He recalled Ami and Minori getting in a fight at the school trip. Their argument had escalated, and they started saying stuff they never should have. If his memories weren’t mistaken, Minori had said some harsh words during their argument.
“You didn’t take it seriously when Kushieda told you to ‘go back to your own school,’ did you…”
“Nooo. That’s not what’s going on. Ahh, this is becoming such a chore.”
Ami seemed peeved as she shook her head at him. She rudely put her sock-clad foot on top of her other knee, grabbed her ankle, and hunched her back. As though trying to take stock of the conversation, she made a motion with her hand like she was grabbing a box and pretending to set it aside, but he had no idea what it meant.
“That’s not what this is—whatever that girl said to me has nothing to do with this. Someone like Kushieda Minori wouldn’t ever affect my life at all.”
“Then why are you suddenly saying you’re leaving?”
“I’ve been thinking about that…for a while. It’s been a long time coming.”
As she said that, Ami reached out her hand like she meant to take back her shoe that Ryuuji was still holding. He automatically held his arm high so that she couldn’t reach. Ami sighed as though exasperated, but it seemed she didn’t intend to force him to give the shoe back to her. He almost thought that he might as well send it flying again.
“Takasu-kun.”
“No.”
“Seriously!”
He absolutely would not hand over the shoe she needed to walk away from him in that moment. Like he’d let her have a half-baked conversation with him and then go back to ignoring him. He wasn’t happy about Ami leaving school either. He was tired of being the only one left behind.
“I was really supposed to leave after the first trimester ended. That was the plan when I transferred. I thought that once the whole stalker thing died down, I could go back to my old school or finish my degree from home.”
“After one trimester… You didn’t mention that to anyone. Were you just planning on disappearing after summer ended when we got back from the villa?”
“I was.”
“You…Kawashima!”
“But I didn’t. Back then, I decided to stay here for a little longer. I was thinking I’d stay for the next day and for the foreseeable future… I thought if I did that that, maybe something would change. I thought that I might be able to change myself, too.”
Back then—Ryuuji was trying to recall what Ami had been like during the past year’s summer. She had been just as spiteful and beautiful as she was now. She had been wicked on the inside, and he just hadn’t really gotten her as a person, and…
“I’m regretting that I ever thought that now.”
Then what was going on with her this whole entire time… Ryuuji couldn’t help but turn his eyes away from Ami’s beautiful face.
Ahmin sure has changed, he remembered Minori saying when they talked during the culture festival.
That was right—Ami and everything around her seemed livelier than usual since summer ended. She got in fights with Taiga whenever they were in contact or approached each other, to the point he couldn’t ever tell if they were getting along or not. Whenever they did that, though, it sent the class into laughter. Though they all praised Ami’s beauty, they had all also accepted her dark underbelly and bad mouth at some point. They humored her despite her personality—no, it was more like they’d whole-heartedly embraced it, making a huge commotion in the process.
Ami’s position in the class changed because she started showing her real personality to everyone. She stopped trying to hide, to make things up, or to dupe them, and leapt into their midst with her true feelings on display. Or so Ryuuji had thought, at least, but it seemed that after Ami took stock of everything, she regretted the days they spent with each other.
“Are you saying that you regret everything you did with us up until today, like all the stuff you did with Kihara, Kashii, Kitamura and everyone…and with Taiga, Kushieda, and me?”
“I’m really grateful to Maya and Nanako, and everyone else. I never thought they would all be so friendly to me. There were a lot of things that happened in elementary, junior high, and my old high school, but this might have been the first time I actually made friends with anyone. Things went okay every once in a while at my old schools, but it was just okay. Actually, no one’s talked to me since I transferred here.”
“Is that really true?”
“You’re surprised?”
When Ami asked him that, he nodded. He had thought that someone as beautiful as Ami would end up becoming the heart of a group whether she wanted to or not, that she would be popular, and that she would end up the center of attention.
“How could someone who thought of school as just a place you’re confined to temporarily make friends? How could someone who thought she would forget everything after graduating, who just thought of this all as a fleeting moment and as fleeting relationships, make actual connections? How can you make friends when you think your real place is at work, that your real self is your model self, and that school was just something to put up with for years? Anyone could see through that, even a kid. But I stopped being that person here, and everyone accepted me… I was so happy about that. I had lots of fun, and I treasured that so much.”
“Then…why don’t you do that—treasure it?”
“It’s too late now. I made mistakes—tons of them.”
She caught him by surprise and took back her shoe. In a show of laziness, Ami bent down to put on her shoe while still sitting on the bench. Her long hair slipped down from her shoulders.
“There we go… I wonder how I can say this… I think you’ll think this is weird when you hear it though. Um…I saw Tiger when she was hurt. I understood her feelings, and I decided if no one else would notice her, I’d be the one to save her… That’s what it was—back then.”
Ryuuji was speechless.
Kawashima Ami really might have seen everything.
“Back then, I didn’t just see Tiger unravel, but a whole bunch of other things, too. It was like everything was going to pieces…right. I really wanted to do something about all of it. I wanted to fix all of it somehow and make sure I protected the place I belonged.”
Ami pulled up her socks after putting on her shoes and stood up from the bench. She combed her hair down with her slender fingers and looked down on Ryuuji.
“On the other hand, I also got hurt, but I thought no one would notice. Why was it always me? Who’s thinking about me? Like, who would notice that I existed?”
Sorry—Ryuuji thought of saying in that moment. He wanted to say What hurt you? Tell me, we’ll go back and fix it, but he couldn’t, and even if he did, he knew that Ami wouldn’t accept that. There was no way to go back and redo things, anyway.
“I want to appreciate where I am now. I thought that was why I needed to think about that stuff, but it got bigger and bigger, and I didn’t know whether I could hold it back, and I ended up panicking because of that, too. My mistakes started piling up, and I couldn’t do anything about it… In the end, I figured it out.”
I’m just an outsider. I’m in the way.
Even though everyone accepted me, I messed up, and that’s what I ended up turning into.
“That’s not true…obviously!” Ryuuji jumped up and practically yelled. “Who’d say something like that?! Don’t mess around! You’re the only one who thinks that! If someone actually said that, I’d never forgive them!”
For just a moment, Ami looked at Ryuuji after he yelled. She raised her eyebrows, and her face contorted as though she were going to cry. When the wind sliced between them, she sniffled instead.
“But…that’s just how it is.”
She regained her composure.
“Things were going fine without me, then I came in. I was like oh, I need to do something about that, and of course I need to do something about this. I stuck my nose into things thinking that I needed to fix everything. I did so many things I shouldn’t have, and because of that…I made a ton of things go wrong. You getting rejected by Minori-chan happened because of that, too. Minori-chan and I had that huge fight, and now we can’t go back to the way we used to be. Plus on top of that, because we got into a fight, Tiger…Tiger almost died. Things turned out like that, so right now I—”
As the words gently flowed from her lips, he could see them tremble.
“I was so, so, so lonely—just so alone. I felt so by myself, I couldn’t help it.”