“Yume already checked her guidebook. Besides, it would’ve been pretty much impossible for them to steal hers. But either way, judging from the way she’s acting, it’s pretty easy to tell that she’s not involved.”
“Phew, you’re, like, on the same wavelength? Gettin’ steamy in here!” Akatsuki-san teased.
But also, I knew that I wasn’t involved. Mizuto probably trusted me. Then again, I wasn’t exactly the best at lying anyway.
“So then, who is the remaining person?” Mizuto continued, ignoring Akatsuki-san. “I had a feeling it’d be one girl in particular, and I confirmed it by doing something really simple.”
“What’d you do?” Akatsuki-san asked.
Mizuto calmly responded. “Whoever stole the guidebooks would have the ones that Yoshino and the others had been using. There would’ve been secret messages written inside. Regardless of what writing instrument you use, there’d definitely be some kind of trace of something having been written. It’s a simple matter of looking at the guidebook and seeing if there’s any trace of something being written or not to determine if they’re involved.”
Then I suddenly remembered that on the bus before we got to the aquarium, Mizuto had...
“Isana immediately showed me hers when I asked, and wouldn’t you know it, it was completely clean.”
Yeah, I remember him commenting on how clean it was. Back then, I’d thought it was a weird thing to say, especially because of how messy and filled with books his room was, not to mention his lackadaisical attitude towards keeping things orderly. He wasn’t exactly the type I’d take to focus on things being clean, and as such, it had been out of character for him to praise the cleanliness of something, especially a guidebook.
“And that’s when you confirmed that she wasn’t involved...” I said.
“Exactly. With that, I confirmed the two people who weren’t involved. Naturally, that pinpointed who the thieves were. Asuhain-san was one of them, but so were you, Minami-san.”
Of course, out of the seven potential culprits that we could’ve gone to, I would have chosen Akatsuki-san. She was my closest friend, and pretty much the only person I could think of who’d go so far as to steal to protect my reputation. Even last year, I could feel that things would get out of hand when Akatsuki-san involved herself with me.
I had no evidence, but I was almost a hundred-percent sure that she was the ringleader of this whole thing. As if to confirm that, Akatsuki-san didn’t seem to try and contest anything and simply smiled at Mizuto before talking.
“You’re pretty sharp, Irido-kun. You got me. I surrender! I wanted this to stay under the radar so Yume-chan wouldn’t find out, but after you laid everything out so clearly, I can’t exactly make up any excuses.”
“Akatsuki-san...is this how you’ve been protecting me this entire time?”
I thought back to the start of the school year when she asked me if I knew how to turn people down, and then immediately after, a guy suddenly asked me out. I had no doubt that Akatsuki-san had been working behind the scenes to help me out.
Akatsuki-san looked guilty. “I don’t usually do anything so direct... I chat on LINE and stuff, and try to subtly get people to give up—stuff like that. By the way, Kawanami’s a culprit too—not with the guidebooks, but he does help swat down anyone who tries anything on the two of you.”
“I had a feeling. Though the way you phrased that kinda infringes on his honor.” Mizuto shrugged.
It’s precisely because Kawanami-kun had that side to him that he’d been so surprised when Higashira-san popped up by Mizuto’s side.
“I was thinking you might not need me to help you anymore, and I was thinkin’ that you two might wanna score some good memories together since it’s our school trip and all. So this was mostly just running a teensy-weensy interference.”
“You’ve really mellowed out,” Mizuto said.
“One thing you’ve never understood about me is that I’ve been mellowed out since last year. I only messed up once, right?”
“That one time was more than enough.”
It seemed that something had happened without me knowing, but there was something else that I was more interested in.
“Asuhain-san stopped Yoshino-san and her friends to buy time, right? Is that also why she asked Mizuto out?”
By getting close to Mizuto, she could use Yoshino-san and the rest’s desire not to see any girls closer to him to bait them towards her. To make sure that Mizuto wouldn’t catch onto that intention, she’d made sure to ask him out before the school trip. Was that it? Was that really the only reason she’d asked him out?
“Oh wait. Full stop! Don’t misunderstand, Yume-chan!” Akatsuki-san began frantically trying to clear something up. “I didn’t tell her to do that! I wouldn’t ask anyone to fake confess for something like this! Whether I’d do it myself is another story, though...” she said, as if she’d done it before. “Asuhain-san just said she’d do it. I said that all she had to do was lend us her guidebook, but she was the one who brought it up and asked us if it’d work.”
“Asuhain-san did it...by herself?”
Akatsuki-san folded her thin arms and tilted her head. “I told her she didn’t have to go that far, but she wouldn’t listen and said that this would make things more certain. I thought that maybe she actually had a thing for Irido-kun, but judging by last night...” Akatsuki-san glanced at me.
N-No. I don’t think Asuhain-san feels that way about me...right?
Mizuto folded his arms as well. “So I’m guessing you don’t know anything about why she started acting weird on the second day?”
“Nope, not at all! I tried asking, but she wouldn’t tell me. Maybe I shoulda stopped her from fake asking you out...”
“I suppose only Asuhain knows the answer,” Mizuto said indifferently to a deflated Akatsuki-san.
I think I’m slowly starting to piece everything together. I think I see the situation surrounding Asuhain-san. Though I still have no clue what’s been going on with her ever since the start of this trip.
“It’s time to talk about the real topic now.”
“Right...”
Even I knew what he was getting at. Asuhain-san had entered the aquarium faster than any of us here. Mizuto looked right at me. His eyes were gentle but powerful. I could feel myself relying on him immediately as usual, but the next thing he said to me wasn’t him being soft on me at all.
“The rest is up to you.”
“Huh?”
During my confusion, Mizuto began talking to me like I was a kid. “It won’t mean anything if I’m the one solving everything. After all, I’m not the one she’s after, right?”
Then I remembered back to what Asuhain-san had said about how she couldn’t stop thinking about me and how I didn’t get it. I’d been the one to push myself closer to her. I’d been the one who wanted to get closer to her. I’d been the one who wanted to learn more about her.
“Okay...”
Though I felt alone and uneasy, I’d borrowed more than enough strength. I needed to do my best. I needed to figure out Asuhain-san. I wouldn’t let her say that I didn’t get it anymore.