Still unable to respond, he stood paralyzed in the snow. What do you want to do? He couldn’t just ask her that. He couldn’t ask her that, because it could imply Taiga was to blame. It would be like saying he wasn’t in the wrong because he just did what she wanted. He would be the guy who blamed their running away on the girl—no.
But also, it was because part of him was scared of asking, “Taiga, what do you want?”
Taiga had taken his hand in order to run away with him. And she actually did run away with him. That was enough to convince him that she wanted to be with him too, but…
He was afraid.
He knew why he did it. When Taiga’s mother appeared and said she would be taking Taiga, he couldn’t have done anything except run away. He just couldn’t live in a place without Taiga. Even if someone asked him why, all of his answers would only come retroactively. When he had decided to run and abandon the home he shared with his mother, his hand had grabbed Taiga’s.
But he didn’t know why Taiga had run with him. And the reason why he was scared and couldn’t ask her and wanted to avert his eyes was that…
“Taiga.”
His gut told him there was a deep, red, gaping wound right there.
He hoped he wasn’t right but knew he probably was.
“Let’s walk, anyway… There’s nothing we can do just standing here like this.”
He squeezed out his voice and once again touched Taiga’s fingertips. He took her delicate fingers and grasped them in his hand.
Taiga swayed like a pendulum. “If we walk, how far will we even get…?” She swung back to where she had been. His gut feelings were inching closer towards reality.
He felt like the outline of what she was about to tell him was being etched out clearly, little by little, just by the way her body swayed and through the earnest echo at the end of her words. It was why Taiga abandoned her place, why Taiga was forced to abandon her condo next to the Takasu’s house, why Taiga couldn’t accept the place she belonged with her spontaneously appearing mother—and, whether all of it happened for the same reason, why Taiga’s mother was trying to separate them.
His gut was right.
Ryuuji was so scared of the wound, he shook.
Taiga slowly raised her face. She still held his hand. “We…don’t have money anymore.”
She looked into Ryuuji’s eyes.
“We don’t. We really don’t.”
“I know… Didn’t you just throw it all away?”
“So, about that. Look. Well…” She gently let go of his hand. She pushed up the hair that touched her cheeks and then thrust her hand into her pocket. “There’s something that I need to tell you.”
The scene he feared might be about to begin. Ryuuji almost instinctually tried to avert his eyes from Taiga’s. He was scared of Taiga’s eyes, blotted with darkness, turning towards him.
“We really don’t have a single cent. What was in my wallet was really the last of it. Even my account is empty. I haven’t had a deposit this year. I had a lot saved up, but then money started to slowly get withdrawn from it. First one hundred thousand, then two hundred thousand, and after that happened a couple of times, it’s mostly—”
“Uh.” Ryuuji felt as though white flames were blowing from his eyes, ears, and nose.
So that was why.
Of course.
Of course, of course, of course that’s what caused it! His shivering grew more intense, until he felt like he was about to explode.
“What! Does! That old man! Think he’s doing?!” The shout spilled from him like vomit, like he’d drunk poison that made him sick. It splattered around foully, probably tainting Taiga too, but the hate rising in his throat was too much to hold it back.
Would he try to get involved with her again? Would he make her suffer again? Would he hurt Taiga in the same way he did before? Well, if he did, then Ryuuji wished he’d just die already. Just die already!
Taiga turned her face down slightly. “He hasn’t contacted me,” she said faintly. “Apparently, he lost, after all this time. He’s been getting sued for a while now.”
The bangs that spilled over the tip of her nose quivered as snow fluttered down and clung to them.
“So, my dad ran away with Yuu. It was all because he had to pay a huge amount of money. Apparently, it’s the kind of thing he has to pay no matter what. It won’t go away even if he declares bankruptcy. He doesn’t have a company or a house, and the car and everything else is all gone, too. The condo isn’t ours anymore, either. I’m squatting in it illegally.”
On the thick, white earth were eyes like marbles, a nose like dried leaves, and a mouth like the branch of a tree. Inside the ellipse drawn in crayon were round eyes, a triangular nose, and a square mouth. The face was bloodless and without warmth.
That was Taiga’s face.
“My dad ran away. What’s going to happen? Will he eventually get arrested? I have no idea. In the end, I didn’t even know what kind of job he had or what kind of work he did this whole time…and I didn’t think that was weird. I didn’t even know things had ended up like this. Until my mom came by during that school trip, I had no idea. I didn’t even know my mom had ended up like that.”
Why didn’t you tell me anything? He didn’t recognize the voice asking that question as his own. The voice felt like an echoing siren in the far reaches of another dimension.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. I’m really sorry.”
What had she been planning on doing, then?
Her words slurred as she grew flustered, like she was saying it in a dream.
“My mom said that she would take custody of me, so I told her to buy the condo, then. That I would live there, and she could just deposit money in my account like my dad. I said that if she couldn’t do that, then she should just leave me alone. Even though I’m a klutz, I would find a job, and I would do anything to make a living. But it didn’t work. She said it was impossible for her… It was like my mom wanted to completely cut ties with my dad. She said that ‘her own daughter’ couldn’t also be ‘Aisaka Rikurou’s daughter.’ She said that she would take me away. She said she would take me somewhere where no one could follow. I kind of feel like I should have been grateful for Yuu—”
Ryuuji thought about Taiga’s face until that day. She had been trying to pass it off by lying the whole time, but those empty eyes peered into true despair at times. He thought of her voice when she yelled in the lecture room—of the feelings that she should have been able to convey…
The feelings she wanted to convey.
“—Ryuuji.”
Defeated by all of it, Ryuuji broke. He covered his face and crouched at Taiga’s feet. He tried desperately to swallow the sob that overflowed from behind his hands by holding his breath. Crying wouldn’t help anything.
There was nothing he could do.
“Ha ha ha…”
He heard Taiga’s voice.
He felt something fluffy and warm be put on his head. It was the scarf he’d lent to Taiga, warmed by her body heat.
“I’m weird, aren’t I?” Taiga stooped down to wrap him with the scarf, and with herself. She wrapped her arms around him, and her whisper quivered at the back of Ryuuji’s head. Her long hair, which pushed into his nose, was cold. The faint snow fell on top of them, on the surface of the flowing water, on the town. “Things like this just always seem to happen to me…”
Protected by the scarf and Taiga’s heat, tears wet Ryuuji’s cheeks. If you’re weird, then I’ve got to be weird, too. He couldn’t form that into sound. If the unbreakable Aisaka Taiga is weird, then, I, Takasu Ryuuji, have got to be weird, too. He couldn’t get the words to come out. The maddening sob just burned at the back of his throat, and he couldn’t even scream. He had no place where he belonged. He had no place to go. He didn’t even have a place to go home to.
Ryuuji desperately got up and stretched out both his arms. No matter where he tried to be, no matter where this place was, he would never change, and he wanted to make sure Taiga knew that. With every ounce of strength he had, he hugged Taiga back.
“Why are you…still staying by my side?” she said.
You idiot! Instead of shouting, he raised his face. He buried his chin in the top of Taiga’s hair and looked up to the heavens the snow fell from. His wet cheeks immediately chilled and froze.
“You don’t know?! You really don’t know?!”
The night sky was starless, and he couldn’t even find a constellation to guide him. He didn’t even know where he was. He just knew that here, in his arms, he had Taiga. He was wherever Taiga was.
That was the only thing that was certain.
“Where else am I supposed to be except for here?!”
Huh? He blinked. It was here all along? Ryuuji gently let go in surprise. The answers to the questions that he hadn’t understood to ask had all been here. They were all here.
Separated by half a step, he brushed the hair in Taiga’s face behind her ear. He leaned down and peered into her pale face. When she asked, “Here?” he nodded as he touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. Her cheek was firm, even warm from the flow of her blood.