Right then, for some reason, she—
✦ ✦ ✦
“No. Even then.”
✦ ✦ ✦
—she looked at me with frighteningly clear eyes.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How can you say for sure that’s right?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Her gaze was so direct, it was unnatural. She asked the question like a child, searching for the basis of my conviction with frightening purity.
I flinched slightly.
Her blunt question, and the way she was approaching all of this, clashed with the moment. I thought we’d been sharing our feelings of isolation and trying to communicate the truth hidden beneath.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What’s the reason you can say it’s right?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“The reason…?” Flustered, I just parroted her.
Hadn’t we gotten close? If we both reached out, we would connect, wouldn’t we? If Hinami just opened that thick door and reached out, I could pull her over past that deep rupture that had been carved between us. So I’d thought.
“Do you have any basis to say that nobody can argue against that?”
But.
“Can you prove it?” Hinami’s eyes were fixed on something that might have been lying beyond the darkness.
“…I told you. Everyone is thankful to you…to Aoi Hinami, and their feelings are no lie.” I was faltering.
Most likely, what she was asking for was an even more fundamental basis to validate the existence of Aoi Hinami.
A simple answer: a reason that should accompany my forward attempt to validate her.
“You’ve made lots of important connections, friends… It’s a really beautiful thing…”
My words weren’t reaching her.
She’d just demanded proof from me, throwing the word in my face.
She didn’t want pretty words like human connection, gratitude, love, or anything else in that category.
“So then that makes it right…!”
Since most likely, her question was—
✦ ✦ ✦
“Can you say that’s right in the real sense?”
✦ ✦ ✦
She was inviting me to a more fundamental place, far from anything abstract like feelings or friendship.
“…”
I was speechless.
“Yes, in society’s view, it’s right to have close connections who are grateful to you. But that’s only what everyone believes. Nobody can prove if that’s right in the real sense. —Really, no one.”
It was like how questions from children expose what adults believe without evidence.
“Even then, can you say that’s right?” Hinami was just pointing out my own insincerity.
“I…”
Maybe it would have been easy for me to tell her she was playing word games with me.
Maybe that would have been enough to disregard her question and feel like I had won.
But when you’re a quibbler like me, you’ve heard that exact same line over and over again since you were small. So I knew it would be a form of surrender. The people who say that have given up on thinking it all the way through to the truth.
My words were just a wish.
I’m sure that there is no such thing as “right” in the true sense of the word.
“I mean, that’s what ordinary people all want, even if they can never get it…!”
The words continued to pour out of me as if pushed out by a pressure I couldn’t fight, but on the inside, I hadn’t come to any answers.
What I needed right now in order to take Hinami’s hand—
—the words I had to say to get her to reach out to me—
“Only someone really needed by everyone will have that…!”
Fumbling along, I turned my feelings into words.
A probable basis. Masks and true feelings.
Scarcity and victory. Recognition and brilliance.
“And you were happy, weren’t you, Hinami?! It spoke to you!”
It wasn’t like I thought that was the answer. But if I put what I was feeling into words, then the words might connect organically, and I might be able to communicate something new. This feeling inside me told me I could believe in that—and it was the one thing that was absolutely real.
“And…if it spoke to you…then that’s enough…!”
I put my feelings into words, betting on that single thread of hope.
But bit by bit, simple impatience and the desire to just convince her were seeping into my words.
“That’s enough to prove you’re not wrong…!”
Even as I was saying it, I was certain that this time—
✦ ✦ ✦
—her question demanded a deeper answer than I could give right now.
✦ ✦ ✦
Hinami’s eyes were sad, far darker than the night around us.
“…I see,” she said with a sigh, breaking eye contact with me and looking up at the clear, serene night sky. You could reach out to it, but you would never be able to touch it.
Countless lights twinkled above.
I knew that there were two types there: fixed stars that shone with their own light, and the wanderers—planets that couldn’t shine unless they reflected light from elsewhere.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So you can believe in something without a reason.”
✦ ✦ ✦
I recalled what Ashigaru-san had said to me that day.
In order to act, in order to change—weak people need a reason to believe.
Being able to believe in myself without a reason made me strong.
Meanwhile, people who sought reasons for all their actions—
✦ ✦ ✦
“Can you not believe in yourself without a reason? Can you not believe the way you are is right just because?”
Normally—
—for someone with common sensibilities, someone who would allow even a little compromise when it came to reasons or logic—if they received the smiles, words, and feelings from friends they’d spent years building relationships with, if they were shown through investment and effort that everything was sincere, then that time would be validating even without any reasons “in the real sense.”
At the very least, Hinami had felt it temporarily, so that normal sense of exhilaration would be the basis for believing in the way she was.
However.
“I couldn’t do it.”
The wind blew. The ends of her hair fluttered, stroking her cheeks.
“If I made first place, that would make me right. If I could excel more than anyone, if I could become the person everyone wanted, then that would validate me—that’s what I thought.”
Her words were almost like a prayer somehow.
“But…I remembered what I am.” She smiled gently. “I’m empty.” Her voice was quiet and peaceful, like the light of the moon. “Just being happy in the moment on its own… Just thinking that was good and feeling accomplished in the moment—no matter how right that is…it never validated anything about me.”
Despite her negativity, she looked somehow refreshed.
At the very least, I had never seen Aoi Hinami speak like this about defeat before.
“I think I was trying to force myself to believe.” Her lips twisted up awkwardly. “Even though I knew that being sought after didn’t make me personally valuable.”
I knew this expression. I’d experienced it multiple times myself.
“I wanted to forget my loneliness, so I lied to myself—I tried to believe.”
Times when I was really helpless and hopeless—
—when I suppressed my feelings to spinelessly go with what others wanted, I’d always had that expression—
✦ ✦ ✦
“I tried to believe the lie that continuing to win is right.”
✦ ✦ ✦
—it was the smile of defeat, of a person who had realized their own insincerity.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Because I’m weak. I’m a bottom-tier character.”
✦ ✦ ✦
I had to say something.
I had to find one more thing to help draw Hinami toward me. She’d finally come out this far. That was what I wanted to do—that was all I wanted to do.
Even after getting everything—even now that everyone envied her—she still didn’t think of herself as right. What could I say to validate who she really was, then?
If being right or being acknowledged wouldn’t do it, then what would fulfill Aoi Hinami’s emptiness?
The racing thread of my thoughts wasn’t leading me to any conclusions.
She spoke first. “If there’s anything right in this world, then it’s just one thing.”
As if she was resigned to it, as if she were revealing the secret of the world—
—it spilled out of her in plain, almost self-evident words: