Envious of a Bunny Girl

There are very few places in the world where you can walk into a large room and see a crowd of people watching a Japanese girl wearing bunny ears and a frilly dress sing and dance in a manner of adorableness that should be illegal. An anime convention is one of those places. Anything goes at these things, honestly, so seeing her there didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the intense jealousy that suddenly roused within me as I watched her.

I was standing between my boyfriend dressed as Ryuuji from Toradora and some 40-year-old man dressed as Ash from Pokemon. Both of them were staring at this girl like idiots, which annoyed me because it's not like my boyfriend had never seen a cute girl in his life. Hell, we were dressed as one of the most adorable anime couples in recent years and I looked damn good as Taiga if I do say so myself.

It was like this even before we started dating. He would gawk and dote after some hot little thing that would only pat him on the head and say, "You're a great friend!" Meanwhile, I'd pretend not to notice and then secretly cry in my dark pit of despair known as LiveJournal. It was the same thing for years--you'd think I'd have given up on him after the first hundred times, but emotions have this annoying tendency to stick around despite things like logic and reality.

What made things worse was when he asked me to help him get this one girl. I don't know where he got the idea that I was any good at this stuff. He only saw me as someone to come crying to every time he was put in the friend-zone, so how could I possibly help him win the affections of his latest sweetheart? The fact that I liked him only made it ten times worse.

One of the funny things about being an anime fan is that sometimes you watch a series and then your life starts reflecting it. In my case, Toradora was becoming a reality. The set-up was similar--a guy and a girl teaming up to get their crushes to like them--except I had a crush on my teammate instead of some other guy. The very illogical and needlessly hopeful side of me thought that things would play out like they do in the series. Eventually, the main characters fall for each other and get over their other crushes. I had to keep reminding myself that reality doesn't work that way.

And yet, there we were six months later at an anime convention, watching some Japanese bunny girl dance and sing in front of a large crowd. He had that same dumb look on his face that he wore whenever one of the many girls who turned him down walked by. It was like I wasn't even there. I was probably overreacting, but a part of me felt like he just settled with me. Of course, I'd give up too if I got rejected that many times--well, I guess I did technically, except it was all by the same person. Still, feeling like the default sucked. I couldn't recall ever grabbing his attention like that.

So I finally admitted it to myself. As pathetic as it was, I was jealous of a foreign girl dressed in cute clothes who I would likely never see again. It was a very sad day for my pride, but I had to own up to it.

Suddenly, he grabbed my hand and looked at me with a goofy wide smile and a blush tinting his cheeks. "You would look so good in that!"

I stared at him blankly with my mouth slightly open.

"What, you don't like it?"

"N-no! I do, but it's just--I didn't expect you to say that."

The song ended and the Japanese girl took a bow as everyone applauded. As the crowd dispersed, he put his arm around my waist and we quickly walked away before we got stuck in traffic. All the anxiety left me completely and I hardly noticed anything else around me.