Anzu pressed a button on a little remote control to turn on the AC, then left me alone in the room once more. Unsure of what to do, I sat on the floor and took a sip of my iced tea. Then I unraveled the wet washcloth and used it to wipe my face and neck as I looked around the room.
Right off the bat, the main thing to stick out to me was the massive bookcase that nearly covered an entire wall. On its shelves were all manner of different books, ranging from classic literature to popular pulp manga, all neatly organized by publisher. It was a perfect display of Anzu’s detail-oriented personality. The next thing I happened to notice was her writing desk, which was the only part of the otherwise immaculate room that was remarkably untidy. Books were stacked atop it in uneven piles, and eraser dust was strewn all across the surface. Other than those two details, however, it was about as spartan and unspectacular as Koharu’s bedroom had been. I had to wonder if they were exceptions to the norm, or if my lack of personal experience had merely given me some bizarre notions as to what a teenage girl’s room should look like.
After finishing my initial survey of the room and fully wiping myself off, I was officially bored. That was a bit of a problem, because it felt pretty flustering being alone in a girl’s room with nothing to do, as a guy who’d never really had any female friends. Even sitting there absentmindedly was a challenge, because my mind kept getting distracted by the vaguely sweet feminine fragrance that seemed to only exist in girls’ bedrooms. Thinking I might read a volume of manga or something to keep myself occupied, I got up and walked to the bookcase. Surely Anzu wouldn’t object to me pulling one out to entertain myself, would she? Luckily, she happened to have a copy of a particular manga I’d been meaning to check out, so I went ahead and pulled it out from the stacks.
“Hm?”
It was then that I noticed an envelope, wedged between the top of the manga volumes and the bottom of the next shelf up, almost like it had been hidden away. Curious, I reached to pull it out. Printed on the corner of the front of the envelope was an official company name and logo: “Yutosha Publishing Co.” The seal had been broken, but obviously I wasn’t about to go rifling through someone else’s mail. Just as I was about to slip it snugly back into place, my hand froze.
Wait a minute. Isn’t Yutosha, like…a pretty major book company?
Then all of a sudden, the image of Anzu on the ground desperately gathering those pages of drawings flashed back into my head. Could it be? My better judgment tried as hard as it could to quell my rabid curiosity, but in the end, the latter came out on top. With trembling hands, I gently pulled the letter from the envelope and had a look.
“…Well, holy crap.”
I heard the doorknob twist as Anzu let herself back into the room. “Sorry that took so long… Wait, are you reading my—”
“Oh, yeah. My bad. I was getting pretty bored, so I kinda helped myself.” I was sitting on the floor with my back against her bed, leafing through one of her many volumes of manga. “Should I have asked first?”
“No, you’re fine.”
In her lacy camisole and matching lounge shorts, Anzu was showing a lot more skin than I’d ever seen on her, to the point that being in the same room was making my heart race. When she walked over and sat right beside me, it only worsened my nervous tension. I set the manga I’d been reading on the low table and tried to start a conversation in a feeble attempt to keep things from getting weird.
“Boy, you sure read a lot of manga, don’t you?”
“Yep, I sure do. Does that surprise you?”
“Maybe a little, yeah. I mean, I’ve only ever seen you read normal books at school.”
“Wow, you must pay a lot of attention to me.”
“Yeah, well. You’re the one who refuses to blend in like a good little conformist. Not my fault you stand out.”
This got a good laugh out of her, which did help me loosen up a bit. We went on to make casual small talk for quite some time, gushing about our favorite movies, books, foods, and so on. We whiled away the warm, sleepy hours of the late afternoon—each passing minute feeling lazier than the last—as time trickled by like honey, slow and sweet.
“To be honest with you, I actually do still have parents,” she suddenly confessed, not long after we finished talking about our most nostalgic childhood video games. “I mean, it wasn’t a lie in the sense that they’re not a part of my life anymore, but I still feel bad for misleading you. Truth is, my mother and father are both still living in Tokyo. They were always extremely strict, though, and I guess a rebellious daughter like me was too much for them to handle. So, they tossed me overboard in the hopes that living with my aunt on this deserted island for a while would make me change my ways.”
“Uh, you do realize we’re still connected to the mainland here, right?”
“It was a metaphor. Don’t think too hard about it.”
I could only laugh and shake my head. Kozaki wasn’t even that remote, all things considered. But whatever.
“I always hated my parents,” she went on. “The way they treated me like I was mentally deranged for wanting to pursue my dreams and make a name for myself, just because it wasn’t a ‘stable’ career path like the boring, worthless ones they decided to waste their entire lives on. I’ll never forgive them for that. But you know what’s really sad? When they told me they were sending me away to live in Kozaki, I took it way harder than I expected. Like there was still some lingering affection there I couldn’t shake, no matter how much I told myself I hated their guts. I’m such a stupid brat.”
Anzu shook her head in self-reproach.