Every dark-colored car that passed them looked like her mother’s Porsche to Taiga.
They were on a corner of the sidewalk at a crossing, hiding in the shadow of a closed salon’s sign and waiting with bated breath for the light to change. She thought it might never change as the intense, red light illuminated the snow that danced down from the sky like falling ash.
It’s cold, she wanted to say.
I wonder if the snow will stick, she wanted to say.
“…”
Ryuuji, she tried to say, but her voice froze at the back of her throat. Unable to make a sound, she blew away the snow that had come to rest on her bangs, which touched the tip of her nose.
Ryuuji, where are we going? What will we do? What will happen to us now? If she couldn’t say those things, she might as well keep silent.
A large truck turned too fast into the crossing in front of her, and its cargo creaked as it went. The shrill, grating sound echoed down the deserted nighttime residential road. It sounded full of deliberate menace. Taiga felt scared despite herself and shifted her weight on her booted feet. The chill from the freezing asphalt permeated through her toes and into her bones.
Her right hand was in the safekeeping of Ryuuji’s left the whole time. Ryuuji remained silent, but his fingers shivered. His grip firmed and loosened several times, but he never seemed to be able to stop from shaking.
She looked up at the side of his face from where she stood next to him. His blurred outline seemed as though it were incredibly high up, but she felt like if she stretched her arms out, she might be able to reach him without even standing on the tips of her toes. He looked as though he was glaring at the red light with his intensely scowling eyes, but she was sure his face would be warm and his chin would be soft. A single snowflake fell onto the edge of his color-robbed upper lip, melting and disappearing instantly.
Touching him would mean the end. Taiga averted her eyes.
A desire so intense it frightened her soaked into her through their connected hands. She wanted to grip it harder, to pull it in, to tear into it with nails like claws. She wanted to cling to it and drive her fangs into it. She wanted to satiate her hunger and quench her thirst. Then, as she bit in, she wanted to scream the contents of her heart.
She wanted to drive away the emotions which she still didn’t fully understand. She wanted to confront the ebbing and flowing feelings that had always been within her. And yet, she couldn’t even say his name as she hid in the shadow of the salon’s sign. A haircut was four thousand five hundred yen. For long hair, it was an extra thousand yen. A blowout was two thousand five hundred yen. She stared at the lettering until she’d almost memorized it. The light still didn’t change.
If her best friend, who’d given her shivering, cowering back a push, could see them now—
“Uh…”
—how disappointed would that friend be?
When Taiga turned her face down, her nose started to run. She sniffled and rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Ryuuji might have mistaken that sniffle for the unbearable sound of her crying, because the hand that had so firmly held hers suddenly let go.
“Ah?!”
“Don’t raise your voice. We’ll bother the people nearby. Plus, we’re runaways,” he said, scolding her for the yelp she let out without thinking. He hadn’t spoken in a while, either, and might not have had full control over the volume of his awkward words, because they came out loud, carrying further than expected.
But Ryuuji ignored that and quietly took off the cashmere scarf he’d been wearing under his down coat.
“Whaat… You can’t be serious.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Just take it.”
He gently wrapped it around her neck—well, not exactly around her neck. She already had her own scarf under her coat. Ryuuji put his scarf around her head in order to protect her from the snow. He even tied a neat knot right under her chin.
“I look like a loach collector…”
Ryuuji looked at her like he were the great king Enma, passing judgment on whether a departed soul would go to hell. “You don’t collect loaches, you catch them,” he murmured slowly, considering his words carefully. Snowflakes gathered again on the tip of his nose. His white breath quavered.
“I could have at least said something. Done my due diligence…” he continued, letting his cryptic words trickle out as though he were talking to himself.
“What about?”
“To Kitamura. I should have told him we were keeping our jobs secret from our parents.”
Unable to meet his eyes, Taiga curled her lonesome right hand, which no longer had a place to go, into a fist. She opened it again. Would he hold it again for her? But-but-but—
The light still wouldn’t change.