She didn’t give off the faintest hint of a good impression. In fact, initially, I thought she was the worst. I don’t want to sound like the beginning of a romance manga, but she was stubborn, annoying, thorny, and hard to approach. Actually, it was more that I didn’t want to approach her.
These are the honest feelings I held for Kuroba Eru in middle school.
She would sit in the corner of our clubroom and scribble away with her pen, and whenever she opened her mouth it was to bite at someone, regardless of whether she was talking to an upperclassman or not. She’d tell them the brutal truth—that they were terrible at drawing—which brought the entire atmosphere grinding to a halt.
No one wanted to approach this rabid dog. But most importantly, all I wanted at that time was to sink to the bottom of the ocean so that I could be all alone. Everything was in my way: the name Yozakura Aina, my looks, everything.
Whenever some oblivious boy confessed to me, I had to restrain myself from telling them to go home and look in a mirror, all while they told me with pure hearts just how serious they were. Then the girls would gossip behind my back about how high and mighty I was for having spurned their classmates’ advances. But to my face, these same girls would make up pointless lies about how they’d never say such things about me... All of it, all of it, all of it made me miserable.
So, I joined the manga society. I figured no one would understand why I was there in the first place, and I was right. It being a manga club meant that, at the very minimum, I had a few volumes of manga to leisurely pass the time with. If I turned into a ghost member and went straight home, my grandma would worry about me. I didn’t want to see her worried face.
I ended up being a sort of ghost member within the clubroom anyway, and I was satisfied that everything went according to plan. There were a few club members who tried to close the distance in the beginning, but they left me alone once it was clear that I wasn’t interested. I spent my days watching from afar as they chatted about their meaningless trifles. I also looked on as Eru drew without rest and eventually collided with them.
There was one other place I visited every now and again. “You fool,” she told me. “No one can perform like that off of talent alone.” I had only known my teacher since I’d moved to Niigata, but this was something of a catchphrase of hers. She was a once-divorced woman around forty who’d previously worked as a voice acting instructor at a training school in Tokyo. Now, she lived freely while managing a small troupe in Niigata and writing her own plays.
I hated both the fact that I had been pathetically abandoned and that I’d let myself wallow in self-pity. I had wanted to throw everything out when I’d left the capital, but my old coach from my child star days in Tokyo introduced me to her, saying that I should think things over again—that it was a waste to toss it away.
There’s nothing going to waste, I’d thought. I truly believed that, but listened to her all the same. I think it must have been because I enjoyed acting in and of itself.
“I know you don’t hate acting, you fool,” my teacher told me, as if she had me all figured out. “It’s fine if you hate yourself. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t. If you hate yourself so much, use your voice to become someone else. That will still be you, but it won’t be the you that hates you.”
Even though I didn’t quite understand what she was saying—even though I didn’t try to understand—I think the reason I couldn’t get mad at her was because I really did like acting. My teacher called me a fool every time I saw her, but I found it strangely comforting.
I would haunt the clubroom, pop in at my teacher’s place, smile for my grandma, and go back to being a ghost. As my own lifeless days went round and round in circles, Eru became more and more alone in the club. It was easy to tell from the outside looking in.
Pursuit begets loneliness. The sight of someone working diligently to chase their dreams is poisonous to the eyes of some people.
The manga society’s clubroom was an empty classroom, so it was pretty spacious for the amount of people we had. Most of the members huddled around President Igarashi, near the blackboard in the center of the room. Eru had claimed the corner seat closest to the hallway, and I watched them from my spot next to the window.
Igarashi and company chatted away; Eru drew.
And the next day.
And the day after that.
And again, the day after that.
It never changed.
They were incompatible.
I did my best not to get involved with Eru—to not even look her way—so I didn’t know how good her illustrations were, but I had a feeling they were well made. If not, the other club members would have turned her into a laughing stock. Not only was that unfeasible, but approaching Eru only ever served to hurt their feelings, so there could be no doubt that she was skilled. As they drifted listlessly along, her existence must have been venom to their eyes; Eru was someone who stood far above them in skill, and showed no signs of slowing down.
“She’s so gross.” I’m sure the offhand remark I heard one day was their honest opinion. In that case, it was only natural that Eru and the others would have clashed over the cover art for the culture festival.