7:21 P.M.
I stared blankly at the seat in front of me.
To my side, Ushio was doing much the same.
It was now six full hours past our original ETA.
And we’d been on this bus for nearly half a day.
Long enough for both of us to feel like zombies.
With more than eleven hours down the drain, I wasn’t even thinking about having a good time, or how we were going to overwrite the bad memories, or anything like that anymore. All Ushio and I cared about at this point was getting the hell off this bus as soon as possible. Everything else felt utterly trivial by comparison. Spending such an exorbitant amount of time in transit was enough to break the psyche of even the strongest of people.
I stood up, stepped out into the aisle, and arched my aching back. My joints sounded so brittle as they popped, you’d think my entire body had begun to rust over. More than anything, it was my morale that had taken the biggest hit after sitting still for so long without moving a muscle or saying a word.
“You, uh…remember how they used to play Doraemon movies on the bus rides home from elementary school field trips?” I asked, plumbing the depths of my brain for literally any conversation topic.
“Yeah, I remember,” said Ushio.
“And how they’d have that teeny-tiny monitor near the middle of the bus so the people sitting in the back could see? It would slide out from that little side compartment where it was hidden and into the center of the aisle, like, ‘vreeeem!’ Man, I always thought those things were so cool. Like some kinda TV from the future.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Do you have a favorite Doraemon movie, or nah?”
“Sakuma, please. You don’t have to force yourself to talk to fill the silence,” said Ushio, not even bothering to look over at me. “I’m not even annoyed or anything, there’s just no point. Like…why waste your breath?”
Okay, yeah, I give up. She clearly wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat. Forcing a conversation would probably make her even grumpier; better to just stop now while I was ahead and shut the hell up.
“…Looks like we’re not making it home today, are we?” said Ushio.
“Yeah, probably not.”
She looked over at me, visibly annoyed. “So what do you want to do about Cape Soya?”
“We should still check it out, at least. If we don’t do that, it’ll be like there wasn’t even a point in us coming all this way.”
“I mean, was there ever going to be?” Ushio gently closed her eyes and rubbed her stomach, saying under her breath, “Ugh, I’m so hungry…”
This wasn’t the time to fixate on whether she was having a good time or not; her basic bodily needs weren’t even being met. But there was literally nothing I could do about it, which made me feel utterly pathetic. Powerless. Weak. And then one by one, all of the negative thoughts and insecurities I’d been suppressing came rushing to the surface and overflowed—like someone had pulled the cork on my bottled-up emotions.
“God, what am I even doing…?” I muttered, chastising myself. “Feel like I don’t even deserve to be your friend anymore at this rate, let alone your boyfriend.”
Ushio twitched, then opened her downcast eyes with a sigh. “Stop saying stuff like that. I know you’re just putting yourself down because you want me to reassure you, and I’m not falling for it.”
“No, I mean it… I feel like I’ve lost every last shred of self-confidence I had.”
“Oh, is that right? Well, suit yourself, I guess.”
She didn’t yell at me, nor call me pathetic—she just completely shrugged me off. This struck me as unusually cold for her (even though I knew I was kind of asking for it). Or maybe she didn’t have enough energy left to formulate a more tactful response… In which case, this might actually be a good opportunity to share some of the more vulnerable thoughts I’d been having about us. If she didn’t have the energy to think too hard right now, then I might get an honest, unfiltered response.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do intimate stuff with you, for the record,” I said. “It’s more like…I just can’t make myself feel the urge to, if that makes sense.”
Ushio didn’t say anything.
“And so, yeah… I don’t really know what to do about it.”
“I mean, I’m just as lost here as you are,” replied Ushio. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place if it were an easy problem to solve.”
It seemed my intuition was correct; it sounded like she was willing to speak frankly with me about these kinds of subjects right now. I figured I might even be able to get away with pushing the envelope a little further.
“I wonder if I can, like…learn to be more sexually attracted to you, y’know?”
Ushio whipped her head around to glare at me.
Aw, crap… Okay, yeah. Way too far. Not sure what I expected.
“Don’t say that to my face, you idiot…” she grumbled.
She was so right, I didn’t even bother trying to backpedal; all I could say was sorry. Ushio pressed her cheek against the window as if trying to cool her flushed skin at least a little bit. Honestly, it was awfully warm in the heated cabin of the bus.
“You say you want to be ‘more’ sexually attracted to me,” she said. “Does that mean you are, at least a little bit?”
Her face was still pressed against the window, and her voice was fairly even, so I couldn’t tell what state of mind she was asking this question from. I figured I should answer honestly rather than try to think up some strategic play.
“Mmm… I think it’s less of an overall sexual attraction thing and more just that I find certain things about you and behaviors of yours, well…sexy, I guess?”
“Like what?” Ushio instantly replied, practically cutting me off.
“Like, when you have your hair up and I can see the back of your neck, or when you wear those black tights under your skirt, or the smell of your hair…”
“Ew, gross…”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to know!”
Ushio’s shoulders quivered for a moment, as though she was chuckling softly through her nose. The tips of her ears were bright red, but I still couldn’t see her face, so I assumed she might be trying to conceal her embarrassment. These sorts of girly mannerisms of hers were the things I really did find cute about her. Though it wasn’t long before that redness faded, and her shoulders began to droop.
“But I guess my body’s just a bridge too far, huh…?” she said.
This was it: that same bottomless rift I’d felt between us back in Otaru. She was sitting in the seat right next to me—in this tiny, shared pocket of warmth safe from the elements all around us—yet somehow, she felt light-years away. Like there was nothing I could possibly do to reconcile that divide. But even knowing it was futile, I still felt compelled to reach out a hand and try to touch her.
“Ushio, I—”
Just then, a little announcement chime rang out over the bus’s intercom, and the driver took his microphone in hand.
“Attention, all passengers. We will be arriving at our destination shortly.”