Head Over Heels From The Scarf I Lent Her Chapter 1

It happened on a snowy day when I was in my first year of high school.
We had finished our midterms and were just going home. A young girl stood alone.

“Isn’t that… Miyamoto’s sister?”

Her name is Miyamoto Satsuki. They say she’s the cutest girl in the neighborhood—no, even in the whole town. For whatever reason, the middle schooler was standing at the front gate of our school, facing away from it.
Maybe she’s looking for her sister. At least that’s what I chalked it up to.
But there was something lonely about the look of her back.
Her light brown hair reached to the small of her back, and for a quick moment, I wanted to find out how soft it must feel.

She was most likely outside waiting for her older sister Amane, but Satsuki was dressed without even a coat—only in the uniform of the middle school nearby.
Yamanaka Tooru was surprised at that.
But Tooru had nothing to do with the girl. He’s seen photos of her quite a few times before, so he knows of the person, but seeing her up close was a little bewildering.
Satsuki is standing right there, yet everyone simply pa.s.ses her by.

Getting closer and catching a glimpse of her reveals her porcelain cheeks turned red from the cold. Her hands, too. Her breath slowly disappears in the air and in turn uncovers the profile of her adorable face tinged with a faint sadness.
As he shudders at her state, Satsuki notices Tooru and looks up at the tall boy.

“Can I… help you?”
“Oh, uhh, no…”

“What are you doing here?” was what he wanted to ask but couldn’t.
Maybe she just has business with Amane. And who knows what Amane would do if she saw them together. That’s why he shouldn’t do anything uncalled for and simply just go home. But Tooru couldn’t leave her well alone.
n.o.body in their right minds would leave a girl like that alone, though all the other students going home did exactly that.
Perhaps she grew impatient of Tooru not saying anything, Satsuki calmly speaks up.

“If there’s nothing you need, then I think you should best hurry home.”
“Umm, where’s Amane?”
“My sister… seems to be running late.”

What a harsh reply.
Amane is notorious for how aggressive she is. You hear all the time that she has bullied someone or that she has yelled at someone again.
It might be easy to say otherwise if you’re not here to experience it in person, but to make such a mild-mannered girl stand in this bitter cold is far too cruel, Tooru thought.
Oh, whatever. Screw it.
Tooru takes the scarf from his own neck and wraps it around hers. Satsuki lifts her hair from under the scarf and then looks up at Tooru.

“Umm, what are—…”
“Sorry, but that’s all I got. Don’t worry about returning it back to me. If you don’t want it, feel free to throw it out. And, uhh, stay warm and head home.”
“Hey, hold on…!”

Tooru dashes away from the school gate after his line.
Pa.s.sers-by look over and wonder what was happening, but he paid it no mind. Maybe Satsuki will get hit by Amane later. But even if so, he couldn’t help himself but to do it.
Having sprinted all the way up the hill, Tooru finally looked back at the front gate.

The girl, as beautiful and graceful as a doll, was looking back at him. The scarf hadn’t been thrown away.
Good. If only for just a little, the scarf will shield her from the cold.
Even when completely out of breath, Tooru ran as if to escape her line of sight.
It wasn’t that he was interested in her; standing outside under the wintry skies like it was some sort of cruel joke was simply too deplorable.
Doing it for his own self-satisfaction was good enough a reason. That’s why Tooru wrapped the scarf around the girl.
It was too late to regret it anyway. He can but hope that the bitter cold would be a little bit more bearable.

By the time he had looked back again, the school gate had disappeared entirely from his view.
And after that, Satsuki was never seen at that spot again.

: /ch001/ /next/