All Beautiful Girls Want to Stick with Me

At that time, little Kotomi had been napping upstairs. When she woke up, feeling a bit hungry, she instinctively went downstairs toward the kitchen. Even though she was still at the age where she could barely talk, her memory for where food was kept was remarkably sharp.

As she passed through the living room, her mother scooped her up and said, ”Say hello to our guests first.”

Even though little Kotomi couldn’t speak properly yet, she had her own unique greeting: she’d look at someone and go, ”Rua!”

That was how she said hello back then.

After greeting the adults, she turned to greet their daughter—but the moment she looked at the little silver-haired girl sitting on the sofa, she froze mid-”Rua.”

The girl’s silver hair shimmered like liquid light. Even though Kotomi had been a bit of an airhead as a child, she did know one thing—she was beautiful.

Back then, Kotomi had been at the peak of her self-adoration phase. Whenever she saw a pretty girl, she couldn’t help but compare herself.

But when she saw the silver-haired girl, she stopped completely. If she had known how to talk at the time, she would’ve tugged on her father’s sleeve and said, ”Dad, I want to marry her!”

However, her admiration quickly vanished the moment she noticed what the silver-haired girl was holding—a bag of tomato-flavored potato chips. Her chips. The last bag of tomato chips she’d saved in the kitchen to enjoy later that night while watching the Kamen Rider movie!

The silver-haired girl noticed Kotomi staring, shook the bag a little as if to ask, ”Do you want some?”

Kotomi blankly took the bag. Her dazed expression shifted into shock—and then despair. There were only two chips left.

”Waaah!”

She shoved the last two chips into her mouth with trembling hands, clutching the empty bag to her chest before bursting into tears—loud, uncontrollable sobs that lasted an entire day. She cried so hard she nearly passed out several times.

Even now, whenever Kotomi recalled that memory, something about it still puzzled her. She remembered every detail vividly—except one. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what the silver-haired girl looked like… or what her name was.

It was as if an invisible eraser had wiped all traces of that girl from her mind. But the eraser hadn’t done a perfect job—at least Kotomi still remembered that the girl’s hair had been silver.

Back to the topic at hand—after hearing Haruno Yukinoshita’s story, Kotomi looked at her with open disdain. ”Your behavior was downright demonic. How could you be so awful, so shameless? How did Ms. Hiratsuka not pin you to the ground after you ate her honeydew pudding?”

Haruno twitched the corner of her mouth. ”Why do you sound like I committed some kind of unforgivable sin…? Anyway, yeah, the first time little Shizuka and I met, we didn’t exactly get along—because of that stupid honeydew pudding.”

”At that time, my mom gave you a whole bunch of snacks,” Shizuka interrupted dryly. ”There were plenty of pudding flavors to choose from. Why did you have to pick the honeydew one?”

”How was I supposed to know you wanted the honeydew pudding?” Haruno protested. ”I just grabbed one at random! Who could’ve guessed that by chance, I’d pick your favorite flavor? And honestly, it didn’t even taste that great. Mango pudding’s way better—ah! Don’t hit me! Can you act a little more like a mature woman? We can talk this out!”

Haruno’s plea was met with another glare from Shizuka, but she quickly continued explaining to Kotomi.

”Anyway, you know how kids are—they get mad quickly, but they also get over it quickly. Even though our first meeting started off rocky, half an hour later we were happily building Lego together. Don’t let Shizuka’s smart looks fool you; she was actually terrible at putting Lego sets together. Still, she was really into it. While I had already finished building my set, she was sitting there frowning, overthinking every little piece.

”To cover up her embarrassment, she took me upstairs to the second floor, pulled out her game console, and we started playing Kirby. We took turns—whenever one of us lost, the other would play. As the game went on, we both became ridiculously careful, trying not to die so we could keep playing longer. And of course, every time one of us made a mistake and lost, we’d both get super competitive about it.

”It’s been so many years now that I can’t even remember what console it was—or which Kirby game we played.