Before I could reply, eyes still adjusting to the first bright lights I had seen in a while, someone else, a man sitting in a folding chair with his arms crossed, cut in, “You have some business with me?”
“…Yes, I do.”
“Doesn’t that all hurt?”
“It does.”
More importantly though, I started to say, when the woman, probably a member of the research team, stepped away with a, “I’ll go get some things!” running out of the room and leaving the door open behind her.
“Sorry about that busybody,” he said, as I stood there speechless.
“It’s fine,” I replied, shaking my head again, bowing to this utterly resigned individual. “Been a while, Wakisaka-san.”
“Since we talked, I guess. Saw you not that long ago. So, what’s up? Why’re you all bloody?”
Bloody? When he said this, I looked at my arms, finding I was far more injured than I realized. I quit looking before my brain could register how painful it should be.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” I explained.
“My, never thought I’d see the day. The great Tabata-kun wants to ask me something! Sure, honestly speaking, I’m shocked you’d even come to see me.”
Not even appearing surprised by my injuries, he picked up a cup that was on the table and put it to his lips, then said casually, “I thought you hated me, after all.”
I had no idea how I ought to reply to something so straightforward, but once I got over my hesitation, I bowed my head.
“My apologies.”
What I was apologizing for was not for hating him but for barging in here to see him despite that fact. I could have bent the truth, but if I did that now, so much more of what I was about to say would probably start twisting into a lie as well, so I just bowed my head again.
“Whatever, I already knew it. Pick your head up,” he said lackadaisically, despite me having confirmed my dislike for him. I did as I was told and straightened back up, finding him looking back at me with his usual world-weariness. “I’ve always appreciated that honesty of yours, Tabata-san. It’s normal for people to have things that they like and that they hate. I am a little curious as to why, though.”
“Why…?”
Why was it? I thought for a moment. What were the right words to express what was in my heart? I thought long and hard, before I realized there was no reason to be driving myself crazy over this. I’d already decided this from the very start. After being so stricken with shame and regret after listening to Akiyoshi’s speech, I should have known. I should have been perfectly aware of it.
Now though, when I tried to say it, the words caught in my throat. I was dripping sweat from every pore. My insides ached once more.
Wakisaka was waiting. I took in too deep of a breath, ignoring how shrill my own voice was, and told him, “I think…”
And told him.
“…I think that I thought that Akiyoshi would never look my way again.”
My feelings were like mud I was dredging up from the bottom of my heart.
There was the truth of how I felt, with no attempts to hide it. I had only just realized what had been there all along.
It was still difficult to agree with Akiyoshi’s assumption that I had feelings for her in a romantic way. Still, it wounded me that my precious companion, the only one dear to me, would ever turn her attention to anyone but me.
And the things I had done had hurt her more deeply than anything else ever could.
I had to face those facts. I had come here so that I could.
As I spoke, I felt the air around me grow thinner. It grew harder to breathe, my heart rate rising to its limits.
It hurt so much to accept my own feelings.
The corners of Wakisaka’s mouth quirked up.
“I see. I’m sure it’s trite of me to say, but there’s no person in the world who focuses all their attention on only one other person and nothing else. Plus, she was definitely looking your way.”
“…I know.”
I did know. If I had just thought about it, I would have realized that.
“Anyway, I’m guessing what you wanted to ask about was Akiyoshi-san?”
“Yeah, um…you are aware that Moai is over now, yes?”
“Obviously.”
“That was my fault.”
Despite my stating this clearly, there was still some part of me that was afraid to admit my own wrongdoings, and I could feel my stomach constricting.
I wondered what he thought about this. I did not expect doubt or anger. In fact, just as I predicted, he merely said, “I see,” a response that hurt far more than either one. “So, how’d that come to be?”
This was a perfectly natural question, though I wondered if I should answer it, the weaker parts of me urging me to convey the story while omitting the parts that were less convenient for me. However, I told him everything—by which I mean, the whole story of how I had tried to destroy Moai, and how I had hurt Akiyoshi.
I still lacked the strength to suppress the weaker parts of myself. It was just that it would have been so much more frightening to wallow in the misery of that weakness.
As soon as I finished speaking, without the slightest hesitation, Wakisaka opened his mouth and said, “You really suck.”
There was no hint of reservation in his voice.
“I do.”
“Akiyoshi-san used to talk about you all the time, at least until you quit Moai,” he said, staring right at me. “She might’ve badmouthed you a bit, but I’m sure that’s just a reflection of her faith in you and your deep friendship. She was obviously in the wrong in some ways in this situation, but you really betrayed her trust.”
“…You aren’t wrong about that.”
Other than Akiyoshi, he was the first person to actively criticize me about this matter. Coming from such a clear-cut angle, it struck me straight on.
“So then, that all said, what was it you wanted to ask me?”
Whether it was out of kindness or indifference, I was thankful that Wakisaka could be so objective about this. He had given me the opportunity to speak about the reason I had come here.
“I was wondering…”
Though I very clearly disliked Wakisaka, it took an extra second of breathing to prepare myself for being disliked by him.
“…if there was anything I could do for Moai.”
I knew this was a selfish thing for me to ask, and it took even more courage to say it than it had to admit that I disliked Wakisaka. After I had been the one to tear things down, after I had hurt Akiyoshi. But I had to say it, even knowing that I would be despised, vilified, scorned.
Though I had fully expected it, I heard Wakisaka let out a deep sigh that cut directly through all my confidence.
“What is it you think that you can do?” At this point, he did not include, but I could hear it in his tone.
I steeled my wavering body, holding back my legs from running.
“…I’m s-orry, I have no idea. I really don’t know. But I was just thinking that, maybe there might be something.”
“Why’re you asking me?”
“…Because we’re outsiders.”
Wakisaka looked neither pleased nor displeased at what could have been taken as a rude remark.
“As far as Moai is concerned, I am now an outsider. So, as someone who was helping Moai out despite being an outsider himself at one point, I wanted to ask your opinion.” For some reason I could not get out the words, “And that’s why I came here.”
Wakisaka folded his arms and stared at the wall of the lab. I followed his gaze to see a wall with a narrow opening in it. “Now, this is just a simple question, but…” he started. “What exactly was Moai to you? What would have been the point of destroying it, just to build it back again?”
“Ah…”
I was about to say that it was for Akiyoshi, but I stopped myself short. That wasn’t true; it simply wasn’t. If I said it was for the sake of someone else, that was just me shifting the blame again.
I thought hard about what he meant by that question. I was not considering what sort of answer Wakisaka would want to hear, so much as genuinely posing the same question to myself. I searched for the plainest words possible.
Then, I found them.
It wasn’t that I had remembered it. It had always been there, just on the tip of my tongue.
“I…”
I had been pretending that I hadn’t seen it. I had been hiding it from everyone.
However, it was the truth and nothing less.
“I always…I always wanted to be there.”
It was true. That was all. That was all there ever was.
Nothing more.
That was the one thing I could not say to Akiyoshi.
If only I had been able to, perhaps…perhaps there still would have been time.
If only it had been at any other time.
If it had been two years ago, a year ago, a month ago.
It wouldn’t have been too late.