All my fault. I hadn’t even thought about it like that before; it was a possibility my subconscious had been completely ruling out. After all, it wasn’t as if I held the power to deliberately stop time or anything like that. Yet for whatever reason, Akira’s words struck a chord somewhere deep within my chest. Was it because they reminded me of something else, perhaps? No, that couldn’t be it. This was my first timefreeze. I’d never once experienced anything like this before… Or had I?
Could I really say for certain that this was the first time?
“Well?” Akira demanded. “Say something, already.”
I lifted my head up with a start. Her face was right up next to mine.
“Wh-whoa, stay back…!” I said, recoiling in a fluster at her unexpected proximity. Akira, meanwhile, just let out a haughty snort.
“Ha,” she said. “What a little scaredy-cat. You’re pathetic.”
Now this I could not take sitting down. She’d been running her mouth for quite a while now, completely making light of me and my condition just because she thought I wasn’t capable of fighting back. I considered myself a pretty calm and rational guy, but I wasn’t so mild-mannered as to take such flagrant verbal abuse.
“Would you just knock it off with the tough-girl act, already?”
“Uh, excuse me? It’s not an ‘act,’ kid. That’s just who I am.”
“No, you’re full of it. The truth is, you’re the one who’s scared.”
Akira’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “The hell did you just say to me?!”
“Because if I remember right…” I said, swallowing hard, “it was you who broke down and cried in the tunnel, not me. Isn’t that right?”
A glint of fury and betrayal flashed across her irises—and then came a loud SMACK as a shimmering shower of tiny sparks scattered on the backs of my eyelids. It took me a few seconds to realize that Akira had just slapped me across the face. It was so sudden that my surprise outweighed both the pain and the force the impact applied to my cheekbone. I just stood there, mind totally blank, with my mouth hanging halfway open like an idiot. Akira glared at me with misty eyes and trembling lips.
“Fine then,” she said. “I’ll go to Tokyo by myself. Don’t follow me.”
I just stood there in a daze as she walked right past me and barged down the road with a long, indignant stride.
“Ah…”
I tried to call out to her, but my voice wouldn’t come. Regret pooled in the pit of my stomach, then welled up into my diaphragm and pressed against my lungs, squeezing them silent. I was powerless to do anything but watch her silhouette slowly disappear over the next hill—at which point I let out a great big sigh as though someone had finally pulled the cork from my mouth.
“…Damn it.”
What the hell was I even doing? I knew better than anyone just how humiliating it was to be ridiculed for a fear you had a complex about, so why had I done that to her? I needed to chase after her and apologize right now—but I couldn’t. My legs felt rooted to the spot. My mind knew exactly what it was I needed to do, yet my heart still wavered with the fickle uncertainty of emotion. Obviously, I knew Akira had to be livid right now. Who knew if she would forgive me, no matter how hard I apologized…
At a loss, I hung my head and did nothing but watch the rain drip down from my dangling, matted bangs. It was colder than cold—yet I assumed Akira intended to stubbornly make her way south to Tokyo on trembling legs. Come to think of it, what was she planning to do when she got there? I’d never told her my uncle’s address, so even if she did manage the whole trip alone, she was destined to hit a roadblock in that regard eventually. I wasn’t sure if she was just hoping things would work out somehow or simply hadn’t thought that far ahead. Regardless, she was clearly acting more on impulse and emotion than out of rationality. And I was partly to blame for that. I needed to try to clear the air, even if she wasn’t in the mood to listen.
I combed back my wet bangs with one hand, as if to symbolize my renewed resolve, then set off down the road at a brisk jog. Luckily, it was a straight shot at a downward incline after the crest of the hill, so I was able to catch up with Akira in no time. I didn’t quite have the courage to look her in the eye, so I stopped a few feet behind her.
“Hey, um… My bad,” I said. “I really shouldn’t have gone there.”
Silence.
“That was totally uncalled for,” I continued. “It was extremely immature of me to make light of your feelings in a vulnerable moment. And I’m really sorry.”
Still nothing.
“Anyway, uh… At least let me block the rain for you, all right?”
With that, I circled around Akira and started forging a path ahead through the rain. Akira still didn’t say a word, and she simply sidestepped out of the lane I’d just cleared for her. The message was clear: Don’t waste your time. I don’t want your pity. For a moment, I considered insisting on it, or at least agreeing to switch off every once in a while, but I knew arguing with her would only waste both our energy. So I swallowed my disappointed sigh and just kept on walking—trying my very best to convince myself that at least this cold shoulder treatment was preferable to getting pushed down onto the pavement again.