I was on speaking terms with a handful of other girls in addition to Miki-san, and I was fairly confident I had successfully made friends with Miyazato-san, too. In which case, I would be well within my rights to worry about her and take action on her behalf. But I was a pathetic loser: the more I cared about someone, the more cowardly I became. It was hard for me to say the words that mattered most.
Miki-san, on the other hand, was amazing. At the start of our first year, she infamously started to pursue an older student she had a crush on by changing her shampoo, shoes, and even her belongings to suit his tastes. How did she even learn what he was into? I have no idea. Unfortunately, her obsession creeped him out, and he rejected her. Still, I often found myself wishing she would give me even a fraction of that energy…but then again, I wouldn’t want to diminish her charm, so…
“On second thought, Zuka, lend me that aggressive attitude you use on all the girls.”
“On second thought? I don’t remember you having a first thought!”
Naturally, he didn’t know about my feelings for Miki-san. I hadn’t told anyone thus far, nor was I planning to.
“Well, Miyazato-san’s in danger of getting held back if she keeps skipping, right?”
“How did you get from that to my so-called ‘aggressive attitude with girls’? Because I do not get aggressive! And yeah, I’d love it if Miyazato could graduate with the rest of us, but…she might be in trouble here soon.”
I appreciated his blunt honesty in times like these.
After English class came Biology. Then, after we finished eating lunch, we laid ourselves down on the floor of the empty music room and stared up at the ceiling, all while the AC was running on full blast.
“But if she doesn’t wanna come to school, then it’s not gonna be easy to get her to come back. Too much time has passed. Like with clubs, y’know? It’s easier to quit than beg forgiveness.”
“Oh. Gotcha.”
“I gotta say, though, it’s frustrating when people disappear. Part of me wishes she would open up and talk to us about whatever’s going on, but at the same time, I dunno if it’s something we can really solve. I just hate not being able to help, man.”
Here was something he and Miki-san had in common: a strong sense of responsibility. This was what I meant by aggressive. They went the extra mile and took action, regardless of whether it was any of their business or not, because they cared. This was a trait I wished I had.
But I didn’t, so instead I stared up at the ceiling and replied, “Yeah.”
“What are you two up to in here?”
Out of nowhere, I could hear footsteps somewhere inside the music room. Zuka’s perfect six-pack abs flexed as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. “Oh, hey, Looney.”
Now I knew who it was. Also pushing myself into a sitting position, I listened as they chatted back and forth for a bit. Once they were done, Zuka rose to his feet and looked down at me as I moved to follow suit.
“Did you wanna do something about Miyazato? Is that why you asked me to lend you my ‘aggressive attitude’? Not that I have one, for the record!”
He always wore his emotions on his sleeve, and his punctuation matched his behavior. A question mark hovered over his head.
“No, it’s not that. Not like me being aggressive will make her want to come to school any more than she does right now.”
“Yeah, for sure. To be honest, though, I think you’re fine just the way you are. If you ask me, you’re exactly the kind of person Miyazato would want to sit next to. See, everybody has their own strengths—ever heard the fable of the North Wind and the Sun? You’d be the Sun, easy.”
I could tell from the punctuation floating overhead that he wasn’t joking around.
“And before you say anything, no, I’m not the North Wind.”
Then he laughed and clapped me on the back—a little too hard, if I’m being honest. But I knew he didn’t mean any harm.
Me, personally, I was lucky enough to have two suns lighting up my empty life.
Maybe that’s what Miyazato’s missing, I thought to myself.
But as it turned out, I didn’t know the half of it.
The next day, no offense to Miyazato-san, something even more important happened. The empty seat beside me faded into the background.
When I passed by Miki-san, I noticed that she had gone back to her original shampoo. What could this signify? Clearly, she hadn’t gotten rid of her old shampoo, so…did she use someone else’s? Well, maybe she spent the night at a friend’s house. But if so, why didn’t she just say that instead of “It’s a secret”? And why was she happy that someone noticed?
Ultimately, I felt like crap all over again.
Even then, with a little time, I probably could have convinced myself that Miki-san had her own nonsensical reasons for alternating shampoos…except it kept happening. A week later, I smelled that different shampoo on her again. And if the exclamation points over her head were any indication, she was in an exceptionally good mood. There could be only one explanation.
Not to get needlessly detailed, but the new shampoo—a brand called Bilien—was pretty popular among the cool kids back in junior high. It felt like a massive billboard that read I ONLY DATE COOL GUYS, NOT LOSERS! Naturally, this made me even more depressed. Not that I had any right to be, but still.
If I’d had even an ounce of courage, I could have spoken up the last time Miki-san asked us if we noticed anything different about her. At the time, Zuka had replied “Did you gain weight?” only to promptly receive a punch to the gut, but after that, I could have casually pointed out that she changed shampoos. But I didn’t have that courage, and maybe I never would.
Instead, like a total loser, I spent the whole week having had just one small, weird, and entirely unrelated exchange with Miki-san:
“Morning! Don’t forget to take vitamins. You don’t want to wind up with a nasty summer cold.”
“Oh, uh, right. Thanks.”
I didn’t know why she felt the need to give me this advice unprompted, but it was another Bilien day, so I figured maybe she just liked to mother people when she was in a good mood.
Then it happened a third time. She had now used Bilien shampoo on three separate occasions. Once again, she tried to wheedle an answer out of Zuka, but he was clueless, and I couldn’t say a thing. Meanwhile, midterms were now just two weeks away…but I couldn’t bring myself to study.
Ideally, I would shrug it off and say to myself, Eh, I’ll just make up for it tomorrow. But from that day forward, Miki-san started to use Bilien more and more frequently. The first and second occurrences were a full week apart, while the second and third were five days apart. The fourth was three days after that, the Thursday before last. Then the fifth was that Sunday, when I happened to encounter her at the corner store near my house. Then it happened again on Tuesday and again on both Thursday and Friday—twice in a row. It felt like I was slowly watching her move in with her boyfriend, and I was so crushed that I could tell I was probably going to bomb my midterms.
“What’s the matter with you? You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Not once had Zuka even come close to noticing the shampoo situation. Every time Miki-san used Bilien, she hounded him all over again: “Something’s different about me, isn’t it? You can tell, right? Just say yes!” And today, Friday, his response was: “Well, your shoes are falling apart.”
Technically he was right, since she had a giant hole in one of them, but according to her, she had left it like that on purpose to show off her “cute new socks.” Ultimately, this was not the answer she was looking for, and thus it put her in a bad mood.