Childhood Friend Heroine V1 Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Height Difference
People are creatures of growth.
This is especially true during the transition from childhood to adulthood, when development is remarkably swift. It’s not uncommon to be surprised by how many centimeters someone has shot up since you last saw them. Strangely, however, the person themselves—or those who are always by their side—often fail to notice the change as it happens. An image of them has already formed in your mind, a fixed impression of who they are and what they look like. Unless something specific happens to challenge that perception, you remain oblivious to the growing discrepancy between the image and reality.
So, really, what happened next was unavoidable.
◇
Mid-April, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom.
Saito stepped out of the nurse’s office, gazing at the physical measurement record his homeroom teacher had handed him.
Height: 173 cm. Weight: 66 kg. Sitting height: 90 cm.
“I grew quite a bit, huh?”
Compared to last year, he’d grown a full four centimeters. He felt like his line of sight had gotten a little higher, though that might have just been his imagination. He’d thought his growth spurt was coming to an end, but it seemed it was still going strong. Impressed by the better-than-expected results, Saito let out a small sound of admiration, even though it was about himself.
“Saito, let me see,” Kai said, having waited for him just outside the classroom. Curious about his friend’s results, he pestered Saito to see the record sheet.
“Sure, go ahead.”
Since he wasn’t a girl, there was no embarrassing information to hide, so Saito showed it to him without a second thought.
“Damn, you’re huge! There’s like a twenty-centimeter difference between us.”
“Is there really that much of a gap? I thought you’d be a bit taller than that, Kai.”
“Right? This data has to be wrong. I demand a re-measurement!”
Saito had always thought Kai was on the smaller side for a guy, but he’d never imagined there was a twenty-centimeter difference. When he said as much, Kai looked delighted and tried to storm back into the nurse’s office. However, another person grabbed his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
“I get wanting to exaggerate, but Kai-kun, you already asked for ‘one more time’ and got re-measured multiple times. I don’t think the number is going to change at this point.”
“Stop hitting me with logic!”
According to Haruki, Kai had already insisted on several re-measurements. Saito had to agree that the result probably wouldn’t change.
Unable to accept reality, however, Kai covered his ears as if to block out the world. Saito and Haruki exchanged a look and laughed.
What an amusing guy.
“Ooh, Ito-cchi and the gang, good work,” a voice called out as they returned to the classroom. Yakumo Shuri, a gal with reddish-brown hair, approached them. “How’d the results go? Let me see, let me see.”
“Sure thing,” Saito replied.
Behind her followed Lily and a quiet-looking girl named Kanzaki Minaka. Lately, when Lily wasn’t with Saito, she was often chatting with Minaka and Shuri.
“Whoa, Ito-cchi, you’re a whole 173 centimeters! That’s huge! Kai-cchi is the opposite at 155 centimeters—so tiny and cute. And Haru-cchi is, well… normal?”
“Am I the only one getting the rough treatment here!?”
“Tough luck.”
Shuri glanced over the three boys’ results and shared her unfiltered thoughts. Haruki, the only one to receive a half-hearted assessment, protested, asking if there wasn’t something more she could say. But his height and weight were the very definition of average; it was hard to come up with any other comment.
“Lily, how’d your height turn out?” Saito asked, glancing sideways at the shocked Haruki.
In the past, he might have demanded to see her record sheet, but thanks to the relentless education from both Yahana and Lily, he’d been corrected. Now, of course, he only asked about her height.
“I grew a little. 0.5 centimeters.”
“That’s basically margin of error.”
“The ones digit changed, so I definitely grew! You growing a whole four centimeters is what’s weird, Saito.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still in my growing phase,” he said with a smug grin. “But hey, with this, I’ve finally passed you. After all the times you’ve called me shorty, you’d better prepare yourself. Ha-ha, shorty, shorty. Huh? Where’d Lily go? She’s too short for me to see.”
“Ugh… I knew this would happen. That’s why I didn’t want to lose.”
Last year, they had been nearly the same height. But by a millimeter’s difference, Saito had been shorter, earning him the usual shorty treatment. This year, however, their positions had finally reversed. As Saito teased her relentlessly, as if settling years of resentment, Lily bit her lip in frustration.
“Ooh, how rare. Lily-cchi is actually going ‘grrr.’ That’s a rare sight,” Shuri commented.
“…I suppose,” Minaka added quietly.
Seeing their friend so openly frustrated—a rare sight indeed—Shuri and Minaka watched in surprise.
“Speaking of which, Shuri, do you know about the ideal height difference for a couple?” Saito asked, his teasing spree finally over as the conversation shifted to more feminine topics.
“Of course I do. It’s about fifteen centimeters, right? That’s supposedly the easiest for things like kissing and hugging.”
“Fifteen centimeters… so for me, that means 140 centimeters.”
“I think it’d be easier to look for the reverse in that case,” Haruki pointed out.
“Well, for me, that’d be 177 centimeters,” Shuri mused. “Sounds like a pain to find. Oh, but Mina-cchi is 158, so that’d be perfect with Ito-cchi.”
“!?”
“Tch.”
“Tch!? Wait, did you just click your tongue at me!? That’s pretty harsh, don’t you think?”
“Must’ve been your imagination. Stop with the paranoid delusions, would you?”
As they were each discussing their ideal height partners, Saito was shocked to suddenly hear a click of the tongue directed at him. He’d hardly ever talked to Minaka and couldn’t think of anything he’d done to earn her dislike. Had he unknowingly done something wrong? If so, he wanted to apologize. Creating an awkward atmosphere with Lily’s friend wasn’t his intention, but judging by her current reaction, it seemed like a difficult conversation to have.
“It’s not like having an ideal height difference means you’d unconditionally date someone,” Minaka said, her tone sharp. “You can adjust with heels and stuff. As long as it looks good when you’re standing next to each other, that’s all that matters.”
“Whoa, you brought up the topic yourself, but you’re saying some pretty blunt things, Mina-cchi.”
“Whatever.”
Clearly in a bad mood, Minaka roughly wrapped up the conversation. Just then, the teacher entered the classroom, and the group disbanded.
On his way back to his seat, Saito spotted Lily’s record sheet, which had fallen on the floor. He picked it up, and a bit of mischievous spirit welled up inside him. Just as he tried to peek at the weight column, an angry shout accompanied a fist that drove straight into his solar plexus.
“Don’t look!”
“—Gah!”
A critical hit!
The pain was so intense that Saito dropped the record sheet, learning once again that looking at a woman’s weight was taboo.
Is fifty-nine kilos that embarrassing?
Still, the number he’d caught a glimpse of seemed pretty slim for her height. The creatures called women was hard to understand. With that thought, Saito lost consciousness.
◇
Time passed, and it was now after school.
At the station platform, Lily and Saito sat on a bench, waiting for their train home.
“Hey, how about this one? Looks pretty good,” Saito said, holding up his phone.
“A Mc○ employee, huh. It’s close by and the pay’s decent, but I’m scared teachers or acquaintances might show up. Rejected.”
“Eh, well then, how about this Mo○ place?”
“It’s pretty far from school. Too far to commute to every day. Besides, if I think about it, you just want to eat cheap hamburgers, don’t you? Choose properly, without any personal motives.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Today’s topic was part-time jobs. Now that they were in high school and part-time work was allowed, they were eager for some extra cash. They’d been searching for decent job listings together, but it was proving to be a difficult task. The main bottleneck was that their school, Seira High, officially prohibited part-time work. On top of that, their houses were far apart. Finding a place where they wouldn’t be spotted by teachers and that both of them could commute to was a tall order.
Apparently getting bored with the search, Saito had started randomly listing off the names of hamburger shops.
“Actually, I just thought of something,” Lily said. “Can you even handle customer service?”
“…Probably not.”
“Then it’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“We’re done for.”
They’d gotten carried away with the idea of getting part-time jobs, but thinking about it carefully, Saito couldn’t envision the man-hating Lily managing any kind of customer-facing role. Thinking back, the part-time job she’d had in college during their first timeline was strictly desk work, like video editing and advertisement creation—she’d never done a lick of customer service. It seemed their search was doomed from the start.
Putting their phones away, the two of them slumped into a shared melancholy. Just then, an announcement echoed through the platform, heralding the train’s arrival. Lily and Saito stood up from the bench and got in line.
“It’s super crowded, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Should we take the next one?”
“But there was a huge delay at noon, so it’ll probably be like this for a while.”
“You’re right.”
The train that pulled in was so packed it was hard to imagine anyone else could get on, making them hesitate. But a quick check on their phones confirmed there had been an incident earlier, so waiting for the next train likely wouldn’t make a difference.
“We have no choice but to get on.”
“That’s our only option.”
Steeling their resolve, the two decided to board. They bowed their heads to the people standing near the doors and managed to squeeze inside, but it was incredibly tight. The slightest sway of the train caused bags and bodies to bump into each other.
“…Hey, just stay still. Sorry about this,” Saito murmured, seeing Lily’s pained, frowning face. He slipped his body between her and the other passengers, shielding her.
“This should be better, right?”
This isn’t better at all!
It was true that, thanks to Saito protecting her, she was no longer being jostled by the crowd. However, the way he was protecting her was a perfect kabedon. If she moved her face even slightly, their lips might touch. This childhood friend of hers probably thought something like a kabedon wouldn’t matter between them at this point.
Honestly, Lily had thought so too. Until just a little while ago.
A few years back, when she and Saito had taken the train together on a trip, she’d been in a similar situation.
Close, close, close, close, close, close!
But there was one decisive difference between then and now: their height.
A few years ago, Lily had been several centimeters taller than Saito. So even during a kabedon, his face had been roughly at the level of her neck or slightly above her chest, and it hadn’t bothered her much. She had unconsciously assumed the same thing would happen this time.
An ambush from outside her awareness.
Faced with a completely unexpected situation, Lily’s mind went into overdrive. Her body temperature went haywire, and she felt heat rushing to her face at an incredible speed.
—This is bad.
Both reason and instinct screamed that it would be bad if her childhood frie
nd saw her like this. Lily hurriedly turned her face to the side and buried it in Saito’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
“…It’s nothing.”
It’s totally, completely not nothing, though.
She absolutely couldn’t let this brat of a childhood friend catch on. If he found out, he would definitely tease her about it. She desperately wished for her heart, which was beating twice as fast as usual, to calm down, but it wouldn’t listen.
In the end, until the moment Lily got off the train, her heart kept racing, and the heat in her body never subsided.
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