I’d meant to continue right away, but I found myself hesitating. Chika took this opportunity to ask, “From who?”
I started to say the name, but I stopped myself. What she was asking about was the relationship.
“A girl who used to be my lover.”
There was nothing to be embarrassed about. It was just that talking about her here felt wrong. Still, it was just as wrong to be racked by guilt while talking about her. That was nothing more than a flare-up of my half-hearted ego.
“I did the same thing as you. I closed myself off from a future where I could be the one to repair the relationship.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you afraid?” I could feel in her question only a hair’s breadth between her heart and her words.
“I wasn’t afraid of disrupting our future. There’s no reason for her to associate with me, just as there is no reason for me to associate with her.” No, that wasn’t it. “If I was afraid of anything…”
If I said any more, I would be stepping into extremely basic territory. I didn’t want to show my real self and run the risk of disappointing Chika. Still, this was Chika, whom I apparently shared mutual influence with even in matters of the heart. She would figure it out sooner or later. Chika had shown me her fear; there was nothing strange about letting her see mine in equal measure.
“If there was anything that I was afraid of, it was that if she was unhappy, or even died, because of something I left behind inside her…if I ever found out about something like that, I would never stop blaming myself. Even if I didn’t do anything to her.”
This was not a hypothetical fear. It was something I could actively predict based on past experiences.
Allow me to talk about the past for a moment.
The relationship that she and I shared lasted just three months, during our third year of junior high. Only three months, she had said, but both at the time and even now I felt that I spent those three months “pretending,” as Chika put it. Thinking back on it now, I should have been honest. By half-assing things and pretending to have some real consideration for her, I had created an air of disaster between us. I put up a front as a sympathetic person and drew words of parting from her, muddying the path with a superficial shared understanding.
And then, she tried to take her own life.
One of our classmates, knowledgeable on the subject, said that her method would have never resulted in her death. I looked into it myself and confirmed it was true. I wondered which it had been: Did she know that she wouldn’t die, or was she determined nonetheless? Even if her method wasn’t truly fatal, if she hadn’t known that, didn’t that still mean she was fully intent on dying?
I couldn’t permit myself reckless apologies or worries. Eventually I realized that I didn’t need to waste time on human relationships. And soon, the number of people who casually approached me at school drastically decreased.
“I don’t think we have a direct effect on each other’s emotions, but the action I took is pretty similar to yours.”
“What did you say to her?” Chika asked. I had no idea if she wanted to test the extent of the shared influence or if she was merely curious to know more about me.
What had I said to close off our future?
“Nothing particularly special,” I replied.
It really hadn’t been anything special. I had said something very generic, something I would say to just about anyone. It was…
Y’know, Izumi, we really are boring.
“That…does seem special to me, though.”
“…Not really.”
It really wasn’t special. Every last one of us is a really goddamn boring individual. That was all I was saying. Boring. Basic. Every single person in the entire world mistakes themselves for someone special and uses that feeling to make excuses for their behavior, whether it’s in clinging to dead romances, dragging others into their messes, hurting people, worrying about things, or whatever. Not that Chika, with no concept of romance, could ever understand that.
“It’s really not special.”
“I don’t get this rohmanse thing, but if I treat it like an extension of friendship, I think she must still be pretty special to you if you would say something to her that’s so obvious that you normally wouldn’t say to anyone else.”
Obvious.
I stared at Chika as I took in the meaning of that. Her voice came again before it had fully finished sinking in.
“I don’t know if she’d see it as a good thing or a bad thing, but most of us live and die without ever being special. It’s such an obvious truth, but most people don’t seem to realize it—at least the people around me. But if you say something like that aloud, people get upset with you and act like it’s an insult.”
“That’s…that’s true.”
“But it’s not like that.”
I had inadvertently interrupted, despite my intention to listen to what she had to say all the way through. Regretful, I shut my mouth. Perhaps because she could see what I had done, Chika’s eyes narrowed.
“Only the people who realize that fact can truly live. They dismiss the idea of ever making themselves into someone special.”
“…I see.”
That was how I’d always lived my life.
“That’s why I think that girl must be special to you—that’s the place you’re starting from since you’re willing to admit that you aren’t special yourself.”
“The place I’m starting from…?”
Izumi and I had never made that kind of progress.
“You were hoping something would change, weren’t you?”
“…I was.”
I really, truly was.
As I nodded, a light bulb popped on inside my head. There was a moment where my words and thoughts aligned. Chika had suddenly put a name to a notion within me that I had struggled to put into words.
I wanted something to change. That was it. That was how I really felt about Izumi. I finally saw it. Even if I was just pretending, I wanted her, the person who I thought I loved, to change. I couldn’t deny my own arrogant wish for her to change herself into a person who suited my needs. I wanted her to escape from the place where she was subject to the whims of my own boring self and of the boring love that we once shared.
Even if it was just a case of overlapping coincidences, we had tried to acknowledge each other as individuals. Izumi, at the very least, had truly seemed to hope she could be someone special. In that alone we were alike. I couldn’t overlook the fact that she aspired to the same thing as me.
And yet, in failing to make her wish a reality, I had only hurt her again.
“Still, if it’s a sin for you to be afraid of that, then I’m a sinner too.”
“You did the same thing? To that estranged friend of yours?”
She neither affirmed nor denied this. Instead, her eyes turned away from me for several seconds, and she breathed in.
“Finding someone who’s committed the same sin as you is a lot like holding hands with someone.”
Her voice was husky and gentle. I didn’t think that such a thing could ever happen within a living body, but I felt it—just once, my heart beat hard, probably the single most powerful heartbeat I had felt in my entire life. The next moment, its rhythm returned to normal.
On one hand, I was uneasy about what that strange sensation might have been, on the other, a far too novel notion floated through my head: The telltale beating of my heart told me that my spirit and Chika’s were holding hands.
Though it may have all been in my imagination, that single heartbeat had made what I felt inside me all the more tangible.