“Yes,” my companion replied. “Why are you so surprised?” She looked at me and added, “[Classmate I Can Get Along With]-kun, this is my best friend, Kyōko.”
She smiled, while her friend looked unsure. I was left holding my dessert and coffee, waiting to see how this interaction would run its course. Part of me would have rather not stuck around to find out, but for the time being, I put my dishes on the table and sat in an open chair. Our table was round, with four chairs, either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how this went. The two girls faced each other while I sat in the middle, where I could see them both without particularly trying.
“Wait,” the other girl said, “so you are getting along with [Gloomy Classmate]-kun?”
“Yeah. Surely you heard me say so when Rika asked,” she replied, giving me a small grin. Her friend’s confusion only deepened.
“But Rika told me you were joking.”
“[Classmate I Can Get Along With]-kun just doesn’t like that kind of attention, so he misled her. Rika believed him over me—and here I thought she was my friend.”
She said it jokingly, but her friend didn’t laugh. Instead, the friend turned an appraising gaze upon me. Our eyes met, which caught me off guard. I tried to gloss over it with a quick bow of my head in greeting; she reflexively nodded back at me. For a moment, I thought that would be the end of it, but a real best friend wasn’t going to let me off with only a bow.
“Hey,” the friend said to me. “Have we ever talked before?”
I thought that was a rude question, but since she didn’t seem to mean anything bad by it, I didn’t let it bother me.
“We have,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it was when I was working the front desk at the library.”
My companion, who was listening in, laughed and interjected, “You can’t call that talking.”
I thought, That’s just your opinion, but her friend muttered, “I wouldn’t.” Whatever the case, neither her friend nor I particularly cared what it was called.
“Kyōko, is it all right that you’re sitting with us?” the girl asked. “Aren’t your friends waiting for you?”
“Oh, right,” the friend said. “I was just about to head out. Listen, Sakura, I’m not complaining, but I’ve got to ask.” She glanced at me but otherwise kept her eyes locked on my companion. “You’ve gone out with him two days in a row, and now you’re at this place, alone, where only girls and couples go. So when you say you’re getting along, is that what you mean—as a couple?”
“No,” she said. I was about to say the same, but she beat me to it, so I held back. Both of us saying it at the same time might have come across as suspect.
The friend’s expression softened in relief. But then she frowned again with suspicion as she looked at us in turns.
“Then what are you?” the friend asked. “Friends?”
“It’s just what I said. We get along.”
“Forget it, Sakura. Sometimes you’re impossible, you know.” The friend looked at me. She knew—probably from experience—that she wouldn’t get any direct answer from my companion. “[Gloomy Classmate]-kun, if I said you two were just friends, would I be right?”
I took a moment to consider how to handle this stray bullet that had been lobbed my way. I chose the best response I had.
“We get along.”
I could see both their faces at the same time; one fed up and disgusted, the other beaming with delight.
The friend sighed dramatically, shot my cohort a glare, and said, “I’ll get to the bottom of this tomorrow.” She waved goodbye to her—and not me—and left.
I wondered if my companion’s plans for the next day were with this friend. It made me a little gleeful to think of her being put in the line of fire tomorrow instead of me. I’d given up on caring about the rest of the class staring at me. As long as it never came to real harm, I could ignore it.
Sounding half surprised and half happy, the girl said, “I can’t believe we ran into Kyōko here.” She plucked a warabi-mochi from my plate without asking. “We’ve been friends since junior high. She’s always been strong-willed, so I was intimidated by her at first, but as soon as we started talking, we hit it off right away. She’s a good girl, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun—you should try to get along with her, too.”
I paused, then took a deep breath and said, “Are you sure it’s all right not to tell your best friend that you’re sick?”
I knew I was going to spoil the moment by saying that. If her upbeat mood could be likened to bright, happy colors, this was dumping a bucket of ice water, washing the colors away to a dull gray.
But I didn’t mean it to deliberately hurt her.
For once, I was being thoughtful and sympathetic. What I was really asking, without any other motive behind it, was if she really should be spending her limited time with me, of all people. Wouldn’t her final days be better shared with her best friend, someone who surely meant vastly more to her than me?
“Yeah, it’s all right,” she said confidently. “That girl gets emotional. If I told her, she’d probably start bawling every time she saw me. Where’s the fun in spending time like that? I’ve already made up my mind: For my own sake, I’m hiding this from everyone until the last possible moment.”
Her manner and expression remained upbeat, as if she had repelled my splash of ice water through sheer force of will. I decided not to ask anything like that again.
But this show of determination had another consequence. A doubt that had been dormant inside me since the day before now came bubbling up to the surface. I needed to ask.
“Hey, listen,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Are you really dying?”
Her expression faded in an instant, and I immediately wished I hadn’t asked. But before that regret had a chance to linger, her expression came back, quickly cycling through a range of emotions as it had before.
First it was a smile, then she looked upset, then a bittersweet grin, then anger, then sadness, then upset again. Finally, she looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and said, “I’m dying.”
“Ah,” I said.
Her smile deepened, and she blinked faster than usual. “I’ve known I was dying for years now. I guess thanks to medical advancements, my illness doesn’t show, and I’ve been able to live longer than I otherwise would have. But I’m dying. They tell me I might have another year left, or I might not.”
She was saying things I didn’t want to know, and that I didn’t want to hear, but I was still listening.