Chapter 8: My Fake Girlfriend Is Handsome!
The fall breeze blew gently through the courtyard, rustling the long black hair of the beautiful girl walking sweetly and silently along. It was like a painting left behind by an artist, and its subject...was me. A commotion was stirring up around me.
“Who’s that pretty girl over there? I don’t remember seeing her around school before.” “She’s gotta be all dressed up for the Queen Nevermore contest, right? I’m pretty sure they weren’t accepting outsiders as contestants.”
“So she’s gotta be from our school. But damn, I didn’t know our school had such a cutie.” All it took was me walking in plain sight to get the rumors flowing. Just as I’d planned. I smirked internally.
Sasara had made me look cute, but there was more to it than that. My gait, my mannerisms, my expression. All of it was a part of my calculated creation to entice the hearts of men! That wasn’t to say I was the only one capable of something like this. Anybody who’d spent such a long time poring over the desires of their fan base would be able to pull it off.
But the simple truth was that I’d captured these boys’ hearts. I’d managed to catch the attention of every pair of eyes around. It was a good thing that I’d decided to pass through the courtyard on my way to the Queen Nevermore contest. Call it a dress rehearsal. My judges were both the many, many people looking on from the school hallways which overlooked this area, and those taking a break from the clamor of the festival in the courtyard.
I had to suppress a chuckle. I couldn’t wait for the contest itself.
I was walking along, minding my own business, when I suddenly heard some shrill voices among the chattering boys.
There were a number of girls there, their screeches high-pitched enough to burst my eardrums. That was weird. I could understand why Midori and Sumire had reacted as extremely as they had; they both knew who I was underneath. To any regular girl, I must have looked like the same type of beauty you’d see walking on the street. It shouldn’t cause such a commotion.
I looked up, puzzled. A white rose bloomed in front of me. I mean figuratively, of course. “H-Hey, Aki. You look great.”
A handsome young man was in front of me, raising a hand in a casual greeting. He was dressed like a fairytale prince. Only he wasn’t a man, he was a beautiful girl dressed as a man. I hadn’t seen a person like this before, but I’d heard that voice often enough to know it like the back of my hand.
Tsukinomori Mashiro. My cousin, neighboring classmate, and fake lover.
Why was she standing in front of me now under the guise of a handsome guy?
Also, she’d done well to recognize me. Maybe she’d known me for so long that she recognized me by something akin to a scent?
“Since you’re entering the Queen Nevermore contest by dressing as a girl, I wanted to enter King Nevermore dressed as a boy. If we both win, we can have the closing party dance together,” Mashiro explained, bashful.
It made sense. I had to admire her ability to take action.
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to surprise you. What do you think?”
There was silence.
“H-Huh? You are Aki...aren’t you? Why aren’t you saying anything?” Mashiro looked up anxiously from under her long eyelashes.
I crossed my fingers in front of my mouth and shook my head to let her know we couldn’t talk right now. My appearance was the perfect disguise, but in the end it was still only a mask. If I was touched, if I took off my clothes, or if I spoke, I was done for. As a beautiful girl, I was imperfect; my layers were paper thin, and the removal of any one of them would be devastating. There was no telling who might overhear us right now. I couldn’t risk speaking with my masculine voice. If I couldn’t speak, wouldn’t that put me at a disadvantage in the Queen Nevermore contest, I hear you ask?
Have no fear.
Mysterious, silent beauties were popular with around eighty percent of the male population, according to the statistics. In actuality, my inability to speak was a limitation that I would use to give myself a major advantage!
I’m not taking constructive criticism. This is the truth I’ve decided to cling to.
Either way, I still wanted to avoid being outed as a boy before I took to the stage. Luckily, Mashiro seemed to understand my concerns; she nodded.
“Don’t say anything, then. Could you tell me what you think with body language?” I nodded.
“Canary-san helped me dress up.” Mashiro hesitated. “What do you think?”
Mashiro stood in a way that would let me see all of her, the same way you might stand in front of a mirror. She was wearing a jacket and waistcoat reminiscent of late eighteenth-century French nobility. On her lower half she wore long culottes, giving her a sophisticated air. There was something sexy about her
even as a boy—it probably had something to do with the weird pheromones she’d been giving off recently. She was like a mind-melting prince who’d put all his skill points into sex appeal. It was kind of weird, to say the least.

“We even bound my chest properly to make my figure less feminine.”
I couldn’t remember her chest being so prominent that it would require binding. That was the first thought that came to mind, but of course I didn’t voice it out loud. I knew it was a rude thing to think, but I should be fine as long as Mashiro respected my freedom of thought.
“You were just thinking something rude, weren’t you, Aki?”
Except Mashiro didn’t respect my freedom of thought.
I shook my head vigorously like a frightened puppy pleading for forgiveness.
An earlier version of Mashiro would promise forgiveness on the condition I set myself alight and offer up my life, along with a myriad of other insults, but the Mashiro who’d overcome the hardships of the summer vacation was a little different.
“Seriously? You’re such a naughty little kitten, Aki.”
“Wh—”
I almost spat out the word without thinking.
Look, I couldn’t help it, okay? It wasn’t my fault. Mashiro was dressed up right now like a boy with a pretty face, and she’d suddenly closed the gap between us so she was right in front of my nose, like a brand-new, all-powerful enemy showing up in their first scene of a shonen manga. The fact that my squeak had been too quiet for anyone but Mashiro to hear was something, at least.
I was forced backwards till I had my back against one of the pillars holding up the walkway, at which point Mashiro put one hand beside my head and smirked at me.
She chuckled. “You’re cute as a girl, Aki. Even your reactions are girly.”
Stop it! I don’t know how to feel when you’re saying all this stuff with such a handsome face! “That defiant look in your eyes is really nice too, like you’re a power bottom. It’s like I’m seeing a brand new side to you, and it’s making my heart pound. I guess it’s because I love you.” I couldn’t respond. She was being so direct and honest with her feelings. My own heart was thumping uncontrollably. Mashiro’s thought process was...
“You know, I kinda like it.”
“Huh?”
Taking advantage of our proximity, I whispered into Mashiro’s ear.
It was because I was jealous. Deeply jealous of her ability to think this way.
“Love is blind and narrows the mind. It puts a complete stop to your thought process. And yet you’re able to accept the person you love as the person you love, no matter how they’re presenting themselves. I can’t think of anything kinder than that. This might be rude to say, but that’s not something I’m capable of myself. I’m super impressed.”
I wanted to create an environment for Iroha where she could be herself, but up until now, I hadn’t noticed the question that I was essentially asking myself through that desire:
If Iroha lost her annoying nature, would I stop liking her? Oh, and when I say “liking,” I mean as a friend or senpai.
If there are any of you out there who also think Iroha’s annoyingness is cute, I want you to speak up. Could you accept Iroha just as she is? Could you accept all of her, even if she changed who she was? Say my own answer to that question was no. I would be just like her mother, Amachi Otoha. And maybe I was; right now I was expecting Iroha to be a certain way. She’d now threatened to change, and I was trying to put a stop to it.
That was why Mashiro’s words resonated with me, in a weird way. Mashiro’s gentle and unconditional acceptance of me, even when I was pretending to be a girl and based entirely on love, only seemed to highlight my selfish ego.
Even so, I’d challenged Iroha to this duel, and I wasn’t about to back down!
I decided I would sit down and have a proper conversation with her once the Queen Nevermore contest was over. On first thought, I wasn’t sure what I would do if Iroha decided to abandon her pesky ways and continue on with a new persona, but I knew I had to be prepared to face it head-on if nothing else.
“Thanks, Mashiro. By the way, you’re really handsome.”
Mashiro giggled. “I know. I am handsome. Handsome enough to beat OZ—Kohinata-kun—and take the closing dance with you.”
“Right. I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah! I can’t wait.”
Mashiro shot me a final, sweet smile before stepping away from me. The way she turned her back, the hand she raised to say goodbye, the scent she left in the air; everything about her was as smooth and cool as the most handsome of boys, right up until she disappeared from view. I sort of understood how those screaming girls must feel about her.
When the realization hit that by dressing like a girl I was starting to think like a girl, I quickly clenched my jaw to pull myself together. I needed to complete my mission as soon as I could—so I started walking in the direction of the Queen Nevermore contest again.
“Hey! You’re Kohinata-san’s senpai!” A voice from behind made me jump.
I turned around to see a friendly girl waving from one of the windows in the school hallway. She was one of the girls Iroha had spent the summer festival with on the last day of the summer vacation. The one who spoke in some really strange slang (which I was pretty sure was of her own creation). I didn’t know her name, so let’s just call her Pudding-chan for convenience, since her use of lexicon had a similar structural integrity to the dessert.
Hold on. How did she know it was me?
Maybe she had the same thing going on as Sasara; these open-minded sociable types like her had several friends who didn’t pay much attention to gender norms, so they were good at recognizing people whatever they looked like. Or maybe it was a complete coincidence.
My first thought was to ignore her, but if she called out to me several times, it would only attract unwanted attention. My best bet was probably playing innocent. There weren’t a whole lot of students who would equate “Kohinata-san’s senpai” with “Ooboshi Akiteru.” See? It was a good thing that everyone treated me like part of the furniture...and I’m definitely not crying about it right now!
I approached the window, and kept my voice low as I spoke back to her. “I’m in a hurry to get to the Queen Nevermore contest right now. If it’s not urgent, do you mind—”
“It’s urgent! Urgent, sergeant!”
Those things only look like they rhyme...
“Right... So what’s up?”
Her weird word choice aside, I could tell she was in a panic from the air she gave off. Pudding-chan’s eyes opened wide. “It’s a major danger-banger-disaster-burnt-toastal-service level of bad!”
“Could you stick to Japanese? Also, I should’ve said this ages ago, but there’s no way that’s real slang.”
“We’re dealing with something super bad here!”
“Okay, now I understand. Wait, what’s bad?!”
“Kohinata-san’s vanished-banished into size-zero air and a baff of smoke!”
“How many times do I have to ask you to speak— Iroha’s disa— Ah!” I nearly let out a shout, but quickly shut my mouth before my deep masculine voice could out me to anyone nearby. I tried to make sense of the situation, but I just couldn’t work it out. “You sure she’s not just gone to the dressing room to get ready for the contest?”
“No, nope, and nopers! Our bud-bud reminded her to get a shovel on, but she was all like ‘no!’ and ran away! It was like spy-fall supreme!”
Her friend had reminded Iroha to hurry up, but Iroha had refused to go get changed and ran away with all the stealth of a professional spy. I guess. I must have been getting used to listening to her weird slang, because I actually understood it this time—just about.
It wasn’t that Iroha had run away from her friends to prepare for the contest, but that she’d run away from the contest itself. It was weird; when we poked our heads into Iroha’s classroom before, she’d seemed full of enthusiasm. Could something have made her change her mind in the short time between then and now? Or was there some kind of trouble afoot?
“We’re gonna look for Kohinata-san ourselves. If you find her, please make sure she’s okay!” “Right. And please let me know if you guys find her.”
“Okey-de-cokey!”
She’d used that one before, at least, and it was nice that she was trying to be confident. Pudding-chan left then.
I wanted so badly to pull my hair out, but then I remembered my wig and makeup, and my hands stopped in their tracks. But at least I could grumble.
“Iroha! What the hell are you playing at?”
I raced away, cursing the frilly dress and freshly worn shoes which hindered my movements. ***
The Queen Nevermore contest was due to start at three that afternoon.
I stuck my head into classroom after classroom. Whenever I did, the hands on the room’s clock had crept a little closer to the deadline. I checked my phone and the flood of messages I’d sent Iroha that would put any stalker to shame. Not a single one of them had been read. I tried calling her too, but of course she didn’t pick up.
“Where the hell did she go?” I couldn’t help grumbling aloud, no longer caring about the risk of anyone hearing this pretty girl speak with masculine tones.
All of this had been to satisfy my own ego and to win the Queen Nevermore contest against Iroha specifically. There was no point in my transformation if Iroha wasn’t even going to be there. I’d been doing a lot of running lately, I realized. Chasing after people who’d disappeared for one reason or another.
Like that time I chased Mashiro after school when she kept refusing my party invitation, or that time I went looking for Mashiro after she hid away in the mall’s movie theater, or that time at the summer festival when Mashiro and I got separated...
Now that I thought about it, I was always running after Mashiro. This was the first time Iroha had disappeared on me. It was rare for me to have to search for Iroha.
Was that because she was stronger than Mashiro? Or was it because she tried to hide her weaknesses? If her disappearance was a result of her weaknesses coming to the surface, then I was the only one who could support her. The only one who understood her to her very core, the only one who could encourage her. She had a handful of superficial friends, but no one best friend who knew what she was really like. She only had me, her senpai in the year above.
I was running around the school as fast as I could, like the protagonist of a major anime movie. My self-appointed sense of heroism was a little embarrassing, and I was starting to get sick of it. My ego had
really been on the rise lately, huh? As if Ooboshi Akiteru could ever be the protagonist of anything. People barely noticed my existence—yet here I was trying to “save” Iroha like the male lead in some romantic comedy.
This was no story. This was real life.
Say this was the final scene of a movie. I’d reunite with Iroha, there’d be some drama, and then we’d live happily ever after. But reality was rarely that interesting.
The conclusion was something much simpler, and it came in the form of my phone vibrating. Iroha: LOL. How many messages you gonna send me? You really are in love with me, lmao!
My stream of messages displayed a read mark all at once, along with Iroha’s laughter-filled, teasing reply, and a sticker of Tomaty-kun spluttering with laughter that I found especially irritating. “What the hell!”
Annoyed at how much she’d made me worry, I sent her a ton of stickers to express my rage. Slamming my phone back into my pocket, I let out a huff.
Yeah, it was unlikely that there was ever going to be any real trouble. This was real life. It wasn’t a story, where everything was meticulously organized. There was chaos, and stuff that just wasn’t fair. I was no protagonist; not everything could be solved by my hand, and I didn’t have control over everything either.
Iroha was living her own life. Her own story.
Maybe it was Pudding-chan or someone else, but it seemed somebody had positively influenced Iroha and helped her to find an optimistic answer for this situation.
“Iroha has more people in her life than just me.”
The thought made me a little sad, but at the same time...
I’m so glad she’s okay.
And that was the truth.
AKI: Glad you’re okay. I hope you’re not planning to run off with your tail between your legs anymore, because I’m going to crush you in the Queen Nevermore contest. Iroha: You’re going down, Senpai! This isn’t gonna end up the way you want it at all!
***
“So yeah, everything just kinda solved itself. Not an exciting story at all, right, Ozu?” “Don’t worry, Aki. The gods see everything; not just what goes on from your perspective.” “Meaning?”
“Meaning you’ll learn all about what happened to Iroha later on.”
Interlude: Iroha and Sasara
I was in a far corner of the empty library, squished between two bookshelves. It felt like I was a hermit hiding away in the forest. The scent of damp, old paper seemed to settle my thundering heart, and I felt the tension start to drain from my stiff shoulders. I could just about make out the sounds of the festival drifting in from far away, as though they were coming from another world I wasn’t a part of.
During the Nevermore Festival, only staff and students were allowed in the library. It was closed off to prevent books from getting stolen or lost, something that became more likely when a large number of outsiders had access to it. On the flip side, that made it the perfect hiding spot.
When I realized the Queen Nevermore contest was getting close, something inside me had frozen up and said I couldn’t do it. With nowhere else to go, I ended up escaping here.
I felt an unexpected affinity to this library. Anything to do with entertainment was banned in my house, so I didn’t have any books of my own. Sometimes, if there was a book I wanted to read, I’d come here and pass the time with it in peace, sitting right at one end of the room where no one would see me. Though someone must’ve at some point, because my existence in the library became a kind of urban legend, which was pretty funny. I always made sure I was in honor student mode when I read, of course.
This place was like my third home, and I felt a sense of peace here. There was no committee member standing guard here today, and the librarian was also out. It was just me, by myself, making the whole place completely quiet.
Until I heard the door slide open.
“Found you! Finally. Seriously, that took forever!”
It was one of my classmates, Tomosaka Sasara. She was wearing a gorgeous, fiery orange dress with a flourish of frills. It looked like the kind of thing she’d wear if she was determined to get her next photo trending on Pinsta. I bet it would too.
It wasn’t like I was an expert or anything, of course! I just kinda pieced it together from the stuff she told me was popular on Pinsta.
“What are you doing here, Kohinata Iroha? You haven’t even gotten changed! The Queen Nevermore contest starts in literally two seconds!”
If I had to sum Tomosaka Sasara up in one sentence, it would be this: she was so freaking annoying. It should have been obvious that I didn’t want to take part.
She grabbed a nearby chair and pulled it way too close to me, before sitting down right in front of me. Her chest was pressed up against the back, and she was straddling it like a spring horse, her legs wide open in a stance that was anything but refined. It was even worse when you considered how fancy her dress was.
“This better be good. Why’d you run off like that? I was super excited to face you in the contest, so now it feels like you’ve betrayed me.”
As if she had the right to complain. She was excited, and she felt betrayed. How was any of that my responsibility?
I was about to open my mouth to reply, when Sasara frowned and inclined her head. “No, wait. I’m the one who got overexcited and then felt betrayed, so that’s on me. So...huh. I guess I don’t have the right to blame you for anything.”
Where did this self-reflection come from all of a sudden? I thought she’d come here to pick a fight and lord over me. I mean, it was nice that she’d picked up on her own mistake and was working to fix herself, but couldn’t she have done that on the way here and then just left me alone?
“Look, I get that you’re terrified of losing to me—it’s not like you’ve got a chance, after all—but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you just run away! At least put up a proper fight!”
“I...can’t...”
It was all I could do to squeeze out those trembling words. That was all my voice was capable of at the moment.
I mean... I mean, I... I couldn’t...
“I can’t take part in an event that puts me on stage with all those animals staring at me! It’s disgraceful!”
There was a pause.
“Huh?”
Sasara’s eyes were as tiny as pinheads.
I know! I’m acting like a total weirdo. I am a total weirdo!
But I couldn’t stop it. These feelings of disgrace that bubbled up inside me. I didn’t like them, and I knew I was being a hypocrite, so I had to try and keep them to myself. But the cry of my soul couldn’t be silenced. Because right now, I was acting. I was possessed by my role.
Who was I acting as? It should have been obvious. I only had one person in my repertoire who worked so hard to be pure in all things. I’d slipped into the role a while ago now, pausing only once, so any observers should have known who it was.
It was Midori-san.
My true, rational self was still sleeping deep within me—the one listing off so much pretentious nonsense right now. She knew this situation wasn’t exactly ideal. Now that I was Midori-san, I was