The Reason Why She Can't Smile

Kanako is an outsider at school, friendless and dismissed by her classmates as a downer. She was once a cheerful, outgoing girl who loved to smile, until Eiji—the younger brother of her tutor and one of her classmates—told her she looked “fugly” when she smiled. Eiji moved away soon afterward, but Kanako took his words to heart, and no one has seen her smile in two years. Now he has returned to town, and Kanako faces the prospect of seeing him again.