Once I was asked that question at Toriko’s house, with her right in front of me, there was nowhere to run. Besides, I’d come here of my own volition. As I lowered my eyes to the table, I noticed the Survivor’s Guide to Sex again, and got a little shaken up.
Okay. Yes, I love Toriko. I’m ready to acknowledge that. But looking at it again, are my love and Toriko’s love the same? Toriko’s romantic love is probably also a sexual love. She says I’ve been looking at her weirdly too, but I don’t really get it.
It’s certainly true that I’m always thinking about how pretty she is, and following her with my eyes, though...
“Sorawo?”
I gave up and spoke. “Uh, yeah... I think I love you too.”
“Huh...?”
I couldn’t look up. I was terrified of how Toriko would react.
“Hey, don’t just mumble. Say it properly.”
I hadn’t even been audible. Getting desperate, I shouted.
“I love you! I love you!”
When I raised my head, Toriko was staring at me, eyes wide. Now that I’d said it, the only option was to turn around and go on the offensive. I fixed Toriko with a stare, waiting for her response.
“For real?”
“Apparently!”
For some reason, that came out sounding petulant. Toriko sat there with her hands on the table, not stirring an inch. I’d half expected her to jump on it the moment I said I loved her, so this reaction was unexpected. Part of it was simple surprise, but she didn’t take her eyes off me at all, like she was looking for an opening to sidle up to some particularly wary prey.
“Do you mean...as a friend?” she asked cautiously.
I shook my head.
“Okay, what kind of love is it, then?”
She’s concerned about that part, huh? I tried to search for the right words.
“I dunno. If I had to say, it’s a special kind of love... I think.”
I heard a rattle as Toriko rose from her seat. I involuntarily recoiled back in mine. Looking down at me, Toriko leaned over, gently extending her right hand.
Her hand touched my cheek.
“So, is it all right for me to interpret what you’re saying that way?”
“I dunno... What’s that way?”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
“You’re scaring me. Why are you rubbing my cheeks?”
“Force of habit...”
“Could you fix that habit?”
Toriko’s hand wandered from my cheek down to my neck. It tickled, so I pulled away from it. Holding the side of my neck as I looked at a Toriko who seemed like she hadn’t hadn’t gotten quite enough, I said, “You called us accomplices, didn’t you? Said it was the closest relationship in the world.”
“Yeah.”
“I was happy with that. You put a name on our relationship, Toriko.”
“You were pretty fixated on the idea, after all, Sorawo.”
“I’m sure you weren’t thinking that hard when you said it.”
“Honestly, yeah. I said it back when we went Kunekune hunting, right? That was still only the second time we’d met.”
“Yeah.”
“I think, at the time, I just wanted to get closer to you. I mean, I’d totally forgotten about it until you brought it up again later.”
“Despite saying it yourself.”
“Sorry,” Toriko said.
“Why’d you want to get closer to me?”
I bit back the words, Wasn’t your head full of Satsuki-san at that point? No other person’s name needed to come up in the conversation that I was having with Toriko right now.
“I’d never thought there was another girl exploring the Otherside all by herself, so once I found you, the only thing to do was for us to become friends, right?”
“Well, we’re definitely a rare breed.”
“And you didn’t seem all that against the idea.”
“Didn’t I? I don’t think I’d opened up to you yet at that point. I was thinking, ‘What’s with her? Why’s she acting so friendly?’”
“Hmm?”
“What’s that look for?” I asked.
“You say that, but you had a pretty pervy look on your face.”
“Wha?!”
“It took me by surprise. Here I am, holding you in my arms, and you go and stare at my face, then your eyes start working their way down. I was like, ‘Girl sure has a lot of energy for someone who almost drowned.’”
“So, what? When you were talking about me ogling you before, you meant—”
“Yeah, right from the get-go. From the moment you saw me for the first time.”
I was dumbfounded. Given how much was written on my face, was it true? This should have been embarrassing, but I was so lacking in awareness that it wasn’t even hitting home.
“I could tell it intuitively. Oh, this girl’s fallen in love with me,” Toriko said.
“You’re too full of yourself.”
“Am not. I’ve had girls fall for me before multiple times, so I know what it’s like.”
“Multiple times?” I repeated accusingly. Toriko chuckled.
“Don’t worry. It’s never gone well.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. I don’t know what was so funny, but Toriko burst out laughing.
“Wh-What?”
“You’re so easy to read, Sorawo! It’s adorable,” Toriko explained, wiping the corners of her eyes. “You love me, and you get jealous... From where I’m standing, it’s so obvious you’re into me, but when I try to get closer, you dodge me. What gives?”
“I dunno. Maybe your approach is the problem?”
“Was it that bad?”
“Like at the hot springs...”
“Oh! That was, well, y’know... It was more than I could handle...”
Toriko started sounding like she was making excuses. She looked off into the distance, and her eyes weren’t coming back to me. This was more than she could handle too. How cute.
After looking at Toriko with sober eyes for some time, I asked, “So you’re not okay with us staying ‘accomplices’? That can’t be our relationship?”
Toriko furrowed her brow with consternation. “It can’t... I want to move forward from that.”
“And ‘forward’ is us going out, or being lovers? Is that it?”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Toriko said insistently.
“In your mind, romance is above ‘the closest relationship in the world’? That’s the thing I’m having the hardest time getting. We’ve already got the best relationship there is.”
“Hrmm...” Toriko thought for a moment before speaking again. “I know you put a lot of value in us being accomplices...and that makes me happy.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And that was enough for me too, at first. But the more you said it, the more I felt like I was being rejected.”
“Huh? Why?”
I was surprised. I’d never considered that before.
“When I was thinking I’d like to get closer to you, you’d say ‘we’re accomplices, right?’ as if to confirm it with me... It felt like you were telling me, ‘Don’t get any closer. This is as far as our relationship goes. You’ve hit a dead end.’ And that made me feel really...lonely.”
I was speechless for a while. “I see... So that’s how you felt about it.”
Toriko nodded. The way she stayed standing beside the table, her shoulders slumped dejectedly, made my chest tighten painfully.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah. I know that’s not how you meant for me to take it. I think that me reading too much into things, and being in too much of a rush played into it too. But...”
Toriko’s voice faded away powerlessly. Her left hand was resting on the table, and I put mine over top of it. When had I stopped hesitating to do this sort of thing? It was something that I could do not for any romantic reason, but out of a simple desire to cheer her up. Ungloved and exposed, her translucent hand was cold to the touch.
I looked up at Toriko as she hung her head, still sitting in my chair.
“I was thinking the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“We already had the best possible relationship, accomplices, so what was the point in taking a step down from that to lovers?”
“A step down...?!” It seemed my words took her by considerable surprise, and Toriko stared at me in mute amazement.
“I mean, it’s ‘the closest relationship in the world.’ There’s no way any other relationship could be above it.”
“Okay, your logic checks out, but...” Toriko pursed her lips, unable to accept it.
“If you want to say it’s kind of a false reasoning, maybe you’re right. But that’s really what I was thinking. So whenever you tried to bring romance-y stuff into our relationship, I felt dissatisfied.”
“Dissatisfied? So it’s not that you hated it?”
“Yeah... I haven’t been able to put it into words very well, but I think I get it now. You felt like I was saying ‘let’s stop here, let’s not go any further.’ I felt like you were saying ‘let’s stop having the strongest, ultimate relationship, and settle for something easy to understand like romance instead.’ Being ‘accomplices’ was original to us, something no other people had, but romance is so common you can find it anywhere...is how I felt. It pissed me off, thinking, ‘Why should I have to settle for the kind of relationship that just about anyone could have?’ That feeling still hasn’t changed. And that’s why...”
It took courage to say the next bit to her face. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for it, then said:
“I don’t want us to be ‘lovers.’”