Time passed. It was about a month after that meet-up.
“Oh, well if it isn’t Kaede! Hey there!”
“Oh, hey there.”
The temperature had gotten warmer and already the smell of summer had begun drifting along the breeze. I was in the cafeteria eating some zarusoba when Ten happened to pass by, a girl at his side and a giddy smile on his face.
“Being too sociable is just as bad as not being sociable at all,” said Pon-chan, who I had happened to run into early and was now eating with, dull and ominously.
If it could be said for some that shyness was a strength; then there were also those for whom being communicative was a weakness. Though it may sound odd to say, you never know when you’re going to have a change of heart in terms of your own values. That was probably why Moai had changed from back then and why I decided to proactively embrace the fact that it was not an impossibility that we might someday change as well.
One month from the start of things, I was still working hard on the plans we had laid.
Things had been going well. We had since gotten in touch with Ten and had managed to forge a bond over food and drinks. It worked out for us that Ten rarely rejected those who approached him, nor chased after those who left him. By his philosophy—that once you got to know someone, you were already friends—I suppose you could even call us friends. As Tousuke had accurately predicted, he was very different from me, and the sort of person I did not usually get on with, but there was no direct harm in dealing with him. Though I did, of course, have to be careful never to approach him when he was with any members of Moai that I knew.
“Wearing a jacket in this heat… Is he out of his mind?” said Pon-chan, who was wearing a short-sleeved jacket herself, about Ten. In the month since, her feelings of hatred towards Moai had only intensified, but I could not exactly call this a problem, for our purposes.
The problem lies, specifically, elsewhere. Unlike Pon-chan, Ten rarely spoke about people who were not present. While this had the inverse advantage of making it unlikely that he would ever reveal anything about us to others, it also meant that he never actively spoke about any of the women who might potentially be involved in a scandal with him. Thus, the only course of action would be instead for us to bring up the topic of women, but in the end, it just seemed too forced and unnatural.
Presently, we were struggling to come up with ways to make this happen.
To sidetrack for a moment, let me talk about this jacket of Ten’s which Pon-chan mentioned. When I had overheard the Moai members in the café a month ago, I was waiting in talking about Ten, I had thought it a lucky coincidence, but I now doubt that was the case. As it would turn out, the disguise I had been wearing at that time bore a striking resemblance to the sort of clothing Ten usually wore. I must have reminded one of those girls of him, which is why he came up in conversation. Though unintended, this had been yet another smart move on Tousuke’s part.
Apparently, there really was a reason for all things.
After lunch, I parted ways with Pon-chan, sat through my last class of the day, and then headed to work. For a change of pace from the Moai developments that had been occurring during that month, I had picked up a new part-time job. Well, I say “new,” but the fact was that when I had informed my manager from my previous part-time position about my job offer, I had been asked if I would come back to work. My Moai plans were important, but I did need money to live.
I rode my bike ten minutes from the university and stopped behind a large drugstore. When I took the familiar back entrance into the locker room, I came face-to-face with Kawahara-san, a girl who I had been privately referring to as “Miss Yankee,” and whom I now often shared shifts with following my return. She greeted me with a, “Morn’,” to which I returned a, “G’morn’.” She was a freshman at my university, so at least in terms of school she was distinctly my kouhai. However, if you counted the time after I had come back to work here, I was her kouhai. But if you counted the time before I left, I was her senpai, so we had spent the past month struggling to decide on how exactly we were to address one another in terms of formality, eventually settling on a mutually relaxed register. Luckily, we had yet to encounter one another on campus.
Working here at the drugstore was easy. I was mainly in charge of stocking and manning the register and other odd jobs, and because it was located in a residential district, there were few troublesome customers. Even if they did show up, I could just have them speak to a certain other employee on staff. Only once did I have to deal with a customer demanding a particularly unreasonable return; the “Come again?” that Kawahara-san gave them sent a shiver down my spine. Since then, she had privately earned from me the moniker of “Miss Yankee” as per the thuggish impression I got from her. She was also easily distinguished by the sparkly silver earrings that peeked out from behind her hair that hung over her ears.
I guess I couldn’t be as carefree as Pon-chan was. I diligently did my work, not making much conversation with Kawahara-san, as it grew steadily darker outside the shop, and soon night had come. We got few customers at that hour, so we mostly swapped positions between one of us tidying up the store while the other stood at the register staring off into space.
I mopped mindlessly around the register, letting the music from the store radio drift into my ears. Kawahara-san stood nearby, idle. The interior of the shop was the same as always. We had passed many days like this.
It was just as I was passing in front of the register that Kawahara-san suddenly called, “Tabata-san!”
“Huh?” I replied at this rare address, perhaps sounding a little jumpy. Kawahara-san glanced upward, as though trying to think of what to say, and then looked back at me.
“I went to check out that Moai thing, the one you were talking about before.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, her lips moving ever so slightly.
“They had an info session, so I went.”
“Well, that’s some initiative…”
“And then I joined.”
“Wait, really? Oh, I mean, uh…”
“Well, I’ve got some spare time.”
Kawahara had just confessed to me that she had joined Moai simply because she was bored, as casually as if she were buying manga. I was completely taken aback.
If I was being honest, though, I should have expected in these last few days that this might happen. This was not pure coincidence. What I was shocked at was my own cowardice.
As part of my anti-Moai plans that I had launched a month before, I had been considering sending in a spy. It could not be an outsider like Tousuke, who was not actually part of the group, nor someone like Pon-chan, who took part in group activities despite actually hating them. No, I needed a spy who would join the group legitimately of their own accord, who would be willing to divulge what they had seen and heard inside as gossip, unawares. Of course, I had no such existing person on the inside, and I had given up on the plan as unrealistic—but when Kawahara had asked me recently, “There any interesting clubs around?” I had recommended Moai to her as a group that seemed rather high-minded, saying, “Might be kind of cool.”
Naturally, I had suggested this to her because I thought it might be easier for me to get information if she were to join, but I had never thought that she would act that quickly, nor that she would tell me she had joined, which was where my surprise came in. I felt quite guilty, as well.
“Had no idea you’d be that interested.”
“It’s not that I’m interested in that stuff, but I’m not big on athletics, and if I were into cultural studies stuff I could just do that on my own. That’s why I joined up.”
“I see.”
“What? Do those guys actually suck or somethin’? They some kind of cult or somethin’?”
Though you probably could call the club’s foundation something akin to a cult, I was aware that was not the question that Kawahara-san was asking, so I shook my head and said, “Oh no, it’s nothing like that.”
“Well, that’s good. I could tell that those Moai folks were pretty gung ho about their stuff. With other groups I was invited to, you could practically smell the cynicism. I like people who are kind of into themselves, though.”
Once again, it seemed that I had orchestrated an arrangement that suited both of our needs perfectly. However, I could not let her know that—rather, I could not say that it did not seem to me that a group of people who were drunk on their own ideals were much different from the cults Kawahara was so worried about, so I chose my words carefully.
“I don’t know much about it, but it seems there’s a lot of rumors about them, so just be careful, and let me know what kind of stuff they get up to.”
“Why, you interested?”
“Only as far as hearing anything juicy.”
“Gotcha.”
And with that, our conversation was over—we noticed a customer approaching the register. I turned my back, returning to my mopping. Behind me, I heard Kawahara-san give a “Welcome” without raising the corners of her mouth so much as a millimeter.
Two hours later, both of our shifts ended. Kawahara-san hurriedly changed out of her uniform and left the locker room. I have no idea why, but for some reason she always left the locker room a little before I did. When I got outside, I would find her waiting for me atop her scooter, helmet already equipped. “See you later,” she said curtly, before riding off into the night. This was always the pattern.
Maybe it was because of the sort of people she hung around that she was very strict about hierarchy, I mused as I unlocked my bike, glancing down at my phone to find a text from Tousuke.
“Apparently Ten’s gotten a businesswoman girlfriend.”
To the untrained eye, this would be nothing more than a meaningless update on a male friend’s love life, but for us, this was the opportunity we had been waiting for.