Date Her Instead Vol. 5

Chapter Six: What Lies In A Gal's Heart?

Over the course of the next two weeks, very little happened. Kanako and Michi both tried hanging out again, but with both of them being so afraid of saying something that would start an argument, their time together didn't last long. As for their time at school, they had at least managed to achieve the level of maintaining small-talk before class, but the few times they had lunch together were less than promising. The results were getting so dismal that both Kanako and Michi were starting to wonder if there was really any hope at all.

"Since when are friendships so hard?" Kanako complained during lunch one day. She was eating on the stairs with Hinami, something that had been happening more and more frequently. "A-Are they?" Hinami asked. "Apparently," Kanako said with a sigh. "Every time Mi-chan and I try to act like we used to, it completely backfires. We just end up fighting. And then, if we try to be more careful about what we say, it's just a lot of awkward silence..." "T-That does sound d-difficult," Hinami agreed. "I just don't get it. We used to be so close. How did our friendship turn into this mess?" Kanako asked, not expecting an answer.

Kanako was learning the hard way that while it was sometimes easy to make friends, it was much harder to keep them. Looking back, she remembered her and Michi getting along fairly quickly and becoming fast friends. After that, it had only been up. Kanako had been sure that their friendship was getting stronger with each passing year, but she had been wrong. Something she hadn't realized was that a large part of her relationship with Michi was built around the idea of Michi protecting Kanako from Haruna and making her feel better after interacting with Haruna. As soon as the girl in question came back into the picture, a huge blow was dealt to their friendship.

Seeing how strongly Michi was against Haruna was enough to show Kanako that. "If I had been able to realize that sooner, I wonder if this would've ever happened?" If she had made more of an effort to make their friendship more about the two of them instead of Haruna, would there be so much distance between her and Michi now?

Naturally, having such a large chunk of their foundation removed meant that something needed to fill that hole. Kanako understood that. Most likely, so did Michi. However, understanding and doing were two separate things. Neither of them knew what to fill that hole with. Even if they did, would it be big enough to prop the foundation back up?

Just how large was that hole? Kanako really had no idea, but it did make her wonder just how much of Michi had genuinely cared about her. Obviously some amount had, or else she wouldn't be making the effort to fix their friendship at all, but Kanako wondered what exactly Michi was doing with those feelings. Was she trying to build them up? Or, was she trying to find something else to match them so she could fill in her own missing pieces? The only way to know was to ask the girl herself, but Kanako had no intention of doing that. Somehow, she knew there was a simple truth about all of this. If both of them found that something to fill in the hole made in their foundation, the repairs to their friendship would just come naturally.

Kanako could take some solace in that line of thought, but it was hardly enough to really make her feel better. The issue of Michi still remained, and on top of that, she still had to think about Haruna too. On that front, even less progress had been made.

Ever since Haruna had told her to stay away, Kanako had been doing mostly that. Part of her reason was simply because she felt that maybe if she listened to Haruna, something would change. Another reason was because she felt like until she could figure out what a "little nudge" was, she would just keep being too aggressive and make things worse.

"How can I show her my feelings without scaring her off?" Kanako thought. It was practically impossible to approach Haruna. Aside from passing greetings in the hallways, Kanako couldn't even get close without Haruna running off. "There has to be something I can do."