Confession

They say the road to love is paved with sweet glances, butterflies in your stomach, and a beautiful collision of souls under sakura trees.

But not for me.

No, no, not for this poor soul whose luck in love was written by Shakespeare himself drunk, blindfolded, and with a wicked sense of humor.

Today started with hope. You know, that weird, foolish optimism that only teenage boys and anime protagonists seem to possess. I was glowing. Floating. Radiating main character energy.

And why, you ask?

Because I volunteered to take out the trash.

Yes. Trash.

Not because I care about the environment or suddenly decided to be the janitor's understudy. No. I did it for love.

More specifically, I did it for her.

Let's call her "Her" for now because names hold power and I'm currently too heartbroken to speak hers aloud without emotionally combusting. She was there, beside me, holding the other side of the trash bag. Our hands...dear reader, our mortal, teenage, sweaty hands....brushed ever so slightly.

And for that brief, fleeting nanosecond, I saw my future flash before my eyes.

Spoiler alert: It was glorious.

Cue dramatic romantic piano music. Cue cherry blossoms where there were no trees. Cue a future where we got married, adopted a cat, and argued over where to order takeout.

And then she said:

"Can you not touch it so much? It's leaking. Gross."

That was it.

That was the bullet to my beating shoujo heart. The climax of my one sided romance arc. My romantic castle built from subtle smiles and shared pencils collapsed like a Jenga tower in an earthquake.

She didn't even look at me afterward.

I returned to class alone. Or rather, I returned with something worse than loneliness .....hope crushing rejection.

She left. Her seat was empty. Her bag, gone. Her aura, erased from the atmosphere.

Me? I slumped in my chair like a soggy biscuit in milk. One hand on my chest, the other raised to the heavens.

"Why, cruel world? Why must thou mock me?"

The janitor passed by and peeked into the classroom.

"You good, kid?"

"Only as good as Hamlet in Act V, Scene 2," I whispered.

He blinked. Then left. Rude.

So I, the shattered shell of a boy, rose. Each step was heavy, like gravity had cranked up its pettiness. The hallway stretched longer than usual. Students passed me by in normal speed, but I was in anime slow motion, complete with exaggerated footsteps and echoing violin music.

Outside, the world dared to move on without me.

Birds chirped. Couples giggled. A dog barked happily at a passing butterfly.

How dare they.

I took the long way home. The tragically scenic route. Each shadow whispered, "You got rejected without even confessing."

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of emotional despair," I murmured, "I shall fear no rejection, for the gods of romance have already forsaken me."

Then...like a final kick to the ribs by Cupid himself.....someone behind me said it.

"I love you."

Pause.

Freeze frame.

Heart: Excuse me, what?

My spine straightened like a ruler. My sweat glands activated. My soul ascended then immediately plummeted back into my mortal body.

"I love you."

Again. Softer. But real.

I didn't turn.

Nope.

Not yet.

Because if I turned and saw it was just someone messing with me? I would evaporate. Turn into emotional mist. Become a tragic urban legend told in hushed whispers at school lockers.

Instead, I stood there. Frozen. Like a poorly coded NPC in a romance sim who just glitched in place after hearing his true ending route was finally unlocked.

My thoughts? Chaotic.

Thought 1: Is this a prank? Is there a camera crew?

Thought 2: Is it a ghost? Is this how I die?

Thought 3: Please, dear anime gods, let this be real. I have sacrificed my pride and emotional stability for this moment. Deliver me.

I looked at the ground, hoping it would open and give me answers. It didn't. Useless ground.

My brain decided to perform a flashback reel of every interaction I've had with girls in the past year.

A classmate once said, "Thanks for passing the worksheet."

Did she mean more?

Another girl waved at me last week. Was she waving at me? Or the guy behind me? I didn't check.

Then there was Her.

No, it couldn't be Her.

Could it?

My heart went Super Saiyan. My internal dialogue began arguing with itself like a badly written courtroom drama.

"Turn around!"

"No, you fool! It could be a setup!"

"But what if it's real?!"

"What if it's your MOM?!"

Silence.

I slowly, so slowly, began to turn. Like a dramatic reveal shot in a historical drama. The wind blew. Leaves scattered. My hair swayed gently like the budget finally kicked in.

I imagined what I'd see: Her. Holding her school bag. Blushing. Looking like every tsundere at the end of a 12 episode redemption arc.

But no.

My eyes landed on someone else.

Not Her.

Someone else entirely.

System Error.

My internal monologue blue screened. Brain.exe crashed. Emotions stopped rendering. The graphics glitched.

What… what plot twist was this?!

And then she spoke again:

"I really do love you. I've been trying to tell you all year. I was too scared. But today I saw you looking so sad… and I couldn't hold it anymore."

I wanted to say something. Anything.

But my mouth betrayed me.

"Nice weather today."

Kill me.

JUST KILL ME!!

Her face turned puzzled.

I tried to recover.

"I mean, uh, nice clouds. Your voice is… cloud like. Soft? Fluffy?"

SHUT UP, BRAIN. SHUT UP.

I laughed nervously. The kind of laugh that makes people slowly back away and text the school counselor.

She giggled.

Giggled.

Was that a good sign?! Or was she nervous laughing because she was realizing she just confessed to the school's certified emotionally unstable poetry boy?

"So… can we talk? Properly? Maybe… walk home together?"

I blinked. Twice. My survival instincts were failing.

Say something smooth, I begged myself.

I opened my mouth

and sneezed.

Right into my elbow. Loud. Violent. Possibly contagious.

She flinched. I wanted to self destruct.

"Sorry! Allergies! Romantic tension! Pollen in the wind!"

She laughed harder.

That laugh.....it warmed something inside me. Like hot chocolate after walking in the rain. Like being told "I missed you" when you didn't think anyone would.

I smiled.

Just a little.

Hope flickered.

Maybe this wasn't a cosmic prank. Maybe this wasn't a rejection dressed in sheep's clothing. Maybe, just maybe—

"I love you."

She said it one last time. Like she meant it. Like it wasn't a joke or a mistake. Like she had rehearsed it in the mirror and decided today, she would be brave.

And in that moment, I felt… peace.

For the first time all day, I didn't feel like a background character in someone else's story.

I felt like the lead.

I turned fully to face her.....

and then:

BLACK.

Cue ending theme.

Cue "To Be Continued" in aggressively stylized font.

Cue me, screaming internally into the void of teenage romance.