The Reader and Protagonist Definitely Have to be in True Love

Chapter 16 - Reader: I have not betrayed you.

Once upon a time there was a bear child. He was ridiculed by a group of bear children, therefore he became a chuuni. (Once upon a time there was a naughty child. He was ridiculed by a group of naughty children, therefore he became a socially retarded otaku.)

Du Ze was always a cute, silly little creature; he was born that way. Before he had a problem with his ears he was cute inside and out; after he had to wear a hearing aid, his face became impassive but inside he was still incurably st*pid.

At birth his ears were not good, but it was in middle school that they really started to deteriorate. Because the progression of his hearing loss was extremely slow, at first Du Ze did not realize it was happening. He just thought that sometimes when people spoke, he couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. The only thing he could do was to ask the other person to repeat himself. But after this happened again and again, Du Ze discovered that people probably didn’t want to speak to him anymore.

Du Ze thought about it: if he was talking to someone and that person kept on interrupting him and asking him to repeat himself several times, wouldn’t it be annoying? But how can he stop himself from doing this? The moe Du Ze thus made his mind up: as long as he smiles, everything will be okay.

He never thought that his ears had a problem but when his parents found out about his troubles, they took him to the hospital to check out his hearing. Du Ze watched as his parents got a hearing aid for him. He felt incredibly panicked – just in the blink of an eye he was labeled “disabled?”

So Du Ze ran way from reality. He refused to wear a hearing aid, pretending that nothing happened.

If you can’t hear clearly, smile. If you don’t know how to react, smile. When other smile and say something, keep on smiling. He did not realize that his voice was becoming more and more unclear since he was unable to grasp the proper intonation and volume.

Because of his deteriorating hearing condition, Du Ze finally had to wear a hearing aid. The first day he wore it, he was suddenly in a world of clear voices. As he stood outside the classroom, listening to his good friend inside, Du Ze heard him say:

– Ah Ze, he is an *diot, always giggling and saying things that make other people laugh themselves to d*ath.

A friend seemed to imitate a maliciously lengthened, funny, grating, and ugly tone of voice, making the others laugh.

“Right! I told him he was an *diot and he only laughed like a fool.”

“One more time!”

“You! Didn’t the teacher say ‘be nice to the disabled’?”

Du Ze opened the door. The classroom was full of laughing people who abruptly stopped and stared at Du Ze. He walked to his seat and sat down calmly, his face impassive. The people around him looked at each other in dismay. They didn’t know whether Du Ze had heard what they were saying.

“Ah Ze, you’re here …is that a new MP3 headset? Cool!”

Du Ze looked at his “good friend.” His chest felt as though something was squeezing it and he was suffocating. Suddenly, he felt that making a sound was an embarrassing and terrifying thing. That funny imitation lingered in his brain, the mocking parody of his speech let him know that his earlier behavior of trying to escape reality was a silly thing to do.

The teenager raised his hand to the hearing aid headphones, in front of his classmates, he nodded in silence, smiling stiffly: Yes, there are headphones, just headphones.

Therefore he hadn’t heard anything.

– That was probably the last time Du Ze smiled in front of other people.