Unlike a Comic

It’s getting darker earlier but at least there are less bugs now when I wait. The station is completely open so it’s boiling and mosquito infested in the summer and freezing in the winter. I just missed the train into the city so I have to wait. I take out my phone and email Nori-chan that I’ll be late. She sends me an email back full of emoji* and it makes me smile. We continue mailing each other while I wait for the train. She just makes my frustration evaporate. Even though I’m nervous around her, I’m still really at ease with her if that makes any sense.
That’s how I know I want to marry her. I mean, I know it’s a given as long as we continue to date without problems that I’ll ask her to marry me. The problem is I think I was ready to ask her after we’d been dating a week. We’d been friends for a bit longer but I’d always liked her. It didn’t feel like we’d only been dating a week. I even think about the wedding sometimes but I know it’s not really something a guy’s supposed to do. What can I say, I’m a young man in love. Though I’m self conscious about my love. I haven’t told her that I’m in love with her because I’m not in high school anymore. I also fdon’t live in a shojo manga comic but that’s blantantly clear to anyone who’s heard me try to be smooth. I really just want to know how to say the right thing. Everytime I think I’m going to finally say it, when she looks up at me so expectantly, my tongue feels like it takes up my whole mouth and I’ve suddenly forgotten how to speak Japanese. Maybe I need a phrasebook like the tourists at Starbucks have. I need a menu of phrases I can read off and point to and hope that she’ll know what I mean.
I’m pretty sure she does but that doesn’t make it any less annoying that I can’t bring my mouth to form the words “daisuki desu”*. It was hard enough to bring myself to say “suki ja”* Sometimes I practice in the mirror. I have a sticker of us on the mirror and I practice saying it over and over. It gets easier as I say it, puffing my chest out, trying different voices. But it still never quite sounds like me. Considering how hard it is to say it I suspect that if the characters in the managa were real people they must just spit it out. Or they’re a lot smoother than me. I wish I had a girl mangaka who would write my dialogue for me. I mean, if I can’t even say it how am I ever going to ask her to marry me?
I mean I can imagine that I do it in this smooth fashion on Christmas eve. I take her to her favorite restaurant. I have the ring, it’s perfect. It’s not too big, she doesn’t like really big jewelry. It’s just right for her hand. As we’re finishing the perfect course of the perfect meal I slide the ring over and ask her if she will stay with me forever. It all comes so easily in my head. It’s always easier to decide what words I want to say than to actually say them. I don’t think I could be that smooth in reality. Plus in my fantasy I use the word perfect too much which distracts from how perfect it would actually be.
But I want things to be perfect because to me, she is perfect. Even things she considers to be hideous flaws, like the freckle on her check or the fact that no matter how much cream she uses, she’s still tan. It’s not that I don’t see these things it’s that I don’t care about htem because they’re her, and…I love her. There, I said it. But it’s still just in my head to an imaginary audience while I wait for the Kabe line that goes towards Hiroshima City to come. So naturally it doesn’t count. I wonder if she likes the fact that I tumble over my words around her.
Nah, girls only want kakkoi* guys so I’m fairly confident in one thing: that she thinks I’m a doofus. But as I read her email I wonder, if maybe I’m lucky and she actually does find my clumsiness endearing. Maybe, she even loves me too.
Daisuki desu: Love. You can also use this for things you really like. It’s a less strong way of saying “I love you” (the strong way is aishiteru, in case you’re curious)
Suki ja: Like. Suki is the adjective for like and “ja” is subbed in for “da”(informal desu) in Hiroshima-ben. It makes you sound manly.
Manga- comics
Mangaka- the person who draws and writes manga
Kakkoi- cool.
On one of my visits to Mitaki I saw this guy waiting for the train into the city. He started off really tense but gradually relaxed and sank in his seat as he looked at something on his phone. I mean for all I know he could have been reading 2-chan but he looked a bit like a more Japanese version of Marten from Questionable Content. He also had a very relaxed expression on his face so he must have been reading something happy. So because I like Marten I decided he was looking at an email from his Japanese Dora. Though once I sat down to write his voice isn’t really Marten’s at all which is good because plagruism is bad.