Gingerly, I asked, “Uh…do you guys not get along?”
“No, what makes you say that? I treat her no differently than I do anyone else.”
“You’re not wrong, but that’s not what I meant.”
Satsuki-san didn’t say anything. Instead, she glared at me for being so quick to agree with her. Excuse me? Who in their right mind wouldn’t agree with Satsuki-san? It wasn’t my fault she was catty to everybody!
“But thanks for the lifeline,” I added. “I was hoping to stick around and do a little more schoolwork before I went home. So this works out better for me.”
Satsuki-san, on the other hand, was all ready to go. Bag in hand and everything.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “But I am concerned for your little sister. I’ll be in the area as it is, so while I’m there, I’m thinking of dropping by your house.”
“Oh. Okay.”
So Satsuki-san and I left together.
On any other day, this would be the part where I would muse something like, You know, it’s a relief to have a good pal like you. Except it wasn’t. Not in the slightest. Satsuki-san made me nervous. Even if she was my very best friend in the whole wide world, she scared the pants off me. There were besties and, well…there’s Satsuki-san. She was kind of a category all to herself.
I needed to make things feel more casual. Somehow. Anyhow. There had to be a w—
Just then, Satsuki-san mentioned offhand, “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to help you. I simply can’t focus on my studies when your sister is on my mind. And I certainly didn’t come running to your rescue when I heard Terusawa’s voice.”
“Wha—oh, okay. Whatever you say.” Like a fish all too eager to be on the hook, I leapt to take the bait: a new topic of conversation. “Yeah, you’d never come help me out of the goodness of your heart, right? As if! Don’t worry. Sure, I sometimes entertain the wild notion that you’re, like, super kind at times. A literal angel. But I know that deep down you’re just strict and nasty and awful to everyone. Especially yourself. You seem like the kind of person who would speak up in kindergarten story time and say, ‘Momotaro should take the treasure all for himself and let those weak villagers get murdered by the ogres. Survival of the fittest. That’s how the world works, to my mind. How else are we to interpret the cruel law of the jungle?’”
Satsuki-san kicked the back of my knee.
“Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”
She walked right on past me, her black hair fluttering behind her. “What are you stopping for? Keep moving, Amaori.”
I trailed behind Satsukick-san in fear as she powerwalked to the train station, regaling her with the story of what went down when Ajisai-san came to my house.
“My, how fascinating,” she said. But she didn’t look very fascinated. She looked like her usual unfazed self. “It appears Sena’s concern for other people’s feelings has backfired on her.”
“Huh. Now that you mention it, I guess it has.”
“You’d be hard pressed to find a better person to turn to for general advice. However, I fear she struggles to make people open up when they don’t want to talk to begin with. She may make a good priest, but she’s no heart surgeon.”
I didn’t quite follow that last part, but she had me in the first half. Maybe she was right. Satsukick-san didn’t seem to care about my sister, but something told me she really did want to help. I appreciated it, honest.
“Satsukick-san, you sure do have an eye for people,” I told her.
She paused for one horribly awkward moment before asking, “In what sense?”
“Nothing bad! It’s just, I thought Ajisai-san would be able to make everything all right. I never considered it might be a struggle for her until you said that.”
I remembered what Satsukick-san told me last summer vacation: “Look beyond the version of her you made up in your head.” In some sense, maybe I was still fixated on that imaginary image. And you know what? It really sucked when people pressured you to try things you couldn’t do. Maybe it wasn’t fair for me to put all this on Ajisai-san. And then there was that bit, I added to myself, when she got huffy and slapped me. Did I cause that? Me?
“How astute of you to notice,” Satsukick-san said. “I see you’ve grown.”
“You think?”
“Sure. Or at the very least, here’s my opinion: I think it’s best to know the undesirable or hidden portions of someone’s personality. You can still be friends with them, and it even brings you closer together. That’s how it is with family, you know. You forgive each other’s faults.”
Huh. That was some deep stuff. I thought I got what she was saying. Sorta. Or maybe one day I’d look back at this and go, Ohhh, so that’s what she was getting at!
Like she said, this was a sign of growth. But I also felt like I wasn’t growing fast enough. After all, my friends had this figured out already; they were light years ahead of me. I mean, that last part’s a no-brainer. Wasn’t that why I promised Ajisai-san to try my best?
“Yeah! Try your best, me!” I told myself—and, well, Satsukick-san.
“By all means,” she said. “Whatever makes you happy.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna try my best! Someday, you’re going to look at me with tears in your eyes and tell me, ‘It’s been an honor to know you.’”
“Mm-hmm. At your funeral.”
She and I stepped onto the train and talked until we got to my stop.
“Incidentally,” she said, “I have a question for you. If only because we’ve exhausted every other conversational topic. That’s the only reason, of course.”
“You’re the boss,” I said. “I guess? Anyway, shoot.”
Satsukick-san followed up that absurdly long preamble by saying… (dun dun dun) “Has Terusawa done anything bad to you?”
“Wha?” I spluttered. “Boy, you guys really don’t get along.”
I was no stranger to my friends having disagreements with each other, but I wish I was. A stranger, I mean. I sucked at tiptoeing around other people’s feelings, which was one of the major reasons life was such torture.
“Not at all,” Satsukick-san said. “It’s a serious question.”
“Uh, you sure you don’t have it out for her…?”
“If you’re referring to the incident with Class B, I worked through all my feelings during the competition. The only one I’m still upset at is Mai. That victory would have been mine had she not snatched it away.”
“Come on, you can’t blame her for that.”
Eh, well. I guess this made sense. Satsukick-san wasn’t the type to waste mental real estate on an enemy she’d already trounced. It was like a waste of brain hard drive space. So whatever animosity I sensed aimed at Youko-chan must have been a figment of my imagination. Yet if that was true, why was she asking me about Youko-chan? I tried puzzling it out, but no matter how I looked at it, it just didn’t add up.
“Never mind,” Satsukick-san said. And with those two little words, she ended the conversation, leaving me high and dry without an explanation! The tyranny of this girl.
“Well, to answer your original question,” I said, “not anything bad. We chat when we bump into each other. Or she invites me to hang out with her once in a blue moon.”
“Oh?” said Satsuki-san. “And where have these hangouts occurred, pray tell?”
“Uh, you know that café between school and the train station? We went there to chill after school one time. And talk and stuff.”
“About what?”
“Huh? I dunno. What did we talk about?”
I searched my memories. I felt like it was mostly her asking me questions about a whole lotta nothin’.
“Oh wait,” I said.
“Hm?”
“Oh. Uh, nothing. Never mind.”
Actually, now that I thought about it, Youko-chan had grilled me about her huge misunderstanding—that was, that Kaho-chan and I were dating. When she said, “Gosh, Renako-kun, you sure are popular with the ladies. What, do you have another girlfriend or something? Haha jk (unless?),” my heart about leaped out of my throat. Because uh. She wasn’t wrong about the multiple girlfriends thing. Just, I was dating Mai and Ajisai-san, not Kaho-chan! But wild horses couldn’t have dragged that out of me.
In the end, Youko-chan grinned and said, “Course, it can’t be easy to just, like, come out and say it. Not to me. Guess I just gotta keep working at it till we’re closer!”
On the one hand, I was glad she wanted to be my friend. Believe me, I was totally down to be buds. But on that other, that’d just make it easier for her to be nosy, you feel me? I guess girls just liked talking about crushes and dating and stuff. Even Satsukick-san had her romance book binges.
“Just FYI,” Satsukick-san said, “I wasn’t trying to make this a big thing. I promise.”
“Okay. So, we’re at the stage where we’re feeling things out? Trying to put a label on it?”
“Huh? Who’s we?”
“You and me. In this conversation. We’re trying to put a label on my relationship with Youko-chan. Right?”
“Oh my god.” Satsukick-san sighed in exasperation.