☾☾☾
“YOU can’t come with us!” Shizuku snapped at Shimozuru as she practically slammed the door in his face. I watched him as the two of us rode off.
She wouldn’t let go of my hand. Not when we went to change nor on the ride home.
My heart had cooled after everything that had happened. The warmth of her hand seemed to be the one thing keeping it going, and for that, I was grateful.
“I’m sorry, Urara,” she offered about thirty minutes into the ride.
“...Why are you apologizing?”
I thought it strange that she would. I glanced at her and saw she had wrinkled her nose. She apologized again.
“You’ve been so down lately, and yet I barely even noticed.”
“Oh, no, I never said anything to you. How could you have known?”
She was my best friend, but there was no way I could have told her Chouko’s secret. But I never intended for her to find out like this, either.
“I was just so caught up in dancing, so oblivious...”
“You were incredible. Even Mochizuki admitted it. You earned that win. You need to be proud of it.”
We continued talking as I lightly stroked her hair, careful to preserve the special style she had it in.
“...Even though it ended on a sour note, we still won, didn’t we?”
“Yes, Shizuku. You won.”
“Three wins, two losses. So we beat Tsukuyomi.”
“Yes,” I said, gazing off in the distance while heaving a sigh.
“This is where the game ends, you know, Urara?”
“Yes. But...”
“But?”
“Some things don’t have to come to an end.”
I squeezed her hand tighter. In turn, she squeezed mine back.
“You’re right,” she murmured, letting me know she completely understood everything I wanted to say.
✦ ✦ ✦
☾☾☾
I’M still not sure how I got pulled into it, but Shizuku had seized victory in the Ojousama Challenge, beating Chouko at three wins to two.
However, she still hadn’t found herself in a relationship with any of the love interests from Moonlight Beauty ~Be My Bride~.
Unlike in most stories, where victory or defeat led to an epic denouement, her success in the competition had ended anticlimactically.
And so, it would be a week before she visited me in the depths of my misery, after a family vacation with souvenirs in hand.
“Still, to think Tsukuyomi was a guy all along. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t heard it from you.” Shizuku began with that the second she walked into my room.
Not only did she start with a sensitive topic, but she had to rub it right in from the get-go.
“But how did you know? No matter how I look at it, Tsukuyomi was the definition of a young lady. Even if I heard it from the horse’s mouth, I still wouldn’t believe it.”
Her words were loaded. I carefully reflected on how I could explain it to her, but I struggled to find the right words. I settled for starting where I could.
“Um, well, because I saw it.”
“Huh, what?”
“...H-Hi...”
“‘H-Hi’?”
“His chest.”
“Tsukuyomi was naked?!”
“No, he wasn’t naked!”
He was absolutely, unequivocally appropriately clothed. I just happened to run into him at the wrong time. And so that was where I began my explanation. The match with Haruto and everything that happened after.
“Hmmm, sounds like your brother and Tsukuyomi were both in the wrong, trying to settle things with kendo like that.”
Are you really one to judge them for that, Shizuku?
“Ah well,” she said, now that I had explained, and opened the snacks she brought back from her trip.
She said they’d gone skiing in Australia, but the snacks were chocolate macadamia nuts again. I liked them anyway, so I was happy nonetheless.
“So what are you going to do now, Urara?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. Now that you know Tsukuyomi is a boy, that changes everything about your relationship, right?”
That wasn’t the point. No matter what form he took, Chouko was still Chouko. It was just...
“When I think about his chest...”
“What? You can’t date a guy without breasts?”
“That’s not it!”
Please just forget about breasts for right now. I needed to talk about what was going on in my heart.
“My heart aches. Every time I think about Chouko, it squeezes tighter. I don’t know if I could take it if I tried to reach out and he ignored me.”
Oh, not again. I had thought about this time and again lately, then denied it, only for the thought to arise once more, tossing me into a cycle of increasing despair.
“I don’t want Chouko to hate me,” I whispered, my fears finally given voice.
I wanted him to smile at me again. To hear his kind words. More than ever before. And on and on from here forward. For me. And only me.
“Urara, I knew it...”
Just as Shizuku was about to continue, a loud ringtone reverberated throughout the room.
She pounced on her smartphone and checked the screen. Her eyes narrowed, and she tossed it onto my bed.
“What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
“It’s fine. Just some dumb text.”
On that day, while she was trying to protect me, Shizuku had lashed out at Shimozuru. After we were in the car, I had caught her looking lost in thought.
So maybe that email was from...
“Shimozuru?”
“Huh? No way. It was from the Prince.”
“Whaaat?”
“I dunno why, but ever since that day, he keeps sending me all these weird messages. I really don’t get it at all.”
She grabbed her phone, unlocked it, and showed me. Wait, weren’t these messages private? Was it really okay for me to see them?
“It’s all right, go ahead and have a look,” she said. I peeked out of the corner of my eye and saw pictures of a unique-looking cat.
“Um...it’s a cat.”
“Yes it is. An ugly one, at that.”
“Depends on how you look at it. I think it’s cute.”
“Apparently, it’s the Prince’s cat.”
Every day since then, Mochizuki had sent a picture labeled “Today’s Bergamot.” Neither Shizuku nor I could figure out why he was doing this.
“I don’t get any messages from the person I really want, just junk like this.”
“Shizuku, you’re waiting, aren’t you...? For a message from Shimozuru?”
My words immediately flustered her, and her eyes began moving around, looking anywhere except at me. Finally she relented, seemingly defeated, and nodded her head.
“You really are...”
“Stop, Urara! Just wait a sec. Wait, and don’t say it yet. I know. I know it’s true, but my heart just isn’t ready yet!”
I understood. I understood so much that it hurt.
She felt bad about smacking Shimozuru’s hand and yelling at him. That she hadn’t apologized for going too far, and now the gap between them was growing deeper and deeper.
And now, no matter how much she wanted to see him, she was frozen in fear.
“I can see it in your eyes. You feel the same way, too, don’t you, Urara?”
“Yes...I think I do. Definitely.”
Finally acknowledging it, my true feelings began to flow forth freely from my heart.
Being afraid that the wedding dress had been for Chouko was absolutely because I was feeling jealous.
Because I loved—
I clenched my fist. I was ready.
“Shizuku, can I tell you? About what happened in my past life?”
The story of a feeling I couldn’t quite bring myself to call love.