I must definitely be dead, he thought. It was neither cold nor not cold. It neither hurt nor didn’t hurt. It was as though all his senses had frozen.
Ahhh! This is so baaad!
Even Taiga’s shriek, coming from the top of the bridge, seemed to echo in slow motion. I’m done! Ryuuji’s arms and legs thrashed madly on reflex, and he immediately reached the bottom of the river—actually, the river was shallow enough for him to sit in it on his butt.
“HGAWBABUHBUHBUH.” He practically sprung to his feet. “BMAHGAHZUBOA…BAH! BWAH!”
He coughed, struggling to replenish his oxygen. He would die. He would actually die.
Takasu Ryuuji, on the verge of death, decided to take down all God’s creatures, big and small, with him. He had become a self-destructive bomb that could blow up the entire planet. His frantic, glinting eyes stared into the end of nothingness, and a gruesome smile played on his lips. His single black wing soared as a flash of light released from his chest. He would be reincarnated as a demon king in a thousand years’ time. It would be a most frightful millennium—though, of course, that wasn’t the case.
“See…we end up in situations like this…”
The true terror in this situation was Taiga, Ryuuji thought as his vision shook to the point it blurred. She watched him from up on the bridge and then nodded like she’d realized something.
“I’m glad you were fine. But, well… You’ve learned through experience, right? You better not jump a second time. There’s no easy way to go out in this world.”
“Y-Y-Y—”
“You want to say, ‘Yes,’ don’t you? Good. If you understand, then…” She rubbed away her tears, “Can you climb back up?”
…What are you talking about?! thought Ryuuji. I mean it!
“YOUUUUUU, y-y-you were the one who pushed me offfffffffffff!”
“Huh? What? Can’t hear you.”
“I-I-I-I wasn’t trying to jump!”
“Huh? You weren’t?”
“I-I-I can’t believe you got the wrong idea and went violen-n-n-n-t!”
“Oh no! Then you should have hurried up and said so.”
Submerged knee-deep in water, Ryuuji sucked in air to say who-knows-what to Taiga, who was looking down at him. The snow fluttered down onto his wet and freezing body, and he had already completely lost feeling in his hands and feet.
“Hey, are you okay?” Taiga leaned out from the railing and rubbed roughly at her tear-stained face with the back of her hand as she looked down at him.
“O-of course I’m not okay… I-I-I-I-It’s cooooooold!”
“This won’t do…”
“Well, it’s all your fault!”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t on purpose, so…”
“‘It wasn’t on purpose…’ Then what was it?! Why you—you—you…you klutz! Klutz! Klutz! Klutz! Klutz! You’re violent! A ruffian!”
If he didn’t say more, he wouldn’t be able to calm down. He couldn’t calm down, but because he was on the verge of freezing to death, the melting, runaway furnace in his gut began to quiet. He looked up at Taiga as he breathed out white and rubbed roughly at his numb face with his numb fingers. As he did that, feeling came back to him; his blood was slowly starting to flow again.
His brain registered at that moment precisely how much distance there was between him and Taiga. Even if he stretched out his arms, he could never reach the top of the bridge from in the river.
“That’s why I said I was sorry.”
“You never said that…”
Taiga pouted. Her soft hair danced loosely in the wind where the snow fluttered. The reality that Ryuuji wouldn’t be able to touch that hair, her face, and her lips was already unbearable. He wanted to be near her, just closer to her, and to always, always be by her side.
He didn’t want anyone to steal the place he had decided to live.
And if he didn’t want it to be stolen from him, all he could do was fight. And the ones he had to fight were mainly adults, so to win against them, all he could do was become an adult himself.
In other words…
“Hey…Taiga.” Ryuuji waved his hand to get Taiga’s attention.
In order to be properly recognized as an adult by the adults, he needed to do things according to the ways of the adult world. He would quit being a kid who could be jerked around at an adult’s convenience. Animals all did that, didn’t they? The beasts of the ground, the birds of the sky, the fishes of the ocean and streams, and even the bugs of the trees—all of them—stood their ground when they matured into adults, saying “This is my spot.” They would rear their heads, release loud cries, and fight for their lives.
“I’m seventeen.”
Taiga was silent for a bit and then nodded. “Well…we are in the same grade together…”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” It might not just have been because of the cold that the fingers Ryuuji reached out toward her were quivering. “I’m almost eighteen.”
They would get through this Thursday, get past Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and gain distance—they would run and run and run and wander, and their destination would be Ryuuji’s birthday. When that happened, he would plant his feet and yell, I’m going to live here!
But until then, he and Taiga could only run. Until the day he turned eighteen.
That was why he caught his breath as he looked at Taiga.
“Marry me.”
Taiga’s white coat was blinding under the line of lamps that lit the bridge, and he felt like it was made of light itself.
“From now on, for all my days, through everything that happens from here on out—for all of it—I’ll do it together with you. Let’s live together—forever, starting now.”
Before his quivering, outstretched fingers was the light he had been so, so, so wishing for. He would grab that star with his own hands.
“Are you…trying to save me?” However, Taiga’s face contorted, and her voice was like ice. “You’re doing that because you pity me… Is that supposed to be compassion? Sympathy? Kindness? Are you just so caught up in being a good kid that you get the warm fuzzies from sacrificing yourself? Is that why you’re saying that?”
Her ferocious, glinting eyes didn’t so much as falter as they pierced through Ryuuji, and her talons quivered. Blood hotter than magma rushed through Taiga’s whole body. In that case, I’ll tear you to pieces. If you’re careless, I’ll tear you apart and eat you, her body language said.
“Aghhhhhh, seriously…damn iiiiiiit…it’s coooooooooollllllld!” Ryuuji yelled.
If she was putting her life on the line, he was, too. Ryuuji looked up at her. It was like he was standing on the very edge of a cliff, with the flames of love closing in after him. He shook uncontrollably, and both his eyes opened wide. He bit his frozen lips and desperately, with every ounce of strength he had left, stretched both hands toward Taiga.
“You can think whatever you want! But you’re my one and only!” He yelled loud enough to make his voice hoarse. “I love you! That’s why I’ll fight anyone trying to steal you! No matter who it is, I’ll fight them!”
“You…love me?”
“It’s cold! It’s cold, cold, cold! I feel like I’m going to die!”
“Ryuuji, you love me?”
“Ahhhhhhh, it’s cold! It’s cooooooooooooold!”
“You said you love me. You said it, you said that, you did… You said that. You definitely said that. I heard it.”
If she heard it, then why was she questioning it? His hands relaxed. His knees suddenly buckled, too. Ryuuji turned his face down.
“I love you,” he muttered. He felt like he had vomited the entire contents of his heart, till it was wrung dry. In the end, that was what it was. That was exactly all it was. After all that commotion, he had finally squeezed out everything he’d been holding in.
“I can’t bear to see you dealing with anything that makes you sad. I don’t want to suffer anymore, either, but if all of that sad stuff and hard stuff and unbearable stuff brought us here—if it brought me to you, if it made you come to me, then it’s all precious to me. The effect your existence has on my whole world—”
…is what was keeping me together, I think.
As Ryuuji muttered that, he saw something unbelievable. Taiga disappeared for a moment from the other side of the railing, and—
Stepping over it, she was trying to jump over.
“Wait. W-w-w-wait, stop hey, whoa, ahhh…”
With an “alley-oop,” Taiga jumped. Her skirt puffed up and spread. Ryuuji thought it looked like a dome.
“I can’t catch you! I can’t catch you! Whooaaaaa!” In the next second, he was intent on grabbing Taiga’s weight. She hit him in the shoulders, back, and hip, bringing up a giant splash of water. Ryuuji veered dangerously and staggered. “Ahh!” he thought he heard himself yell.
“Well, now I’ve come to you.” Taiga clung to him as he staggered, about to fall. “No take backs. I can’t be returned. I won’t let you go. It’s too late.”
“A-are you a monkey or something?!”
Taiga clung to Ryuuji’s torso with her hands and legs, entrusting her entire body weight to him. She rested her chin on his shoulder and yielded everything to Ryuuji’s arms. Under his ears, her front teeth touched the carotid artery beneath his thin skin as though she were nibbling on him. Ryuuji shivered from the warmth of her tongue.
“Who cares if I’m a monkey or whatever, you can’t return me anymore!”
“That’s exactly what I want. Who would give you up?”
But he really couldn’t support Taiga’s weight. A second later, the two of them tumbled right into the middle of the freezing river. A column of water splashed up, followed by their screams.
You, why you! Look what you did! Idiot, idiot! Stupid, stupid! Klutz, klutz! Ahh!