“I want to hear how you feel about it now.”
“Koyanagi-san…you really should get to school.”
“I told you, it’s fine. So, what’s your happiness?”
“You can’t be skipping school…”
“Weird to think that’s bad for me, but it’s okay for you. So, it must be fine. Here, I’ll say it myself: This wasn’t my idea, but according to a very special friend, this is what happiness is about.”
“You need to go to school.”
“I’m already smart! I told you, I’m not going!” I said, shouting without thinking. Although I was a little embarrassed, I could not take back what I had said. I quickly offered a quiet “I’m sorry.”
That was when I realized something and came to a decision. If you wanted to be someone’s friend, you couldn’t hide any shocking secrets from them. So, I decided to reveal just how I was feeling.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t wanna say it, but our classmates have been ignoring me.”
“Huh…?”
“I’m sure you know I didn’t have any friends in our class to begin with, but at least there were some people I could talk to, and if I greeted them, everyone replied. But now, everyone’s ignoring me.”
Talking about painful things hurts as much as experiencing them, but it also has the mysterious power to open up your heart, in the same way as deep breathing.
“I don’t want to go to a place full of children like that,” I said. “More importantly, I think it’s a lot more fun solving difficult questions with you.”
As I was speaking, I realized something incredibly important.
“Y’know something?” I asked. “I’m gonna come here from now on. So, you should teach me how to draw. I’ll never learn how to draw as well as you, no matter how long I go to school.”
I finally realized it.
“Hm, wonder what I should teach you in return. Life is like the seat next to you, y’know?”
It wasn’t him who needed allies. It was me.
“If someone’s forgotten their textbook, then you have to share it. And, well, if you have to see someone’s face every day, it’d better be someone you don’t hate.”
“I…”
“Yes? What?”
When he finally spoke, his voice was somehow even quieter than usual.
“I want you to teach me…how to…be like you.”
His voice was as soft as a flower’s whisper, but I heard it. And then, I was disappointed, wondering why he would care about such a thing.
“You don’t want to be like me. If you were like me, then you wouldn’t be able to draw those wonderful pictures. My mother saw a lion I’d drawn and she thought it was the Tower of the Sun. I hated it.”
He was silent again.
“So if a magician ever offers to turn you into someone else, the person you should change into is you. Got it?”
He didn’t say a single word about that. Instead, after a long, empty pause, he said something else.
“You really should go to school.”
I was shocked. I hadn’t expected him to say that again. I had made my conviction clear, again and again. I had made up my mind, but he didn’t know that, of course. Obviously, this bothered me.
“Why? Normally you never oppose the things I say in class, but you’re nothing but rude today. I guess you hate me so much you’d rather see me go somewhere where everyone ignores me?”
I said it as a joke, imagining him shaking his head so vigorously I’d be able to tell it even on the other side of the door. But when a reply from him did not come, I began to feel uneasy.
The words he had said the last time drifted out from my heart bit by bit, as if wanting air. If I were to let them all out at once, that dark, terrible thing would take root again inside my heart, and all my courage would be trapped like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.
Before I could let that happen, I had to be sure that Kiriyuu-kun didn’t actually hate me. If he did, he would never talk to me this much. Indeed, those words had probably just leapt out of his mouth all on their own. And so, I will ask him the same question once more, and wait for his reply, I thought, before he put a stop to that.
Life is the same as a beautifully painted dessert. Sometimes you just can’t understand how it got that way. Kiriyuu-kun still said nothing. But his feelings and actions silenced me, and I felt that monster inside of me sinking back down to the bottom of the sea.
I heard the door unlock. Then I saw the doorknob turning, slowly but surely.
Perhaps because the window was open inside the room, a strong wind blew in my face, sending my bangs dancing and forcing me to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw Kiriyuu-kun standing before me, countless sheets of paper dancing behind him, carried by the wind. Has his hair grown a bit longer? As I wondered this, looking at his face, one of the papers came flying towards me, plastering itself against my own.
Unable to breathe, I quickly snatched it away. When I looked at it, the smile that spread across my cheeks must have rivaled even Skank-san’s.
Kiriyuu-kun was the complete opposite, crouching in the doorway, a tragic look upon his face. There might have even been a bit of dampness to his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he said.
A lot of people seemed to be apologizing to me lately. And yet, I had not received a single apology from the people I actually wanted to hear it from.
“Why are you apologizing?”
Hadn’t he said that he hated me? If that was true, then I couldn’t say that it didn’t bother me, but then I had been the one to call him a coward. Fair is fair.
Kiriyuu-kun looked me straight in the eye.
“Y-you…”
“I what?”
“You’re getting ignored…because of me.”
“That’s not true.” I shook my head. “It isn’t your fault. It’s because all those idiots in our class are too stupid to even know right from wrong.”
“But it is true.”
Even as he looked straight at me, the tears flowed from Kiriyuu-kun’s eyes. This had been happening a lot lately, too.
“What is?” I asked.
“That my father…stole something…”
I was quiet. Indeed, I had already known this was true. Even so, I shook my head. I tried to imagine just how tragic a thing this must be for Kiriyuu-kun. I don’t know whether my imaginings truly reached the depth of it, though I stretched them as far as I could. If they did not, I had no idea how much further I would have to reach to get there. Even so, I proudly shook my head.
“Even if he did, so what?” I looked into his eyes to guide him. He was wrong, after all. “Even if your father stole, it doesn’t change the fact that he always greeted me kindly. More than the kids in our class, who I see every day. Moreover, that’s no reason for people to ignore me, or for me not to go to school. And it’s no reason for them to talk badly about you. But this conversation isn’t about your father, anyway.”
Indeed, out of all the bad things that had happened, not once had Kiriyuu-kun ever done anything wrong.
“The ones who are wrong are the people who don’t know that. The fact that I’m not going to school is those people’s fault, too.”
So, there was no reason for Kiriyuu-kun to be sad, or to cry. That was what I meant, but life is like when you get off of a teacup ride, and sometimes you end up walking in the opposite direction from the way you mean to.