Count To 10, Then Open Your Eyes - 1

For 20 minutes at the girls’ high school we attend, it becomes a date course.

Mocchi, a normal girl the same age as me and who also lives in my neighborhood, is my girlfriend! Or rather she’s supposed to be.

Exactly a week ago on Friday, I confessed my love to her.

I fell in love with someone even though they were a girl like me.

This is nothing but pure love.

To be honest, I want to be with her so much that I don’t mind getting married to her.

I confessed everything through tears.

“I like you too.”

This was Mocchi’s reply.

She had her usual elusive smile and fuwa-fuwa voice.

Huh? I wonder if I’m staring blankly.

I felt quite uneasy, but I managed not to lose myself for the time being.

And for a week.

Nothing changes.

Time passed with sad, normal going through the days.

“Today is the day you come to stay the night at my place, right?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s already Saturday. Time sure flies, doesn’t it?”

“Ahaha. If you keep saying things like that, you’ll turn into an oba-chan in no time.”

While we were talking casually, honestly, sweat was rolling down my back like a waterfall.

The two of us have a sleepover every other week.

It’s the first sleepover after the confession.

Although it cannot be counted as a “first experience,” there is a faint hope that some sort of first experience event will occur.

At this rate, it seems unlikely.

In the evening, while waiting for Mocchi, I hugged a 50cm-sized heart-eye bear (it’s a teddy bear with heart-shaped eyes made by a manufacturer I had never heard of).

After taking two showers, I practiced by imagining my target, layered on top of the stuffed animal.

“Like this, or maybe like this, yeah. Like this?”

Is it abnormal for me to seriously try to kiss a stuffed animal?

In my delusion, my stuffed animal is Mocchi, and her eyes become hearts as if by magic.

When my tongue gets covered in fur, though, I come to my senses.

At that moment, the doorbell rang, announcing Mocchi’s arrival.

As usual, time passes by as fast as it always does.

The taste of sticky stuffed animal fur in my mouth and my random fantasies are drying up.

“I’m wearing cute lingerie today, don’t you know?”

The confession that would normally make me jump at seems to have confronted me with the reality I was not consciously aware of.

“Is that so? Ehehe.”

As I was thinking about it in my head, wondering if I should have left out the giggle, and then she asked, “What about you, Kana-chan?”

In truth, I am wearing adult lingerie with a matching top and bottom.

It’s a cheap set that costs twice as much as regular underwear.

I wore it for the first time today, and I’m sure she’ll fall in love with it.

“Ah… maybe something a little sexy, too. Ahaha.”

I felt like I was laughing obscenely, so I turned my head away.

Aren’t I so naughty?

Aren’t I a bad fit who doesn’t suit the angelic Mocchi?

As I was repeating my reflection and despair inside my head, Mocchi sat in front of me.

And she’s sitting straight.

“Try closing your eyes.”

Mocchi says that while smiling.

“When you count to 10, then open your eyes.”

Mocchi likes that kind of thing.

She must have said “piza” 10 times, “shika” 10 times, a total of about 1,000 times she’s done something like this.

I closed my eyes and thought, “This is my first time seeing a pattern.”

When I open my eyes, I see Mocchi’s face surprisingly close.

Her thick eyelashes, droopy eyes, and slightly red nose are the same as always.

But why does she look like a little devil instead of an angel?

Maybe it’s the mischievous smile on her lips, or the sparkle in her deep eyes as she stares straight at me.

Her face slowly approaches.

The speed was just long enough for me to be able to turn my head away.

And yet, she was so strong and direct that I never thought of rejecting her.

Our lips touched.

And just like that, I pulled away immediately.

I’m left in a daze, unable to demonstrate the techniques I acquired at the cost of my stuffed animal.

It was with all my might that I managed to suppress my increasingly heavy breathing.

“Do you want more adult kisses?”

As if by magic, I nodded my head over and over again at Mocchi’s suggestion.