’re handsome, Ayame-chan.” You leave out the other fifty-or-so adjectives you could use to describe her so as not to sound completely insane. Don’t show her your hand yet. (Or ever.)
“And that’s the truth?”
“Yes.”
Ayame-chan speaks slowly, like she’s stepping over a minefield. “...And what if that made me happy?”
“That’s okay. I want you to be happy.”
“You’re beautiful,” she suddenly mumbles, and if it were any other conversation you’d swear you misheard her.
You look at her (she really is gorgeous, almost ethereal—) and wait for her to take it back. For her to stumble over her words, just like you did.
She doesn’t.
“You think so?” you whisper.
“Yeah.”
“...Thank you.”
“Thank you?” she repeats, furrowing her brow.
“I don’t...know what I’m supposed to say,” you admit. You haven’t been called anything like that to your face before. You’ve been called hot, sexy, sure, but that was by creepy older men who saw you as an object. And Utsuro-sama never calls you anything at all. You’re just Taira to him, and it makes you so angry you could cry.
You do cry, all the time, and Ayame-chan is always the one who dries your tears. Her hands are calloused and firm, but they’re soft on your face when she wipes the tears on your cheek away with her thumb.
You could cry right now, and she’d hug you and tell you it was okay. She wouldn’t ask questions because she never does. She never pries, never says more than she needs to.
Suddenly, you feel like crying, and suddenly, you’re crying.
Ayame-chan pulls you into a hug like it’s where you belong, like it’s second nature (and with her chest pressing right up against your face, fuck—) and starts to run her fingers through your hair. You try to feel comforted, but your awful brain ends up settling on uncomfortably warm. She’s picked the worst way to do this, and she has no idea.
“Did I upset you?” she asks.
“No,” you lie. “I’m happy.” It’s the biggest lie you’ve told all day.
“Okay,” she says.
You think that the silence that follows might eat you alive.