“…In other words.”
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A murmur.
Her tone was piercing and serious, clashing with the mood at the table.
It was so quiet, just barely audible, so perhaps Haruka-chan, who was continuing to chatter happily away, hadn’t heard it.
Feeling something was off, I looked at the expression of the speaker.
“…She’s close with her mother…who has also spoken lots of words of affirmation…so that means…”
There was Kikuchi-san, her eyes lowered and her brow unusually wrinkled as she muttered softly. While she seemed like she had absorbed what Haruka-chan had been saying, it was as if her thoughts were rapidly moving ahead.
“So then my sister—”
“The reason for her efforts is…acknowledgment.”
From Haruka-chan’s story, Kikuchi-san had picked out her family environment, and the words of acknowledgment within it.
When I glanced to the side, Mizusawa also seemed to have noticed that something was off, and both of us looked back and forth between Haruka-chan and Kikuchi-san, then at each other.
“…What’s that?” Mizusawa asked me.
“Um…”
I wasn’t sure how to put it, but I more or less understood what was going on.
Actually, more than that—I’d been hoping for this, somehow.
“I think something’s happening in Kikuchi-san’s head… With Alucia, I mean.”
“…What?”
That was Kikuchi-san’s writer face.
Where her eyes had been somber before, now they were flashing and wide, focused on nothing in particular.
“That’s why it seems like no matter what she did, she’s never wrong…”
She picked out pieces of the stories Haruka-chan was telling—about the parent-child relationship, the good times they shared—and put them together.
“So then…her having lost sight of it was an acquired trait…so rather, at first…”
I was wondering how this would turn out.
“—And that was what I wanted to talk about!” Eventually, Haruka-chan finished speaking. Her warm smile was a sharp contrast with Kikuchi-san beside her, whose expression was cold as ice. “I’d like to learn some things about my sister that I didn’t know!” Still with that warm smile, she turned to Kikuchi-san. “What do you think about my sister, Big Sis Fuka?”
“…Me?” Kikuchi-san answered calmly, even though the spotlight was suddenly shining on her. It was as if the depths of her eyes, filled with a mysterious air, reflected a different world. “The way I see Hinami-san…”
Eventually, she began to murmur softly as if she was sorting out the thoughts in her mind, but her head still seemed to be a little in the clouds. She was sharp, akin to a predator calmly catching prey that had come within range.
“It’s not what I thought before—” Kikuchi-san was muttering like she was stirring up some settled sediment, observing it closely. She seemed far away, as if she were the only one moving as time around her was stopped. Kikuchi-san took a deep breath.
What she said was something neither Haruka-chan nor I could have expected.
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“—I believe she is a girl who has lost her god.”
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The statement was piercing.
I didn’t know what it meant. But the quiet weight of it was overwhelming.
Haruka-chan’s eyes were wide in amazement, either because of the strength of those words or maybe because it’d helped her understand something. It was as if Kikuchi-san’s words had sewn her to the spot.
“A warm family… Unconditional love. It…surprised me that she had those things.” Kikuchi-san remained expressionless.
But she spoke carefully, as if she wanted to be certain of each thing she said. “I’d even considered the possibility of a neglectful environment, or that her family had made some twisted impositions, but perhaps that isn’t the case… That means Hinami-san…was able to believe in someone, or in whatever it was behind that person.”
Murmuring and murmuring along—
—her voice came low and cloying, twining around as if her words had physical substance.
“At first, her heart was fulfilled by just one thing…and she wasn’t scared to face the world. If that single thing enabled her to understand that everything was okay…”
Neither I, nor Mizusawa, nor Haruka-chan could interrupt her.
“…then that would be like the sun to her.”
Instead of Kikuchi-san explaining this to us, it was more like she was confronting a vague, fog-like thing that lay behind a thin membrane, observing it closely, then going deeper into those thoughts to give it form.
“Her foundation came from another, her world from another. Her happiness was taught to her by someone else. I’m sure her family was filled with more brightness and warmth than any other back then.” Her keen eyes continued to work, so as to not overlook even the slightest clues.
Her manner of speaking took on more of an edge, more urgent than before. “That’s why Hinami-san was perfect. So long as she was turned toward the sun like a sunflower, that was enough to enable her to be herself. Just by taking in the sun and absorbing it, she could be the world’s heroine.”
Her gaze pierced straight into Haruka-chan.
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“But—”
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As if slamming some complex glasswork into the hard and cold asphalt, Kikuchi-san said…
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“—at some point, all that—”
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…in a voice reminiscent of a spell chanted in a foreign land:
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“—shattered to pieces.”
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Her breath caught, and her voice faded out.
There was a choked sound like someone had failed to swallow, and Haruka-chan was staring at Kikuchi-san with sincere shock. Horror, even.
“…Goff, koff.”
“…Are you okay?”
Some saliva must have gotten in her windpipe, as she coughed and gasped shallowly. Even Mizusawa’s gentle question of concern seemed a little tense.
Seeing the two of them like that—maybe without even seeing that—maybe I’d understood just from what was said.
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—Most likely, Kikuchi-san’s words had crossed a line.
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I cut in to stop her. “Kikuchi-san, that’s—”
But Haruka-chan held me back. “Wait…please.”
She couldn’t continue after that. No—maybe it was more accurate to say that she didn’t know what she should say anymore.
Pressing her throat and trying not to cough, she was looking up at Kikuchi-san as if she was clinging to something so she wouldn’t be shaken off.
“…Haruka-chan?” I said.
But her gaze never left Kikuchi-san.
Eventually, as if she was frightened but also somehow expectant—she asked Kikuchi-san:
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“How can you tell?”
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A shiver ran over my skin.
The question wasn’t very difficult to understand.
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What Kikuchi-san said rang true.
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Just like how during that play, the lines Kikuchi-san had written had reached past Hinami’s mask.
Kikuchi-san’s powers of imagination had arrived at the same image of Aoi Hinami that Haruka-chan possessed.
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“Um, you’re completely right, Big Sis Fuka…,” Haruka-chan began slowly with trepidation, her voice clearly trembling.
Eventually, it came out like a confession.
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“Our family—is a little strange.”
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Right then—
“Haruka-chan…?!”
Mizusawa was the first to notice something wrong, and I followed his gaze and saw it, too.
Finally, Haruka-chan noticed a beat after.
“…Wait, huh?”
Haruka-chan’s eyes—were shining wetly.
“Huh…? Ah… I-I’m sorry…!” The look in Kikuchi-san’s eyes changed as if she’d suddenly snapped out of a trance. She sounded panicked, but Haruka-chan’s tears showed no signs of stopping, spilling out as she began to cry right there.
“Haruka-chan, are you okay?” Mizusawa asked gently in concern.
“Y-yeah…” She put on a smile like it was nothing and just scrubbed at her face, as if her tears were something we shouldn’t see.
“It’s not nothing, come on.” Mizusawa offered her a pack of tissues he’d gotten somewhere, clearly used to dealing with this sort of incident, but he still looked baffled. If you didn’t know the background here, you wouldn’t even be able to guess why this was happening.
But I was the one person who most likely had an idea of the reason for those tears.
A warm family.
Something they had believed in.
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And those words like a curse—that it had shattered to pieces.
Of course Haruka-chan was shaken up.
Most likely, Kikuchi-san’s observation had brought back—
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—the memories of her departed sister.
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But of course, there was no way the others would know that. I’m sure Haruka-chan wasn’t even aware that I knew.
“It’s okay… It’s okay…!”
Unable to talk about any of it, Haruka-chan continued to cry for a while, just dealing with her loneliness and misery alone.
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“Thank you very much for today! And I’m sorry for breaking down like that!”
Omiya Station.
We got off for a moment to change trains, and then the day came to an end with the group heading in two different directions.
“Oh, no, I’m really glad we were able to talk about this stuff. It’s all right, so don’t worry,” I said, hoping to patch up what my girlfriend had done.
Mizusawa joined in to help. “We’re all friends who want to help your sister somehow. So let’s keep in touch.”
“…Yeah! Thank you very much!”
Mizusawa’s remark did a good job of emphasizing our camaraderie, and it made the incident that had just occurred fade into the past.
But—
“…I’m sorry.”
The person who had caused it was only able to apologize quietly in a voice that Haruka-chan may not have even heard.
As I was gazing at Kikuchi-san’s profile, Mizusawa poke-poked at my shoulder. “Fumiya,” he said in a whisper.
“…Yeah?” I replied in the same tone.
“This is it for today, but…” He looked over at Kikuchi-san. “—Make sure things are okay with her?”