All this time, I had made a concerted effort to be Looney. To get everyone to like me. I couldn’t let myself be the person I really was.
I need to work harder. I need to work harder, I repeated to myself silently, probably because I was so tired—both physically and mentally. Miyazato-chan had drained the last drop right out of me.
Ugh, there I go again, blaming other people when it’s really all my fault.
And naturally, everything that happened afterwards was all my fault, too.
After we finished our military base tour, art museum trip, and mini-concert showcase, we all headed back to the hotel. There was still time before dinner, so while the group leaders all needed to go collect tomorrow’s schedules, the rest of the students chose to spend this time resting in their rooms. Each group consisted of fix or six people; my prince was our designated group leader. He would let us know about tomorrow’s schedule over dinner.
In our room, the girl who had asked me about boys last night was presently nowhere to be seen, as she was the leader of a different group. So it was just the five of us, and Miki-chan was having fun gushing with everyone about all the great places we’d explored today. I listened quietly to their conversation for a while, then told them I was going to go buy a drink and excused myself from the room.
For the most part, we were supposed to stay put until the group leader meeting was over, but we could go to the lower floors as long as we had a clear reason for doing so. I asked the teacher on guard duty for permission to use the stairs, since all the elevators were on lower floors. The group leader meeting had probably just ended, and now they were trying to come back up, and the boys would need to deboard at the third floor, and it would take way too long to stand there and wait…or so I explained to the teacher, anyway. But in truth, I just wanted to be alone in a quiet place to organize my thoughts. Because I had a lot of them.
I gingerly pushed open the heavy door and entered what was probably the employee stairwell. Then, step by step, I worked my way down through the empty space—slowly, like I was trying to conceal my footsteps for some reason.
As I passed by the door to the third floor, I could hear the male students’ rowdy voices. Then, as I reached the second floor, I suddenly came to a stop. This particular floor was reserved for unaffiliated hotel guests, but as far as we were told, we were the only people currently booked to stay here. Even the elevators had been set so they wouldn’t stop at the second floor. In other words, the whole floor was empty.
Resigning myself to an angry scolding later, I decided to sneak onto the second floor. I took a few steps, then plopped myself down on the sofa next to the elevator doors. Not much of an adventure, but all I really wanted was to catch my breath and go back to being my usual self.
But in the end, I failed to accomplish this…and it was all my fault.
Right as I inhaled enough oxygen for a sigh—
“Could you knock it off already?”
“…Huhwha?”
I was so caught off guard, I ended up sounding every bit as loony as my nickname suggested. And that was a critical error on my part.
“You’re freaking obnoxious!”
She spat the words at me so fast, I struggled to process them, and right as I finally realized who had spoken and what she had said to me, she fixed me with a sharp glare and took off like a bullet toward the stairs.
“Wait, but…wha…?”
It was so sudden, I couldn’t think straight. She was my classmate—one of the girls staying in the same room as me—but she’d gone to the group leader meeting—wait, what? Then why was she here on the second floor? And why did she say that? She was mad at me, but why? Was it justified? What did I do? She seemed like she was…crying…
Evidently, I would need someone else’s help to solve this mystery. When I glanced in the direction from which the girl had come, I spotted a tall figure standing there.
“Looney…”
It was…my prince. One look at him and it was as if I’d eaten the fruit of knowledge. I instantly understood what she was talking about.
Apparently, I had hurt someone yet again.
Then I heard a faint tinkle from inside his loosely clutched fist.
“Don’t worry about it, Looney,” he said to me yet again. But this time, he meant it in an entirely different way, because this time, he was consoling me.
So here’s the rundown: The girl who yelled at me was in love with the boy I referred to as “my prince.” That was why she asked me whether I was interested in anyone. At that point, I had essentially denied any interest in him. But then I spent the next day clinging to him even more, which she had possibly interpreted as an act of spite towards her. Unable to stand it any longer, she arranged to meet up with him and then gave him a bell. But it was no mere gift; she wanted an answer from him. And just as he shot her down, she encountered me right there. She must have thought to herself, are you here to laugh at me? Either that, or perhaps she just never liked me to begin with.
Mind you, this was simply my read on the situation, but I was pretty sure I was right. All I’d heard from my prince was that he had turned her down, but that was all I needed. “Don’t worry about it”? Not possible. Was there a human alive who could hurt someone and then continue to go about their day like it was nothing? Sure, I was cold and unfeeling, but our hearts were built to worry. I contemplated going straight back to our room to give her an explanation and a sincere, heartfelt apology…but then I thought better of it. Even if she said she forgave me, I was the only one who would feel better. I cursed myself for being so thoughtlessly selfish.
But if I couldn’t apologize, then there was nothing else I could say to her.
When I returned to the room, she wouldn’t even look at me, and as I sat there in silence, Miki-chan started teasing me about having forgotten to buy a drink, and since I naturally couldn’t joke back as easily as I normally would have been able to, she got worried and asked me if I was okay. Guilt surged in my chest.
Don’t worry about me—worry about her!
Obviously, I couldn’t say that, but at the same time, if I acted sad, then the other girl would think that I thought I was the victim. Thus, I did my best to act like everything was fine.
At dinner, I barely ate. I claimed I wasn’t hungry, but naturally, my friends weren’t coldhearted enough to buy that excuse. My prince gave me a hard look, probably because he knew what was going on with me, but I didn’t have the composure to handle it, so instead I gave him the rest of my food.
Desperately, I tried to think of a solution to this problem. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was really just a symptom of everything that was wrong with me, and in order to patch things up with Miyazato-chan and/or the other girl I hurt, I would need to fundamentally change who I was as a person. And that was not something I could feasibly accomplish over the course of a single field trip.
After dinner, we reviewed tomorrow’s schedule, went back to our rooms, then headed off to the communal bath. Unsurprisingly, the other girl continued to avoid my gaze. Miyazato-chan must have been worried about my condition, because she actually spoke to me. But while her tone was casual, I could tell that she was flustered. So, out of respect for her as my friend, I did my best to keep things casual in return.
I took off my clothes, washed my body, and then stepped into the bath. The movements came second nature to me, which was helpful since my mind was too much of a mess to function. So instead, I just went through the motions with flawless accuracy. But even that backfired, because the Looney everyone knew was not a robot.
“Looney, seriously, what’s gotten into you?” asked Miki-chan. “You usually try to mess with me whenever I’m washing my hair.”
“…Ah, well, my intent was to betray that expectation this time around. But if you were looking forward to it so badly, I’ll be sure to go all-out tomorrow!”
It came out sounding too forced. More specifically, I was now keenly aware of just how forced all of my acting had been thus far. Nothing I said was ever uttered purely on a whim; I always carefully evaluated my words before they left my lips. I never spoke from the heart. My words had no soul to them.
I submerged myself right up to my nose and spoke in bubbles.