Naomi found himself doing a little rough mental math. The used book sale was three days away; after today, they’d have two more days to move the books. They could probably manage one round trip after school per day, for a total of three trips. But that wasn’t going to be enough to get all the books to school.
Shaking his head, he gripped the rusted metal handle of the handcart a bit more firmly and pushed it stubbornly forward. Ruri was walking in back, pushing from behind. They’d found this thing in the storage building too, and it was a bit of an antique itself; every push forward made its boards squeak and groan. He was getting kind of worried that the bottom might fall out.
Dropping down onto the bench on the riverbank, Naomi finally managed to catch his breath. They were about halfway to school, but they both really needed a break.
Taking an already soggy handkerchief from his pocket, Naomi wiped the sweat off his face as best he could. It was late June—summer was sneaking up on them again.
He glanced over at Ruri, who was gulping down mineral water from a plastic bottle. Ultra-Hard Cave Water was the last thing he would have chosen from that vending machine, but for some reason her choice didn’t surprise him.
Ruri looked just as sweaty as Naomi felt. Since she was only helping out from behind, she could have gotten away with slacking off a little, but he knew by now that taking it easy wasn’t in her nature.
It’d been two and a half months now since they joined the library committee together. Maybe he’d gotten to know her a little better in that time.
“By the way, Katagaki-san,” she said, turning to look at him, “what kind of books do you like?”
“U-uh…”
She’s making small talk now?!
This was small talk, right? It had to be. He just had to come up with a reasonable reply, then. He liked all sorts of books. If he wanted to, he could have rattled off a dozen titles and then talked about every one of them at great length.
His conscious mind held him back, though. He caught his hand automatically moving toward his back pocket, but he stopped it. There was no note in there today, no cheat sheet for this one. This was a question he didn’t know about in advance.
He was sweating again, and it wasn’t just from the heat. He’d gotten careless, assuming nothing would happen today. Sensei hadn’t warned him, after all.
They were still doing their early-morning training, so he saw Sensei every day. But the man had seemed preoccupied lately. While Naomi practiced, he’d spend the entire session glaring at maps and numbers that floated in midair. The day of the accident was approaching; maybe he was busy planning their strategy for that.
Naomi had gotten more and more comfortable with their peculiar arrangement. At first he’d been nervous and pestered Sensei constantly about the day’s events…but the man always warned him when something big was coming up, so he’d stopped bothering. Naomi hadn’t asked Sensei anything about today. He didn’t know the right answer to this question.
He could screw this up completely.
“Well, I…”
His voice was actually trembling slightly. He was scared. Scared of a little small talk.
Ugh. I haven’t changed a bit.
“I read all sorts of stuff, I guess. Anything that catches my eye…” It was the vaguest, most harmless answer that he could think of.
“I see,” Ruri responded. It was a noncommittal, nothing response, and the conversation ground to a halt.
Naomi hated himself in that moment.
This wasn’t right at all.
What kind of conversation was that? It wasn’t the way classmates should talk to each other, or friends. It definitely wasn’t a conversation between a soon-to-be boyfriend and girlfriend.
A gust of wind blew by, and the small flowers on the riverbank swayed back and forth. The sun glittered on the river. Cars passed in the distance.
All of it just seemed to emphasize the awkward silence.
He needed to say something. If this kept up much longer, she was going to decide he was a fundamentally boring person. Or maybe just a jerk.
But Naomi’s mouth didn’t want to move. He couldn’t force out a single syllable. He felt about ready to cry.
“I’m a fan of adventure novels, personally.”
The silence was broken. Startled, Naomi looked up from the ground; Ruri was gazing out at the river as it flowed peacefully by.
“The heroes of those books throw themselves into their journeys. They face terrible challenges, but they never give up. That’s always appealed to me.” She was looking up, now, to where the moon hung palely in the sky. “I want to live my life that way, too,” she continued. “That’s the kind of person I want to be.”
Ruri had opened up to him; she’d just told him something real about herself. She’d taken the risk of exposing her actual thoughts and feelings. Naomi felt like she’d just given him a big push forward. He had to meet her halfway here. He owed her that much.
It wouldn’t be fair to let one person drag the cart along all by herself.
“So, actually…” His voice still trembled, unfortunately. “I like science fiction.”
He could tell she’d turned to look at him, but he couldn’t look at her himself. Instead of meeting her gaze, he focused on getting the words out coherently.
“Those books show you whole new worlds, right? And they’re really amazing, bizarre worlds, totally different from our own. But they’re not just made up out of nothing. You’ve got the science part there, too, to tie them to reality.”
The words flew out of him like an avalanche now. He was talking too fast, almost babbling. If he’d seen someone else speaking like this, he would have felt embarrassed on their behalf. But he just couldn’t stop.
“Those worlds are fiction, of course, but they feel like an extension of the one we really live in. So it kind of feels like our world’s part of the story. It makes me feel like I’m a character in a story, too.” His slowing down and losing its confidence—he hadn’t planned this out in advance, so he was seriously startling to ramble. “I mean, I know I’m just a minor character, but…well…I guess I can’t explain it very clearly.” He pushed through it with sheer willpower, like a marathon runner closing in on the finish line. “But anyway, I love science fiction.”
He’d said everything he could.
Ruri responded “I see” for the second time—another blank reply.
Naomi felt the anxiety he’d suppressed bubbling back up again. He’d taken a real gamble here. He’d rolled the dice, but there was no telling what the outcome might be. He’d told her about himself, about what he really thought and felt. Instead of reading off some line from a notebook, he’d given her his words, just as they’d popped into his head.
What if she thought they were ridiculous?
What if she disagreed with him completely?
It would almost be too much to—
“I think…”
Naomi looked over to find she was looking back at him.
“I know what you mean.”