“But you know what, having my head blown off by an invisible sentinel would kind of be a problem. I’d feel bad making you clean up my brains, too…right?”
“…”
He couldn’t bring himself to respond. His innocent male heart was overwhelmed, leaping under Taiga’s seemingly teasing gaze. It felt like he was being forced to tap-dance barefoot on a griddle. Ryuuji glared even more firmly at Taiga, who was fanning the flames that heated the griddle as she directed him to Dance! Dance!
“What? What’s with that face? What do you want to say?” She sat slovenly cross-legged, putting together the undersides of her feet. Taiga rocked her body like she was a tumbler doll that could never be knocked down. She opened her eyes purposefully wide and pouted. “I have no idea what you want to say. Aren’t I a terrible fee-fwee-fiancée?”
Because he couldn’t achieve victory through words, Ryuuji resorted to launching a missile. He pushed a hand to his lips in a masculine way and blew a kiss, like a black mamba darting from the gap between his front teeth to spray lethal, deadly poison into Taiga’s eyes—though of course he wasn’t doing that. He was just trying to return the weird kisses she had blown at him earlier.
I don’t care if my mom or anybody else is downstairs, I can at least do this! Go! Go! One kiss for five thousand yen! Ryuuji clenched his fist.
“That’s all you got?! To my eyes, it looks like it’s going so slow it just stopped!” Taiga slapped the invisible kiss in midair as though crushing a mosquito.
“Oh! Y-you’re so cruel…!”
“‘Oh! Y-you’re sooo cruel…!’” she mimicked.
“I didn’t sound like that…”
“Actually, who knew you were such a shallow guy…” Taiga spitefully kept her jaw jutted out and spread her arms wide in exasperation. She shook her head, clearly resigned.
“What?!”
“I can’t believe you’d try to give me an air kiss. My, oh my… I can’t believe you’d do something that embarrassing…”
“Hey…you’re the one! Who did it first! Well, it doesn’t matter anymore…” When he couldn’t get his mouth to move the way he wanted it to, Ryuuji turned his eyes away from Taiga’s face. “I’m going to bed,” he said curtly and actually pulled the covers over his head, with his back facing her. He closed his eyes.
“Oh dear. Now he’s angry. Look at him pouting, even though I was just teasing.”
“…”
“Ryuuji. Ryuuuuuji.”
“…”
“Ryuu-chan.”
“Stop that.”
“But you know what, didn’t things go great for Ya-chan?”
“…”
“And for you…too.”
Ryuuji kept his eyes stubbornly closed as he drew away from Taiga’s breathing at his feet.
“Things went great for me, too. I think I’m better off. I think so, at least. Ya-chan even thanked me…and I’m sure, when it comes to you, Ryuuji…” Her voice seemed to tremble faintly. The edges of it were growing hazy. “Are you really going to just sleep?”
Ryuuji’s only answer was silence.
“I guess it’s fine if you do. My hair is dry, and I’m warmed up now…so I guess it’s fine.”
He felt Taiga get up and then felt her step on the edge of his bedding. He automatically followed the sound of her receding footsteps. He opened his eyes and raised his head, his body following suit.
THUMP!
“Agh?!” Ryuuji swallowed his breath at the sudden assault.
“Sleeping people aren’t supposed to move.”
“Even if they’re not, you… Th-that hurts…!”
“You’re not allowed to talk, either.”
Ryuuji flailed his arms and legs, and choked, pinned solidly under the bedcover as he tried to grasp what was happening. Taiga had pounced right on top of him and was holding him down with all her body weight. It was a picture-perfect vertical four-quarter hold, and his head was buried under his blanket to boot.
“You can’t run away. Because you’re sleeping,” Taiga whispered in a faint voice that could have been mistaken for a sigh.
He really couldn’t move. He couldn’t run away. Taiga probably only weighed forty kilograms, but she was using all of it to hold Ryuuji down, and she wasn’t letting go. “When it comes to you, Ryuuji…I really, really, reallyreallyreally, really—”
They had been born into separate bodies.
No matter what they did, their two souls would never become one.
“—love you.”
But regardless of that, in order to be as close as they could, they would—
She pulled down the covers that were over his face, and her soft hair tangled and fell to Ryuuji’s cheek. Their foreheads crashed into each other. As if feeling out the roundness of their heads, their eyebrows rubbed against each other. The tips of their noses pressed against each other, and their quiet sighs piled onto each other. Before long, they were separated just by the smell of shampoo as their hot lips touched. All of Taiga’s weight was on Ryuuji’s lips. It was much warmer than the first time, and much slower. Ryuuji barely got himself together before he melted from the heat of love. He desperately opened his eyes.
I love you, too. I love you, Taiga, he repeated.
He wanted to wriggle and leap up. He wanted to run through the lands on all four legs like a beast. He wanted to live one and the same life as her. But all they could do was draw their separate bodies close, all they could do was touch, and it was just too frustrating to stand.
It was precisely because they were separate and could never become one that they were drawn so strongly to each other. Even as they clawed at the air and cried out and suffered, they held each other firmly. They hungered for the world they wanted to make together, and their eyes opened wider.
Time and life were finite and too short, and their hopes were so far removed they knew nothing but impatience.
“But you’re actually going to sleep now.”
But they were also rapidly growing up. Time progressed and, once passed, would never return. “Now” was becoming the past.
Taiga’s fingertips touched his eyelids. He could feel her ever-trembling heart. As she trembled, she closed Ryuuji’s eyes and held down his eyelashes.
“I’m going to sleep, too. Good night.”
It wasn’t like he would be able to sleep.
—It wasn’t like he would be able to sleep.