* 11 *
After that, oh, it was awful. I never would have imagined what good influences my girlfriend had on my first life.
Having lost my "goddess of happiness" for my second life, I was as powerless as a vinyl bag in a storm.
For the first month or so, I wanted to believe it was some kind of mistake. Thought Tsugumi must've had some reason to lie to me.
I earnestly believed that soon enough, she'd come tell me "I'm sorry for lying. There were deep circumstances which made me unable to respond to your affections that day, but actually, I love you."
But fifty days passed since my confession, and even I couldn't believe that anymore. It was too late for her to take it back.
It seemed no matter how hard I tried, faithfully recreating the past was impossible from the start.
Why, if I'd known this would happen, I should have just become a prophet.
But it was too late now. Five years had passed since I swam upstream, and my mental and physical ages had mostly realigned.
On a related topic, a life without Tsugumi was so hard to bear that I stopped really trying to listen to lectures after that, putting me down a few notches in academics.
Don't underestimate the effects others can have on you, I mean it.
You might think it's ridiculous that I'd struggle with high school exams with knowledge up to twenty years old.
But hey, you try emptying your head and being stuck back in elementary school for a few years. I think you'll get what I mean then.
Brains are flexible, so any information we deem to be unnecessary is mercilessly tossed out.