Day three. Five days to the wedding. Most of the crime crew was in the club room, except for Yanami.
Asagumo-san clicked the stopwatch and stared at the numbers on the display. “One minute, fifteen seconds. Can you stall longer?”
“Any longer and we risk suspicion. It would be more natural to get to the point than to artificially lengthen the conversation.” The president set the time sheet on the table.
We were rehearsing for the day of. Whether it was schmoozing our way past the front desk or luring out Tanaka-sensei, we couldn’t avoid contact with other people. We had to be ready.
Asagumo-san jotted down the president’s comments, then paused. “One thing still worries me. The bride and groom’s suites are right next to each other. If Riko-san’s sister appears, it would put the entire plan in jeopardy.”
“She’ll be in the middle of having her makeup done around then. I’m almost positive we’ll be safe.” Shiratama-san took a forlorn bite of roll cake. “They’re hiding her dress until she comes down the aisle anyway.”
Yanami was on a diet. Shiratama-san was on whatever the opposite of a diet was and well on her way to those two kilos the plan demanded.
“You can slow down,” I told her. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Everyone’s doing so much. I don’t want to be the weakest link.” Another teary-eyed bite. The cake remained unfazed and undented. I found myself with a newfound appreciation of Yanami’s appetite.
Speak of the devil, the door opened just then. “Tak… Takin’ a breather,” Yanami panted before collapsing into a chair. The track suit was a new look for her. She’d started running due to the aforementioned diet. She tried to open a bottle, but it vanished from her hands. “Asagumo-chan?”
“Too much sugar. I’ve prepared a more calorie conscious drink for you. Here.” Asagumo-san handed her a different bottle.
“What’s in it?”
“It will make you thinner.”
“I’m in!” She turned the thing up and chugged. I’d have been a little more interested in the nutrition facts, but that was just me.
Asagumo-san handed me the stopwatch. “From the top. We need to fill in the gaps on the timetable as much as possible. If you would time, please.”
“Right,” I replied.
President Houkobaru was the star role in today’s script, but seeing as I would be Shiratama-san’s liaison leading up to her abscondment into the chapel, I had to be cognizant of every stage of the scheme. We went through it all, from infiltration to exfiltration, and when we were done, I noticed Yanami. Something was up with her. Her eyes were dead, like she was gone from this world.
“You good?” I asked her. “Not dehydrated, are you?”
“What does it mean to ‘eat’?”
Okay. Weird. And not the usual weird that came out of her lips.
“Not good. Got it. Want me to get you an onigiri?”
She shook her head. “What is ‘hunger’? Why must we take lives to prolong our own?” Another gulp of Asagumo-san’s concoction. Perhaps we weren’t ready for whatever that stuff was. As a species. But then again, you couldn’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. Yanami slowly rose to her feet. “Think I’ll go for a few more laps.”
“I think you should rest a little longer.”
“Nah, I’m in the zone. Dunno what it is. I feel like I could run all the way to America.”
I somehow doubted that, but far be it from me to be the one to tell someone their dreams were unachievable. So I just smiled as she left.
“Asagumo-san, that stuff you gave her is safe, right? Legal?” I asked.
“Perfectly legal,” she replied. “I made sure.”
Well, anything legal couldn’t possibly be bad for you.
I lifted my mug, stopped halfway to my lips, and then set it back down. Asagumo-san’s contact was getting removed from Kaju’s phone as soon as I got home.
✦ ✦ ✦
After the meeting, I was meandering around Toyohashi Station’s east exit, doing the rounds at a few bookstores and anime-related shops on the way home. A poster on the wall for some event caught my eye. I immediately rerouted toward South Side Station Square. An impulse I could only attribute to the devil on my shoulder.
Had I carried on toward my intended destination, I might not have stumbled across Yanami with her face glued to the glass of an udon joint’s window. She chewed solemnly on her banana, staring longingly at the customers inside. A crime in the making. Sometimes I hated how good of a citizen I was.
“What are you doing, Yanami-san?”
“Oh. Hey, Nukumizu-kun.” She offered me but a glance and took another bite of her banana. “Was feeling a bit funny earlier today. Thought I’d cool off.”
Rejoice, she was sane. As sane as Yanami could be.
“Taking another breather?”
“Eating air udon.”
Perhaps I’d spoken too soon.
She gave me a look. “Do you have any idea how little you gotta eat to lose a bunch of weight fast? All I’ve eaten today is bananas.”
“So eating one in front of udon is ‘air udon.’”
“Now you’re getting it. I eat the banana, I watch the people eat udon, I’m basically eating udon myself. Fills my tummy and soul.”
“And how’s your soul feeling?”
“Empty.”
Demoting the spiritualist to a mere stalker. All joking aside, though, Yanami was genuinely doing this. Dieting. Something she had only ever claimed she was doing anytime she cooked up some crackpot theory that was anything but.
“Hey, uh, you doing okay?” I asked. “Like, health-wise. It’s a big change.”
“I’ll be fine. What do you think I eat so much for in the first place?”
To diet, huh? A woman of great preparedness, she was.
“I mean, a senpai’s gotta put her money where her mouth is sometimes, y’know?”
“I’m surprised. Didn’t think you were taking Shiratama-san that seriously.”
“Well, if I don’t, who knows what crap that girl’ll step in. She’s a loose cannon. If a few photos are all she needs to chill, I say give her a whole album.” I didn’t disagree. She finished off her banana and waved the peel. “Plus, she kinda reminds me of me last year.”
“Last year. Right.”
Himemiya-san had just transferred back then, and that was the source of everything. The inciting incident to Yanami’s ultimate realization that she wasn’t a heroine in Hakamada Sousuke’s story but the obligatory friend side character.
“Gotta wonder where I would’ve landed if I’d been as unhinged as her,” she said.
Unhinged. That was Shiratama-san all right. A girl lashing out because she had nothing else to lose. A girl Yanami never became but knew very well.
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” she continued. “I was a chicken. Didn’t have the guts to be upfront with Sousuke because I knew what’d happen if I was. I was too scared to lose what I had.” She smiled, amused at the past. “Not that I’m feeling mopey or anything. Don’t get it twisted.”
“I know.”
To literally everyone else who weren’t privy to this heart-to-heart, we probably looked like a bunch of weirdos, standing there staring at strangers eating udon. I took out a plastic bag and let Yanami drop her peel into it. “Let’s get ramen when this is over. My treat.”
“I’m down, but you better not be trying to fatten me up.”
“Just get you back to your old self.”
“It’s your funeral, bud. I’m gonna make you regret that offer.” Her lips curled into a playful sneer.
I clumsily grinned back. The regret was hitting early. Made a mental note to hit up an ATM before then.