“Where are you?”

  “Getting iron, and you?”

  “Hunting.”

  “Please bring meat and mushrooms.”

  “I’ll try.”

  It was Saturday. I finished all the important things I had to do during the day, and Alice finished all the tasks of her work, so we had tons of free time. We used that free time playing one of our favorite online games. But instead of doing anything interesting, we were just collecting objects.

  Farming wasn’t something interesting, so we needed to talk about something else to not get bored. I had some ideas of what we could talk about, but Alice was curious about something that… I wasn’t waiting for.

  “So... What were your couples like?”

  “... Huh?”

  “You know, sometimes you talk about that, but you never elaborate.”

  Alice didn’t seem like the type of person who had interest in love, so this was certainly surprising. She wouldn't tell anyone this, so it was safe to talk about it... Still, I need an answer.

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “I didn’t know relationships could end in friendly ways. I want to know your stories, but I always forget to ask.”

  “Yeah, that happens to me sometimes.”

  “Then, can you tell me?”

  “If that makes this less boring, I could. Which one do you wanna hear first?”

  “Do it in order. I wanna know how your way of ruining relationships evolved.”

  “All right.”

  Five couples was a big number, so I did my best to remember every single detail about them.

  “The first one… was a guy I met when I was fourteen.”

  That guy was a few inches taller than me. He was one of those people who got invited to events, not because he was particularly funny, but because he was easy to talk to.

  “Who gave the first step?”

  “Him. My mentality was a little different when I was younger, so I accepted.”

  “You’re only seventeen though…”

  “We tried to date for a month or two, but we quickly understood that we weren’t the type of the other.”

  “How did you act in that relationship?”

  “I acted as usual. He probably thought I would be reliable and attentive.”

  “You were popular back then?”

  “Yeah, a little for my personality, and mostly for my height.”

  “You're destined to be two meters tall, right?”

  “Please don’t say that, it could become true…”

  “You should accept that tall girls are pretty.”

  “Ahem.”

  Talking about my height embarrassed me, so I rubbed my microphone with a damp cloth, making an annoying noise.

  “Okay! Sorry! sorry!”

  Satisfied with her pain, I tried to remember my second couple, and at the same time, my first girlfriend.

  "I started dating again a year later. It was a girl a year younger than me."

  “Right, you told me that you’re bisexual.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Having variety is good, right?”

  “Yeah, you have more people to disappoint.”

  “...”

  “So, she talked to you first?”

  “We met in the library. She struggled a lot with math, so I explained everything she didn’t understand during her class.”

  “And she fell in love with you?”

  “Yeah, like in a love novel or a manga.”

  I think she was at least fifteen centimeters shorter than me. She got stressed easily in class because she struggled to understand some things, and generally, everything was a struggle for her. She probably only wanted to be my girlfriend because she was much less stressed around me.

  “How was it?”

  “She did the best she could, but we both knew the relationship had no future. She probably just admired me, nothing more.”

  “Like an old woman giving food to a sanctuary?”

  “What kind of example is that?”

  “So, you were the one to break the relationship again?”

  “Correct.”

  “So you're the problem in every single one of them. Good to know.”

  “...”

  “I know you're holding the wet cloth, please put it down.”

  Before starting the torture again, I tossed the cloth. Meanwhile, Alice laughed.

  “So, who was the third one?”

  “It was a girl older than me, and I think the first one I actually liked.”

  “Now I’m interested.”

  “She was a girl who was about to graduate. I met her at the beginning of last year.”

  “Do you like older women?”

  “Kind of. She was cool and pretty. I felt really good about not being the older one.”

  She always had the best answer for everything, her expression was always serene, and she was always ready to comfort anyone who needed it. 'Kindness' would be the only word needed to describe her.

  “If you loved her that much, why did the relationship end?”

  “She quickly saw through me, and understood that I wouldn’t do something to change. That combined with the fact that she was planning to study very far away made her finish our relationship.”

  “How it felt being the one with the heart broken?”

  “I was actually waiting for that. You cannot be disappointed if you already visualize the bad scenarios.”

  “That’s cannot be good for you…”

  “At least it was the most peaceful one. I never told her anything, but we both understood pretty well that we didn’t want to continue the relationship.”

  “"It sounds more like an employment relationship."

  “She would look pretty in a suit.”

  “It's a shame I don't know her face. Anyways, what with the fourth one?”

  “The fourth one… was the most annoying one.”

  Just remembering that made me feel bothered. But Alice wanted to know, so I must explain a bit more.

  “He was a member of the theater club.”

  “Oh yeah, you told me about them.”

  “We’re the same age… But Evan is really scary.”

  “Can you say his name?”

  “He’s not that important to me.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  "... It was almost as if he could read my mind..."

  “You mean…”

  “Yeah. At first he started the relationship because he needed to learn about couples for the club, but he ended up learning too much about me.”

  The relationship was two weeks long, but he deducted almost everything about me. He understood how lonely I feel, how much I lie, he even learned some of my habits.

  He promised not to tell anyone, but about two weeks later I decided I'd rather bite an electrical wire than go out with him. Why? He always predicted what I was going to say, knew how I was going to react, and understood what might upset me...

  I knew the relationship was dead when he said something really hurtful to me.

  "At least he was understanding... But just remembering his tone makes me want to punch something!”

  “Calm down, you will end up punching your microphone.”

  “I… Ugh!”

  “It could be worse, it could be an abusive couple.”

  “At least I didn’t have one like that…”

  I don't know if the worst thing was his attitude or that he actually gave a very good performance thanks to those weeks.

  “And those would be my couples. As you can see, my luck with love is not the best.”

  “If you are the problem, you can’t call it luck.”

  “There’s people worse than me with a couple and sons.”

  “That is totally different.”

  “The point is, I’m actually single. I’m okay without a boyfriend or a girlfriend for a long time. At least I have more time to spend with you.”

  “And that means you will not be a pain for other people for a while.”

  “We may not have kissed even once, but there was affection in almost all of those relationships!”

  “A really superficial affection to… Wait a minute.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Two boyfriends… Two girlfriends… You told me that you had five couples.”

  “... Ah…”

  The fifth one was the one I didn’t like to talk about, so I was trying to not reach that one… I mean, it was the one that made me decide that I didn’t want to be in a romantic relationship ever again.

  “That one… Can we skip it?”

  “It was that bad?”

  “You see, it was the first one that actually hurt.”

  “Damn. Was it even a good relationship?”

  “Well, she was cute, attentive, her smile was like seeing a beautiful painting…”

  “... I see…”

  I was so engrossed in describing her that I didn't even notice my own tone. Alice's reaction made me realize how much I'd been daydreaming.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “Are you jealous? You know you are my only real friend right now.”

  “...”

  “Wait, really? You don't have more online friends?”

  “Shut up. It's just... you usually don’t talk about anyone else with that tone. It was shocking.”

  “I guess good memories only get better with time.”

  “I don’t think that is an old memory."

  “Yeah, our relationship was totally ruined just two weeks before I met you.”

  “Now that I think about it, you were even more rude when we met... Broken hearts are scary…”

  “It never happened to you before?”

  “My most close experience to that was when I discovered that a character I liked had a girlfriend."

  “That happened to me one time.”

  “Okay, tell me.”

  “You really need a conversation topic, right?”

  “The mine is extending too long, I need something to not die by boredom.”

  I don’t know if it was on purpose or she just forgot about it, but I ended up not telling her about how that relationship ended.

  A part of me feels sad because she probably was curious. But, when I remember that day, I can only hate myself.