Date Her Instead Vol. 3

Chapter Thirteen: Am I Wrong?

In the silence of a third floor apartment, a girl laid on the floor. Her two long blond strands were strewn about in various directions while the rest of her hair remained tied up in two separate buns. This was the style that Michi went with for her hair. She had kept it like that for as long as she could remember, and while at first her uncooperative strands had bothered her, now they just felt natural. And, aside from when she slept or took baths, her hair remained the same.

It was consistent, unchanging. Keeping it the same way was part of what Michi liked. But, as the school year had gone on, Michi found that her hair seemed to be the only thing that hadn't changed. Her relationships with her friends were... different from what they were before, to say the least. When it specifically came to Kanako, that was another story entirely.

However, the most drastic change was one Michi hadn't ever expected. Chiyo Wakabayashi, a girl that by all accounts was loud and flashy and everything Michi hated, had somehow managed to shift her perspective on the gyaru demographic, if only a little.

It was hard to admit. It was hard to stomach. And yet, the more Michi thought about it, the more she couldn't deny it (though try as she might): Her long-held disgust for gals had softened. The credit for this change entirely went to Chiyo herself, although Michi got the feeling that if she told Chiyo that, she'd probably make some sort of joke about it. "...Like I could ever tell her anyways," Michi thought.

A small, slight shift in mindset had definitely occurred, but the way in which it had was what really held Michi's attention. Primarily, it was one moment, one specific moment, that had made everything currently in Michi's head impossible to ignore.

Simply put, it was the smiling face of Chiyo, as tears had cascaded down her cheeks.

It sounded ridiculous, but in that time, Michi was reminded of just how human Chiyo was. Of course, it was obvious she was human, just like her, but Michi thought about it in a more vague sense. That moment had made her realize that beyond what felt like fakeness, beyond all the sex and stereotypes, Michi had simply felt like Chiyo must've been some sort of different species compared to her.

There was her fashionable, outward appearance, but going deeper, there was a girl that truly cared a lot about her friends. She was a girl who wanted desperately to not just make her friends happy, but to find happiness for herself. And yet, in that endeavor, she had failed. Miserably she had failed... but she just kept going. Putting on make-up as a mask and a smile to eliminate a person's doubt, Chiyo had tried to remain as she always had been.

It hadn't worked. Michi had noticed. She saw the cracks in the façade and went so far as to call Chiyo out on them. She still didn't understand why she had done that, but in doing so, she had been shown a side of Chiyo that she was certain no one else had seen. Something told her that not Haruna nor Jasmine had ever seen Chiyo like she had been that day. Vulnerable, broken, lonely.

Because she had seen that, it had reminded Michi of two things. One, that Chiyo wasn't a different species at all. Rather, she was just a high school girl that sometimes seemed bigger than what she really was. It was one big show, but instead of it being a sham, it was a genuine performance, one that Chiyo poured her heart into each and every day, if for no other reason than for the sake of others.

She had her faults. Chiyo's sex life (which arguably shouldn't have even existed considering her age) had gone off the rails. In her efforts of trying to help her friends, she had only made things worse for herself. She wanted to fix her friendship with Haruna, but was paralyzed by fear of just pushing her farther away.