Adachi to Shimamura - Volume 2 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Earnest Boobs

I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what Shimamura's chest was like. 
It was there, in that sentence, that you could see the true nature of my affection towards her. 
Only ten minutes had passed since the beginning of the new year, yet my thoughts had already found their way to Shimamura's chest. Still, even though thinking about this might have seemed like a joke, it was actually a big deal to me. 
Did I want to see Shimamura's chest? 
It went without saying, but I had never seen her naked. As I didn't participate in any of the sports classes where we had to swim, the same was also true for her in a swimsuit. I was left to ask myself: Did I want to see that? 
"Hmm..." 
Sitting on top of my bed, my finger pressed against my forehead, I thought about it earnestly. I wonder, if you were to ask Shimamura to guess what I was doing ten minutes after our phone call, would it even cross her mind that I was thinking about her chest? My assumption was that it wouldn't. 
For some strange reason, I could pick out each individual tick and tock of the clock on the wall. It was the same one I'd been staring at moments before the year changed. 
I imagined Shimamura. Then, I removed her jacket. I already hated myself for doing this. What was I, some kind of pervert? Regardless of those feelings, I kept going. I took off the top half of her school uniform, leaving only her bra on. Its colour and design was based on the one time I'd gotten a glimpse of it before she had switched to wearing winter clothes. Green and—no, those sorts of details didn't matter. The problem was, did I want to remove her bra and take a look inside, at her breasts. 
Ignoring for a second whether I thought it was wrong or not, I did feel that my affection towards Shimamura fell under the umbrella of "love". In that case, it really was a problem. Probably even a massive problem, if you were to ask my parents. I was sure that Shimamura would feel repulsed as well if I were to ask her to let me touch her chest. All things considered, it was easy to see why I wanted to distance myself from those sorts of things if at all possible. 
Why had I gone for this thorough analysis then? Good question. 
Honestly, it felt a little anticlimactic. This was it? Really? I'd been way calmer than I had thought I'd be. 
I felt no reluctance, nothing that could be classified as not wanting to see them. At the same time, I couldn't find the urge that would make me take the initiative. Putting aside the fact that her breasts weren't really asserting themselves all that much, if I did truly hunger for them, I would've been staring at them non-stop. 
And yet, I didn't do that. Probably. No, definitely. 
All things considered, I was surprisingly normal, wasn't I? It was only the past me that had been weird, and I felt relieved knowing that. 
I didn't look at Shimamura that way. Back first, I lay down on the bed and stretched out my body. 
The boomerang I'd placed on my shelf as a trophy caught my attention. Staring at it, I couldn't help but grin. 
A strange sense of freedom filled me. My affection for Shimamura was pure. I loved her as a person, as simple as that. In that case, there was no need to feel anxious about what other people thought, was there? I felt optimistic. I then thought back to our phone call, and as I did, a smile formed on my face. 
"The way she wished me good night... That felt good." 

I wasn't sure why, but those words had soaked right into my soul. It was to the point that I wanted to hear them every single night. 
Of course, we shouldn't forget about the way she had suddenly praised my thighs. That whole thing had really shaken me. I got up and touched my legs through my pyjamas. If she really thought they were fine the way they were, then all I should work on was maintaining the status quo. Don't add anything, don't take anything away. While that was a good guideline, the question still remained as to how, exactly, did I make sure that nothing changed. Should I perhaps measure the diameter of my thighs? No, but... 
I turned to lie on my stomach and buried my face into the pillow. Even if I were to do this with Shimamura's breasts, plunge into them face-first, with the current me, that wouldn't pose a problem. Why? Because I was... normal... 
"...My face? Her chest?" 
My face... Against her breasts... 
I sprung up. The world around me looked like it was shaking, and so did the pillow. I felt dizzy. 
What the hell had that been? Feelings of embarrassment filled me, and my cheeks grew hot, hot enough to make my head hurt. How had that been related to anything? 
"Huh? Huh?" 
Pressing my hand against my face, I found myself baffled. Why was I feeling so warm? The indoor heating wasn't even on. 
One more time, I imagined myself face to face with Shimamura. She was wearing her school uniform, the winter one. I wasn't going to undress her this time. Instead, I turned my eyes towards the small mounds near her chest and brought my face close to them. Shaking intensely, I pulled my head back right as I was about to land between them. In a similar way, the real me had also butt-stomped onto the bed. The contents of my head felt like they were boiling. If I had a spout for releasing steam, no doubt would it be shooting it out right now. 
"That's... not..."  

Obviously, I didn't know what her breasts felt like. I'd never touched them, after all. If I was forced to say, I guess the sensation was similar to how it felt when I washed myself. Not that I'd ever put any thought into that. That was all to say, it had been purely my imagination that had caused me to react in this way. But why? I was meant to be normal. 
This time, instead of bringing my face close, I reached for them with my hands. Even though this wasn't real, even though I was just imagining her, I still found myself closing my eyes tight as my hands came into contact with Shimamura's breasts. For a moment, I simply bounced up and down, still sitting. That caused dust to float up into the air, and as I stared up through it, I felt like I had reached some sort of an understanding. 
It wasn't just my face. No, touching them with any part of my body was bad. 
"Bad"? Hmm... No, it was bad. Definitely. 
In conclusion, this overreaction meant that while I didn't have any particular desire to see them, I did want to touch them? Wait... What? 
"What the hell is this!?" I yelled to myself while gripping my head. There was nothing normal about that. No, it was weird. A massive problem. 
I really wish I would've stopped my search at the initial conclusion. Instead, I'd gotten carried away and ended up exploring a whole new direction, an unknown direction. Still, it had just been my mind playing tricks on me, and come tomorrow, none of that would matter anymore. Right? 
I'd proclaimed that I was normal, only for this to happen. Then, I'd gotten myself all worked up for no particular reason. 
I guess this was what they meant when they said "many go out for wool and come home shorn". 
"If I was forced to say... I guess I'm digging my own grave?" 
I'd made a hole in the wall and celebrated getting out, only to realise that I was still within the prison. 
There was something that my mental agonies and Shimamura shared: I simply couldn't let go of them.