After I passed through the Aqua Room, there were suddenly fewer lights, and the other guests looked to be nothing but shadows. In the darkness, a specimen of a massive giant squid was lit up, welcoming me. Its white skin and slender tentacles that shone in the light looked more like they belonged to a monster than any living creature. It was clear that I was entering the Deep Sea area.
The individual tanks glowed a dull, deep blue, and each of them had an explanation panel and were lit up by artificial light. Since there were a lot of people, despite it being dark, it wasn’t as frightening as being in a haunted house. But as I walked alone along the sole lit path, like the aisle of a movie theater, I felt like I was deep in the sea moving further away from civilization and the light of the sun.
As I walked through the darkness, I remembered something. When I’d asked Asuhain-san why she wanted to beat me so badly, she’d said she had nothing else going on. The only way she could take on others was through her grades. That was the only way she could prove her superiority to the people who belittled her. And when she was so confident that she could win against anyone with her grades, I appeared.
When did I forget her intense gaze? She’d always been looking at me, her rival—her sworn enemy who’d taken away her one weapon. On the other hand, I thought back to how indifferent she’d acted when Aso-senpai and I had been talking about romance. Most likely, every time we discussed it around her, she wished she could be a normal girl like us so she wouldn’t have to be so focused on something like her studies to protect her identity.
When did I become a normie? I used to be just like Asuhain-san. The only thing I’d had going for me was my seriousness, and just like her, I’d been frustrated about not getting the highest grade on a math test—my best subject. I don’t know when, but at a certain point, I found that I didn’t need to rely on one specific thing anymore because I had so many more important things to me. Suddenly, I remembered how Mizuto had teased me by saying that I’d grown as a person.
He’s right, though... But up until now, most of the relationships I’d had weren’t ones I’d developed on my own. So much of what I had now all started thanks to meeting Mizuto. Somewhere along the way, I forgot what it was like to be someone who had nothing—no, who had only one thing.
My high school glow up had only been surface level. Though I wanted to say that I’d grown, I’d lost understanding of my past self in the process. Could I really call that growth? That’s more like running away from who I used to be. Ultimately, I was still shy, pessimistic, and narrow-minded. It would be sad if growth meant living on while forgetting about that. After all, the more you grow, the more things you don’t understand.
I was starting to understand why neither Mizuto nor Higashira-san ever attempted to do anything about their lack of friends. They were preserving their identities. They were fine as is and thought that was the best way to be happy.
That’s why they never tried too hard to be understood by others. If anyone showed up along the way who understood them, then that would be nice, sure, but otherwise, it wasn’t a big deal. It was that simple.
So what about Asuhain-san? What my past self had wanted was someone who understood me. Whether that manifested as a friend or a boyfriend didn’t matter; I wanted someone to prove to me that I wasn’t alone. Which means Asuhain-san wants...
After walking through the long, dark hall with the individual tanks, a path to the right appeared. Down it was a curved wall that faced left. On it were small, square-shaped windows of different individual tanks in two rows. Near the ceiling, there was a sign emitting a dull blue light that read: “Tiny Marine Life in the Deep Sea.”
I wasn’t sure if it was just because most of the people were gathered in the previous area, but there wasn’t much of a crowd here. I passed by about four or five people and continued down the path until I reached an area with a huge tank, nearly two blackboards long. Standing in front of it was a single girl.
She was vacantly staring at the bug-eyed fish swimming around in the dim, blue light of the deep sea. Her profile was beautiful enough to send electricity through my body. She’d always had a pretty face, but when dyed by the light from the tank and the darkness from the hallway, she had the same transcendent beauty of a sculpture.
It was an ironic sense of beauty that the less emotion showed on her face, the more beautiful she became. Oh, wow. How am I only realizing this now? I...don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile.
“Asuhain-san,” I resolutely called out, prompting her to sluggishly turn her head towards me. “Would you like to go around the aquarium together?”
In response, she responded robotically—cold and emotionless. “There’s nothing left to see. The exit’s right around the corner.”
“Then let’s go to the beach. Or even the gift shop on the first floor.”
“You really think that I’ll go along with you if you strong-arm me again?” Asuhain-san turned her gaze back to the tank. “How long are you going to keep up that arrogant attitude of yours? Your actions practically scream that you want to save the charity case.”
“I might be arrogant, yeah.”
Her words were as sharp and direct as a knife, but I took them head-on. I was sure that acting like a Goody Two-shoes here would only get on Asuhain-san’s nerves.
Suddenly, I got it. I didn’t use logic to reach a conclusion like Mizuto or my best subject, math; instead, I used my own instincts.
“You’ve been trying so hard to understand me this entire time without me even having to do anything.” Asuhain-san’s eyes flicked over to me as I said this. “The reason you chose Mizuto as the person to ask out was by process of elimination, right?” Still, she stayed silent. “The only guys you’ve really had any interaction with are the ones from our Kobe trip. There wasn’t anyone on the student council you could go after without getting in someone else’s way, and Kawanami-kun is the kind of guy you’d probably hate the most, which naturally left Mizuto as the only option. After all, he’s not the type to brag about getting asked out and aimlessly spread that news around.” Still, she stayed silent. “All you wanted to do was ask someone out, hoping to find out if something inside you would change. Mizuto was the most convenient person for your experiment since he was the one with the highest possibility of making you experience romantic feelings.” Still, she stayed silent, so instead, I answered for her. “You were studying romance, weren’t you? For my sake...”
Asuhain-san stayed completely silent, but she guiltily looked away. Even though she had finally beat me on a test, I’d been so enamored with my budding romance that I hadn’t reacted like I was bitter about losing at all. That was why she decided that she needed to change herself.
It was all to understand what I was saying—to be able to have the same conversations that I enjoyed. So she used her one weapon: studying. She tried to understand what’s so wonderful about romance.
“I have no way of knowing how your experiment turned out for you, but I’m pretty sure that Mizuto would have accepted you even if he hadn’t seen right through you. He’s kinda like you in some regards, after all.”
Specifically, how he’s so removed from the world that he barely reacts to anything. But on the flip side, when there was something he was really passionate about, he’d get so into it that his surroundings disappeared. I was almost jealous of how much like Mizuto she was in that regard.
“But after the first day...you stopped that experiment. Was it because you realized that it was pointless? Or because you started to hate yourself?” I’m not sure, but I have a feeling it’s the latter. Asuhain-san was pretty hard on herself. I wouldn’t be surprised had she reflected on how she was acting and suddenly started to hate it. “And then, when you were trying to distance yourself from Mizuto and me, I chased after you, not knowing what was going through your head... At first, you tried to pretend like nothing was wrong and go back to how things used to be, but it hurt that I didn’t know what you were going through, and then you changed your mind, thinking that there was no need to push yourself to act like everything was okay. Am I right? I’d like you to say something if I’m not.”
Even the greatest literary detectives couldn’t always precisely guess every little thing going on in the culprit’s mind. There was no way that someone as unimaginative as I was could do anything better than desperately trying to think that I understood.
I thought she’d be mad at me for not understanding her. I thought I would’ve made her mad. But even so, I felt like I was making progress. Compared to how I was before, completely in the dark, I knew what I didn’t know, and was starting to move towards feeling like I understood. That was why I thought hearing Asuhain-san’s true thoughts would be a big step towards this goal.
But then, Asuhain-san betrayed my expectations. “You’re wrong,” she said, not in an angry tone, but a voice as quiet as if we’d been submerged into the deep sea. “I was simply in despair... I was sad and lonely, like a child whose parents didn’t buy them something they wanted. I couldn’t even get mad... I didn’t give up because I didn’t want to force myself to be something that I wasn’t anymore. If anything, I think I gave up on the very act of giving up.”
She did? So she didn’t simply toss away her loneliness and sadness because she didn’t care anymore, but she’s dragging those weights around with her.
“Oh...” I was a little bit lost, but still, I said, “That’s rough.”
“That wasn’t exactly thoughtful of you to say,” Asuhain-san said, turning to look at me.
I slightly smiled and nodded. “Better than saying nothing, isn’t it? Words are too unwieldy to convey what’s in your heart, but...there’s nothing else we can do but use our words.” If we aren’t able to experience what they’re feeling, then all we can do is talk it out. Useless actions or direct, uncouth, thoughtless words were better than not saying anything at all.