Golden Time:Volume4 Chapter2

Status: Incomplete

6% completed (estimated)

   

Golden Time 4: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Heavy, explosive, very forceful... such a sound has the word 'woman,' but overall, whether his lover was a suitable and beautiful woman or not, she was certainly complicated.

Nonetheless, he instinctively felt there was something uncalled for in Kaga Kouko today. She was being strangely heavy, and explosive.

Still lying down on the bed, his body feeling heavy and nearly dead from fever, Banri was watching Kouko and his friends seated close by in the narrow room, envious of their excellent condition.

"I really was just kidding. I just thought it would be funny if I said you were cheating. I was trying to get a laugh."

Closest to Banri's bed, positioned right next to the mattress, her head held high and sitting beautifully with her legs to one side, truly the princess, Kouko broke the silence. A silk handkerchief spread across her lap, she covered her legs elegantly as if she were out on a picnic date.

Her smile was composed. She had an aura of calm. She had the appearance of born royalty.

"After all, there is no way my Tada-kun would cheat on me."

Before anybody could think about shaking their heads or interrupting with a snort,

"Tada-kun loves me completely after all. Of course I know that. ...He loves me!"

Suddenly sitting up straight, the veins popped in her temples and her voice rose. Ooh... everybody pulled back a little.

"Or rather, that absolute confidence makes me grow stronger and stronger. The power of being loved runs through me and makes me feel even better, and that in turn makes you... ouch!"

Left to herself, she would have been able to keep on talking forever, but Linda, who was seated next to her, struck her near her white elbow.

"But didn't you look really serious just now!? Seriously, cut it out. For a moment there you really scared me!"

"You're imagining things."

Rubbing the stricken area in a strangely happy way, Kouko elegantly fluttered her big eyelashes with their jet-black mascara. With a light purple eye shadow softly feathered, she was today again so feminine she glowed.

Behaving that way to the extreme, bearing herself like a beautiful actress, she pulled out from her bag some sort of small, round thing only a girl would have, a container the likes of an oyster shell.

"Should I be so strangely suspicious towards the Linda-senpai who came to the aid of my destined Tada-kun? Though I had thought that NANA-senpai would be here too. Has she returned to her place next door?"

She scooped out some of the contents with her ring finger. When Linda answered "Yes, she did," she continued, saying "What a shame, I really wanted to thank her," and then rubbed her soft lips with that fingertip. What she had taken with her finger looked like rose-pink lip gloss, and the sparkle of the melting glaze colored her well-shaped womanly lips more and more beautifully.

Like that, deliberately, she turned towards Banri and her eyes turned gentle. No voice coming out, the others unable to see her expression, she communicated only with Banri, her lips moving,

"Are you okay?"

She said; just the one phrase.

I'm fine, thank you, said Banri, also voicelessly, nodding only to Kouko. Across Kouko's white cheeks, a gentle smile slowly broadened.

Already, there was absolutely no way he was going to speak about having seen such a face, Banri thought.

Kouko had placed the bouquet of roses, her gift to him, by his bedside, just like flowers by a gravestone. ...It's fragrance was now getting rather too strong for his sick body. If he could, he'd set it aside quickly, it was so...

She was missing the mark, but there was no lie in her sincerity. In Kouko's gaze a genuine love was growing, unsullied by even one drop of mud.

When you are dedicated to something that way, you don't worry about your own condition.

Besides, as always--- there was still the matter of the photo. He didn't think that would be touched upon right now.

The picture of him and Linda together, taken in the old days. Banri wondered if Kouko had taken it with her. It was a possibility. Kouko had come down to this room so many times now, and besides there was what happened a few days ago, the day of the Omaken rehearsal. In the middle of that rainstorm. To Banri, it seemed she had gotten awfully unstable emotionally, and had simply burst out into tears for no reason he could understand.

Now, thinking about it, to put it simply, he wondered if it was because she had seen the picture of himself with Linda.

He felt like he had to double-check: Had she perhaps seen the picture? And then taken it? And then, if it seemed like it, then he had to explain the truth to her. Between this and that, tied together with his memory loss, he had not spoken yet to Kouko of his earlier time with Linda.

But, looking like that at his lover smiling at him, he didn't feel particularly able to broach that topic just now.

Besides, in reality, Kouko probably had nothing to do with his losing the picture.

It was simply somewhere, perhaps stuck between the pages of a book. It was likely, and he thought he would prefer that to have happened. First and foremost, being together with Linda in this situation, he didn't think he could just ask straight out from the start.

Giving up everything, putting his own heart to rest, Banri filled his nasal cavities with the sweet smell of the roses. He grew even more dizzy. Kouko let her gentle smile slip from Banri, turning towards Linda.

"Linda-senpai, once again, thank you very much. For your having cared for my Tada-kun, as a woman, I am truly grateful. Please please convey my gratitude to NANA-senpai as well."

"Yes, of course, I was just going to say that. Because we were planning on heading to school once she got back, I was going to do it then. Or rather, if it's all right with you, may I give your contact information to NANA-senpai? That way, if something happens like this time again, though we don't want it to happen, then she'll be able to contact you directly, right away."

"Yes! Sure! Of course! I don't mind!"

Suddenly the well raised 'good girl', she made the expression of the devoted underclassman, nodding and answering to Linda,

"You sure do put on an incredible show. That was completely different from what you were saying a little bit ago."

The voice that burst out in undisguised amazement was that of Yanagisawa Mitsuo.

As Kouko's childhood friend, formerly her unrequited (they say she was even stalking him) partner in love, at the moment you could call him her natural enemy, kept close. Better known as: Yana-ssan.

<~~6% Completed~~>

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