Chapter 3: Kissing Makes You Lose Your Mind!

“I came here because I like you, Hamori-san.”
Kameyama-kun said it with a tense look on his face.
“I-I mean, to explain what happened... my dad is a physicist, and he researches spacetime. There was an experiment, and—”
After that, I didn’t hear a single word of his explanation.
None of it reached me.
My head was spinning so badly that I barely knew where I was standing anymore.
The ground was shaking.
Well, technically it wasn’t.
But to me, everything was shaking like crazy.
Like one of those funhouse attractions at an amusement park.
You sit in a chair inside a room, the walls start rotating, and it creates the illusion that you’re the one spinning.
The walls.
The windows.
The curtains.
The blackboard.
Kameyama-kun.
Everything was flying around me at high speed.
W-What is happening to me right now?
Well, technically nothing is happening.
I’m just standing here.
Okay.
I’m standing.
Current status confirmed.
Why am I doing point-and-call checks in my head like a train conductor?
What am I even doing?
Still...
I was calming down a little.
The shaking—
or rather, the way everything around me seemed to be spinning—
was slowing down.
“Hamori-san, are you okay?”
“Huh? Y-Yeah. I’m fine...”
“Come here.”
Kameyama-kun pulled out a chair and guided me into it.
I was so dizzy that I was honestly grateful he helped me sit down.
The cool sensation of the chair against my back and hips somehow calmed me.
Probably because it was something I felt every day.
My vision slowly returned to normal too.
“Sorry, Hamori-san. You were creeped out, weren’t you?”
“Huh? By what?”
“When I said I liked you.”
“Wh-What?! No! Not at all! Not at all! I’m not creeped out!”
Kameyama-kun heard my answer, made an awkward face, then lowered his head.
Ah.
Ah.
Ah.
This is bad.
No.
No, no.
That came out wrong.
The way I said it made it sound like I actually was creeped out, but I was lying so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
At the very least, Kameyama-kun clearly thought I was lying.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait.”
I grabbed his face with both hands before he could look any farther down.
His cheeks squished upward.
Surprisingly soft.
Though also kind of firm.
I pulled his face back up so he was looking straight at me.
“...”
“...”
Our eyes met.
I could see my own reflection in his pupils.
O-Oh...
If I pulled him toward me right now...
I could kiss Kameyama-kun.
I’d never been this close to a boy before.
I’d never stared into a boy’s eyes like this either.
C-Could I really kiss him right now?
Hey!
Hey, me!
Do I actually want to kiss Kameyama-kun?!
We’re talking about a kiss.
My first kiss.
Think carefully, me.
This could become a memory I carry for the rest of my life.
A kiss...
A kiss, okay?
A KISS?!
UOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!
UGYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I screamed.
Inside my heart!
My heart was screaming itself insane!
UGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO!
I had mocked people for this.
I had mocked rom-com protagonists for making such a huge deal over a simple kiss.
I had mocked Korean dramas for spinning the camera around during kiss scenes while beautiful music played.
I always thought:
It can’t be that big a deal once you actually do it, right?
You’re just putting your mouth against someone else’s mouth.
I’ve even gone further than that in my imagination.
I write about this stuff.
I was a fool.
Kissing makes you lose your mind!
I was unbelievably nervous.
My heart felt like it was about to leap out of my chest.
Blood was rushing through my whole body.
Thank you for all your hard work, heart.
But right now, I would really appreciate it if you could shut up.
Please.
But it wouldn’t stop!
I was completely dominated by the sound of my own heartbeat.
The pounding was like a typhoon trying to tear my mind apart and blow it away!
UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
CALM DOWN, MEEEEEEE!
Don’t get blown away!
Hold on!
NNNGH!
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
HUP!
And...
Landing successful.
...
What am I doing?
What exactly landed, and where?
None of this makes any sense.
Still, somehow I had calmed down enough to think again.
What kind of calming technique was that supposed to be?
Right now, I was hesitating.
Kiss him?
Or don’t kiss him?
If I pulled him toward me with both hands, I could kiss him right now.
Think, me.
Suppose I went to university.
Maybe one day someone would steal my first kiss while I was drunk.
Or during the Pocky Game.
Or maybe during some king’s game where I couldn’t withstand the pressure from everyone around me.
Maybe I’d lose it to some party-boy upperclassman who messed around all the time.
Men were physically stronger.
There might be situations I couldn’t avoid.
If that was possible...
wouldn’t it be better to kiss someone here instead?
Maybe it wasn’t the best option.
But it might be the better option.
Choosing the safer choice didn’t sound so terrible.
Hey!
HEY, ME!
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR NON-NEGOTIABLE LINE?!
What was my non-negotiable line again?
Right.
I only wanted one thing.
I wanted my first kiss to be with someone I liked!
Someone I liked.
I had to like him.
That was the important part.
Did I actually like Kameyama-kun?
That was the single most important question.
I definitely had positive feelings toward him.
There was no denying that.
I thought his drawings were amazing.
And I was happy that he had read my novel with such genuine interest.
Fine.
I could admit that.
But that still didn’t necessarily mean I was in love with him.
Right?
It wasn’t love.
Actually...
where exactly did liking someone turn into love?
Did I just need to like him more?
Could I even like someone that much?
Then what was this heartbeat?
Why was my heart pounding so hard that no matter how much I tried to calm it down, it refused?
Ahhh!
Wait, wait, wait!
I hate letting my body drag my feelings around!
I hate the suspension-bridge effect!
It’s just like when your hormones mess up and put you in a terrible mood.
I hate that feeling because it’s completely manufactured by your body!
What I really felt.
That was what mattered.
But I had no way to verify it...!
I didn’t know whether this feeling was love or just affection!
Think.
Think, me.
Do not charge ahead.
Treat this like the most important moment of your entire life!
Judge him.
Calmly.
I needed to decide whether Kameyama-kun was suitable as a boyfriend.
Whether he was someone I could actually fall in love with.
First:
His face.
I looked directly at Kameyama-kun, whose cheeks I was still squashing between my hands.
Average.
Not bad.
Not amazingly handsome either.
But I’d heard that really handsome guys were more likely to cheat, so maybe this level was actually ideal.
He looked a little more mature than the Kameyama-kun I remembered from a year ago.
Maybe a little thinner too.
Had he started exercising sometime during the year?
Next:
Height.
Kameyama-kun was a little taller than me.
A year ago, I thought we were around the same height.
Maybe he was the type who grew later than everyone else.
Honestly, as long as he was taller than me, that was good enough.
I was fairly tall for a girl anyway.
Too much height difference would probably just be inconvenient.
And heels looked painful as hell.
Why did adults wear them when they literally changed the shape of your feet all the way down to the bones?
And finally:
Income.
I wasn’t going to go easy on him just because we were still students.
Judging whether a man had earning potential was a woman’s duty at any age.
Women who married Sengoku warlords didn’t have much freedom to choose their husbands, but even then, they still did everything they could to secure the best marriage possible.
And after marriage, they often supported and guided their husbands too.
So...
How about Kameyama-kun?
Hamori Vision locked onto its target.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Ding!
No, this guy was obviously going to make a ton of money.
If he could draw that well, he’d blow up on social media and jobs would come flooding in.
And his concentration was absurd.
He had nothing but qualities that could earn money.
Hey.
Hey hey hey hey hey!
This wasn’t bad at all.
We even had similar values because we both created things.
Wait wait wait wait!
To be honest...
I had been trying to find something wrong with Kameyama-kun.
Some part of me had been searching for reasons to deny my own feelings.
But I could only find good things about him!
What the hell was happening?!
No.
Wait.
There was something bad about him.
He was lying.
Right now.
At this very moment.
He was still lying!
And I had to get the truth out of him!
“Hey. Is the world really collapsing?”
“Hafuhafuhafuh.”
Oh.
Right.
I was still squashing his cheeks with both hands.
I loosened my grip a little.
I didn’t let go completely, though.
If I did, I felt like I might lose control of the situation.
Kameyama-kun looked straight into my eyes.
“The world really is collapsing.”
Something clicked against the window.
Whatever it was had already fallen upward, so I couldn’t tell what it had been.
Probably debris.
Outside, all kinds of things were falling into the sky.
Cars.
Gravel.
A sofa.
A television.
A truck.
Garbage bags.
Clothes.
Far in the distance, a huge mass of water was slowly rising into the air.
Probably the ocean.
Was the world actually ending?
Nothing was happening inside this room.
Everything here looked completely normal.
“And if you and I kiss, it’ll stop collapsing? That’s true too?”
That was the part that made absolutely no sense.
Fine.
For argument’s sake—
no, not a hundred steps.
A thousand.
Ten thousand steps.
Fine.
I could accept that Kameyama-kun had come from the future.
His face really did look more mature than I remembered.
That was honestly more convincing than the student card.
Now that I had gotten a proper look at him—and literally had my hands on his face—I knew it wasn’t some special makeup trick.
And fine.
I would reluctantly accept that the world was collapsing too.
“Yes. If you don’t kiss me here, Hamori-san, causality itself will collapse.”
THAT.
That was the insane part!
Why?!
There was no way one girl’s first kiss could control the causality of the entire world!
If that were true, causality would be collapsing nonstop every single day!
“I don’t know why either. I’d like an explanation myself. But you seem to care a lot about your first kiss, so maybe there’s a large divergence between a world where that wish comes true and one where it doesn’t... Though I could be wrong.”
Haaaaaaaaah?!
Care a lot?!
“It’s not that I ‘care a lot.’ I just want my first kiss to be with someone I like. That’s all.”
Normal.
Completely normal.
Objectively speaking—source: me—there was absolutely nothing strange about that opinion.
Kameyama-kun blinked.
“Huh? Hamori-san, is that really all?”
“That’s really all.”
Kameyama-kun looked like he was about to start thinking deeply.
If he disappeared into another concentration trance, I’d have to wait all over again.
So I squished his cheeks upward before he could.
“U-Um... Hamori-san. Could you let go of my face?”
“No.”
If I kept holding him like this, I could reject him if he tried to force a kiss.
And if he came any closer than this, my heart might actually jump out of my chest and run away somewhere.
“Your face is right in front of mine, so... I’ve been nervous this whole time.”
My heart hadn’t stopped pounding either.
I was trying as hard as I could to stay calm, but even my breathing had gotten a little heavy.
Wait.
Did my breath smell?
I hadn’t noticed before, but I could feel a little of his breath too.
“Y-You’re not lying? You look pretty calm.”
“I’m really not calm at all. Can I borrow one of your hands?”
I gave him a suspicious look, but nodded.
One hand was more than enough to reject an unwanted kiss.
I’d be fine.
If he tried anything, I could still stop him.
Kameyama-kun carefully took one of my hands and guided it toward his chest.
I could feel the fabric of his white summer uniform shirt under my palm.
“Huh?”
“Can you tell, Hamori-san? My heartbeat has been driving me crazy this whole time.”
Wait wait wait wait.
My heart was already pounding hard enough, and now touching a boy’s chest made it even worse.
I’d never touched a boy’s uniform before.
It was just a shirt, but the fabric felt surprisingly stiff.
“Can you tell I’m not calm? I’m seriously nervous.”
“I-I mean... my heart is kind of going crazy too, so... I can’t really tell.”
And it was YOUR fault mine was going crazy!
My heart was working overtime.
My whole body felt hot.
I felt like my blood was about to boil!
“I see... Hmm.”
Kameyama-kun let go of my hand.
Then he undid the second button of his shirt.
What is he doing?
Before I could ask, Kameyama-kun took my hand again—
and guided it inside his shirt.
“W-Wait—”
I was too confused to stop him.
My hand slipped inside his shirt.
My palm touched his bare chest.
“Can you tell now? How nervous I am?”
W-W-W-W-W-WAITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAAAAAAAAAIT!!!
YOU’RE TOTALLY CALM ENOUGH TO DO THIS, YOU BASTAAAAAARD!!!
A firm, hot sensation pressed against my palm.
His heart was pounding violently beneath it.
The fact that I was touching a boy’s bare chest for the first time sent a wave of heat surging through my entire body.
Like throwing gasoline into a fire.
There was no stopping it now.
My face had to be completely red.
I couldn’t control it anymore.
Midsummer was raging inside my chest.
Kameyama-kun really was nervous.
Maybe he really didn’t have any composure.
But I had even less!
Hey!
HEY, ME!
DON’T FREEZE UP HERE!
SAY SOMETHING!
DO NOT LOSE THE ABILITY TO SPEAK!
YOU WRITE NOVELS!
SQUEEZE SOME VOCABULARY OUT OF THAT EXPERIENCE!
Right now, what mattered was composure!
I had to look composed!
I could not lose here!
“W-Wh-Wh-Why aren’t you wearing an undershirt...?”
THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
You were supposed to say something like:
Oh, wow. You’re surprisingly cute when you’re nervous.
And I stuttered too!
Wait.
I had already told him my heart was going crazy.
Trying to act composed now would just make me look ridiculous.
Close one.
Safe.
...
No.
Nothing about this was safe.
We were so far past the line that I had fallen straight into the water.
“We had PE sixth period. In the future I came from, I mean. I was supposed to go straight home after that, so I took off the undershirt I’d been wearing.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but his chest was slightly damp.
Oh.
Right.
Kameyama-kun had come from a year in the future.
“Can you go back?”
“I might not be able to.”
“You can’t go back unless you kiss me?”
“Uh...”
He looked away, clearly uncomfortable.
But only for a few seconds.
Then he looked directly at me again and answered properly.
“If we don’t kiss, I definitely can’t go back. The future I came from is a future where you kissed me.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“The world should collapse... but honestly, I don’t know for certain. Maybe the future keeps going anyway. But at the very least, I know I won’t be able to return to my future.”
Kameyama-kun didn’t seem like he was lying.
He sounded completely serious.
If this wasn’t a lie...
then that meant Kameyama-kun had been sincere from the very beginning.
Even though he had asked me to kiss him, he had never tried to force himself on me.
He kept apologizing.
The drawing thing was still weird, though.
“Honestly, I didn’t think much about it before coming here. About what it actually meant to force someone to kiss me.”
“Yeah.”
It was just like artificial respiration.
When someone’s life was in danger, things like a maiden’s pride, feelings, or supposedly non-negotiable lines stopped mattering.
Your personal wishes were no longer the priority.
Just like the princesses of the Sengoku period.
Some of them had even been sent into political marriages at the age of three.
For Kameyama-kun’s sake—
or maybe for the sake of the entire world—
I had to use my first kiss.
I had to give up my non-negotiable line.
“Then I suddenly got embarrassed. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t even thought about that. So... I ran away into drawing.”
“Yeah. I understand. I do the same thing.”
Sometimes I escaped into novels too.
I thought people could only really escape guilt or anxiety by becoming completely absorbed in something.
When I was writing, I could forget unpleasant feelings for a while.
For Kameyama-kun, that thing was drawing.
For me, it was novels.
“I decided I should leave the final decision to you, Hamori-san.”
Right now, it was just the two of us.
If there had been a third person here—
if other people had been watching—
I probably would have had no choice but to kiss him.
Someone would definitely have forced the issue.
Objectively speaking, I knew I would be blamed if I refused.
I hadn’t done anything wrong.
But just like artificial respiration or the princesses of the Sengoku period, sometimes human society demanded that you sacrifice something personal for the sake of others.
An emergency.
That was what this was.
Come to think of it, Kameyama-kun had been telling me from the very beginning that this was an emergency.
I was the one who hadn’t listened.
Of course, there was no way I could have believed him right away.
But now...
I could tell.
From his choice of words.
From the way he carried himself.
If all of this turned out to be an elaborate prank set, I was going to collapse spectacularly.
“Why are you leaving the decision to me?”
“Because even if the world collapses, your first kiss is more important.”

The midsummer heat raging inside my chest felt like it was about to burst out through my entire body.

This guy.

This guyyyyyyyyyy!!

Is he serious?!

Is he actually saying that?!

You literally just said that if I don’t kiss you, you might never be able to go home!

That means you might never see your family or friends again!

You’re saying my personal feelings matter more than every relationship you’ve built—

more than the end of the entire world?!

Just because you like me?!

You’d really go that far?!

IDIOT!

ABSOLUTE IDIOT!

THE PUREST FORM OF IDIOCY!

I’d heard boys were stupid.

I just never realized they could be *this* stupid.

But...

Even while I thought he was an idiot...

part of me was falling for that very stupidity.

Maybe I was just as hopeless.

I decided.

There are moments when a girl has to take one step forward.

“Kameyama-kun.”

“Yeah?”

“Please kiss me.”