Did I do something wrong? Or was I misinterpreting things? Pitifully enough, I was obsessed with the fact that Wataya hadn’t responded to my text. Perhaps she’d thought of me as nothing more than a nuisance the whole time I was elated on our date. The possibility scared me a bit. Then again, I might be overthinking things. When we ran into each other on campus, we chatted as if nothing was wrong. But after that first date, Wataya would sometimes space out in the middle of our conversations. She seemed lost in thought. It had happened again today.
“Wataya, are you all right?”
“What, me? I’m fine. Sorry.”
She arranged her face into a smile. That was an accurate way to put it.
“Are you getting enough sleep? You did fall asleep in the library the other day. You must be exhausted.”
“Oh, I just stayed up late writing the night before and didn’t sleep enough.”
“Writing, like a paper?”
“No, something personal. Something that had a deadline. Anyway, I’m getting plenty of rest now, so don’t worry about me. I just have some things on my mind.”
I tensed up, worrying those things had to do with me. I wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t have the courage.
“If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Instead, I said something completely different. She gazed at me silently. For some reason, she smiled sadly.
“It’s fine. You really are like I thought you were. A nice…”
She didn’t finish her sentence. I looked at her questioningly.
“Never mind,” she said.
I decided not to think too much about the text, or anything else, because I sensed she wouldn’t want me to. There was no point in worrying about it.
But maybe I should have given it more thought.
We finally made it to the aquarium a full two weeks after first talking about it. Like the time before, we met after class and took the subway to the nearest station. Night at the Aquarium started at five. Outside, the sky was dyed a lonely orange, but inside, we were greeted by a lit-up fantasy world. It had a mature ambience.
“Hey, this is pretty nice,” Wataya remarked. We walked through the exhibits together. It was fancier than I’d expected, which made me nervous. We were surrounded by other couples. Some of them were holding each other’s hands as they peered into the tanks.
I was hoping to hold Wataya’s hand that night. I kept glancing at her pale, delicate fingers, but when it came to actually reaching out to grab it, I hesitated.
“Why so quiet?” she asked.
“Nothing… I’m just n-nervous.”
I glanced reflexively at her hand again. I think she noticed, but she didn’t say anything about it.
“We’re here, so we might as well enjoy it. Come on.”
She headed down a softly lit hallway like she knew her way around. When I asked if she’d been there before, she said, “Just once. In high school.”
High school. Was it with her ex? Slightly pained by that thought, I watched the colorful fish swim around in their tanks. After a few minutes, she stopped in front of one. Its large inhabitant was not so much swimming as elegantly soaring through the water.
“It’s a ray, isn’t it?”
“Yup, a ray through and through.”
“…Can you eat rays?”
“Naruse, that’s a bold question to ask in an aquarium. The employees would be shocked if they overheard you.”
I felt flustered. Maybe it was a bit of an indiscreet comment. She looked at me and giggled. I was glad, but her smile didn’t last long. She turned back to the tank.
“She’s still here, same as always,” she said.
Wataya was doing it again. For a moment, she had vanished from the present. What was she despairing over? She had come here in high school. Had something changed between then and now?
She walked silently to the next tank. I watched her without saying a word.
Eventually, the sun set, and it came time for the outdoor dolphin night show. The crowd was bigger than I’d expected. The same tastefully tinted indirect lights were on outside, and the dolphins looked completely different than they did during the daytime.
The show started. Surrounded by couples, Wataya and I watched the dolphins leap and dive. The couple right in front of us joined hands. My own hand flinched. Would it be presumptuous of me to hold Wataya’s? Would she be offended? Nervous as I was, I took the plunge and grabbed her hand.
I’d read somewhere that love is wanting to hold someone’s hand so desperately, you feel like you’re going to die. And that the greatest joy of love is that feeling.
Wataya looked at me. She smiled.
Or not. No sooner had I seen her grin than she took her hand away. She was staring back at the dolphins.
I was overcome with regret. I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t speak right away. I apologized after the show ended. She slowly smiled and shook her head.
“Let’s get going,” she said. We left the venue. I felt so bad about my insensitivity and presumptuousness that I remained silent. It was after seven thirty when we stepped outside the aquarium.
“Um, would you like to grab dinner together?” I asked, honestly thinking she would refuse. I’d messed up that badly. But she said yes. Very normally and naturally.
We used the map app on my phone to walk to a restaurant. There was an Italian place nearby with big windows and a spacious interior that I’d thought of taking her when I was planning our date. Luckily, a table was open. We sat down across from each other and ordered from the unfamiliar menu.
I’d relearned a lesson that day. I was pitifully green when it came to romance. I lacked experience and was way too tense. With Wataya in particular, I lost sight of who I was almost immediately. I felt bad about that, but I also realized that my tension around her was a sign of how much I liked her. Wataya, who was sitting there right across from me.
She noticed me staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing… I’m just starstruck.”
“What?”
“By this place, I mean. The…the street at night and everything,” I said, chuckling awkwardly.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, amused.
After that, I was able to talk with her as usual. She teased me; I got flustered. She laughed. We ate our dinner. My heart was pounding the whole time. I felt perhaps this state of suspension between nervousness and happiness was the pleasure of being in love.
Even if we were only playing make-believe, I wanted to spend more time with her. Our actions might have been inauthentic, but they could be the beginning of something. If we imitated love enough, it might become real.
That was why—
“I’m sorry. I’d like to break things off.”
I didn’t fully register what she said. It came out of the blue. We’d just been joking around, then she said that with a half smile. My happily thumping heart abruptly took on a cold, stormy cadence.
What did she just say?
Maybe I’d misheard her. Maybe I was misinterpreting her words. “Break things off” could refer to anything. Branches. Bread. Maybe I was so nervous that I’d taken her statement out of context.
“Um, what did you…?”
“I think we should break it off. Stop being a couple.”
But it was no mistake. She was ending our relationship.
The world grew abruptly heavy. All the noises of the restaurant that hadn’t bothered me before came flooding into my ears. The sound of forks scraping against knives, of couples talking happily, of waiters calling to cooks.
Until that moment, I had only seen Wataya. Everything else was a blur. That insular world had just vanished.
“But why? Is it because of what I did today…?” I managed to ask. She shook her head.
“No, not at all. I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”
“Thinking about what?”
“You genuinely have feelings for me, don’t you?”
I felt like I was being presented with an impossible choice. If I said yes, I was going against the condition of our relationship. If I said no, I was obviously lying.
I mean, I was crazy about her. What should I do? How could I fix the situation? Could we be a couple again? I stared at the table without answering her question. But I knew I had to say something. If I didn’t, the whole thing would end right there.
“Why did you agree to date me in the first place?”
Nevertheless, I asked that spineless question. As if I was accepting that the end of our relationship was inevitable.
“I’m sorry. I don’t really know why I did,” she said. I raised my head. She looked terribly sad.
“There’s something I can’t forget…though I know I need to forget it. Maybe I thought that having a pretend relationship would make it all go away. If we kept things on a surface level and just had fun.”
Just having fun. That was what she wanted, and maybe I hadn’t been able to give that to her. Either way…
“Then let’s do that starting now. Just have fun. The only thing I need to do is be careful, right? Not get too close?”
I was desperate. I had a reason to be desperate. But my feelings didn’t reach her.
“I want things to be over. It was doomed from the start. I knew it would end like this.”
“But…”
“And I told you from the beginning, I don’t like nice guys.”
As someone with nothing to offer, I thought I should have been kind at least. But it seemed she didn’t need it. To the contrary, it got in the way.
“Why don’t you like nice guys?”
I was reeling, but I still asked her the same question I had before. She responded right away.
“Nice people are good people. That kind of person…dies young.”
I didn’t know if she was being honest or just trying to make me give up. All I knew was that no matter what, I wasn’t going to be able to continue our current relationship. When I didn’t say anything, she stood up.
“Thank you for everything. I’m sorry to have put you through this. But it was fun.”
She reached for the bill. Before I could say anything, she said, “Let this be my way of thanking you. Bye.”
She smiled, then left without giving me a chance to respond.
I was left alone. She paid the bill and walked out the door. I stayed in my seat, listening to the sound of something ending.
It was dark outside the window, and the glass reflected the bright interior of the restaurant. I saw myself in the reflection. Me, who knew nothing about Wataya’s real self.
Soon, it was summer vacation, and then very quickly, it seemed, break was over. I didn’t speak to Wataya once during that time.