Chapter 3
SPRING OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL. The red train, second car from the front. Outside the window was a residential area, and it was clear the cherry blossom season was well and truly over. The small hills that rose up here and there among the town above were thick with light green foliage. The fresh leaves were still soft and subtle in their hues. They looked like they’d be pretty tasty if you boiled them up—kinda like broccoli.
I rode this train every day. I tried to wait for the train at the exact same spot on the platform, at the exact same times, whether I was going to school or coming home, so that I could board from the exact same door. It had been more than a month since I started doing it. I liked this spot. I never sat down, even if there were seats free. I liked to stay standing in this exact spot.
I boarded at the station closest to the school to go home. The train then stopped at the next station. The doors opened. People got off, and people got on. There was that group of three.
There they are! Wait… Huh?! No way! His hair’s black now?!
The doors closed, the train started up again, and I was a malfunctioning metronome. My heart was pounding nonstop. A fire, a festival, a runaway horse. My ears, nose, and forehead were burning. My whole face was a fireball. They were speaking right next to me.
“So then Mou-chan shows up…”
“Huh? No way.”
“Yeah, I call bull.”
“No, she was there!”
I couldn’t look, so I was watching secretly from the corner of my eye like I always did. I could see him from where I was standing.
“C’mon, quit being a dumbass. There’s no way.”
His silky black hair shook with his laughter.
It felt like my insides were turning inside out and about to spill from my mouth. I quickly looked away. And then I looked back. My mind was going crazy and it wouldn’t stop. The blood was charging through my entire network of veins. I couldn’t get enough oxygen; I couldn’t breathe. I took a load of quick, quiet breaths, making sure no one would notice, and pretended to look out of the window.
The three of them were together about eight out of ten times. They always got on and off at the same stop, which was probably the one closest to their school. They never wore their blazers properly, and the bags they hung over one shoulder were always squashed. They didn’t talk much in the mornings but got pretty loud on the way home. And one of them was as lethal as poison.
Even just stealing glances at him made me feel like I was gonna stop breathing. And while I was at it, why not let my heart stop beating too? I couldn’t stop looking. But I couldn’t take a proper look either.
He hadn’t been there this morning, so I was screaming internally. I hadn’t seen him for an entire day. He was having more of an effect on me than usual. I mean, he’d dyed his hair again, by which I meant he’d gone back to his original color. My eyes were darting back and forth ’cause I wanted to look, but I couldn’t, but I wanted to look, but I couldn’t.
His collar was slack around his long neck. His bangs were a little too long, and the eyes underneath them slanted upward a teensy bit. Even when he smiled, his gaze was so cool that it had to be at least forty below zero. He was tall too, like he was existing on another plane from the rest of us. His uniform was worn, so he couldn’t have been a first-year. He was older than me. From the mature way he carried himself, he was probably a senior. I was pretty sure I’d die if those eyes ever looked right at me. I’d burst into flames… No, wait, I’d freeze to death. If he were a mage, he’d definitely specialize in ice magic instead of fire magic. Or so I figured. I was totally right, though.
I didn’t think anything of him at the start. Though I started at an all-girls high school that spring, I was in a public junior high school with plenty of boys in my class before that. Boys weren’t a rarity or anything, and it wasn’t like I paid them much attention. So the trio ended up riding the same carriage as me for three days in a row. Kinda interesting, but no big deal.
The next time I saw them, one of them had blond hair. It threw me off. If anything, I was in awe at the lax rules at his school that let him get away with it. He was blond for three days, until he decided to shock me again. His hair was silver this time. It suited him a million times better than the blond. It drew my eyes right into the cool gaze under his bangs. From there, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even blink. He was like an otherworldly being. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time. I wasn’t, but that’s how mysterious he suddenly looked to me. He was like an illusion, something that even my imagination wasn’t capable of conjuring. I was looking right at him, but I wasn’t sure whether he was real. He could have been some strange, untouchable lifeform from another dimension. That was what I saw when I looked at him.
It wasn’t just his hair color that hooked me. It was his listless movements and the way he didn’t laugh quite at full volume. It was his long limbs, his slightly hunched back, and his blue veins that only appeared on his neck when he looked down. Then there were his super-clean nails. His smooth jawline. His shoulders, which were way wider than mine. Everything about him just looked so different compared to everyone else. There could be thousands of people around him, but I could only see him, shining brighter than everyone else. Every new detail I noticed about him was like another bullet hitting my chest. And I was noticing something new every second. My eyes were glued to him.