The truth is, I was really troubled.
I read the apology my friend sent me from my phone’s notifications screen, so the little ‘Read’ icon wouldn’t show up, and sighed—but I was aware of the fact that it was the lightest sigh I’d let out recently.
I think it started around a month before summer break, when Chie began talking a lot about the fireworks festival. Chie is a bright, cheerful, straightforward girl, but I have to admit that there are a lot of times when she’s not very thoughtful. Even so, I honestly didn’t expect her to go so far as to add me to a LIME group with boys in it under the premise of us all going to the festival together. I wasn’t sure how it’d all pan out if I just left the group, so I was really troubled by it.
Chie herself didn’t have any ill intentions—and there’s no denying that this fact made refusing her harder—but I could have solved everything had I spoken up earlier: ‘I can’t go. I don’t want to go. There’s... someone else I want to see the fireworks with.’ If only I told her that, things wouldn’t have gotten out of hand.
I was weirdly cautious, caused a whole scene, and even made my friend apologize. What on earth am I doing? He just taught me that it was important to communicate properly.
“...I ended up finishing my message with ‘everyone,’” I muttered. Turning my smartphone back on, I looked back through the conversation we’d just had: Hey, I’d written, do you actually wanna go to the fireworks festival with everyone?
I’d hesitated for a good while over whether or not I should add ‘with everyone’ at the end. If I had sent the message without it, I wondered, what would he have thought? He lied for my sake by saying we were going as a club, so would he assume that was what I meant?
What would happen if I went so far as to specify, ‘just the two of us’? What kind of answer would await me? After getting this far, I couldn’t help but wince at the realization that I was trying to test him when we were in such a busy spot with Summit. I decided to stop that line of thought. Besides... I wanted to go with everyone. That came from the bottom of my heart, too. “But...” I said, partially thinking out loud. For that to happen, I need to talk to Eru properly. “...Alright.”
First, I needed to begin by cleaning up all the small things that were within my reach. I opened the message from Chie and sent her a reply saying, “Don’t worry about it,” which I immediately followed up with, “There’s something I wanna ask you.”
Digging up someone else’s history felt dirty, but I was probably the only one in our club who could ask around like this. I wouldn’t let myself regret not doing everything I could for my dearest friend.
I cast my gaze beyond the window. The moon truly was beautiful.