Had he ever felt such a strong urge to touch another person before? He just wanted to be closer to Taiga, wanted to know more about Taiga, wanted to share more of his thoughts with her, wanted her to share hers with him. If he had to put it into words, all it amounted to were those desires, but he hadn’t fathomed that those feelings could rage so tempestuously in his body.
But Ryuuji also understood that if he reached out his hand, that would be the end of the end. It was like a cliff he would tumble down to an unknown depth if he missed his footing on even a single step. Did he really want to be pushed off a bridge again, to plunge into icy water that would freeze his heart?
He tried to act natural as he covered his ears. He tried to feign ignorance as he rolled his tense neck to relax it. He averted his eyes and tried to keep his spine from breaking out into frantic shivers. He tried to whistle but stopped himself. They were fine before. Ryuuji just could no longer remember how they passed the time together before. He couldn’t even really remember when “before” was.
In the corner of his vision, Taiga sat in front of the heater, long hair falling in front of her shoulders. She slowly combed it out with her fingers, letting it warm up. The hair brought up by her pale, slender fingers was too soft and immediately spilled from her hands. As Ryuuji watched it, he felt like it was melting honey. The tip of her nose, visible between her bangs and the line of her cheek, was shining, dyed by the color of the fire.
Just below them, separated by a single layer of floorboards, his mother, grandmother, and grandfather were gathered. On top of that, when Ryuuji looked around the room again, he noticed that it seemed to have been Yasuko’s once. Her furniture, her school uniform still hung up on a hook, her ordinary clothes—it was full of shadows of his mother from the everyday life of her past.
“Hey.”
“Yeah! Uh! Right!”
“You’re being way too loud… Raise the temp on this. I don’t know how to do it.” Taiga didn’t look at Ryuuji but kept staring at the stove.
Ryuuji moved closer to the stove—and to Taiga. How do I turn it up… I wonder if she’d just let me hold her hand? Or just hug her and caress her back? Even friends would do that, right?
Right. It would be fine as long as he stopped there—as long as he could get by without seeming like a stupid, presumptuous jerk. It would be fine as long as touching her was really all he wanted. If his desire to understand her could be fulfilled by physical contact—by only that—it would be enough for him then.
He reached out his hand.
“This is it. I think.”
Ryuuji pushed a simple button that was marked with an upward pointing triangle. Beep, beep. It chirped the number of times he pushed, and the glass tube glowed brighter. The warmth he felt on his skin abruptly increased.
“Is it too strong?”
“That’s fine. Yeah, it’s nice and warm…”
“Make sure you don’t burn your hair.”
“There’s no way even I would do something that clumsy…huh?” Taiga suddenly grabbed the tips of her hair and brought them to her nose. She gave them a sniff. “There’s no way I’d do something like that.”
Hmph! She was oddly confident. She puffed out her chest beside him and brought her face closer to him.
“Don’t get too close.” Ryuuji scowled until his face split open to birth an alien larva—not really. He was just trying to look menacing. As Taiga drew closer, he bent his back away to the same degree to avoid her. He made sure they were an exact thirty centimeters apart.
“What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Why would you say something like that?” Taiga demanded.
Even if he touched her, it wouldn’t be enough—but, of course, he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t tell her it was because his mom was just below them, either. In the end, no matter what they did, it wouldn’t be enough. He was insatiably starved of Taiga.
It wasn’t enough.
No matter what happened, it just wouldn’t be enough. It just wasn’t.
There just wasn’t enough time to know her and love her in every way. A day was made up of merely twenty-four hours, a year of only three hundred sixty-five days, and a lifetime was just barely eighty years long. Even this night would only last for a few more hours. Ryuuji was just a kid. He didn’t have enough of anything. All he could do was writhe helplessly as he yearned and starved.
“It doesn’t matter what happens or how it happens, but this line is the border between you and me.” He traced the seam of the carpet exactly between where the two of them were sitting. You better not cross! He tried to make his face look like that of an old mountain witch.
“What happens if I cross that line?”
“There’s an invisible sentinel with a gun, and it’ll blast your brains out of your head.”
“That’s not what I meant… What would happen?”
Taiga stared at the ends of the hair that she had combed up with her fingertips. Her long eyelashes cast a shadow along the side of her face, and his heart quaked as though he had been kicked hard. How are you so calm about this? Ryuuji thought, on the verge of detesting her.
Maybe, in the end, she hadn’t really understood anything. Maybe she still felt the same as when she fell defenselessly asleep in that two-bedroom apartment, when they had been part of adjoining lands?
“Well…it’s not like I’m going to cross over anyway.” Taiga said.
If that really was true, then what could he do?
“But if I really wanted to cross over,” she continued. “If I made up my mind…you wouldn’t be able to get away, even if you were crying or screaming.”
“You…” …You jerk, no, you devil, no, you Palmtop Tiger!