Our often-single reporter gets a startling surprise from his girlfriend, and eats something he’s never had before.

On Valentine’s Day, it’s not unusual to feel your heart beating faster from a mixture of nervous energy and anticipated romance. However, what we were feeling was actual worry, and it was because of our coworker Seiji.

In Japan, it’s guys who receive gifts of chocolate on Valentine’s Day, but Seiji hasn’t had the most active love life. In years past, he’d sometimes spend Valentine’s Day hanging out in front of Shibuya Station with a sign, begging for someone to give him some sweets, but the last time he tried that he got ran off by the cops, so that plan was out of the question this year.

▼ Seiji soliciting Shibuya sweets

As an alternative, we thought that maybe Seiji, an ardent anime enthusiast, would show up on the streets of Akihabara, where stores were passing out cards and chocolates ostensibly from the female casts of popular otaku-oriented franchises. But he wasn’t there either, and maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised, since this year he actually has a girlfriend, so he was probably spending it with her, right?

But then we got a message from Seiji, in which he wrote:

“I want to die.”

Luckily, Seiji wasn’t actually dead, so we asked him for more details. After finishing work on Valentine’s Day, he went home. Having never really had a romantic Valentine’s Day (his personal best was when a former girlfriend grudgingly bought him some chocolate at the convenience store they happened to be walking past and unceremoniously handed it over to him), he’d decided to try to treat February 14 this year like any other day, so when he went home and walked in the door, he wasn’t at all emotionally prepared for what his girlfriend had left lying on his desk, and it shocked him to his core.

It was a complete bolt from the blue…or, more accurately, a bolt in brown. It was…

…a chocolate cake, made from scratch by his loving girlfriend, Mimi.

▼ And we’re not just saying “loving girlfriend” to sound poetic, since she actually wrote “I ♡ YOU” on the cake.

Not only was the cake homemade, Mimi even decorated it with a cute drawing of a Welsh Corgi, Seiji’s favorite breed, and enlisted the help of the pooch’s ample and round backside in delivering the amorous message.

Though he’s 36 years old, this was the very first time a girl had ever made Valentine’s day sweets for Seiji. “At that moment, I thought ‘This is probably the happiest I’ll ever feel,’ he says. “I’ll probably never be happier than this, so if I died right there I’d be going out on top.”

However, Seiji soon realized he had much to live for, starting with, naturally, eating the cake that his girlfriend had made for him.

At this point we should remind everyone that one perk of working for SoraNews24 is periodically getting paid to eat desserts. So what did Seiji think of Mimi’s cake-cooking capabilities?

“It was more delicious than the chocolate from any fancy, famous patissier.”

As always, love is the best-tasting ingredient. “I have to always show my appreciation to my girlfriend, not just in words, but in action, and the way I live my life,” said Seiji, who’d become deeply philosophical while digesting the dessert.

So congratulations, Seiji, and don’t forget that White Day, the day when guys in Japan are supposed to give gifts to girls, is coming up on March 14.

Photos ©SoraNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’d like to thank his wife for her homemade chocolate.