“Hinami!”
She was walking a little ways ahead, far enough that I couldn’t touch her even if I reached out. She should have been able to hear me, but she didn’t stop walking, passing by the evenly spaced rows of rooms. Even as harsh as her footfalls were, from behind, she was beautiful—that had to be the result of her training.
Finally, she reached the back door of the guesthouse.
She put her hand on the dully shining metal doorknob, and the stiff hinges gave a strangled creak.
I got there at almost the same time as she went out and put my hand on the halfway-closed door. I opened it wide to indicate I meant to follow.
The outside air before me wafted in.
The wind stroked my cheeks, and the night leaped into view.
✦ ✦ ✦
Stars sprawled over the dark sky.
✦ ✦ ✦
It had to be because we were in a suburb, even though it was Osaka—the sky was a near-black indigo, twinkling with stars that couldn’t be seen in the business district of Omiya. Their cold light fell over the chilly night.
The sounds of cars and the bustle of the city didn’t reach the square, so the grainy sound of my rubber soles against the asphalt was particularly loud.
In the silence, Hinami was standing there, resigned.
“…”
I wordlessly came to stand beside her.
We probably couldn’t speak for long. Soon enough, some concerned person would find this place and rush over. This top player in life, Aoi Hinami, had built that kind of trust with her friends.
“…What?” Hinami said brusquely, like an accusation. She didn’t meet my eyes, but she didn’t move from that spot, allowing me to be there.
It couldn’t be my imagination.
As she gazed somewhere into the distance, her eyes revealed a penetrating gray sadness.
“What was it about that video letter—?”
“I’m not going to say any more about it.” She cut off my question.
On the final ride at Yontendo World, she’d told me about her past. Whatever was wrong had something to do with that. The murky memories contained in that video letter had sunk deep into her, through the chinks in her melted armor, but she wasn’t going to let me touch on them.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
I knew that what I wanted to know lay deeper within.
That had to be what she had hidden away from everyone.
“I have…nothing to talk about.”
Right then, I felt like I got a slight little peek behind her mask. It seemed like everyone’s desire to celebrate her had melted her armor.
Now, she sounded frightened and young, like a lost girl left behind by the world.
Even after chasing her all the way here and reaching out to her, the iron door closed by her strong will was still locked. But now I knew how cold that door was, at least, so I just didn’t want to leave my place in front of it.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to say.
I wasn’t even certain if she wanted me to say anything in the first place.
But one thing was clear.
✦ ✦ ✦
On the other side of that thick door, Aoi Hinami was all alone.
✦ ✦ ✦
So I couldn’t possibly ask the reason she was so clearly acting strangely.
I decided to say this:
“…You can still go back.”
“Huh…?” Hinami’s exhausted eyes widened, looking at me.
“Of course you can. I know you can.” It was a sly tactic, but I went for it anyway. “After all you’ve accomplished, the trust you’ve won isn’t going to fall apart because of one screwup.”
I believed, more than anyone, in the value of what she’d spent all this time building.
She had colorfully decorated everything about her, inside and outside, with her bleak and self-serving calculations: remembering what people liked, even memorizing conversational topics, training her facial muscles to smile, and dressing herself so that everyone would like her.
It was a cold approach, one that might cause visceral disgust in some people. It might be downright nauseating to someone who thought purity of intention was a moral virtue.
But for me, I’d done all the same things as her in order to win at the game of life, so I truly understood her coldness, and just how noble her effort was.
“Don’t worry. You’ve got this,” I declared baselessly. “Because you’re Aoi Hinami.”
I had no reason to be, but I was certain. That’s how much I trusted her.
“Is that what you came to say?” She finally turned her head to me, looking me in the eye.
Her perfectly flattering hairstyle was all messed up, and her expression of put-on vulnerability that would charm anyone now appeared worn out. The supposedly flawless perfect heroine seemed to be made of glass, like she would break with light touch from your fingertips.
Her lips cracked open to let out an amused huff. “…Agh.” She sighed in self-deprecation, and then she gazed up at the night sky as if she found it refreshing.
The light from the moon shone white on her neck. But the dim light was too weak to show what lay in her heart.
“It’s like…I remembered lots of things.”
This vulnerability seemed childlike. Real.
Her black eyes seemed to reflect a blurry past—what feelings or memories were they seeing right now? I quietly waited for her to continue.
“I think I had fun for the first time in a long time today.”
“…Well, I’m glad,” I said.
“There were lots of things I loved… I got to really feel the way the things I’ve done are coming back around to me.”
She spoke like a little girl cherishing her dear treasures.
Or perhaps a hunter bragging about the prey she’d caught.
No—maybe those two things were the same to her.
“I didn’t even plan it. It made me think, Wow, Aoi Hinami sure is amazing.”
As if she was speaking about someone else. Maybe that’s how it felt to her. The Aoi Hinami who was standing here was surely a puppet—seemingly human, but not.
The real person was cold, logical, and outside the screen, holding the controller.
“…Maybe that’s why. It was sad.”
Her tone made her sound younger—what sort of past and emotions was she expressing now? I silently waited for her to go on.
“I told you, didn’t I? …I just wanted to prove that I was right.” She crushed the simple, high-quality sleeve of her loungewear in her fingers. “The congratulations and smiles—to me, all of it…is just part of that proof.”
I’d thought I couldn’t be any more surprised.
The word proof was a term you’d normally never use to describe kindness from your friends.
Thinking that the goodwill and kindness toward her, their natural smiles and remarks, were all only premises for her predetermined conclusion—that was a terribly cold and lonely way of looking at it. And I’m sure most people would never want to live like that.
But…
“I told you.” I looked right at her. “It’s okay for you to be like that. For Aoi Hinami to be like that.”
I would not reject her.
Not when everything that she had so earnestly built up had saved me.
Because I didn’t want to believe that it was a mistake.
“It’s true; it might be a twisted way to live your life.”
I had no basis for saying this. But I was certain.
She was just so right—and also so clumsy about it.
“But your ‘proof’ is helping other people and making them grateful to you, and you’ve become important to them. You can see that in what they say to you and how they look at you, right?”
Her complete fastidiousness—
—and her viewpoint, almost cruelly distant and superior—
—and the overwhelming brilliance of the perfect image those things created—
—it was making the people in her life happy.
Her intentions didn’t matter. Even if she was calculated and deceitful, that didn’t matter here.
The resulting framework was an absolutely undeniable, objective fact. To me, that was the hard truth that went beyond her intentions, beyond the true nature of her behavior.
To me, this framework—was the one thing that nobody could deny, not even Aoi Hinami herself.
“So it can’t be wrong.”
Based on that framework, I affirmed the way Aoi Hinami was.
“So I’m not going to ask you to understand right away, either. But bit by bit, as we spend time together…”