After breaking up, my ex asked me to win her back

Once upon a time, there was a girl born into a wealthy family.

She was naturally blessed with a beauty praised by all, a powerful background, and yet it seemed the gods were still not satisfied, unreasonably endowing her with talents equal to her looks.

She wanted to learn piano, she mastered the piano.

She wanted to learn dance, she mastered dance.

She wanted to learn acting, she mastered acting.

She wanted to improve her academic performance, she easily reached the top of her class.

Praise and adoration from others, awards from competitions, she had never lacked these things in her life thus far.

No matter what she did, she could succeed; it was as if she had been cursed with this ability.

The reason it's called a curse, rather than a blessing, is because the ease with which she achieved success soon numbed her senses, making her indifferent to everything for a time.

If she could succeed at anything, then doing nothing was also an option, right?

Once this thought occurred to her, she stopped moving forward, stopped making progress.

That was until she went to Bunkyo Public Middle School and met a boy in the Drama Club named Kagura Hikaru.

In the club, Kagura Hikaru was not only an actor but also a scriptwriter; many of the club's highly praised original scripts were born from his hands.

Some even jokingly gave him the grandiose nickname 'Tokyo Shakespeare.'

But his talent in scriptwriting couldn't overshadow his acting ability; he was the strongest male actor in the entire Drama Club.

According to him, he joined because of a friend and had no prior experience in acting.
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Yet Kagura Hikaru clearly achieved high success in a very short time, and every day he improved at an astonishing rate that made it obvious it wasn't a fluke.

The girl quickly realized that he was the same kind of person as her.

Someone naturally gifted with extraordinary talent.

Upon realizing this, she quickly decided she wanted to become friends with him.

At the very least, she wanted to find out how he dealt with the emptiness that came with talent.

Their first encounter was a success, and it was great that he was a kind person.

They quickly became friends, and along with them, a lovely young lady named Kiryu Hina, whose acting talent was also high, though not to that extent and was still within the realm of ordinary people.

The three of them grew closer and closer, nearly always together whenever they were free.

The girl achieved her initial goal and discovered the method to dispel the sense of emptiness—creating friendships.

During her elementary school years, she was often taken by her parents to perform around the world, showing off her prodigy status, leaving her with little opportunity to interact with her peers for long periods.

Only now did she understand why friendship was precious.

As long as friends were around, even the most boring times could be sufficiently enjoyable. Sharing fun things together was happier than being alone.

Why hadn't she noticed before—having friends of the same mind was so important.

This blissful time continued until Kagura Hikaru and Kiryu Hina shyly told her in her presence that they were dating.

Dating? Aren't you guys friends, why can you date?

Under their puzzled looks, the girl realized she had asked a silly question.

At that time, with her scant knowledge of romantic relationships, she thought that dating between boys and girls was a union through confessions between two people who liked each other.

She had always thought that you could only progress gradually from being pure friends to dating partners and that the two were separate.

It was at that time that a seed was planted.

After Kagura Hikaru and Kiryu Hina began dating, the time the three spent together decreased a bit.

Although they didn't exclude the girl from their company, as a couple, they naturally needed some private time together.

The girl knew inwardly that this was normal, and outwardly she expressed her understanding, supporting their romance.

However, if she had to tell the truth, she wished that their relationship had never happened, would never happen, and that the three of them would always be together as friends.

If it were so, she wouldn't feel lonely.

But seeing the happiness of Kiryu Hina and Kagura Hikaru, she couldn't voice these thoughts.

Is dating someone really that great?

Gradually, the girl began to think this way.

She also wanted to try having a boyfriend.

But, fortunately or unfortunately, she failed.

The number of boys who confessed to her at school wasn't really that high—it seemed that everyone was being considerate of something.

And those few who truly extended an invitation to date, she didn't find any of them appealing.

It wasn't that they weren't good enough; some of them were quite promising, and there were those whose looks and abilities were well above the standard.

But once they were compared with Kagura Hikaru, they were nothing.

Looks, personality, abilities, talent—none could match him.

Soon, the girl realized she had set her sights too high, always comparing those boys to someone like Kagura Hikaru, it was an endless cycle.

After all, she had lived for over a decade and only met one male of his kind, to meet another like him, equally handsome, equally outstanding, and who was also not in a relationship with someone else... the chances were probably too slim to see.

But why compare them to Kagura Hikaru?

Was it so that if they weren't similar to him, they wouldn't do?

Or was it that deep down, she subconsciously felt it had to be him if she were to fall in love?

It was at this time the girl knew she had truly fallen in love.

Only the object of her affection was terribly unsuitable—he was her friend's lover.

It was the worst beginning imaginable.

She thought about giving up, agonized, agonized.

And in the end, she gave up agonizing.

The girl started to try looking at the problem from another angle.

If Kagura Hikaru and Kiryu Hina had advanced from being purely friends to a dating couple,

Then couldn't she do the same?

So, on an afternoon like this one, with the sun shining brightly in the summer sky, beneath the school's cherry trees, the girl said to him:

"I like you, please date me."

That was the beginning of everything, the root of it all.

Starting with Kagura Hikaru's astonished rejection, everything became uncontrollable.

Day by day, the girl watched the boy she liked show affection to his girlfriend, knowing full well that it was natural, something to be congratulated, yet jealousy uncontrollably grew within her.

She wanted to restrain herself but lacked the experience to do so.

From childhood to adulthood, she never had to tolerate anything.

Because the things she wanted but could not have were very, very few.

Even if her parents couldn't provide them temporarily, she knew that someday she would be able to obtain them with her abilities.

But Kagura Hikaru was different.

How to win his heart was the one thing the girl couldn't do, and didn't know how to do.

This one-sided affection, through endless entanglement and agony, slowly took a turn no one could have predicted.

Finally, on the night of the ninth-grade school trip, the devil inside the girl was unleashed, and she spread malice against her own friend.

She took a photo as if possessed.

Using her identity as both a girl and a friend, she secretly took a full-body photo of Kiryu Hina bathing.

Using that photo, she got her wish, and at last, she and Kagura Hikaru became a couple.

Maybe it was a feigned guilt, or perhaps she just wanted to bully her friend and romantic rival; the girl herself didn't know,

In any case, she didn't break up Kagura Hikaru and his girlfriend but secretly dated him behind the scenes.

That is commonly known as cheating.

The complexity of human nature lies here.

The girl regarded both Kagura Hikaru and Kiryu Hina as important to her yet simultaneously did something excessive, deeply hurting the two who were originally her friends.

On that white Christmas night, her deeds were exposed, thus ending their friendship.

It was more than a year later that the girl, Kohinata Motoyo, returned to Tokyo and once again used that photo against Kagura Hikaru.

"Let's start over, Kagura. I'll make you happy," said Kohinata Motoyo, her face serious.

With an innocent and pure face, she uttered a line akin to that of a TV drama's final confession scene.

Dragging Kagura Hikaru into an even deeper abyss.