Maybe she really had forgotten. She brought her eyebrows together and made a puzzled, humorous expression. I laughed. A detached part of me observed myself being brought to genuine laughter by someone else. Partly suspicious, and partly impressed, I wondered when I had become that kind of person. I knew beyond any doubt the person who had caused that change was sitting in front of me. I doubted anyone could judge if the change was good or bad, but one thing was true: I had changed considerably.
Watching as I laughed, she narrowed her eyes and gently said, “I wish I could show everyone what an amazing person you are, [???]-kun.”
That was quite a thing to say to the boy who had pinned her down, even if I would regret doing so for the rest of my life.
I said, “Everyone else can wait—just show Kyōko-san for now. She scares me.”
“I’ve been trying to tell her. She’s just being a good friend and worrying for me, you know. She thinks you’re deceiving me.”
“There must be something wrong with your powers of communication. I mean, she seems smart enough to understand, anyway.”
“Whoa, such high praise.” She gasped. “Don’t tell me—you’re looking to make her your plaything after I’m dead? Tacky.”
I responded to her exaggerated reaction by giving her a disinterested look as I hungrily ate my mandarin. She shifted in bed as if that bored her, and I laughed again.
Then she said, “Time for today’s magic trick.”
This time, she’d practiced an illusion that involved manipulating a coin so it would disappear and reappear in her hands. The routine had a few hiccups, but just like last time, I thought she did an impressive job for a beginner—enough so that someone who didn’t know anything about magic, like me, might wonder if she possessed a special talent for it.
She explained, “Well, all I do is practice! I don’t have much time.”
She’d left an opening for me to say something like, “You practice because all you have is time.” I almost did, but I decided I wanted her to know I wasn’t going to take such an easy opening, and instead I played it straight.
“In another year, you might be able to pull off some amazing tricks.”
Mixed with odd pauses, she said, “Yeah, well… Sure!”
Maybe she didn’t care for how I ignored her gag’s setup. I stuck with it and honestly praised her effort and its results again. She smiled at me, in a good mood.
And just like that, my second visit to her in the hospital ended without any issue.
My journey home didn’t go so smoothly.
If you asked me, no better place existed on this earth than the inside of a bookstore. On my trip home, as on many such occasions, I stopped in a bookstore to enjoy the cold air conditioning and search for a good book. Luckily, I hadn’t come with a girl who would be waiting for me, so I was free to take as long as I pleased.
I had little to boast about myself, except for one ability in which I had total confidence: my concentration when I was reading a book. I could keep on reading forever, immune to my surroundings with only a few exceptions, like someone offering me a stick of gum or the school bell, which had become so familiar I could recognize its ring on a subconscious level. If I was an herbivore, I’d have been so engrossed by my fictional worlds that I wouldn’t have noticed nearby predators, and I would surely be eaten quickly.
And so, until I finished the short story I was reading, and re-emerged into the real world where a disease was taking away the girl’s life, I failed to notice the lion standing next to me.
I was so startled I nearly jumped. Wearing a large gym bag slung over her shoulder, the best friend was looking at an open paperback book in her hands. I knew, instinctively, that the entirety of her focus was on me, her prey.
I wondered if I could move quietly enough to escape. But that faint hope was quickly crushed.
“What is Sakura to you?”
She fired the question at me without even a word of greeting. Her words carried an edge sharp enough to bite through me if I answered wrong.
Cold sweat running down my back, I tried to figure out how I was supposed to answer. That was when I realized nothing prompted this interrogation except genuine concern for her friend. It was an honest question that left me no choice but to give an honest answer.
“I don’t know.”
The several seconds of silence that followed might have been her trying to decide how to respond, or she might have been working up the nerve to kill me on the spot. But the next thing I knew, her lion’s claws were on my arm, and she yanked me toward her.
As I staggered forward, she said with a menacing voice, “No matter how she might seem, she’s twice as easily hurt as other people. Stop getting close to her if you don’t mean it. If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
I’ll kill you. This wasn’t the common, cheap threat employed by kids in grade school and junior high. This was the best friend’s way of declaring that she was serious. I trembled.
The friend left without another word. My heart was racing, as hard as I tried to settle back down. I stood there, unable to move, until another classmate happened to wander into the bookstore and offer me gum.
That night, I tried to think seriously about what the girl meant to me.
But the answer still completely eluded me.