My Girlfriend Was Cheating With My Senior

“You actually said that? You? To the ‘Goddess of the Library’?”

Yota Ishida stared at me with eyes full of astonishment.

“Yeah. At that moment, I was in a state where I didn’t care what happened anymore.”

I replied in the same reckless, desperate tone.

Yota Ishida.

He’s been my friend since high school, and we’re both first-years in the same Department of Information Engineering at Joto University. When I told him, “Karen cheated on me, and it was with Kamokura-senpai,” he got worried and came over to my place.

“So, what did Toko-senpai say?”

Ishida’s throat made a clicking sound as he swallowed hard.

“Toko-senpai…”

I began to recount the story with a hollow voice.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Hearing my opening line, Toko-senpai spoke with a voice that was half-surprised and half-exasperated.

“You don’t understand the meaning? I’m saying: please have sex with me.”

I said it bluntly.

I no longer cared about social standing or the rumors that would surely follow.

After a long silence, Toko-senpai finally spoke.

“What happened?”

Even though it was a voice synthesized through a smartphone, her tone sounded genuinely concerned for me.

I couldn’t answer.

I couldn’t think of where to even begin.

…Because your boyfriend stole my girlfriend…

…And as revenge, I want to steal you away from him…

…I have the right to do so…

…And you, who were betrayed just like me, should do the same…

Thoughts like these were swirling in my head as fragments. But I couldn’t put them into words properly.

Then, Toko-senpai’s voice came through the phone again.

“There’s a reason for this, isn’t there? I want you to tell me. Because I don’t believe you’re the kind of person who would say something so outrageous out of the blue without cause.”

The moment I heard those words, tears suddenly burst from my eyes.

That’s right—I’m not an “outrageous” person.

If anything, I’m the normal one.

The ones who aren’t normal are them.

Tetsuya Kamokura and Karen Mitsumoto.

The man who steals his junior’s girlfriend and acts like a mentor as if nothing happened, and the woman who cheats with her boyfriend’s senior without a care in the world.

Having Toko-senpai point that out made all the painful emotions I had been holding in flow out at once along with my tears.

“M-my girlfriend, Karen… and Kamokura-senpai… are cheating… I… I don’t know what to do anymore…”

It was all I could do to say that much through my sobs.

I could sense Toko-senpai catching her breath on the other end of the line.

“…Is that the truth?”

“I… wish… it were a lie… I really do…”

After that, I couldn’t form words. There was only the sound of my sobbing and sniffing into the phone.

“Isshiki-kun, calm down for now. I’ll hear the details tomorrow. Until then, don’t mention this to anyone around you.”

With that, Toko-senpai hung up.

“But I couldn’t stand being alone with my thoughts, so after I got back to my room, I contacted you,” I told Ishida.

I explained every detail of what had happened to him.

“Well, yeah. Carrying that all by yourself would be brutal. I think you did the right thing telling me,” Ishida said.

Venting to someone didn’t necessarily make the feeling go away, but it was still better than being alone.

“So, what do you plan to do about Karen-chan?”

When Ishida pointed that out, the reality of the situation finally hit me for the first time.

That’s right. What do I want to happen with Karen from here on out?

The feeling that “I can’t forgive her” was there.

But at the same time, I couldn’t find the resolve to say “I’m breaking up with you right now.”

“I haven’t decided what to do yet. But I don’t intend to let it end like this.”

“I guess it’s not something you can just move on from so easily.”

Ishida leaned forward.

“So, what about Toko-senpai?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“You’re meeting her tomorrow, right? Are you going to go through with it and make a move on her?”

I fell into thought.

“I said that in the heat of the moment, but… Toko-senpai has her own feelings to consider. Besides, I don’t think someone like her would let me do that so easily.”

“True. She seems pretty straight-laced.”

Ishida crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back.

“Yu, how do you plan to talk to her?”

“I haven’t decided that yet, either. I just plan to tell her everything I know, exactly as it is.”

“Including the evidence—the photos of the messages between Karen-chan and Kamokura-senpai?”

“Probably.”

“Hmm…”

Ishida pondered for a while.

“I won’t tell you not to do it, but I think you should consider how you say it and when you show it. I’ve heard that when it comes to cheating, ‘the man hates his girlfriend, but the woman hates the other woman’.”

I didn’t quite understand the meaning of what Ishida was saying.

Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that my brain that day simply didn’t have the capacity to think about it.

In any case, I would meet Toko-senpai and lay everything bare.

That was the only thing on my mind.