I’d failed to produce results, but the words said afterward had validated my accomplishments.
That was kind and comfortable. And it could well push victory further away.
I had a feeling that the hint for figuring out what Hinami had lost lay there.
This was completely the opposite from how she did things—setting up all the causes needed to produce the desired results.
✦ ✦ ✦
“—I believe she is a girl who has lost her god.”
✦ ✦ ✦
I recalled what Kikuchi-san had said.
“If the words that gave meaning to Hinami-san’s results…were the sun to her, and her god…”
Those words had been given to her by her family that’s “a little strange,” as Haruka-chan had described it. It was her sun, her god, her reason.
If it was shattered one day—I had the feeling that there was still something lacking in the hazy outline I’d begun to discover.
—And then.
My phone vibrated with a notification.
“!”
Kikuchi-san noticed my reaction. “…Fumiya-kun?”
But I just stared at that line of text.
I’d gotten a DM from Haruka-chan.
“Sorry, you two.”
This message must have been brought to me by the broken story of the perfect heroine, the continuation of which we had written—
✦ ✦ ✦
[Thank you very much for handling the stuff with the student council.
There’s something I want to talk to you about.]
✦ ✦ ✦
“I have to go somewhere.”
—At the same time, I had the feeling that it was connected to Hinami’s past, before she had become perfect.
✦ ✦ ✦
About half an hour later—
“Thanks for waiting.”
—I was in a park close to Hinami’s house.
Haruka-chan’s expression as she waited on a bench was just a little hollow, but she seemed determined, too.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reply, Tomozaki-san.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said in as gentle a tone as possible and smiled. “What did you want to talk about?”
Then she drew in a breath and paused a moment. “What Big Sis Fuka said…”
“…Yeah?”
“Um…about things shattering.”
Shattering to pieces. She probably didn’t repeat the full phrase Kikuchi-san had said because saying it out loud would hit that sensitive point again.
“Um…what does that mean?” I replied.
Haruka-chan continued, “At first…I thought it might be about a certain someone.”
“A certain someone…”
That had to be the one I also knew about.
Haruka-chan slowly rose up off the bench. “Um…can you come with me?”
“Come where?”
She started walking with small steps. “It’s…really close.”
✦ ✦ ✦
We came to an ordinary corner on the road, not far from the park.
There was just one thing there that drew the eye.
Nearby one of the telephone poles lay a beautiful bouquet of red, white, and purple flowers.
“…Right here…”
The way Haruka-chan was acting, the past I knew about, and what we were looking at now—
In my head, I was certain these were all connected.
“…You mean this is where your other sister…had that accident?”
Haruka-chan paused a moment, staring at me with wide eyes. “So you know about that, too… Did my sister tell you?”
“…Yeah,” I answered honestly.
“…I see.” Despite having tears in her eyes—Haruka-chan smiled with relief. “…I’m glad.” She had affection in her eyes, like you’d show toward something small.
“You’re glad…?” I asked, overwhelmed by a strange discomfort.
She smiled weakly and answered, “I’ve never managed to talk about that with her even once.” As she spoke, the muscles beneath her eyes spasmed. “When I tried to bring it up, she seemed so hurt, I couldn’t talk about it at all…” Tears spilled as her face crinkled in a smile. “I’m glad she has someone she can talk about Big Sis Nagisa with!”
“!” I couldn’t say a word. Haruka-chan admired Hinami, but I was sure she was also carrying a kind of loneliness I couldn’t imagine.
“You know—when Big Sis Fuka said that, I thought it was about the accident. The reminder really hurt, so that was why I reacted the way I did.” Her gaze went to the three-colored flower bundle left there all alone. “But…I had a feeling like that wasn’t it.”
“Do you mean…?”
The accident where they’d lost a sister, the words shattered to pieces, and the sudden change in Aoi Hinami.
It seemed like those were connected so simply by a single line.
But it was true that something didn’t feel quite right.
“I think what broke wasn’t a person or something like that,” she said.
The wind blew through.
The purple petals, which particularly stood out in the bouquet, were swept away into the sky.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What broke was everything.”
✦ ✦ ✦
She spoke with a dispirited expression that seemed to be looking back on the past.
I had seen Hinami in Haruka-chan many times. But right now, the resemblance was intense—her eyes black, having given up on everything.
“By ‘everything,’ do you mean…?” I didn’t understand specifically what Haruka-chan meant.
But—I felt like the structure of its essence was the one thing I did get.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You mean…the stories that were believed at your house?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Haruka-chan paused a while, digesting that, then said, “…How much do you know?”
“No, I don’t know anything aside from what I just said. I don’t know what the stories were or why Hinami believed them.”
I really didn’t know anything. This was as far as I got.
“But…I might get it.”
“Why…?”
That was probably because I had been thinking about Hinami constantly for the past few weeks.
Because I had witnessed myself the stories of many “reasons to believe.”
Because I’d managed to learn a little about the responsibility of being a reason to believe, myself.
—And one more important thing.
“…Because…”
Thinking about it now, I’d been choosing not to see it.
No, maybe I had understood. But I had tried to believe that it was not the case in the real sense.
“It’s because your sister…”
My mouth felt heavy.
“…Aoi Hinami…”
I’m sure I didn’t really want to say it out loud.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Aoi Hinami is weak.”
✦ ✦ ✦
I said it myself for the first time.
The remark would hit deep, so I smiled as kindly as I could.
I hadn’t wanted to believe that the magician who had brought color to my world was actually a bottom-tier character herself.
I wanted to show respect to her, the person who had trained me when I was level 1 to make friends and a girlfriend and to really engage with people properly.
So this was the first time I was able to face her weakness in the real sense.
“So she was probably given—”
Because I had experienced it myself, I was able to put it into words.
I’d produced results, being number one in Japan at Atafami, and that had given meaning to the life that I’d thought was all wrong. And when I’d produced results I’d been unhappy with, the voice of a supporter had added color to my life.
I used to believe this game sucked, until a magician had turned it into one of the best.
That magic had given me reasons time and again.
“—reasons to believe in herself from someone close to her.”
I heard her breath catch.
The silence hanging in the air affirmed my hypothesis.
Eventually, like surface tension breaking as water overflowed—
“…That’s what our family is like.”
—the words slowly started to spill out.
“We were taught that everything would be okay, no matter what. Good things and bad would all be taken positively.”
Tears were starting to build in Haruka-chan’s eyes.
“Our family was just that brilliantly amazing. So whatever happened, we were able to be positive about it… No matter what happened, there was no need to change.”
Just from that, maybe it would sound like good parenting.
But.
“—I see.”
It made sense to me.
Because part of the essence of the Aoi Hinami I knew fit into that.