I left the restaurant and stepped out onto the main road, hailing a cab. I let Saitou ride with me, figuring that we probably lived in the same direction, given that we had been on the same train line before. However, when I heard the neighborhood that Saitou mentioned to the driver, it wasn’t one I recognized as on the same train line as mine.
“God, I’m really drunk, sorry.”
Saitou put her hands to her cheeks as though embarrassed by herself. My head was swimming plenty too, so I threw my left hand down onto my seat to avoid touching Saitou where she sat beside me, and responded with an appropriate, “That’s what happens when you drink.” It wasn’t really a problem, honestly, but there was no point in dwelling on it either way, so I just told her, “You can sleep until we get there, if you want.”
However, she shook her head, brushing off my offer with a “Thanks, I’m all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she continued, “You can just write this off as the alcohol talking if you want to, but I’m really happy right now.”
“About what?”
“I just think it’s amazing that two people who were both so bored back then could actually have fun drinking together like this.”
Bored. Fun.
There she went again, deciding my feelings for herself. Though…she was right about the former.
She lowered her hands from her face, resting them on her bag that sat on her lap.
“Y’know…”
She started to say something, then was silent for a bit, staring at the back of the seat in front of her. She let out a sigh, the sort you’d expect before a once-in-a-lifetime confession or someone admitting to an old crush they’d given up on.
“I used to really hate you.”
She glanced at me, giving a self-deprecating smirk.
“I feel like it’s been long enough, so will you hear me out? At first, back then, I thought that I couldn’t stand you. You seemed like the sort of person who thought that you were special but got annoyed when other people did the same things and acted the same way as you. That was the sort of misguided self-aggrandizing I understood, but there was a specific moment when I decided that I didn’t like you at all.”
I had no interest in knowing when, but she seemed like she wanted to tell me, so I had to let her.
“Can I ask when?”
“Yeah. Remember when you lent me your umbrella?”
I thought back, replaying my memories and stopping on the scenes that I normally skipped right over. I guessed something like that might have happened.
“Not clearly, but…”
“You did once, on a rainy day when I forgot my own umbrella. Normally I’d be happy about it, but it felt like, you know… I was like, what a half-assed good Samaritan this guy is. Like, why bother even being considerate for other people if you’re gonna look so unhappy about it?” She added, half to herself, “I guess I hated how similar we were,” before looking out the window.
Even being told that someone had hated me didn’t stir my emotions. I had no interest in any evaluations of me that didn’t have a bearing on my livelihood, and I certainly wasn’t going to take the opinions of some person from the past to heart.
Still, I knew what I was supposed to say to her here. I knew exactly why she would have brought up that topic. She had only announced her former hatred of me to show how her own evaluation of me had changed since then. I could have just ignored this, but again, none of this mattered to me, so I provided the response that I was sure she was hoping to hear.
“You know, I hated you too.”
I purposely let out a smile with the words, and when she turned her eyes back from the window to me, she looked like I had practically saved her.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I guess I hate folks who are like me too.”
That wasn’t true at all, but I didn’t see any point in revealing my true feelings.
She turned forward, tittering, “So you did, huh…” as she let her hands slide from her bag down onto her seat.
The movement was unreserved, and her pinky brushed the ring finger of my left hand. It would be as much a pain to avoid this, so I just waited for her to pull her hand away herself, but she at no point showed any signs of doing so.
Her pinky rested atop my ring finger. Then it curled around it like a crochet hook.
I gave her a sideways glance. She was not looking at me. I saw the serious expression on her face as she continued looking forward and made a choice.
None of this mattered either way, so I untangled my ring finger from her pinky and rested my hand on the back of hers. I softly intertwined my fingers in the gaps between her own slender ones. After a moment of hesitation, she closed her hand around mine.
Soon after, the taxi arrived in her neighborhood, whereupon she directed the driver to an apartment building. I pulled my hand from hers, and we thanked each other.
“See you later. Oh yeah, try not to get caught. Heh, haven’t said that in a while.”
Her cheeks lifted as we exchanged our farewells, then the cab door closed. Alone now, I directed the driver to my home, watching as Saitou opened the auto-lock door of her building.
Not that it mattered either way.