As always, she wasn’t listening to a word I said. With how poor her control of her whole body was, as she took form to throw the ball again, the intonation of her voice was even stranger than usual.
“Mm?”
“Your night…form or your day form… Which is…the real one?”
Perhaps it was because she had thrown the ball with more vigor than before, but it went sailing over my head. The echo of its heavy impact against the wall behind me made my black droplets shiver.
“Huh?”
“Go get the…ball,” she said casually, pointing right at me. I obeyed, turning around and picking up the ball behind me with my tail.
“Throw…it.”
I threw the ball in an arc. Yano-san deftly caught it.
“Are you a human? Or are you…what you are…now?”
“No, I, uh…”
“I’ve been wonder…ing which it…is.”
This time she flung only words at me, the ball still in her hands.
“Which one…is the real one?”
What exactly was she referring to?
“You know… I…”
Though I hadn’t asked her, as per usual, she began speaking about herself.
“I’m not…either one. Day, night, there’s…no difference to me. I don’t change…at all. Everything around me changes. The time and…the people and things and at…mosphere around me change, but I am…the same, day or night. The dif…ferences mean nothing to…me.”
I was lost for words.
“But you, Acchi…kun. You change…completely…between day and night.”
What was she talking about?
“So I wonder which…one it is.”
She kept pointing straight at me, as though interrogating me.
“I’ve been thinking about this while you weren’t…around,” she playfully jabbed.
My black droplets began to quiver, quietly, under the aim of her pointing finger. She was staring straight at me, not averting her eyes.
“I want to…know.”
I drew in a single breath.
I doubted that Yano-san was all that strong or all that wise. She probably had simply developed some sort of curiosity. My human form and my monster form—which one was the real one? She had asked me something like this before, about whether I had been born in my monster form. So it made more sense to assume that this was merely an innocent question.
Regardless, to me it seemed as though her teasing was merely a means to hide her true feelings. Hiding the truth behind a different expression, just as Nakagawa-san had when Kasai criticized her.
Maybe it was merely my feelings of guilt at work, but it felt as though I was being reproached. It seemed like she was concealing her anger towards me—for what I had done while a human, naturally.
She hid this to protect herself. To protect the time that she had now, as Iguchi-san and Nakagawa-san had. If she were to grow angry, then the night would be ruined. If she were to grow angry, then the connection that the two of us shared might be severed. It was for this reason, I believed, that she suppressed her feelings and tried to reach an emotional compromise, by eliciting a response from me that she could accept.
I have no idea if my reasoning was correct. I had no idea how to answer her question in a way that she would find acceptable.
Not knowing this, I sidestepped it.
“I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t answer her question. Instead, I spat out the answer she was truly seeking, flying directly past her inquiry. It was a bit of an evasion, but honestly, it got to the point of what we both had originally been circling around. I felt this was far more meaningful than offering a reply that suited the question that Yano-san had asked, the one which concealed her true feelings. Thus, the deep question that she had asked me was quite convenient for my purposes, if I could speak the truth here now.
“For…what?” she asked, tilting her head theatrically as she rolled the ball between her fingertips.
Of course, she wanted a more concrete apology, I thought.
Normally, that kind of manipulation would have gotten my monstrous hackles up, but for today, at least, she was right to feel as she did. It was natural that she would be angry with me after what I had done.
However, apologizing felt less natural. It was not something that I could do during the day. And so, I stood up straight, bowing down my large, monstrous head towards her.
“I’m sorry.”
“O…kay?”
She was acting even more bewildered. Her eyes were big and round, like a child’s. Goggling at me as she was, she looked almost stupid.
“Um…”
I began to speak and then closed my mouth. Where had my courage gone?
Hardly ever in my life had I done something with ill intent. Even fewer times had I needed to apologize to someone for doing so. Most rarely of all had I been the sole perpetrator of the act.
All the more reason then, that I should apologize.
It was bad, after all.
Bad.
Bad?
Which was bad?
“About today…” I said and then trailed off.
Which was worse?
The thing that I had done today? Or what I did day in and day out?
The explicit bullying? Or the implicit?
Motoda and Nakagawa-san, or me?
Yano-san or the rest of us?
“I’m sorry for stepping on your present for Noto-sensei.”
So many other words, other questions ran through my head, but I offered her the words I had already prepared as they were, not second-guessing them. If I let myself overthink it, I would never say anything at all.
So, it was good that I was able to say it. Still, between my nerves and everything else, I had to avert my eyes. Realizing, however, that this made my apology seem like a lie, I looked her properly in the face.
I saw it.
I took in the transformation of her face as she accepted my apology, clearly, with my own eight eyes.
Her lips twitched.
Yano-san…
“Don’t a…pologize for things that…happen during the…day.”
…did not grin at me.
Her lips still pursed, the reply she gave me was one that I had heard before.
Honestly, I had suspected that she might say such a thing, a prediction which turned out correct. So, that was all right. The words, anyway.
What I had feared most was not her words, but her expression. I didn’t know what I would do if I saw that face; that face that only I understood the meaning of, that face that she showed towards those terrible people.
In the end, however, she had not made that face.
So, that should have been just fine too, and yet…
“You aren’t…going to smile?” For some reason, these needless words came spilling from my jagged mouth.
“Hm…hmm?”
“Even after what I did?”