I brought the mug to my lips, but it held no answers.
As I drank in silence, he sat across from me, his eyes glued to me. He was smiling, and I didn’t know why.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, joy clear in his voice.
“Aw, just you, Sacchan?”
“Nishikawa is having a meeting with a professor, and Takayama is in class.”
That piercing gaze I experienced before the entrance ceremony—Fujieda didn’t look at me like that anymore, but she certainly had her own ideas about me. When we were around Nishikawa, she treated me normally, but she wasn’t so nice when he was absent.
During our free periods, our group usually gathered at a table in the corner of the common room. Even though I was the only other one there, I sat in the farthest corner instead of leaving, trying to avoid conflict as much as possible.
“When’s Kadzuki coming?”
“Well, he’s done with his classes for the day, so I’m assuming he’ll come when he’s done chatting, but who can say? He’s Prof. Tominaga’s favorite, so it might take a while. He told me to wait for him.”
“You really are Kadzuki’s favorite.”
“No, I’m convenient.”
He’d told me not to tell anyone about our arrangement, and I kept my word. Neither Fujieda nor Takayama knew that he was paying me to be his friend.
But they did know we lived together. I wondered what assumptions they might’ve made about our relationship.
If it had been a smaller place, I could have said we moved in together to save money. However, one look at that huge apartment and it became clear that we’d spared no expense.
“How about you? Is Kadzuki your favorite?”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t get you at all. I figured you two are close since you live together, but I don’t see it. I mean, he introduced you to us so suddenly. Until then, he’d never so much as mentioned you by name.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have any particular feelings toward him; I spent time with him only because he was paying me for it.
“Have you guys ever fought?”
We hadn’t, not really. Sometimes I made a snide comment out of annoyance, but he never talked back. I’d never seen him angry.
But I felt like openly admitting that might give her the wrong idea. Nishikawa and I weren’t particularly close. I got mad fairly often; he just never escalated things.
“Oh, all the time,” I said.
“Yeah? What have you fought about recently?” she asked.
I bought myself time by pretending to remember details. Before we moved in together, I was practically living alone, and I didn’t know what people who lived together usually fought about.
Reluctantly, I chose the most recent thing that had annoyed me.
“Like, about how he bought pepper from an imported goods store instead of a normal supermarket...”
“Huh?”
“I mean, who buys overpriced pepper anyway? Pepper is pepper. But he’ll insist this particular pepper from this particular place tastes better or whatever.”
“Kadzuki can afford it. What’s the harm?”
“I don’t doubt that, but I don’t have to approve of such excess.”
But Fujieda didn’t seem interested in my complaints, only humming in thought as if I’d spoiled her fun. “Hmm, but I guess that makes sense. If you weren’t close, you wouldn’t be able to live together.”
Close. I didn’t appreciate the look on her face when she said that. Not fighting meant that we were close? You couldn’t live together if you weren’t close?
Trying to keep my thoughts from wandering down that maze, I looked at my phone to find a LINE notification. The name of the sender was displayed only as “T.”
I immediately opened the conversation to find a sticker and a picture. The sticker was a corgi saying, “To another year!” The image was a photo of two hands forming peace signs, one smaller than the other. As I stared at it, a message popped up, describing the sender’s current circumstances.
It was from Toyota.
About a year after he had left with Suzuka, I got a message from an unknown account. He didn’t write much. The photos he attached always contained two people who were never fully visible.
I had initially ignored it, thinking it was some sort of prank, but I eventually realized who was in the photos.
From the photos he sent me every now and then, I could tell Toyota and his sister were still living together. I suspected he was worried his parents might find him if he wrote too much, so he kept the information he shared to a minimum.
I’d started replying after I realized who the sender was. At first, we’d communicated only through stickers and photos, but by now we had moved on to regular text. We’d been going at it for a while.
“What’s up?” Fujieda asked, noticing that I was smiling. I must have lowered my guard.
“Nothing.”
I hoped they were happy.
Toyota’s updates weren’t always positive. He was in the middle of some kind of trouble, and Suzuka was struggling sometimes. Their lives certainly weren’t easy, but I was happy to hear they had even a little happiness in their lives. They deserved it.
I replied with a sticker for now. When I was about to tap on the picture, a call appeared on my screen, and I held my breath.
I’d erased that number from my contacts.
He had never picked up when I called, and he’d never called of his own accord. I had assumed—gladly—that he was gone from my life for good.
But I still remembered his number. I’d dialed it countless times as a child without a phone of my own.
“Sorry, Fujieda. I gotta take this.”
After leaving the common room, I stared at the screen. I didn’t want to pick up, but my fingers couldn’t help pressing the “Accept Call” icon.
It had been five years.
“Fumihiro?”
That voice sent me back to another place in time and made my heart tremble—I couldn’t help it. I wanted to yell insults at him, but my body stiffened. I couldn’t get the words to come out.
That same carefree voice called out to me on the phone, “Hellooo?”
I knew it too well from when I was little.
“What do you want?”
I thought of the date. I recalled Toyota’s message. I hated myself for it.
Did I really still expect that of him? When I hadn’t heard from him in five years, when I bet he didn’t even know what high school I’d graduated from?
“You’re old enough to work now, aren’t you? Can you lend me some money?”
I didn’t believe in my father enough to doubt the words I heard.
Before I had the chance to look back at the shards of my shattered hopes, an emptiness crept into my heart. It came with a hint of loneliness, which was ridiculous.
To convince myself I was shaking out of anger, I replied in the deepest voice I could muster, “Hell no. Where are you, anyway?”
“How about you? When I went home, someone else was living there.”
So he’d gone to the run-down apartment. I was glad I’d moved.
Since he hadn’t changed his number, he must have heard the messages I left him about mom’s funeral. And yet he made such a shameless request.
“Mom’s dead.” I made no attempt to hide my spite.