Chapter 2
Once the hot shower poured over his head, all the muscles in his body that felt like they had frozen finally regained their normal mobility. Ryuuji thoroughly wiped himself down with a towel and took a breath. He would have to deal with everything else starting from here, but at least his life wasn’t in danger anymore.
“Done with your shower?” Kitamura’s voice came from the changing area.
“Yeah,” he answered. Ryuuji wrapped the towel around his hips and stuck his face out through the door.
“Things are pretty much half-dried, but I’m prioritizing your underwear and socks for now. The rest of your clothes…well…I think they’ll take a while… Hmmmmm…” Kitamura patted down Ryuuji’s jeans, which were spread out on a stranger’s washing machine. He grabbed the hair dryer again. “I guess I’ll put it back in for a little longer.”
“No, no, this is fine,” said Ryuuji. “I can wear this.”
He lowered his head and made a cutting motion with his hand, giving thanks like a professional sumo wrestler. Even though Kitamura had also walked through the snow without a coat and been chilled to the bone, Ryuuji had heard the sound of the hair dryer the whole time he was showering.
His clothes probably wouldn’t be so easily dried, since they had been fully submerged in the just-about-freezing water of the river, but the underwear that Kitamura handed him was definitely warm and dry, just as he said.
“Ahh…I feel like I’ve just gotten back to normal. They were so sopping wet that they were sticking to my butt this whole time, and it felt so gross.” Ryuuji squirmed to put them on under the bath towel he had wrapped around his hips and nodded.
“You’re changing like a girl about to get into a pool,” Kitamura blurted out.
Ryuuji tried to laugh it off. “What…huh…?”
As he thought for a second, his eyes opened wide. A girl about to get into a pool? Yeah, I love that. It’s a delicacy—like eating something that pops against your teeth—was not what he was thinking. His close friend had just suddenly become terrifying.
“Have you been peeking on girls while they were changing?!”
“What could have put that into your head?” Kitamura pulled off his glasses, which were fogged from the humidity, and wiped them clean. “When I was in elementary school, we didn’t have a locker room, so all the boys and girls changed together in the classroom.”
“Oh, that’s all… I was actually really scared for a sec. Actually, don’t watch me like that. Unlike you, I’m shy about being naked.”
“I’m not looking, I’m not. See, I’m not?” Kitamura stood imposingly in front of Ryuuji and seemed to purposefully lower his glasses, opening his eyes wide. You idiot! That’s Haruta level! Ryuuji retorted, and they joked about for a bit as he finished getting dressed.
“I wonder if Aisaka’s changed?”
“Her…her hair was all waterlogged, so probably not yet.”
They turned their eyes to the ceiling and were both briefly silent. Taiga, who had been sopping wet like Ryuuji, should be using Ami’s bath on the second floor in Ami’s room.
As the snow continued to fall, Ryuuji had run with his friends to the Kawashimas’ house, an attractive, tiled, two-story building built upon extensive grounds. Ami’s father’s older brother and his wife lived on the first floor, while the second floor had been divided into four side-by-side studios. Ami said she was using one as her own. She lived alone in the studio but ate her meals in the main house. She said the point of it was that it was like a kid’s room but with more space.
No one was in the main house, so Ami let the boys into the first floor, and the girls went upstairs. Instead of stealthily escorting them through like thieves, Ami gave them a proper tour of the downstairs, like she’d invited friends over and wanted them to have a good look around. The recessed ceiling bathed the patterned sofa in warm light as she pointed out each of her family members’ places. Some cushions, a cardigan, and a magazine had been left lying around somewhat untidily. It looked comfortable. He could see traces of the inhabitants’ well-off status and excellent taste in the things lying around.
Using the bath would leave obvious traces, Ryuuji told Ami, but she had easily answered, “I can just tell them that I used it. You can use whichever towels you want, too.”
This house must have been a saving grace for Ami after she ran away from her own parents’ house because of the whole stalker commotion, whether she realized it or not.
“If Kawashima’s uncle and the others come back and see us here, they’ll think we’re breaking in, won’t they? And we’ll seem like a pair of violent thieves that were even shameless enough to take a bath…” Standing on the thick bath mat, which felt nice under his feet, Ryuuji looked around, unsettled. He saw pristine and matching towels, makeup, a razor, toothbrushes, and toothpaste—no matter how cozy the place was, he was in the middle of running away. He couldn’t stay here for long.
In a hurry, he stuck his legs into his still cold and damp jeans, without caring how they felt, and even put on his T-shirt and parka. He still had no idea what to expect.
“You’re probably fine for tonight. I asked Ami about it, but the Mr. and Mrs. seem to have already left for night duties.”
“They’re working at night? Are they doctors or something?” Ryuuji roughly brushed up his wet hair, trying to banish the face of his mother, who also worked.
“The husband works at a college hospital. The wife is a nurse and caregiver, so it seems like she works in other places. They don’t come back until morning, so that’s as much relief we could have asked for…but the issue is my place. She’s still there. That person.” Kitamura once again took off the glasses that he couldn’t seem to unfog and then used the hem of his shirt to wipe the lenses.
Ryuuji fiddled with the switch of the dryer in his hand. “Calling her ‘that person’…makes her sound like some ridiculous mastermind or something.”
“She looked like one. Kind of a like a final boss.”
“She did make a surprise entrance. Did she come in a Porsche?”
“She did. Um, and how do I put this, she was pregnant, too.”
When Taiga’s mother had showed up at the Kitamuras’ place, Kitamura had apparently told her, “I know somewhere they might be. I’ll bring them back, so please wait here,” and just left. He’d contacted Ami and Minori, and they had run around town looking for Ryuuji and Taiga.
In other words, it seemed Taiga’s mother was at the Kitamuras’ house at that moment. Kitamura had already gotten several calls from home on his cell.
“If my mom mentions Ami’s name, they might come searching here, but… Well, if it comes to that, we can pretend no one’s home.” Kitamura’s naked eyes seemed larger than ever as he squinted and then smiled.
“I’m…really sorry.”
Ryuuji had only just come to the realization that he’d ended up pulling the people around him into this mess. Despite his gallant and self-important proclamations of fighting, and running, and loving Taiga, he was causing his friends trouble. He was causing them worry and needing their help.
He rubbed at his eyes and turned his face down. He and Taiga had finally gotten their feelings through to each other, but the world where they were tied together by their resolve and infatuated with each other couldn’t exist without others inconveniencing themselves to help.
Maybe if they just hadn’t fallen into the river—but even then, they’d still have been at a standstill. The meager change they had between them wouldn’t even cover bus fare. Maybe if Taiga hadn’t dropped her money—but how far and how long could they even go with just twenty-four thousand yen? They might have been able to hide out the rest of the week at a cheap place, but he wouldn’t even know how to find a place like that. The police would have gotten involved, and their friends would still have searched for them, worried about them, and run around in the snow.
Was it better this way? Maybe this was actually the only thing they could have done?
“It wasn’t supposed to go this way…”
Then how should it have gone, instead? If the god of fortune had asked him that, Ryuuji wouldn’t have known how to respond.
“But, but, it’s kind of like I really… Taiga and I really didn’t want it to happen like this—”
“It’s okay.” Kitamura shook his head broadly. “I did all that stuff with the bleached hair and everything, remember? Well, this isn’t a give-and-take kind of situation. I’ll never forget what you did for me, of course, but I’m not doing this ’cause I owe you.”
His friend’s words, which echoed in the herbal fragrance faintly wandering through the bright changing room, certainly seemed genuine. But just because Kitamura believed it was true didn’t mean that Ryuuji could accept it. Not yet.