CH 163

[A Surprising Offer]

“I think… he’s angry at me for hiding the fact that I’m a girl from all this time…” Jarvis said, her shoulders slumped.

Tayte desperately comforted her “Surely not. You know he isn’t that kind of person”.

I also chimed in.

I mean, I knew the truth.

The reason Andrei was avoiding Jarvis was that he was in love with her.

Only, this situation in which his longtime male friend turned out to be a girl and he fell in love with her perplexed Andrei.

After all, he was a serious, or should I say, a straight-laced person. He seemed to find it unacceptable that he fell in love with Jarvis as soon as he found out that she was a girl.

But Jarvis said that she saw Andrei as a brother.

In other words, she didn’t see him as a potential romantic partner.

Of course, that wasn’t to say that Andrei had no chance of changing her view of him from ‘brother to boyfriend’.

If Andrei were able to overcome that wall and tell Jarvis his feelings…

“Barrett? What’s wrong?”

“! N-no, it’s nothing.”

Not good.

I fell into deep thoughts again… I’d better change the subject.

“This is just my speculation, but… I think Andrei is just confused.”

“Confused?”

“He’s known you for a long time and he sees you as one of, if not, his closest male friend. But all of a sudden, he learned that you’re actually a girl. I’m pretty sure anyone would react the way he does if they were in his position.”

I actually almost call her a ‘pretty girl’, but I stopped myself before I could because Tayte was here.

Well, knowing Tayte, she wouldn’t mind, but no one would be happy to hear their partner compliment someone of the opposite sex of their looks.

“R-really?”

“There’s also a proper distance that has to be maintained between men and women. I think it’ll take time for you two to get back as close as you used to.”

The original Barrett was quite a skirt chaser, but if I was being honest, I was always nervous when talking to girls. While I might seem able to talk normally to girls, like when I was talking to Tayte’s friend Cornell and the class president Kleine, I was, in fact, inwardly nervous the whole time.

Andrei was probably the same type as me. The type whose communication skills dropped markedly when conversing with girls. It made me feel a sense of comradeship with him.

Well, putting that aside, my task now was to start changing the way Jarvis saw Andrei.

I had to make her see Andrei not as a brother, but as someone of the opposite sex.

After I came to that conclusion, however, Jarvis surprisingly started speaking.

“Uhm.”

“Hm?”

“There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about, but I hope it stays between just the three of us…”

It seemed she was going to tell us a secret.

I glanced at Marina.

Marina, guessing my signal, promptly left the room. Really, she was very competent.

Anyway, that left just me, Tayte, and Jarvis in the room.

Now then, what was she going to tell us?

“Actually… I’ve received an offer.”

“An offer?”

“Yeah. From the Fontana family. They would like to adopt me into their family.”

““Huh?!””

My voice and Tayte’s overlap.

Wouldn’t that mean… she and Andrei would become real siblings?!