Kaname bookmarked her paperback and stood up. “All right, enough is enough.” She stomped through the train car to where Sousuke was sitting and planted her feet in front of him. As always, he was reading a newspaper. “What is your problem with me?” she said, enunciating every syllable.
“Chidori?” Sousuke feigned surprise. “What a coincidence.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?! You’re still pulling that?” Kaname snatched the paper out of his hand and looked it over. “‘Schwartzie Throws Hat into Governor’s Race.’ This is from days ago!”
“I can read an old paper if I want to.”
“That is so not the point!” she fumed. “Why do you keep following me?!”
“Me, following you?” Sousuke questioned. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about... You seem a bit self-involved.”
“I’d have to be more self-involved not to notice this harassment! You’ve been on me every day from dawn to dusk! If you want to say something to me, say it!”
“I told you, it’s a coincidence.”
There was a prolonged silence, filled only by the sounds of the train and a conductor’s announcement: “Next station, Kokuryo. This train stops at Kokuryo.”
Kaname tossed the paper aside, causing an elderly passenger nearby to frown at her. The trained stopped at Kokuryo Station, and the doors opened with a “fwish.”
“You’re saying it’s just a coincidence?” she asked at last.
“Yes, it’s a coincidence.”
“Fine.” A split second before the doors closed, Kaname leaped out onto the platform.
Fwish.
Through the glass of the closed doors, Kaname could see Sousuke panic—she’d outsmarted him. She smiled triumphantly and waved. “Bye-bye, Mr. Pervert!”
The train began to move away, carrying Sousuke with it. Bag in hand, Kaname walked toward a bench to have a seat. Just then...
As the train was about to leave the station, Sousuke came hurtling out of the window. He fell back-first onto the concrete, bounced, rolled, and only stopped when he crashed into the fence at the edge of the platform. For a moment, she could only stare. “Are you for real?”
Sousuke’s body just lay there, silently.
Kaname ran up, knelt down next to him, and shook him. “Hey, are you okay?!”
Suddenly, he sat up as if nothing had happened, said, “I’m fine,” and proceeded to stand up and dust off his pants.
“Are you insane?!” she screamed. “What were you thinking?”
“I just realized that I had to get off at this station,” Sousuke explained innocently. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“I can’t believe you’re still trying that...”
“It’s a coincidence.”
“Uh-huh...” Kaname shook her head and sat down on a nearby bench. Sousuke sat down next to her, and resumed reading the paper he’d picked up intently.
“And it’s just a coincidence that you want to sit here, too?”
“Correct.”
“Boy, you are really something...” She propped her head up on her knees and gave Sousuke a side-eye.
For some strange reason, his presence wasn’t creeping her out. He’d transferred to their school, burst in on her while she was changing, and seemed to follow her every day. Most people would call that stalking—Kaname had, too, at first. But something about that didn’t add up.
There was nothing about Sagara Sousuke that suggested lecherous thoughts, or impure motives. There was too much dignity in his profile. What was the term... “the fire of will”? He radiated the single-minded focus of an athlete before a match; that look of perfect calm that came from focusing all of one’s efforts on one single goal.
But that just made things more confusing: what reason could he possibly have for following her like this?
“Hey, Sagara-kun,” she said after a while.
“Yes?”
“Could you please just tell me what’s going on? I promise I won’t get mad.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You just happen to be where I am.” It was his standard response, spoken matter-of-factly.
Kaname decided that questioning him was pointless. “Yeah, fine, we’ll leave it at that. Then could your classmate who just happens to be where you are ask a question?”
“Certainly,” he told her.
“You lived overseas for a long time, right? Were things like this at your old school, too?”
Sousuke held a moment of silence, then said, “Yes, I had a very uneventful life.”
She pressed on. “But aren’t you lonely? You left all your friends behind.”
“No. We keep in touch via phone calls and letters, so I didn’t strictly leave them behind.”
“That’s a weird way to respond...”
“I found it appropriate,” he protested.
“Okay, well, were you dating anyone?”
“Dating?”
“Yeah, a girlfriend,” Kaname clarified. “A sweetheart. That kind of thing.”
“I don’t know anyone who could classify,” Sousuke confessed. “My comrade... my friend likes to say, ‘You couldn’t find someone to date you, even in a remote Chinese village.’”
Kaname cracked up. “That’s pretty hilarious.”
“You understand what he meant?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, you’re a total weirdo, Sagara-kun.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. Major weird.” Kaname giggled to herself a little more, then said, “But that uniqueness could be a good thing. Maybe there’s a nice girl out there who’ll really get what you’re all about.” She wasn’t even thinking about whether she, herself, would be categorized as being a ‘nice girl’ or not.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he told her. “You’re very nice.”
“H-Hey, don’t take it too seriously. I don’t know anything about it.”
“I see. I’ll forget it, then.”
“Yeah, you’re a total weirdo.” Kaname laughed once again. At some point in the conversation, she’d noticed a warmth spreading through her body. It was like when a stray dog on the street started following you—a pleasant feeling, with a tiny hint of loneliness at its core. She found herself thinking, Maybe I’ll let this go a little longer.
A voice over the speakers announced the arrival of the next train.