Best friend Satoru has started dating but why does it bother you so much?
The thing was, you never thought you would be one of those girls.
You had seen them online before. The female best friend who hated every girl her guy best friend talked to. The one who became possessive the second another woman entered the picture. The one who insisted she wasn’t jealous while actively making everybody miserable. You hated those stories. Hated those girls. Every time a video appeared on your feed talking about them, you always found yourself rolling your eyes because honestly, if your friendship was truly platonic, then why would another relationship threaten it? Why would it matter if your best friend started dating someone?
Which was exactly why your current predicament was driving you insane.
Because Satoru Gojo had been your best friend for nearly your entire life, and until recently, you had never questioned a single thing about it.
You had grown up together. There was no dramatic first meeting, no cute story, no significant moment where your lives collided and changed forever. It simply felt as though Satoru had always existed. He was there in your earliest memories, sitting beside you in classrooms, walking beside you after school, showing up at your house uninvited and immediately making himself comfortable. Somewhere along the way, your lives became so deeply intertwined that neither of you bothered separating them anymore. If somebody needed you, there was a good chance Satoru was nearby. If somebody needed Satoru, they usually called you first. It had been that way for years.
People questioned it all the time. Your friends questioned it. Your parents questioned it. Complete strangers questioned it.
The number of times somebody had mistaken the two of you for a couple had long since become impossible to count. Even now, whenever your friend group went out together, somebody inevitably made a joke about the two of you acting like an old married couple. Nanami was particularly ruthless about it. Shoko was worse because she looked genuinely convinced. Suguru simply enjoyed watching both of you get annoyed.
But you and Satoru always laughed it off. Because they didn’t get it.
They didn’t understand that once you knew somebody for that long, romance almost stopped being an option. Satoru wasn’t some mysterious attractive guy who sat across from you in class. He wasn’t somebody you could fantasize about because there was nothing left to fantasize about. You knew everything. You knew how grumpy he became when he was hungry. You knew he secretly cried at animal documentaries. You knew exactly how many cups of coffee it took before he became unbearably hyperactive. You knew every embarrassing story from his childhood and he knew every embarrassing story from yours.
And for the longest time, that explanation had been enough.
Maybe that was why you never felt particularly interested in dating. It wasn’t that you couldn’t. Men approached you often enough, and there had been a handful of relationships throughout the years. A few dates. A few kisses. A few brief situationships that inevitably fizzled out when you realized you would rather spend your Friday night watching movies with Satoru than entertaining somebody else’s attempts at flirting. Looking back, perhaps that should have told you something. The fact that every person you met eventually felt disappointing. The fact that they all seemed exhausting compared to the ease you felt around him. But you never thought too deeply about it because there was no reason to. Your friendship worked exactly as it was.
Until university. Until suddenly everybody else started noticing him too.
Not that Satoru had changed much. That was the irritating part. He was still the same awkward astrophysics nerd who spent twenty minutes explaining black holes whenever somebody made the mistake of asking a simple question. He still forgot where he left things. Still rambled when he got excited. Still looked genuinely confused whenever somebody flirted with him. Yet somewhere between eighteen and twenty, the rest of the world collectively realized that Satoru Gojo was devastatingly attractive.
You noticed it everywhere.
Girls found reasons to sit beside him during lectures. They stopped him after class. They interrupted your conversations. They laughed too hard at his jokes. They touched his arm when they spoke.
They found increasingly ridiculous excuses to spend time around him.
At first, it was funny. Then it became annoying. Then, somewhere along the way, it became something far uglier. Because every time another girl approached him, something unpleasant twisted inside your chest.
You refused to call it jealousy.
Jealousy implied you wanted something. Jealousy implied you had feelings. And you didn’t. You were simply… irritated.
Irritated because people constantly interrupted your time together. Irritated because they treated him like some prize to be won. Irritated because none of them actually knew him.
That explanation worked perfectly. At least until the afternoon Satoru casually informed you that he had a date.
The conversation started innocently enough. You were sitting beneath your usual tree after class, discussing weekend plans the way you always did. You had been talking about the new Marvel movie and suggesting that the two of you book tickets before they sold out when Satoru suddenly looked almost guilty. It was such an unusual expression on him that it immediately caught your attention.
“What?” you asked, narrowing your eyes.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing.”
A sheepish grin appeared.
And somehow, before he even spoke, dread settled into your stomach. “Oh,” he said. “I’m actually busy tonight.”
The words shouldn’t have mattered. People got busy. People had plans. Satoru was allowed to have a life outside of you. So why did your chest feel strangely hollow?
“Oh?” you replied lightly. “Doing what?”
His grin widened. And then he said it.
For one horrifying second, your mind went completely blank.
The words themselves were harmless. Ordinary. The kind of thing people said every day. People went on dates all the time. Your friends went on dates. Strangers went on dates. Satoru, being a twenty-year-old university student who happened to look like he had been sculpted by a particularly generous deity, should have been going on dates far more often than he actually did. There was nothing strange about it.
And yet somehow, the moment the words left his mouth, it felt as though the entire conversation shifted beneath your feet.
Still completely unaware that something inside you had just cracked. “Oh,” you said finally.
It sounded wrong. Even to your own ears. Satoru’s smile faltered slightly.
The silence that followed felt awkward. Nothing had changed. Nothing should have changed. You had known this would happen eventually. Satoru wasn’t going to stay single forever.
He wasn’t going to spend every weekend with you forever. People grew up. People fell in love. People got married and all that shit.
So why did it suddenly feel like somebody was trying to pull something away from you? “Who is she?” you asked.
The question came out too quickly. Too eagerly. Satoru blinked.
“I met her a little while ago.”
Your felt sick. “A little while ago” could mean anything.
Long enough for conversations. Long enough for feelings. Long enough for him to decide she was worth taking on a date. And apparently long enough for him not to tell you. The realization struck harder than it should have.
Because that was stupid. Satoru wasn’t required to report every detail of his life to you. You weren’t entitled to that.
A strange bitterness settled at the back of your throat. “You didn’t tell me.” Satoru looked confused. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
The words lodged themselves somewhere painfully deep. Not a big deal. For years, you had been the first person he told everything to.
Every stupid achievement. Every embarrassing failure. Every ridiculous story. Every insignificant detail.
There had been days where he texted you simply because he saw a cat that looked funny.
And now there was somebody important enough to go on a date with, and somehow you hadn’t known. You hated how much that hurt.
“So now you’re keeping secrets?” you joked. Or at least you tried to make it sound like a joke. Something flickered across his expression. Was it concern?
“Why are you being weird?”
Satoru stared at you for a long moment. Then, slowly, he leaned back against the tree. The concern remained. And somehow that only irritated you more. Because what exactly were you supposed to tell him?
Sorry, Satoru. I’m irrationally upset about a completely normal event and I have absolutely no idea why.
So instead you smiled. The fake kind. The exhausting kind. The kind that made your cheeks hurt and flood bile up your throat. “Seriously,” you said. “Good for you.”
His expression softened. And suddenly guilt punched straight through your chest. Because he looked happy. Genuinely happy. The kind of happy you should have been celebrating as a best friend. The kind of happy that should have made you happy too.
Instead, all you could think about was the image of him sitting across from another girl tonight.
Laughing, smiling, looking at her the way he looked at people he liked. Maybe walking her home afterward. Maybe texting her before bed. Maybe kissing her or having sex…ughh you don’t wanna think about that.
Maybe waking up tomorrow with somebody else occupying the space in his life that had always belonged to you. The thought arrived so suddenly that it stole the air from your lungs. And immediately you hated yourself for it. Because what was wrong with you?
As though some ugly hidden part of you had believed otherwise. You spent the rest of the conversation pretending.
Pretending to listen. Pretending to smile. Pretending that every mention of tonight didn’t feel like a knife being slowly twisted deeper and deeper into your chest.
By the time Satoru finally left, promising he’d tell you how everything went tomorrow, your head was pounding. You watched him walk away. Watched him disappear around the corner. And for the first time in years, the thought of seeing him tomorrow filled you with dread instead of comfort.
Because what if it went well? The question followed you all the way home. What if it went really well? What if she was funny? What if she understood his stupid astrophysics rambles? What if she made him laugh? What if she liked all the little things about him that most people found annoying? What if she became important?
You hope his date goes miserable.
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