What exactly is love?!
In middle school, Shirikawa Mari wondered about love after being influenced by all the romance going on around her.
To figure it out, and because she wanted to experience the heart-fluttering feeling that came with it, Shirikawa Mari asked her childhood friend to pretend to be her boyfriend.
"We'll do everything couples do!"
Her childhood friend, two years older than her, indulged her without complaint and obediently played along.
"Couples have to go to a dessert shop and drink from a cup with two heart-shaped straws!" "Sure."
"Couples have to feed each other!" "Sure."
"Boys have to carry girls' bags!" "Sure."
"Couples have to go to and from school together!" "Sure, sure."
It seemed that what couples did wasn't much different from what they usually did, and Shirikawa Mari didn't feel like she was in love, so she suggested they break up.
"I'm sorry. I never thought we'd end up like this either!"
She was heartbroken and in tears, sitting by the window and getting drunk on soda instead of alcohol.
"Don't be sad. Men aren't worth it." Her childhood friend watched and read his lines flatly.
"Goodbye, my love!" She closed her eyes, tilted her chin up at a forty-five-degree angle, and let a sparkling tear roll from the corner of her eye.
After the Shirikawa family moved, her embarrassment suddenly kicked in at her new school because of a few misunderstandings.
What on earth had she been thinking when she did all that?!
But she was far from Tokyo now, and that embarrassing past was buried along with it.
"Mom and Dad have to go abroad for work, so you'll be staying with the Kuroo family for a while."
Shirikawa Mari, who had thought her dark past would never see the light of day again, felt like the sky had fallen.
Returning to Tokyo was one thing, but did that mean she also had to live under the same roof as the childhood friend who had witnessed every moment of her dark past?!
Theme: Be yourself again!
