I circled around the workshop building where the drama club room was, eyes glued to the map on my phone. Needed to make sure we were familiar with the area. Be prepared for anything. Also, Yanami had gone out jogging, and I was antsy being in that room alone.
The north side of the building was the edge of campus. On the other side of the fence there was a residential area. West along it led to a bunch of tall hedges. Dead end. Right on the other side was the wedding venue’s entrance, not that we could cut through this way anyway.
“Huh?”
I looked up from my phone and saw hedges towering above me. But lowering my gaze, I found a hole just large enough for a person to squeeze through. Coincidence? Not likely.
“Patrolling, Nukumizu-san?”
I turned toward the voice to find Asagumo-san and Shiratama-san. Both covered in leaves. Coincidence?
“You haven’t been digging holes through hedges, have you?” I asked.
“Holes? Goodness, would you look at that.” Her eyes widened in genuine shock.
“So this is a coincidence?”
“What else would it be? Do you know, Riko-san?”
“Nope. Must be a coincidence.” Smile. Shiratama-san needed to get that trademarked or something.
Two against one. Confirmed “coincidence.” On an unrelated note, Asagumo-san was hereby banned from the lit club after this operation concluded. I was losing count of just how many charges we were racking up.
Suddenly, I heard the footsteps. My heart nearly leaped out of my throat, but it was just the president. I sidled over to hide the hole.
“There you are,” she said. “Apologies. I got lost in a conversation.” She showed me a piece of paper. “As promised, you’ve been granted permission to come and go for the purposes of club enrichment.”
Asagumo-san clasped her hands together. “That makes this officially legal!”
“Way to go, Asagumo-senpai!” Shiratama-san took her hands, and they jumped for joy.
The contrarian in me did not share the sentiment.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was just past five, and the sky was starting to darken. Our business at Kirinoki concluded, I’d taken a detour back to Tsuwabuki. Was gonna borrow the next volume of She’s (Literally) the Girl of My Dreams from the club room. It was a slice-of-life rom-com where the main gimmick was no one but the protagonist had ever actually seen the main heroine. This particular volume had been met with harsh criticism at the time of its publishing, so I’d been a little hesitant to start it, but I was feeling brave today.
I threw open the door, all but sure it’d just be me and my precious books, but I was wrong. Shiratama-san was already there and twisting up a bundle of white flowers in wire.
“Oh,” I grunted. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Thought I’d finish up the bouquet. I can’t work on it at home, after all.”
I meandered over to the bookshelf, found my book, then hesitated. I decided to take a seat across from her.
The flowers were fake. Shiratama-san bent and adjusted them with tedious precision until they formed the ideal shape before binding them with even greater precision. Satisfied with her creation, she pinched the flowers together, released, and repeated this motion several times.
“Look,” she said. “I made it so all I have to do is undo this part here and they all splay out. I can hide them under my clothes easier this way.”
“Wow. Not bad.”
Shiratama-san smiled at me, then moved on to the final, decorative touches. “It’ll be okay.” She didn’t look up from her work.
“Huh? What will?”
“Worse comes to worst, I won’t let any of you deal with the fallout. I’ll explain. So it’ll be okay. I promise.”
She said nothing more. Just quietly worked on her bouquet.
“The other day,” I began, “you implied you had nothing to lose.” Here I went again, talking out of my ass. Who were these words for? Certainly not her. She hadn’t asked for them. “I think maybe you do. Big things. Important things. You just don’t know it.” She stopped working. “And, well, once they’re gone, they’re gone. So just, I dunno, consider that. Consider it and appreciate what you have.”
Shiratama-san listened to every word. Patiently. Then, with her eyes still down, replied, “It sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
“It’s…not worth delving into. Really.”
I cast my gaze askance, toward the bookshelf, thinking back to last summer. To just before I realized what my relationship with Yanami really was. In my ignorance, I’d shut her out. Hurt her in the process. And it was right there, in front of that bookshelf, that she’d snubbed me for it.
It’d been nearly a year since then. I still thought about it sometimes.
“Everything comes to an end. We can’t change that,” I said. “But what we can change is how we meet those ends and how we remember the past. That’s where you’re at now. You can still choose. I just hope you know there are options that don’t involve throwing it all away.”
Her hands started to move again. “Some things you have to let go.” I could hardly hear the whispers coming from her lips. “Some things hurt to have. Some things deserve to get thrown away. Even memories.”
Suppose she did that. Suppose she lived life refuting and discarding and abandoning. What would she have then? What life would that be? I didn’t know. But it couldn’t have been a happy one.
“You—”
“Done!” Shiratama-san hugged the bouquet against her chest and sent me a teasing glance. “Cute?”
“Beautiful.”
The word came out on its own. A word born of the false strength and the lie and the loneliness that was her life. Artless and utterly without nuance.
Shiratama-san looked surprised at my slip of the tongue, then quietly smiled. “Thank you.”
And suddenly, I was back in that summer. My chest tightened.