I might misunderstand a bunch of things and run my mouth a lot, but I did understand that Wataya and I weren’t compatible.
Everything about me is average. That goes for the outside as well as the inside. I went through a phase where I worried that it was a problem and tried hard to think of something I excelled at, but all I could come up with was a compliment a teacher once wrote on my elementary school report card: Naruse never speaks ill of other people.
I studied hard to get into a national university, but so did everyone else who goes to my university.
I don’t have anything unique to offer. I think about that constantly.
But for the first time in my life, I fell in love at first sight.
She was a year ahead of me at the same university. Her name was Izumi Wataya. I remember the day I met her very well. I doubt I’ll forget it as long as I live.
It was April, just after I started school. Under a hazy spring sky, I was on campus talking to an older student who was from my town. We’d gone to junior high and high school together and were in the same club in junior high. He was kind to his underclassmen and was happy I was attending the same university.
“If you meet any cute freshman girls, make sure you introduce me, okay?”
…I mean this in the best way, but he’s a very friendly guy.
As we were talking, another student walked by. I noticed she held her head high.
“Hey, Wataya!” my friend called out. The woman stopped. Her short black hair swayed as she turned her beautiful face with its almond-shaped eyes toward us.
That was her.
After, the two of them had chatted for a minute before she waved goodbye and turned to go. But then, maybe because I was staring at her, she shifted her gaze in my direction. I remember the moment our eyes met. Her eyes had a dignified loneliness to them. Deep down inside her was a cool, clear sorrow that resisted any attempt by others to understand it.
For some reason, I sensed that.
But I doubt she remembers our gazes meeting. She turned away and walked off toward someplace for only her to inhabit.
“Hey, Naruse, are you okay?” my friend asked, probably noticing how dazed I looked.
“Oh, uh…yeah.”
Of course, part of it had to do with the fact that Wataya was beautiful. But I saw something more than beauty in her. That something was what instantly captured my heart.
“Um, who was that…?” I asked. He told me her full name and that she was in the same department as me.
“Let me guess, you’re interested in her?” he asked, amused.
“No…it’s just…”
“Leave it to me, buddy,” he said.
At the time, I had no idea what I was leaving to him. I smiled vaguely.
About a week later, he invited me to go out drinking. I agreed, figuring it was part of the university experience. A dozen or so second-year students met up at a pub. Wataya was sitting at the table next to mine. I realized with surprise why I’d been invited.
My friend had organized the get-together, and he told me that everyone was just grabbing a meal. I sat down in a corner, constantly aware of Wataya’s presence. After a while, my friend returned from talking to various people.
“How’s it going? You getting enough to drink?” he asked.
“I’m underage,” I answered.
“But you’re drinking.”
“This is oolong tea.”
Seeming to remember why I was there, he smiled, then called out to Wataya.
“Hey, Wataya! I went to high school with this freshman. He says he likes you.”
It hadn’t even been an hour since the party started, and my crush was already exposed. The people sitting near us shouted gleefully and peered at me with deep interest. As I panicked, Wataya looked over at me.
“Really? Is that true?”
“Um, well, it’s just…”
“You should forget about me. I’m a real pain in the ass.”
Now that I think about it, that was the first time she took notice of me as an individual.
I was so upset, I can’t remember what I said back. My peers pushed me toward her, and we ended up sitting next to each other and striking up a conversation. In contrast to my initial impression that she was gloomy, she turned out to be surprisingly laid-back. She laughed and joked a lot. She was already twenty, and she downed hard liquor as if it were water. I’d even call her cheerful.
I managed to tell her my name, but we didn’t get anywhere close to exchanging numbers. I was hoping to talk to her more at the second bar, but she ended up not going. When everyone left the first pub, she headed for the station with a couple of other people.
“Naruse, you better not go home yet,” my friend insisted, so I followed them to the second bar. Even though he’d asked me to introduce him to some cute freshmen the other day, he went on and on about some girl he was madly in love with but who had no clue he liked her.
I got home from my first drinking party in the middle of the night, completely exhausted. I took a shower and immediately went to bed…and had a very memorable dream. I was out drinking somewhere again. Wataya was there. She was sitting next to me, laughing, and I turned to her without thinking and asked, “What’s so funny?” Even for a dream, it was a pretty rude question. I wondered what made me ask it. Maybe I thought it was odd since she came across as being sad and lonely. Maybe I felt like she was forcing herself to laugh.
She turned to me and said with a gentle smile, “It’s better than crying.”
I woke with a start. It was morning. Because I made an effort to commit it to memory, my dream stayed with me, and my heart pounded from what I could recall of it.
Humans are strange creatures. It had been nothing more than a dream, but once again, Wataya was there, and I found myself even more interested in her. After that, I pursued every opportunity I could find to talk to her on campus.
“H-hello, Wataya,” I stuttered the first time. She was clearly taken aback.
“Aren’t you the guy I met the other night? Uh…Naruse, right? The one who said you like me?”
“Yup, that’s me. Thanks for talking to me at the party. H-how are you today?”
“Uh…what? Fine, I guess.”
It was strange talking to someone who knew I had feelings for them. I felt like clouds of unease and ambiguity were floating all around us.
Wataya’s short hair looked great on her. She came off as imposing and cool. But I’d realized at the bar she was approachable once she got talking, with the sadness that I felt from her the first time we’d met seemingly absent.
“Oh, look at the time. I need to get going. Um…bye, Naruse.”
I continued to greet her every time I saw her on campus. Our conversations were always about the same topics. Weather. Lectures. Classes in our department. Our mutual friend, the guy from my hometown. But that was enough for me. Wataya was aware of me as an individual. She even called me by my first name.
I felt we weren’t at level zero anymore—we progressed to level one, but it hadn’t grown into anything more.
No matter what you multiply it by, zero never becomes one. In a sense, there’s an infinite space between zero and one.
Level zero was when you were a passerby, part of the scenery. Very often, things end there. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I felt like there was something between Wataya and me. I tended to that connection with great care. I wanted very much to continue treasuring it.
Once I got used to university life, my biggest motivation for going to campus was getting an opportunity talk to her, even for a minute or two.
“Oh, Wataya!”
“Hi, Naruse. What are you doing here?”
“I hadn’t said hello to you today, so I searched for you.”
“You’re a lot stranger than you look, you know that?”
Sometimes she was out in the open on campus, but other times she was in odd places where no one else went. I was surprised by the area I found her in, and I wondered if she was trying to avoid me because I was annoying, but our mutual friend said she’d always been like that.
“Wataya likes to be by herself,” he told me.
He said she stared up at the sky a lot, and read, and wrote in what seemed to be a journal. I’d seen her doing those things, too.
“But when I see her talking to you, she seems kind of entertained. You shouldn’t worry so much. Now, let me tell you about the girl I like…”
He started rambling about his great love, but I felt encouraged by his words. I continued to look around for her on campus to talk to her. I’d find her behind the administrative building, or in unused classrooms, or at a table in the literature section of the library, or in the low-ceilinged dining hall located in a distant corner of the campus, or on a bench behind the library.
“Hello, Wataya.”
On this particular day, she was on the bench behind the library. The early summer sun didn’t reach back there, and it was cool and shady. She was reading a book.
“Hello,” she said. “You know, sometimes, I feel like an elementary school teacher saying hello to their student.”
“You’d make a good teacher.”
“Should I put on a pair of glasses for you?”
“No, you’re good how you are…,” I said, smiling. She closed her book. I caught a glimpse of the cover. Unexpectedly, it was a novel that had been adapted into a popular movie. I remembered it because the author was famous for being beautiful. If I recalled correctly, it was an adult romance story by Keiko Nishikawa.