“—I think this means I had it backward.”
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If the essence of Aoi Hinami was that she needed a reason for everything she did, then—
“The Aoi Hinami I know has always built up the reasons herself to produce results.”
—a single simple and clear structure had emerged.
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“I thought that the one thing she believed in was the effort she’d invested.”
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I’d tried to believe—that behind Aoi Hinami, the monster of independent efforts, lay endless darkness.
I had wanted to believe—that the only one who could resolve that was the ultimate gamer nanashi, who could fight evenly with her.
I had wanted to believe—that Aoi Hinami was more special and stronger than anyone. That she was just that brilliant.
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“But she wasn’t like that at first.”
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That was why I never realized until now that her initial motivation had been very small and childish—
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—and so weak, laying responsibility on others to an unbelievable degree.
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“The one thing she believed in was the words of another, validating her after the fact.”
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Even as I said that, I was shocked by the weakness those words indicated.
That magic had to feel so warm, gentle, and comfortable.
It could be a reason stronger than anything, one to believe in.
But it coddled you, like an infant in the womb.
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If that was all you clung to, then inevitably—one day, the speed of reality, the moment that left those words behind would come.
“Yeah… That’s why when she lost everything, she—,” Haruka began, but right then—
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“Hey, you—!”
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—a very familiar voice reached my ears—the voice I’d wanted to hear all this time.
Still clear, and full of confidence.
But now it sounded tired.
“What are you doing with Haruka—? Oh.”
When I turned toward the voice, there was—
“…Hinami.”
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There was Aoi Hinami, before me for the first time in a long while.
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“…Big Sis…” Haruka-chan gazed dumbly at Hinami.
“Haruka…”
Hinami’s hair was dull, her clothes worn out. The careless frown on her face was far from the expression of the perfect heroine. I thought I’d seen something like this before—thinking about it, she looked a lot like the guy I’d seen in the mirror that summer vacation after my farewell with Hinami.
Hinami dropped her gaze weakly and bit her lip. “…Sorry.” Her expression and tone seemed crushed by guilt. “Sorry…for letting you see me like this.”
Haruka-chan admired her. She’d even said that she wanted to be like her big sister. I didn’t know whether she’d said that to Hinami, but Hinami had to have noticed her feelings. She’d feel ashamed and pathetic—and she’d want to run away right this minute.
But Haruka-chan was seeing something else at the moment. “Big Sis, um!” Her eyes were earnest, desperately wanting to make sure she would communicate her feelings. “You know—I admire you, and I want to be like you…!” Her words were full of real enthusiasm. “Just recently, you know—I made student council president…!”
“!”
Like she was looking for attention, reporting what she’d worked on hardest to the person she most wanted praise from—
“I’m not good at stuff like you, so I campaigned really hard and asked lots of people. Then I finally made it. Because I had to be like you, because I wanted to be like you, I worked really hard.” Her voice was wavering uneasily as she took shaky steps toward Hinami. “And—and also? The student council work that you can’t do right now because you happen to feel unwell—Tomozaki-san and his friends are all handling it, you know…?”
“Huh…?” Hinami was looking at me with confusion and surprise.
“So it’ll be okay…?” Haruka-chan replied once more, slowly breaking down Hinami’s expression. “You can go back to being you…!”
One step after another, she approached Hinami on unsteady feet.
“So, Big Sis…” Her fingertips touched Hinami’s unmasked cheek. “Talk with me again—lots, okay…? I want to hear lots of cool stories from you…!”
The heat and weight of her words made me understand.
“If you don’t…I won’t know what to do…!”
To Haruka-chan, Aoi Hinami was no falsely brilliant icon.
She was the real sun—so bright, it could never be replaced.
“Haruka-chan.”
Hearing my voice, Haruka-chan lifted her face from where it was buried in Hinami’s chest. “Tomozaki…san.”
“Can you leave this part to me?” I said.
“But…”
As Haruka-chan looked up at me uneasily, I smiled back at her. “It’ll be okay.”
I know that life is difficult, and there are no guarantees.
But.
“—It’ll definitely be okay.”
That was one area where I was just as sure as I was about Atafami.
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“Because I love your sister just as much as you do.”
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“…So it was you,” Hinami said, exasperated. “I thought she’d been going out a lot lately… Agh.”
She said that Haruka-chan had started leaving the house without saying anything to her family more often, and they had been worried she might be wrapped up in some trouble. Well, in this day and age, kids can readily connect with adults on social media, so it is concerning when they go out without permission.
“People in the neighborhood were talking, too… They said some sketchy guy had been waiting for over an hour in front of our house.”
“I’m really sorry for causing you trouble.” Have I become a really suspicious character these past few months? If I was caught on all this, I think I’d be denied parole.
Hinami was sighing, but I was happy just to hear it. “…Why are you doing something like this?” she asked. There was a lack of confidence in her voice, though, so she must have known the answer.
After all, she was the one who’d been acting strangely in the first place.
“I couldn’t get a hold of you,” I said.
“Still…contacting my family without my permission has got to be breaking the rules.” Her gaze flicked away, surely an expression of guilt.
“Yeah. But…you know, right?” Looking at Hinami’s feeble expression, I smiled. When I’m with her, I can’t help but run my mouth.
“Nanashi bends the rules.”
Right now, I had most certainly gone against a number of rules.
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You can’t broach territory you’re not responsible for if the other person is against it.
You can’t force someone to be a certain way just out of your selfish desires or ego.
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—You can’t hurt the people you care about.
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These are obvious rules in life, but I’d bent them to say my piece to her.
“…I suppose so.” Her narrowed eyes were weak, as if the world they saw was colorless. “The complete opposite from me.”
Her expression drew a clean line between us, loneliness apparent in her eyes. “I can’t even breathe without rules.”
Her words were frank, with no warmth or feigned strength.
While this made me sad, I was also incredibly glad.
“…Yeah.” I agreed with her. “You always…depended on them.”
—I was going to hurt Aoi Hinami.
Because that was what I had intended to do when I reached this point.
“What do you—?”
“I do know,” I cut her off. “Since I’ve been thinking about nothing but you for this past month. Haruka-chan told me about what happened, and I’ve thought about it over and over to get here.”
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“—At some point, all that—shattered to pieces.”
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I think because I’d learned about her little sister through those interviews, because I’d heard about it from Hinami’s own mouth, I’d been too fixated on one idea to figure it out.
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“What shattered wasn’t your sister—”
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I had believed that “shattering” had been referring to her other sister’s death.
But hearing about everyone’s reasons to believe—and what Haruka-chan had said just now—I had finally connected the dots.