Chapter 80: I'm Playing Pretend

**I'm Playing Pretend** is the eightieth Chapter of *Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu*.

## Summary

Ichikawa wakes his sister, asking her if his clothes look okay. She calls his outfit stylish, and as he leaves, asks what time he thinks it is. He heads out, boarding a train for Ebisu, thinking on the invitation that Yamada gave him to come and check out her work. When he gets to his destination, he tells Yamada he has arrived, and she texts back excitedly, but says she's nervous. On his way to the shoot location, he ducks into a shop to buy her a gift, settling on a dog-faced cupcake. He contemplates about how early in the morning it is, and when he gets to the set, he realizes that this means there will be nobody else around. Suddenly feeling naked without the imagined crowd to hide behind as he had envisioned, he ducks behind a tree, eventually spying Yamada wearing a white dress with a pink floral trim at the base. Stunned by the sight, he stares forward until her expression brightens upon seeing him. Another man walks up to Yamada, addressing her as Anna, and saying she looks cute today. Ichikawa goes over the various figures at work, noting how stylish and mature each one seems, and how Yamada herself is part of that world. He glances down at his own outfit, feeling inferior, as the mystery man from before announces that they have Pierre Herme macarons, which Yamada looms hungrily over, but is told by one of the workers that they're for after the shoot. Ichikawa, feeling the weight of inferiority crushing him, runs off.

Finding a makeshift seat out of the metal enclosure around a tree, Ichikawa finds himself deep in conversation with his inner psyche in the form of Nigorikawa, who asks him what's wrong. He looks dejectedly down at the dog cupcake he got at the store, that now has a melted ear, and says that it's feeling as though he's been playing pretend. Nigorikawa reminds him that he said he wanted to know more about Yamada to her face, and Ichikawa responds saying it shouldn't matter to him. He reprimands him, asking if he's running away, and if his feelings are serious, and Ichikawa tells him to go away, which he does just as Yamada runs up to him. He tries to question what she's doing there, falling over his words, and she says that she saw him run off somewhere. He asks about her shoot, and she says it's fine because she made an excuse about having to go to the bathroom. Yamada takes a seat, asking if he's okay, or if he's tired, but he blows off the question, saying he's fine and she can go back. She apologizes, saying this must not be much fun, but he counters, saying that work isn't supposed to be about fun. She says he may be right, but reminds him of when she told him how she took lessons in lots of different things, but was never good at them, and quit them right away, and how it was the same with this job, bringing up various other talents who were prettier or had a better personality than her. She reminds him how he told her about how much she enjoyed her job, and how much that made her happy, and that this was why she wanted him to know about her job. As her phone goes off in her hand, she goes to check it, and he contemplates what will happen if she stays there any longer, and how it could affect the shoot or even get her fired. He contemplates Yamada as a normal student, imagining them as they are standing by the tree but in their normal uniforms, but suddenly grabs her hand and races her back to the shoot location, punctuating the dash back by thinking he wouldn't like her as much.

The mysterious man walks up to them, commenting that she had been gone a while. Ichikawa tries to break their hand contact, but she holds firmly, despite his protests. The man continues advancing, asking if he's a friend, but saying that isn't quite what it seems like.

A bonus page is Ichikawa trying on the new shirt he got at Right-On, and also trying on various coats.

## Trivia

This is the first proper appearance of Yuki Suwa, Yamada's manager, though he was referenced way back in Chapter 15 and in Chapter 35.