“All right then, supposing that it was me, what then?”
“What?” Her voice took a sharp turn from the haughty admonishing tone that implied she just might forgive me to something tinged with an obvious rage.
I knew it. I knew that cajoling tone of hers was the kind that you use when you don’t think of the other person as your equal. The old Akiyoshi would have never spoken in a tone like that.
“I’m speaking to you because I wanted to have a real conversation about this.”
“Conversations aside, you did something bad, didn’t you? It’s none of my business, but giving out personal information to corporations? You’re the one at fault here if you were doing something like that at a time like this, when everyone knows why you shouldn’t.”
“That’s entirely true,” she admitted with surprising forthrightness. “That’s why I’m going to acknowledge that and accept responsibility.”
“…You say that like it’s something to be proud of.”
Now I was simply taking inventory of my own thoughts and releasing my feelings aloud.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
She flinched visibly. I could tell that I had struck her heartstrings, so I decided to speak my mind before her irritation could grow any more.
“I don’t get it, but…”
There was no point in delaying this any further.
“Shouldn’t you consider the feelings of someone who would do something like that?”
That preface was probably as good as a full confession.
“Maybe there was once, somewhere, a secret society that pursued its ideals.”
In truth, I should have never said something this risky in front of her. However, the way that her gaze and her voice and the way she addressed me had all changed in those two and a half years was like nails raking down my back. I had thought for certain, should a time like this ever come, it would be in my chest that I felt that pain.
“No one ever thought much of it when it was just a group that clung to its ideals, not inconveniencing anyone. Then, that organization began to grow at a disgusting rate, spreading out all over the school, its members laughing down their noses at others and getting in everyone’s way. I doubt that there was only one person who was less than happy about this. Plenty of people have been fed up with Moai. It’s just that one of those people…happened to do something like this.”
I could feel the wounds on my back growing deeper, but I could not stop myself. The look on her face made me sick. I couldn’t stand the fact that there was no hurt or remorse in those eyes.
I kept on talking, hacking up everything I had felt until now.
“There are people whose whole worlds have changed because of Moai. Their lives at school, and maybe even outside of school, have changed in ways they never wanted. Even though we founded Moai with the mission of becoming your ideal self, you’ve upset the people around you. There have been casualties.”
Despite my clear accusations, Akiyoshi did not interrupt. She merely pressed her lips, looking at me in the way that any normal person would when enduring something. She looked as though she had forgotten her own position in Moai.
For just a moment, there was a brand-new Akiyoshi.
“Moai has been, without a doubt, a perpetrator, but it was because it never atoned for its crimes that this reckoning came. It’s only obvious that something like this would have happened.”
Just then.
Just then, as I spoke, I caught a glimpse of possibility on Akiyoshi’s face. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my part, but… No, it was there. I thought that perhaps she might be coming to realize that what she had done was wrong—the error of her ways. If that was truly the case, then perhaps it was not too late. After all, if I was being honest, all this time I had considered that Akiyoshi, now but a normal person, might be a victim of Moai too. Perhaps she was nothing more than a hero who had been brainwashed by the masses and lost all her strength, without her even realizing it.
Perhaps in hearing what I was saying, she was realizing that right now. Maybe she was thinking back on her own mistakes and trying to bear the shame. Maybe she was having a change of heart.
That was what I wanted to think.
“Moai…it’s been twisted.”
I tried to direct the conversation to a more hopeful conclusion. I thought that there might still be a future where Akiyoshi might change her mind.
“But maybe what’s happening right now might be a good thing.”
The chances were slim, but there was still a chance that Akiyoshi had begun to feel that the current Moai was twisted as well but had merely been unable to stop it. Perhaps she merely could not fix it herself, perhaps because she was their leader, because the tide was too strong.
If so, there was still time.
“Maybe…it could be remade.”
She was still just standing there, enduring as she listened. There was a single gust of cool wind. The shadows wavered.
“You could start over again.”
The wish I’d held onto for all these months had finally been spoken.
“As the proper Moai.”
I was a little proud of myself for being able to say it. To make it easier to speak to her, I quit staring down my own nose and looked Akiyoshi directly in the eye. Perhaps when we saw each other clearly, eye to eye, we would realize that very little had actually changed between us, even though we had both been battered by the winds of a Moai that had changed so much.
“I can help you, if you need me…” I offered. She lowered her gaze, ever so slightly. I had no idea what she was thinking, or feeling, but I tried to imagine.
Hopefully, she was remembering something. However, I should have remembered that in reality, unlike unfortunate predictions, our expectations betray us about eighty percent of the time.
Akiyoshi’s lips began to move, crushing everything I had hoped for.
“Are you kidding me?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure I caught her meaning, then she once more looked me in the eye, her own eyes bleary and seeming to contain every single ounce of strength in her body. Bizarrely, I could only describe her gaze as one you would wear when staring down an ancient rival.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
This time, I was the one who flinched, as everything she had been holding back came roaring out.
“Akiyoshi…”
“The hell?! What the hell is this ‘twisted’ nonsense? This ‘good chance’? This ‘we can rebuild it’? And what, what was it? A ‘proper’ Moai?!”
Obviously, this was not a question.
“You don’t know anything about what goes on in Moai! You don’t know anything about the past two and a half years! You try to destroy Moai and blame it on other people, and then you’re gonna just sit there and say that?! You have got to be fucking kidding me!”
Akiyoshi wheezed, her shoulders heaving, as though she had been forgetting to breathe. I turned over the words that had come out of her mouth in my mind. The more I thought about them, the more bizarre they were.
I had worked so hard to try and guide Moai in the right direction, and I had even reached out to her in reconciliation. And yet here I was being vilified, all my words denounced.
When I finally let that sink into my bones, I felt my blood rush to my head.
“What are you saying? You know it. You feel it. There is something wrong with Moai.”
“You know what? You keep saying that. But just what is wrong? Quit dancing around it!”
The look she had had in her eyes, as though she was actually seeing me, was gone now.
“It’s obviously twisted. You’re hurting people and doing bad things. You yourself said it just now, didn’t you? That you’re doing different things from the Moai we created.”
I could hear her breath, ragged, through her clenched teeth.
“This time, yes, we messed up. And yes, there are probably people we’ve caused trouble for. But what’s so wrong about things just being different?”
“I—”
Akiyoshi wasted not another second, launching an attack before I could put my thoughts into words.
“There’s nothing wrong. It’s natural for things to change as time passes. It’s not like things that stay the same are somehow more righteous than things that change,” she sniped, but I turned her words around.