All throughout my shift, my body felt unsteady. I was not sleepy so much as I was experiencing a constant sensation of falling. I soon grew accustomed to this feeling and was able to stay on my feet despite my ongoing descent. Work proceeded without a hitch, and as per usual I found myself with time to kill. I went about my stocking and sweeping all while feeling as though I were being sucked down into the floor, while at the same time all my innards continued to rise inside me.
It was strange to think that at this rate, things would wrap up uneventfully and I would just go back to that apartment. For an empty person to go back to an empty room felt like a joke.
“Um…”
As I crouched down, restocking the CalorieMates, I heard a voice from behind me. I picked up the CalorieMate bar that I had dropped in shock, returning it to its cardboard case. I turned around, trying to bring down the impossible speed my heart was racing at. I had assumed it was some customer wishing to know where a certain item was, but in fact there stood Kawahara-san.
I stood slowly up, taken by surprise. She stared at me fixedly as my own line of vision shifted from a point lower than her own to a point higher.
“…Something wrong? Shouldn’t you be at the—”
“It’s fine, there’s no customers here right now.”
So then, what was it?
Her brows furrowed slightly. I wondered if she was angry about something.
“Something happen then?”
“No, I was just wondering if you were all right.”
“Me…?”
“You’ve been kind of…absentminded since you got here.”
Oh, of course, she was worried about me. That’s what that expression was. Out of it, huh? I guessed she did have an eye for people.
“I’m fine. I mean, I think I’ve pretty much been absent for my entire life.” I phrased it like a joke, but it was true. Kawahara-san did not laugh.
“Absent, huh? That’s actually a pretty similar word to ‘empty.’ So yep, that’s just me, absent as ever.”
It seemed equally possible that she would laugh at this, or perhaps be worried, or maybe even get mad and say that I shouldn’t say such things. Any of them would have been fine by me, but that was not her reaction at all.
“…Sorry,” she said. “I don’t really know what to say to that.” Apparently, all I had done was make her uncomfortable.
“Oh, no, sorry for saying something so weird.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, since yesterday.”
“…Since yesterday?”
She seemed a bit flustered at my question, putting her hand to her mouth.
“Sorry, it’s got nothing to do with you, Tabata-san. I’m really sorry. No, it’s just…I heard someone else say almost the exact same thing, that they were empty inside. I had no idea what to say to it then, either.”
So, she gets tangled up with a lot of weirdos too, I vacantly realized.
“I don’t think you need to say anything to it. I’m pretty sure I really am empty. Me, and that other person.”
“I can’t feel that way,” she said, then quickly bowed her head and added, “Sorry,” as though even she had not expected her sudden rebuttal. “But seriously…”
It was a bit late for it now, but those appended words made me think that she really, truly, was a good person—a properly good person, unlike me. She bitched and complained about others, but in the end, she really was a good person who sincerely cared about others. Though I couldn’t agree with her words, I thought I ought to at least formally thank her.
Just then, someone entered the store. We both gave a proper, synchronized, “Welcome!” The kind of greeting that would please a manager, rather than a customer.
Kawahara-san needed to get back to the register. She wrapped up the conversation with a, “Well then,” and a smile that reached only her lips, bowing her head and turning her back.
I had to finish restocking the CalorieMates as well, I thought, stooping back down, when I heard one more, “Um…” I looked back to see Kawahara-san approach and then whisper low enough that the customers would not hear, “This is probably unnecessary information, but…”
I waited to hear the rest.
“Actually, the other person who said they were empty was Hiro-senpai, from Moai.”
Dropping only that bit of information, she turned back to the register, not a single hair shifting out of place.
I wondered why she would tell me that. It made little sense, and I almost wondered if she was insinuating something, even though there was no way she could know about the relationship between Akiyoshi and me. But that wouldn’t make any sense either.
It was indeed unnecessary information, but the fact that she had imparted such information to me did not pass me by. It remained somewhere stuck around my throat which had not yet been cut out, hindering my breathing.
I was not crouching now because I needed to straighten the CalorieMates up into rows—I was overtaken by a feeling that the room itself was swaying and was unable to stand.
I dropped to a knee. It grew difficult to breathe. My hands began to shudder. I was unable to bear the chill that rattled around my scooped-out chest and gut.
“Were you…in love with me?”
For some reason, it only now occurred to me what this feeling was that had been cutting away at me and now gouged at my throat.
I was hurting.
At some point, the room stopped swaying, and instead, my vision grew blurry. I quickly hid it before anyone could notice.
“So, um, Kawahara-san.”
For the first time ever, when we finished work that day, I called out to Kawahara-san as she started to leave the locker room ahead of me. Seeing her turn around with wide eyes, as though she had been attacked in a moment when her defenses were down, I had to properly explain the reason I had called to her.
“Sorry, could I ask you to wait up for me…?”
It was an odd request, if you thought about it. Kawahara-san always waited in the parking lot for me before heading home, after all. And yet, she gave me a sincere, “Yes, of cour… Yes,” nodding profusely before heading out the back door with a, “I’ll be outside.”
I shed my apron and work shirt, heading out behind her in my T-shirt and black linen pants. This time, instead of starting up her engine, Kawahara-san was waiting for me.
“Hey, sorry to keep you. Or uh…sorry this is so sudden.”
“No, I mean, it’s fine or whatever.”
“There’s something I want to ask you.”
How to approach this? It would be strange to ask this out of the blue, wouldn’t it? As I dithered, thinking that it wasn’t as if she knew all that much about me anyway, Kawahara-san said, rolling her helmet around in her hands, “Let me guess… Is this about Hiro-senpai?”
“Wha…”
“Well, I mean, I just wondered since our conversation earlier kinda left off at a weird place. Sorry if I’m misinterpreting.”
She wasn’t, so I nodded humbly and said, “No, you’re right. What I was wondering though, was why you told me that the leader of Moai was the other person who said they were empty?”
I feared she might have realized that there was some connection between us.
“Hmm…”
Still turning her helmet over, Kawahara-san looked up at the night sky. I followed her gaze up, but the lights of the drugstore were so bright I could not see a single star.
“So, um, apologies if this starts soundin’ kind of rude, but…”
“It’s fine, go ahead.”
I nodded, fully afraid that the parts of me that had been injured were about to experience some brand-new damage.
“So, uh…”
It was almost a relief to hear the words spoken from so close to me.
“The two of you, or well—you might not actually know Hiro-senpai, but you do know that she’s the head of a large organization, so bear with me. The two of you are completely different types of people, right? I’m sure that the stuff you do and your daily lives are completely different too.”
That was true.
“But you’re both depressed over something, clearly tearing yourselves down and saying that you’re empty and stuff, yeah? So I think you’re sort of both the same. You both have too much confidence in yerselves.”
“Confidence?” I parroted stupidly, reflecting on this unexpected word.