After Shinohara went home, I washed the dirty dishes from the meal. The sweetness of tiramisu lingered on my lips. It was delicious. I liked things that were sweet with hints of bitterness inside. Perhaps noticing my tastes from what I’d ordered at the café earlier, her tiramisu was just the right blend of flavors for me. No doubt the odd sense of guilt that I felt for eating it in a warm room had added to the experience, putting it among the best foods I’d eaten lately.
It was about 8 p.m. now. My day was smoother than usual, in part thanks to her leaving earlier than she typically did. At this rate, I’d have plenty of free time before bed. I didn’t mind time with her, but I needed my alone time too.
Since exams were over, I was in the mood to lie down and scroll video-sharing websites until I fell asleep. Clicking random things on the “related videos” list for hours on end was heaven for me. However, my humble desire was dashed by the green glow of my phone. The name displayed on the incoming call screen was Ayaka’s.
“So, what do you think the guest said to me after that?”
“Hey, can we talk about this another time? I just remembered I have some stuff I have to do before tomorrow.”
“Pssh, you’re just gonna scroll the internet all night. You can do that any time.”
“We can also call each other any time.”
I heard a big sigh on the other end of our speaker-phone call. “Jeez. You’re the only person who gets this frigid when I call.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” I replied, wiping grime off of the pressure cooker with a sponge. My attention was focused more on cleaning than on her.
I’d hardly used this pressure cooker since my parents gave it to me, but now that Shinohara was coming over often, it was actually getting a decent amount of use. One could imagine the pressure cooker was happy too.
“Hey, are you still not done doing the dishes? I can’t hear you over the water sometimes.”
“Just a little longer.”
“Really? It’s taking you a lot longer than usual.” Her remark made me freeze up for a moment.
It was a bigger job tonight because I was cleaning things that had been used to make dessert for two, but I was too ashamed to tell Ayaka that.
“They built up because I was lazy around exam time. Someone who lives with her parents wouldn’t understand.”
“Don’t you make fun of me. I do basically all of the housework around here, even during exam week. Heck, I could even come over and help you with chores.”
I did appreciate the offer, but I wanted to avoid her and Shinohara running into each other as much as possible. Better I do the chores alone than having to walk on eggshells in my own home.
“No, thanks.”
“Really? And here I was about to come over,” she groaned, as if bored.
Most men would be happy to have someone like her at their place, but since those were the exact kind of guys she didn’t get close to, it was only natural that someone she was close to—me—would refuse.
Just then, an intrusive thought crossed my mind: If you really were close, you’d know her better.
We’d been friends since our first year of high school, and it was the winter of our second year in university now. I’d always thought that we spent a lot of quality time together. But Shinohara, a mere acquaintance, had mentioned that Ayaka was in the basketball club in middle school. There would’ve been plenty of opportunities for her to mention that. If there was so much about her that I didn’t know, then it might have been more accurate to say that she was hiding things, rather than never bothering to mention them.
Of course, that alone didn’t make me doubt our friendship. I hadn’t told her everything about Reina, either, so I understood that no level of friendship meant that you could, or had, to tell each other everything. But I couldn’t deny that it still made me a little sad. I knew it was a little arrogant to be sad that someone hadn’t told you everything when you hadn’t exactly opened up yourself. With any other friend, I would understand and not bother to bring it up. But this was Ayaka.
I believed in our friendship, so I braced myself and said, “Hey, Ayaka?”
“Hm?”
“You played basketball in middle school, right?”
I turned the faucet off. All the extra noise disappeared, and silence returned to my studio apartment.
Her answer didn’t come quickly. Since we were talking on the phone, it was hard to divine what the pause meant. “Who told you that?”
That tone of voice was something I’d never heard from her before. It wasn’t anger, and it wasn’t suspicion. Was it…fear?
Water dripped from the faucet, echoing like a cacophony in my ears.
“Is that not something I should’ve asked?” I stood in front of my phone and gazed down at the screen.
It was displaying Ayaka’s profile picture, a photo taken with a bunch of her circle members. The Ayaka in the picture had a big smile on her face, but the vulnerable voice coming from my phone was a far cry from that happy image.
“First off, no. It’s no big deal, or anything.”
This reply was unusually evasive for her. Had my question shaken her that badly? I could tell how she was feeling, to an extent, just by hearing her breathe. Just as she understood me, I could guess at her emotions. Even if I didn’t know her past, it still didn’t change the years we’d known each other. But not knowing her past did make me feel a little isolated. That was why I’d asked the question in the first place.
I shook my head. Maybe it was because we were such good friends that she’d hidden the truth. Otherwise, there’d be no reason for me not to know after five whole years of knowing each other.