“I see...” Asuhain-san said, beginning to look up at the top of the tank where the dim light that filtered in almost looked like a stairway. “So, you’re not a skilled enough speaker to be tactful, I see.”
“I’m a lot better than I used to be, especially in comparison to how I was in middle school!” I said, jokingly.
As I did, she looked back at me. Then, just slightly—very, very slightly—the end of her lips curled.
“I can more or less imagine,” she said.
That was the first time I’d ever seen her smile from the heart.
Since more people began to come in, the two of us left the aquarium. The exit was connected to the beach that we’d seen a little bit of from the entrance. It was vast, and there were a lot of people there, swimming in the ocean or playing in the sand. But even though it was a beach, not everyone was in a bathing suit. About half of them were in normal clothes. Oh, right. I think I saw in a video or something once that people in Okinawa don’t wear swimsuits when they swim.
The white sand crunched under our feet as Asuhain-san and I entered and began looking at the emerald ocean.
“There...aren’t as many people as I expected,” Asuhain-san said.
True. It’s probably because it’s not swimming season. I feel like there were more people in the Churaumi Aquarium.
“Have you ever been to the beach, Asuhain-san?”
“My family doesn’t really go on trips, so I’ve only really been on field trips.”
“Now that you mention it, I think I’m in the same boat...”
It went without saying that I’d never gone on one with my birth father, but my mom and I never went on trips either. She was always so busy with work.
“So...” I looked at Asuhain-san. “Wanna go in?”
“Huh? By ‘in’...do you mean into the water?”
“Yeah.”
Asuhain-san looked down at what she was wearing—a white tunic bound at the waist with string, and skinny capris. It was a very summery outfit.
“I didn’t bring my bathing suit...”
“We’ll just dip our feet in,” I said, taking off one of my sandals. But when I put my bare foot onto the sand... “Ow!” Of course, the bottom of my foot felt like it’d been burned, and I began hopping on the foot that was still wearing the sandal.
I looked at Asuhain-san, and tried laughing it off. “I’m sure it’ll be cooler near the water.”
“Right...” Asuhain-san said in an almost annoyed tone while looking at the vast sea. “It might be nice once in a while.”
I put my sandal back on, and we went towards the edge of the water. This time, I took off both of my sandals and stood barefoot in the cool, wet sand. It was a strange feeling of freedom that my feet, which were typically wearing shoes or socks, experienced from the unfamiliar touch of nature.
Following my lead, Asuhain-san took off her shoes, rolled up her socks, and put them inside her shoes before carrying them. She nervously looked at her feet while cautiously stepping on the sand many times as if to check something. Right after that, the water flowed back in and washed over our feet.
“Eek!” Asuhain-san softly yelped from the cold water, jumping back and grabbing my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Hearing my question, Asuhain-san looked at me and gasped, before looking down with embarrassment. This might be my first time seeing her act like her true self too. Despite how long we’ve worked together on the student council, I can’t believe how many new sides of her I’m seeing. I’m so touched!
After playing with the water that ebbed and flowed, Asuhain-san suddenly began speaking.
“I saw...” she said softly.
“Huh?” I looked up at her.
She continued looking at the waves while talking. “On the night of the first day, at the hotel pool, I...I was hiding in the bushes. I wanted to understand you, so I went there. This wasn’t at nine, though.”
Mizuto said that Asuhain-san wasn’t the one who’d seen us together, but it’s still a fact that she has a scratch on her thigh. I wondered if Asuhain-san was going to give an answer to what I’d asked her last night, now that I’d actually tried thinking from her perspective.
As I tried to mentally organize all the information, I spoke. “Not after nine, right?” Mizuto and I found the blood after nine, so if she hid there, it had to have been before nine. “You’re talking about earlier.”
“Right. It must’ve been around eight thirty... I was looking for a place to be alone, and when I arrived on the floor with the pool, I saw two people enter. I couldn’t help but be curious, so I followed them.”
“And then what happened?”
“At first, I heard a voice say something about how they wished they could’ve been in the same group. Or at least, that’s what I think they were talking about. Their tone of voice was different than usual, so in the spur of the moment, I hid in the bushes by the entrance, and then...”
“And then?”
“I saw a confession.”
Huh? “Like someone asking another person out?”
“I believe that’s the right interpretation. I saw that and...became frightened.”
“Frightened?”
“I was afraid that having a fixation towards someone was incredibly shallow, and that same fixation had taken root in my heart as well.”
I can’t deny that it’s shallow. I did a lot of shallow things in order to date Mizuto. But I can’t believe she felt that way after seeing someone bare their heart like that...
“I...guess it didn’t go well for them, then,” I said.
“Yeah... They were turned down and quickly acted out. Though, now that I think about it, I think they became levelheaded again. But I...wanted to deny that I was like that person—and I wanted to prove it—so I immediately jumped out of the bushes...” The waves washed over our feet with a soft sound. “And I pushed the two of them into the pool.”
Now she was demonstrating the other type of confession—a confession to a “crime.” Nobody got hurt, so she shouldn’t have cared too much, but for Asuhain-san, this had been a very important event. No matter how much Aso-senpai annoyed her, Asuhain-san never shoved her off or slapped her hands away. This might’ve been the first time in her life that she’d ever been violent.
“You were trying to help the person getting asked out, right?” I might’ve just been trying to give her some peace of mind for the time being, but I gave her my frank opinion while looking at her. “You’ve told me before that you look up to President Kurenai for helping you when you couldn’t get away from someone hitting on you, right? It’s basically the same thing.”
“I...suppose. That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“One of them immediately left. The other one asked me to bring them a change of clothes from their room; I did, and then we went our separate ways. While they changed, we didn’t say anything. Nobody else came into the locker room either. It was an awkward situation from start to finish. I can’t help but wonder if there was a better way to have handled that.”
“I see...”
Even now, I remembered the conversation we’d had last night and wondered if I couldn’t have done a better job talking to her. There probably wasn’t a person in this world who didn’t think back on something and wonder if they could’ve done something differently. In that regard, I felt as if Asuhain-san and I could relate.
“By the way...you haven’t referred to those two by name, but did you know them?”
“Yes...”
“Is it okay for you to tell me who they were?”
“I’m really sorry, but I can’t tell you that much,” she said in her usual resolute tone of voice. “I think it would hurt their reputations if I blabbed about it. It isn’t my place to spread this around.”
“I see. Yeah...that’s good on you.”
“You think so? I thought it was the norm for people to enjoy gossip.”
“What’s normal isn’t important. What’s important is whether it’s right for you.”
I got the feeling that I’d been like her, trapped by the shackles of “what would a normal person do?” But now I could honestly think that what was normal and what was common sense were stupid compared to the individuality that people bring to the table.
“You shouldn’t go by what’s normal,” I continued. “If there’s something you want to do, you should do it without caring what other people think. Remember? Whoever gets the lower score on the test has to listen to what the other one says, so I’ll do anything I can as long as it’s in my power to do so. It’ll be my way of apologizing for alienating you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m going to. I won’t accept anything less. Here’s the thing, Asuhain-san,” I said, turning to face her and grabbing her small hands. “It’s true that I wasn’t bitter when you beat me in the finals. If anything...I was happy.”
“Happy...?”
“Yeah, of course! I’d been watching you work hard all this time. I saw you cracking open your textbooks and notebooks whenever you got a chance. You worked so much harder than I did, how couldn’t I acknowledge that? After seeing you work so hard, I couldn’t even be mad. Your hard work was rewarded, and I was genuinely happy about that. That feeling came before anything else.” Well, also, my head was occupied by the fact that I got a boyfriend... I could feel myself wryly smiling. “So that’s why I want to apologize. I’m sorry that I stopped being your rival...”
I couldn’t view her as my rival. I saw her as my hardworking friend. But that’s not what Asuhain-san wanted from me. Even so, she wouldn’t be satisfied if I just pretended to be the person she wanted. That’s why all I could do was apologize. I’d ask her to be my friend with all my heart.
“Then...” Her voice had gotten so soft that I had to lean in to hear her. “Could I...you?”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“You know...like what you do with Minami-san and the other girls... Um...” The words she wanted to say were on the tip of her tongue, but she had trouble getting them out. Her cheeks grew a brighter pink with each passing second. “Could I...hug you?”
Oh... I see. I smiled and opened both my arms. “Of course. Come on.”
Asuhain-san nervously looked both ways before looking to the right again and then looked at her feet for some reason. Then she quietly took a deep breath and looked at my face and cutely grunted as she fell onto me. I caught her small body in my chest and wrapped my arms around her back. She was so soft, warm, and cute. This was Ran Asuhain.