I tried to get the words out, but they caught in my weirdly dry throat and turned into a sigh.
Frankly, I didn’t want to talk with this woman. It wasn’t as if I really hated her as an individual, and if I said I just couldn’t handle her, then, well, that’s how I am with most women. There was no one element I really couldn’t stand. Whether it be her appearance or what was on the inside, there were plenty of positives about her.
I was just scared. It was a fear like with the mirror you see in the middle of the night, the slightly cracked-open door you find in a dark room, the sense that something is behind you when you’re showering—the kind where you don’t even want to make sure what it really is.
My anxiety was telling me that if I said something, absolutely all of it would be caught and trapped, and that I’d have something I didn’t want to know shoved in my face again.
But Yuigahama couldn’t sit there and watch me floundering. “Um, it’s about…the prom.”
“Oh, that.” The glee on Haruno’s face ebbed away like it had never been. She had obviously lost interest, leaning into the backrest. “If you say you want to talk to a pretty older lady, then it’s going to be about love, normally,” she said jokingly with a dramatic shrug of her shoulders.
I let out a quiet sigh. My coffee had just arrived, and it moistened my throat enough to get out a flippant reply. “You’d normally assume it’s to ask advice…”
Haruno smiled back at that. “How very businesslike.”
“I hate work, though,” I muttered with some irony and a half smile, sensing the tension bleeding away. Yuigahama, sitting beside me, also sounded relieved. It was pathetic, if I do say so myself, but I was frankly glad she’d come with me. If I had been alone, Haruno would have just had me at her whims the whole time. Even if I superficially managed to dodge her moves, in the depths of my heart, I’d be trapped.
I gave Yuigahama a subtle nod to say, It’s okay now. Of course I didn’t suddenly believe I could handle Haruno, but still, I didn’t want to appear too lame in front of her.
I brought the coffee to my lips once more and pulled out my phone. “I want you to leak this.” I showed her the website for the dummy prom that had been finished just a while ago.
Haruno studied the screen for a minute but soon let out a little sigh. “Hmm…I don’t get it…”
“Um…they’re against the prom, so if we come up with a new, different one—,” Yuigahama tried to explain, but Haruno smiled kindly at her and cut her off.
“No, I get that.” It seemed that after one look at the website text, Haruno had gotten the gist. It was helpful she was quick on the uptake.
I was relieved about not having to explain the details, but my sigh caught in my throat. Haruno Yukinoshita’s calm, chilly gaze was trained on me.
“What I don’t get is why you’re doing this… Didn’t I tell you about the relationship between you three?” Her tone contained a smile and a teasing ring, but also a deep sadness. As if tormenting me for my mistakes, as if lamenting my errors—every single word she laid out seemed to pour ice water on my nerves, gently freezing me. “Do you honestly think this is what’s best for her?”
“…It’s not really got much to do with Yukinoshita. It’s not like she asked me to do it. I’m just doing it on my own. This is for me more than anyone,” I said, the words I’d planned to say.
I’d known if I brought the matter of the leak to Haruno Yukinoshita, I’d be unable to avoid this question. So I said it in the way that was shortest, with the fewest fallacies. It wasn’t an absolutely correct answer, but it couldn’t be a mistake. At the very least, in my mind, it held a kernel of the truth.
Problem was, it really didn’t seem like it would work on Haruno Yukinoshita. That was exactly why I’d been avoiding this meeting with her until the last possible moment.
A smile crossed her face, and she tossed back the hot wine. Stroking the rim of her glass, as if correcting the rights and wrongs of the matter, she said, “Yukino-chan doesn’t want help. You’re doing it without her permission, so it’s not codependency… That’s all just superficial talk, isn’t it? It ultimately doesn’t change anything.”
I couldn’t immediately deny what she’d pointed out, and I didn’t know what to say. Yuigahama glanced anxiously at me, then at Haruno.
Though neither Isshiki nor Hayama—and probably Yuigahama, too—had said it out loud, they all had to be thinking it. I was aware myself that this was nothing more than wordplay.
“Yukino-chan has chosen independence, and she wants to end that relationship. I think what you can do is stand back and watch, Hikigaya,” Haruno said with the kindness of an adult chiding a small child.
I couldn’t maintain eye contact with her. She had to be right. Before I knew it, I was clenching the hem of my coat.
“…I don’t think that’s true,” Yuigahama whispered. She was so quiet, her voice was just about drowned out in the wind, but I heard it clearly. I couldn’t know her expression from the suppressed emotion in her voice, so I looked at her face.
Her eyes weren’t on me or Haruno. She was sitting straight, staring at a point on the table.
Haruno’s gaze, which had been focused on me, slid over toward Yuigahama. Then with a minute tilt of her head, she prompted her to continue.
Now the center of attention, Yuigahama continued haltingly. “Maybe it sounds nice to say you’ll stand back and watch, but really you’re just cutting yourself off. If we avoid it and never do anything, then nothing’ll change. All of it will fall apart, and then it’ll be over. Us, and the prom…”
The retro lighting of the café cast an ephemeral shadow over her unusually mature expression. That beautiful bearing, and that sorrow on her face, sent pain running through my chest. Or maybe that was because I’d so easily been able to envision the ending she spoke of.
“So we have to be a little closer. We need to be involved. That’s the only way we can end this properly. So…” The rambling fragments eventually died out; I don’t know what she meant to say after that. With her chin sinking downward, I couldn’t read it from her face.
But even so, I understood something now. Really, I’d understood it for a long time. “Yeah… We have to end it properly…,” I muttered at no one in particular, maybe just to myself, and Yuigahama quietly nodded at me.
We probably all still shared that same wish. Now that I was sure of it, I was finally able to lift my head.
When our gazes clashed, Haruno smiled kindly, tilting her head subtly as she narrowed her eyes. “You don’t care what kind of ending it is? Even if it’s one that Yukino-chan doesn’t want? That nobody wants?”
“I’m fine with that.” The words flowed out without hesitation.