With that final message I stood from my seat. This was my last chance today to get some information. I figured I would linger around the outskirts of the hall for a bit, then make my way off campus before the event was over.
I placed my coffee cup and tray on the return counter, bowed my head in reply to the greeting from the cashier, and headed outside. Somehow the day had progressed from noon to evening without my noticing. The sunlight was waning, the wind growing colder.
I headed for the T-junction. A number of professionals and students had begun filtering out of the hall, perhaps being called back to their offices and part-time jobs. With my previous mistake of being spotted by Wakisaka still in mind, I kept my eyes down as I walked. All I needed to do was try and take in more conversations and not run into anyone. I lowered my gaze, so that no one would spot me.
It occurred to me as I did this that this was more or less the way I had been living my life for the past three years. There had been a few brilliant months where I had a friend who shone brightly enough to illuminate even someone like me, but that had been all. After she was gone, I led a quiet life, suffocating my own self—though perhaps it would be imprudent to phrase it so violently.
The only person I could proudly call a friend who I had met since then was Tousuke. However, that had not occurred of my own power; it was thanks only to the kindness of Tousuke, who was fair to everyone, whom I often had overlapping shifts with at the part-time job I had during my sophomore year. We both ended up quitting that job within a few months of that, but somehow, we managed to stick with one another and now were even co-conspirators.
I suddenly started to feel like it was wrong of me to be stealing away Tousuke’s time, making Tousuke, who had so many friends, spend his weekend in a place like this. I would have to check in again with him later to see if he was really okay with this.
My feet carried me to just before the T-junction. Just then, I noticed a rather lively group making their way out of the hall. I glanced up to look at them.
I’m not sure if my timing then was good or bad, or both, but there she was. I realized that, had I looked up even a second sooner, our eyes would have met, and I would have been spotted.
She and her followers had just rounded the junction that I had been looking at and turned towards the path I had come from. My feet stopped in place all on their own. I hadn’t learned at all.
Once more my wits had abandoned me.
I only learned later the contents of the frantic message from Tousuke that had arrived on my phone, still in my pocket.
“The leader’s heading out!”
It had been so long since I had seen her. My body registered her presence before my brain even did.
I felt a strange coldness, goosebumps rising on my skin. I was cold, but a trail of sweat ran down my spine. My hands curled into fists, fingernails digging so hard into my palms that they were sure to leave a mark. I felt nauseated. Finally, the anomalies made it to my brain, and I panicked all at once. I had no idea what this feeling was. And then, I understood. I knew that what I had felt towards Ten, towards Wakisaka, was only a facsimile of the real thing.
This was true hatred.
I realized then that the only reason I had been able to live my life so peacefully these past two years, pretending as though Moai did not even exist, was because I had averted my eyes from this fact.
There, several meters behind me, was the one who had been primarily responsible for stealing Moai away from us.
It is only when you acknowledge that something is real that you can embrace how it is that you truly feel about it.
She was the one in charge of Moai—the final boss, as far as Tousuke and I were concerned. The one who had been running Moai, a Moai without ideals, in its current twisted form. The current leader: Hiro.
Once more, I felt my flesh crawl. From this distance, it would be so easy to grab her by the shoulders and tell her off. However, I couldn’t. My feelings towards the warped and twisted Moai were not something that could be quelled by such half-hearted measures.
It would look bad for me to just keep standing there. She knew who I was, after all. I wrenched myself from my fixation on Hiro and dragged my heavy feet in the opposite direction of her group. I passed by the path that led to the hall and walked to the bench where I had stationed myself earlier. I needed to better steel myself. I nodded my head at the polite, “Thanks for coming!” from the bespectacled, serious-looking girl who was currently stationed out front, practically crumbling the moment I reached the bench.
For a while, I did not move from that spot. Of course, this was partly because I could not risk going back towards the hall and running into Hiro, but that was not the whole reason. My spirit was being crushed under the weight of my own emotions.
I did no further investigation. I merely waited until my heart rate had slowed down to something resembling normal and then left the campus.
I loitered at the Saint Marc Café near Tousuke’s place. About an hour after the first portion of the event was scheduled to end, I received a message.
Apparently, after the event Tousuke had gone with Pon-chan to celebrate a mission accomplished; this info was accompanied with information about the izakaya they had gone to. It was fairly close to the coffee house we had initially met Pon-chan at. In other words, it was near Pon-chan’s place. That makes sense, I thought, starting to stand up. Just then, I received another text.