Chapter 1:
How I Met Yukari
YUKARI AND I met at the corner of a corridor between two buildings at our school, a little over halfway through the new term. To be precise, we’d seen each other before. In fact, we lived in the same neighborhood and had gone to the same elementary school. We were even in the same class when we started junior high. You could say we already knew each other. After all, I did know Marii Yukari’s name and face from the first day of the term that year.
Her appearance is striking, so I remembered her. And hey, I’m not saying this just because I’m her friend either.
I wouldn’t describe her as a beauty, per se, but if I were to call her a pretty girl—an expression which admittedly is embarrassing both for the person who says it and the person it’s said about—I think the general consensus would be positive. Marii Yukari looked young, even discounting the fact she’d been in elementary school until recently, and the way she looked in the baggy uniform that was so obviously brand-new inescapably drew the eye. This resulted in me, for the first time, thinking of a human being as similar to a small animal.
I, meanwhile, was the least adorable fresh junior high school student you could imagine. I was rough and unfriendly and had tough feet and strong muscles from practicing the naginata ever since I was a kid. I’d never lost to a boy my age in arm wrestling, and I’d never thought of myself as cute.
If you ask why I hadn’t approached Marii Yukari much despite having committed her name and face to memory from the first day we met, it might be because I was more self-conscious than I realized. I thought that there was no way a girly-girl like her and a tomboy like me could have anything in common.
Of course, I was like that to my other classmates too—not just Yukari. I kept my distance from everyone and never made an effort to be part of the class. I was socially awkward and my macho attitude just made it worse. From the start of the new term, I got a reputation as an aloof girl, reliable only in important situations, not that my standoffish image lasted for long once I got to know Yukari.
There were always invisible lines between me and others. That was fine by me.
There were still enough kids I knew from elementary school that I wasn’t completely antisocial. I was able to chat during breaks, and I was included in groups during lunch and gym class. That was enough for me as far as friends went.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in other people or that I was disillusioned about friends. In fact, I’m actually more the type to get fired up in conversation, as you can see from how I’m talking to you right now. Still, I guess I was still a little kid at heart and didn’t want other people to know.
But things were different now.
We were wearing uniforms, and my friends from elementary school seemed totally changed. They looked older than me too, and I wanted people to see me as mature. I wanted to act like an adult—like a grown woman—but I was a dull person with nothing to show off except my skills with a naginata. I figured the only way I could avoid letting the cat out of the bag was to shut up, and that was easier for me anyway. Rather than have people think that I couldn’t do anything feminine at all, I preferred for them to think I just wasn’t interested.
Pride exists to satisfy yourself and no one else; I kept my pride by playing the role other people assigned to me.
So you can see how Yukari’s world and mine never would have intersected.
I was Hatou Manabu, the one who had no interest in cute things or being cute, yet that vibe was what caught Yukari’s attention.
To put it bluntly—and this is going to sound like a joke—to Yukari, who had purple eyes with a special way of seeing the world, it was not clear at all whether I was a boy or a girl. So, in order to avoid offending me in the future, she decided to find out…by following me.
Let me point out here that I have swift reflexes as a result of my martial arts training, though maybe it’s just my personality. I also walk twice as fast as other people. My friends get left in the dust when I’m out with them.
Meanwhile, Yukari is short; she’s got a small gait. She might move her legs fast, but her overall movements are small.
Therefore, her version of stalking consists of scampering around for a bit, hiding, looking around, and scampering around again to close the distance when the coast looks clear. That in itself is quite heartwarming if you ask me, but I’d like you to imagine this: what would happen when a girl like Marii Yukari comes hiding and scampering, hiding and scampering, hiding and scampering right as I turn the hallway corner?
I disappeared, and she dashed ahead in a panic to follow. At that moment, I remembered I forgot something and turned around.
It happened in a flash.
Just as I whipped around the corner, I realized someone was sprinting directly at me. Without thinking, I lowered my posture and braced myself. We made eye contact at point-blank range.