Inma no Hado chapter 209: Love Letter
“Kanbai!”
“Kanbai!”
“Kanbai!!”
A small Italy restaurant in Ginza. The room is borrowed, and about 20 men and women are matching their cups with a smile. They are all of the same age group and all of them are in the middle of their thirties. It is no wonder that everyone is in the same age. Today is a class meeting, former classmates who graduated from the same middle school got together and gathered today.
Men and women greeting each other. Warm up old acquaintances for the first time in a while and tell each other’s current situation. Laughter sounds here and there soon, even though it was the first time in ten years since they came together.
“Hey! Shio! How are you!”
“Oh! Tetsu! It’s been a long time!”
“You, you are now a executive director? In the future you seem to be the president!”
Men and women sat on the left and right sides of a long table. Around the man sitting in the middle of it, the conversation is rising with a particularly loud voice. Everyone speaks happily to the man who was the class leader.
The central figure, Shioya, is in good spirits from the old stories when he was evil. The friendship with his former classmates who he did evil things with during middle school have not changed.
“Keiko-chan, you are still beautiful as ever”
“True. Shio, you´re really lucky. You can marry such a beautiful woman”
Keiko, who was Shioya´s former classmate and now his wife is praised by her classmates and smiles next to Shioya. Even now, at the age of 33, her number one’s beauty hasn’t waned at all. Rather it takes a year old with a little childishness remaining, and it is becoming a beautiful person shattered by adding color.
Shioya and Keiko had been married since their middle school days. Shioya was the class leader and Keiko was the yearning of the boys. A couple of such popular people was famous as there was no one who didn’t know them in middle school.
“Even so, I, I liked Keiko-chan~”
“Me too, Me too!! When I heard that the other party is Shio, I gave up…”
“We were also shocked, because Shioya was popular with girls”
“Oh yeah, but you can’t win against Keiko…who is so cute”
“Hateful…. Why is she so beautiful and hasn’t changed much! That’s unfair!”
“Yamashita. You have changed too much, what’s with that stomach?”
“What! You!! You fatty!!”
Friendly classmates. Everyone is joking and laughing loud enough to shed tears. A friend group of three men and three women, centering around Shioya and Keiko. Companions who spent the most pleasant time with them. It is an irreplaceable treasure even now.
Of course the center of the group is Shioya and Keiko. Shioya with a strong push for quarrel is the central entity of the class and its relationship doesn’t change even now even though he became an adult
About 40 minutes after the meeting began, the door of the private room which was the venue opened. Not a waitress carrying cooking, but a slutty man in a suit comes in. No one who was near the entrance, could remember who that man was.
“Emm…. Its reserved here today, is not it?”
The man closest to the table looks at the man with suspicious eyes. At first he thought it was someone from their class, but he didn’t know who it was when he saw the face and thought that the restaurant’s general customers came by mistake.
However, the man who entered doesn’t change his expression and looks around. When the man turned red with beer again tried to say something, he heard a voice from the middle of the table.
“Oh! Midou, you came! Come over here!”
The size and name of the voice, the venue became thin for a moment. It is Shioya who called out to Kenichi who came in.
Kenichi is walking in the hall again while gathering everyone’s glances. The suit seems luxurious to see, but gives the impression that somehow collapsed somehow.
“Midou…Midou, that Midou?”
“Ah, emm…?”
“But, why did he come?”
Such voices can be heard from here and there. However, Kenichi moves to the center of the table without changing his complexion at all. When asking Shioya to sit in front, the man who was there gave his seat and let Kenichi sit there.
“Everyone, don’t you remember Midou-kun?”
Shioya laughs with a grin. The classmates kept silent as if they were in trouble at first, but then they opened their mouths and started talking.
“Midou…you, have you changed a bit?”
“…That, that’s right…somehow the atmosphere…”
All of the classmates suddenly appeared puzzled.
Anyway, Kenichi didn’t talk much at all in the past with his classmates. The geek who always sat in the corner of the classroom with thick glasses and was reading a book. Kenichi whose body is weak and exercise is also a tone deaf, is just silent and sits there all the time.
Such a man has never been involved with their group and has never talked properly. To say more, Kenichi was bullied several times, it was just that. Ever since he graduated, he has never remembered and forgot the existences of his bullies.
“Recently, I met him with a lot of things. That’s why I called him”
Shioya still has a grin on his face. His eyes are flashing with mischievous light, as when he returned to his middle school days.
“Hey…why did you call this guy…”
“This guy is not fun at all, right? At least let him sit by the edge”
The best friend of Shioya is sneaking around and looks at Kenichi who sits opposite. However, Kenichi is completely expressionless, as if he had stifled the inner feelings. Nothing is mysterious even if it is quiet because it was originally a few words.
“Hey hey…don’t say such a poor thing. He is also a classmate…. So get along”
Shioya is asking for agreement by raising a loud voice. No, of course it does not seek for it. The purpose is to get everyone’s attention and to embarrass Kenichi who is shy.
“Midou. What are you doing now?”
“…I’m a teacher of a all girls high school…”
“Uoo! Great! How did you do that!”
The man who was called Tetsu and had a quarrel with him immediately swap his head as if he was a middle school student. It’s like a joke, but there’s a lot of force involved and it’s a bully’s attitude that’s not the same as a dozen years ago.
“This guy…. His uncle was a rich man and he was a director at that school. So thanks to his uncle, he is pretty off now?”
“I see! Come on, say it quickly…”
Another man, who was called Michiaki grinned with a wicked smile. It seems that the former baby boy looked like a duck carrying onion.
“Then, Wallet-kun? Where you called because of that?”
“Pu! Shh!”
The fat woman called Yamashita and the thin woman who was called Toshiko chuckle.
They approach the middle age, their faces have meat and they look like ugly mantis who are tired to life.
In such a situation, Keiko, sitting next to Shioya, turned to the bottom and kept silent. Her face is able to endure something and her husband, Shioya and his friends dont notice that Keiko´s hand shakes under the table faintly.
Then a little bit later, everyone came to talk about the situation in turn. They explain how they had been doing after graduating. Most of them were office workers, but many of them remained in the local community and continued their parents’ family businesses. Many women are married and most are housewives and are busy raising children.
“I´m Midou. I’m currently the vice-principal at a girls high school in Tokyo”
Kenichi, who was a gloomy boy without a friend, says that much and sits on a seat. To the lack of sociability as usual, everyone feel angry.
“You! Talk a little more! Entertain everyone!”
The rough Tetsu swaps his head again. It was very powerful this time and even if he was drunk and playfully funny it was a rough blow. There is a sound and a considerable pain is transmitted. When Kenichi gazes at him unexpectedly, Tetsu reacts somewhat to it.
“What is it! What are you doing here! You are not qualified to come to this place! Even when you came to school, no one chatted with you and no one was your friend!”
The man who has succeeded in the plastering of his family is shouting without concealing his rude background. The room becomes thin at once. Some are frightened, and some are watching the commotion.
“Hey hey, I will tell you a funny story, so be quiet”
Shioya, who was looking at the exchange between Kenichi and Tetsu interestingly, took out something from his pocket. It was like a white envelope and Kenichi seemed to raise a voice at the moment he saw the familiar design.
“What is this…”
Michiaki with a wicked smile as usual asks Shioya. Shioya took a quick glance and was satisfied to see the startled face of Kenichi and removed the letter from the envelope.
“This…this is a love letter written by Midou”
“Love letter!”
Some people hammered out with a different mouth, and then a smile appears on that face. Shioya gathered the eyes of all over 20 people happily and opened it slowly and began reading aloud with a resonant voice.
“My dear beloved, Keiko Ogawa. Please forgive me to write such a letter suddenly. When I first saw you, I fell in love with you”
At that moment, many voices leak out. It is a mixture of surprise, excitement and contempt. As soon as he gets pleased with the reactions, Shioya continues to read. Both Kenichi and Keiko, which are taken aback at the moment, are unable to stop the brutality of Shioya.
“I do not think you will like a man like me, but I definitely wanted to tell you my feeling for you. I think of you everyday and every morning, day and night”
It is an enthusiastic confession and is spelled with junior characters like a middle school student. There is no doubt that it was written by Kenichi himself to Keiko, Shioya´s wife.
However, it was kept inside of the desk in the classroom without passing it after all. At that time, Kenichi remembered that this embarrassing letter had been lost before he was aware. He was looking for a while desperately, but after all he gave up without finding it and had forgotten its existence since then.
“Just thinking about who you like is driving me crazy. Thinking of that, I can’t sleep at night”
The reading of the love letter continues. The shallow grave sentences, in conjunction with its content, it’s a remembrance of shame that Kenichi wanted to erase. But he can’t do anything in front of more than 20 people, his embarrassing past has been told so he turned red.
“I think that it is impossible to go out with you, but I’d like to date you once. If you like, please reply .I love you more than anyone Kenichi Midou”
When Shioya finished reading the long love letter with a funny tone of voice, Kenichi got wet with sweat out of disgrace and his confidence and attitude which had been kept since fusing with the Inma scattered.
“Hieee!!! It’s embarrassing!!”
“If I were to read in front of everyone like this, I would die!!
“You liked Ogawa, isn’t that stupid?”
“Uwa…it’s disgusting…”
Everyone is laughing. They show faces of disgust and some have a look of contempt. What is common is the word that tramples upon Kenichi’s former romance.
Kenichi´s face is red and he faces downwards, Keiko also faces downwards with a pale expression. The evil and ugly emotions that all others had emitted filled up the room into a black flow which eventually melted into a large stream of sky.