Ryuuji still didn’t really comprehend how the situation had come about, but Ami told him she was officially severing ties with him earlier.
Ami apparently hated him and herself because, in her own words, they were both “stupid.” Ami mentioned Minori had turned Ryuuji down because of something Ami had said.
After that, Ami apparently decided to cut ties with Ryuuji. She told him of that decision on the second day of their school trip and it seemed she was still in the middle of ignoring him even now.
Ami tried to avoid Ryuuji and, when she couldn’t, she very obviously tried to ignore him. He wanted to say something about her attitude or at least get some sort of explanation from her, but he couldn’t even get the chance to ask anything related to that.
“You’ve gotten real far trying to ignore me up until today.”
“…”
“You’ve been ignoring Kushieda this whole time, too, haven’t you?”
“And what about that?”
“Don’t act like a little kid. What, are you in junior high? No, this is like elementary school level.”
“Sorry to say it, but I’m not thickheaded like you and Kushieda Minori.”
“What did you say? How’re we thickheaded?”
“I can’t believe you’re acting all friendly with each other like nothing happened even though you got rejected and she was the one who rejected you. The two of you are seriously just revolting.”
Their faces were right next to each other. They were so close he felt like he could even feel the heat from her breath as Ami spewed venom at him. Then, as though she were trying to cut Ryuuji off before he could even say anything, she yelled, “You threw it all the way over there!”
Ryuuji had his bag and Ami’s bag in one hand. With his other hand, he held Ami’s elbow to support Ami as she hopped forward on one foot. They were right next to each other and touching.
The shoe Ryuuji threw had traced an arc and fallen into a gathering of boys on their way home from school. Unluckily, the boys were right in the middle of a futsal match. One of them reflexively applied an amazing volley kick to the shoe, and another guy, who still hadn’t noticed that it was the school idol Ami-chan-sama’s shoe, caught it with his chest. He let it drop to his knee. Shoot! he said as he smacked it back up.
“Aha ha,” the other guy laughed as he missed it. Ami’s poor shoe cleared a line of sakura trees and bounced off the roof of the bike parking lot, then went beyond the school grounds, falling into the children’s park behind it. In order to go get the shoe they would need to go out of the school gate, do an immediate U-turn on the promenade next to it, and once again head in the direction of the park.
“This is the absolute worst. Unbelievable. The pits. I just can’t deal with this.”
“Sorry… Just sit here and wait while I go get it.”
Ryuuji had Ami sit at a bench near the entrance to the park. He left their bags with her and started walking on his own. Ami’s shoe was stuck in some desolate sand like a moai statue.
This was just too hilariously terrible. He regretted throwing it. It seemed that violence had rubbed off on him during his time with the world’s one and only Palmtop Tiger. He tried to pat off the sand covering the shoe before he handed it back to Ami.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Ryuuji’s consideration to keep Ami’s hands and uniform safe from the sand didn’t get through to Ami at all.
“Why’re you ogling my shoe…ick. Seriously? No way.”
“Ick? Why ick?”
He didn’t know what she misunderstood him as doing, but Ami quickly grabbed her shoe back from Ryuuji’s hand.
“Takasu-kun, you’re really weirdly persistent about girls’ shoes… There really are some people like that, like actually. Boot maniacs, heel fetishists… I see, you’re a loafer freak…ahh!”
“I’m not! What’re you imagining?! Here then, get the sand off yourself!”
“Huh? Was that an order? How did this happen? Who do you think you are?”
“Fine, right, I’m sorry! It’s all completely my fault anyway!”
He stole the shoe again from Ami. I’m! So! Sorry! He lashed out at Ami a bit and turned the shoe over to hit it gently on the sole. The sand in it flowed out and clouded the toes of Ryuuji’s shoes.
The world was in an uproar over declining birthrates. They didn’t see a single child in the park at sunset. Several kids were running around the road at the front, but all of them were wearing alphabet-decorated backpacks from a famous college-bound study hall. They looked strangely solemn as they headed to the station.
The current inhabitants of the so-called children’s park consisted of a beautiful high school girl sitting on a bench, wearing a navy peacoat that her long, straight hair spilled over as she crossed her legs and exposed the bare sock of her shoeless foot to the open air, and some guy with a face exactly like a demon in a no-name school uniform furiously hitting sand out of a shoe.
As one more kid with a study hall bag ran by, Ami followed the student with her eyes and muttered to herself.
“Ahh, I see. Today’s already February the twelfth… The kids trying to get into private school are already in the final stages of their exam schedule.”
“Why do you know about private junior high school exams?”
“Because I did them.”
“I had no idea… So I guess you’re like Taiga. You started private school in junior—”
“I didn’t get in anywhere, so I went to public school.”
Was there anything more awkward than that…? Without thinking, Ryuuji almost tried to apologize. Even though she was already in a bad mood to start with, Ami’s expression didn’t change as she brushed aside her long hair.
“Isn’t the day after tomorrow Valentine’s Day?” Ryuuji added quietly.
“Are you looking forward to that or something?”
“No, not even a little. It hasn’t got anything to do with me,” Ryuuji replied straightforwardly. He continued to shake the sand out of her shoe. Many of the boys who lived in Japan would have the innocence that danced in their hearts on Valentine’s Day shattered between their fifth and seventh years of school. The generally accepted consensus was that any boy who said, Huh? Don’t normal people look forward to Valentine’s? or anything remotely similar wasn’t to be trusted.
A smile suddenly passed over Ami’s lips, and her eyes glittered like a chihuahua that found a new toy to play with as she looked into Ryuuji’s face.
“Oh reeeeally? Is that true? You can’t be thinking that maybe—just maybe—you might get some chocolates from a certain someone? ♥ Oh, but who knows? She’s the most blockheaded girl in the world. Her heart’s all muscle.”
Despite releasing so much vitriol, she was completely off target.
“The heart is supposed to be a muscle. Why were you being kept after school?”
He slipped past her remark like the sand flowing out of the shoe.
“What does that have to do with anything? Actually, what did you do, Takasu-kun? Oh, maybe you had another bad dream and yelled again~? Were you like, ‘Tigeeeeeeer.’ Hah, that’s sooo embarrassing. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? What kind of dream were you even having? That’d definitely worry Yuri-chan.”
“What’re you talking about? I was just talking with her about my future… Well, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but everyone seemed pretty upset, and you don’t even know that the heart is a muscle. I wasn’t going to say anything, but your junior high school exams…turned out the way they did. Maybe you’ve got grades like Haruta’s and you got called up—”
“What?! No way! You’re so unpleasant!”
Her lips, which glittered faintly from the transparent gloss on them, contorted. Ami glared at Ryuuji. They weren’t too different in height, and though the glint in her eyes was terrible, he felt pretty shocked that she was the one telling him he was “unpleasant.”
“People call me ‘considerate Takasu’ though!”
“No one calls you that! You’re never considerate towards me! Actually, they asked me to be the model for the uniform picture in the school pamphlet this year, and I turned them down!”
“Oh, that’s it? Why don’t you just do it? That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it! I just said okay without thinking about it the first time they asked, but…I’ve changed my mind now. I don’t want to do it. Ever.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how long I’ll be at this school.”
“That’s—”
That’s—what?
Without thinking, Ryuuji left his mouth half-open, and he lost the rhythm of their argument as he looked back at Ami’s face. Tch. Ami clicked her tongue, and her face obviously showed that she’d said too much. Her forehead furrowed.
Ryuuji froze up. He forgot to ask her what she meant. She basically just implied she would be quitting school…hadn’t she?