Though I felt a bit guilty about it, I took the planner with me back to Kurumi’s house.
I figured I’d better tell her about everything that had happened that day, and to do that, I’d need the planner as evidence.
I left school and took a train to the terminal station. Following the flow of the crowd, I made my way to the platform and onto the next train, my body moving on autopilot. After another ten or so minutes, I was at a familiar, run-down station.
I walked down the country road under the sunset, passing through rice paddies and past corrugated roofs, averting my eyes from the bent-necked sunflowers. At last, I reached an old house with the lights on inside.
I opened the front door and smelled miso soup. I could hear the rhythmic chopping of a knife coming from somewhere in the back. Only then did I finally relax.
“Oh, Natsume! Welcome home. You’re late today!”
A mass of gray-and-black hair swiveled around as I stepped into the living room. Kurumi had poked her head out of the kitchen. She had an apron on over her uniform.
“…Yeah, I had something to take care of. Sorry I couldn’t leave with you.”
“Well, I’ll let it slide this time. Oh, we’re having roast beef. It’ll be done soon, so give me a moment. If you could go ahead and scrub the bath, I’d be super grateful!”
“Oh, sure. I’ll get to it.”
“Whoo! You’re a lifesaver.”
“It’s the least I can do. Thanks for all the cooking.”
She merrily told me it was no problem, then shot me a big grin. I began to feel bad for lifting her mood. It was like I was buttering her up before a blow. What I had to discuss tonight would lower anyone’s spirits.
I put my things down and took a seat.
I took a deep breath, then pushed through my reluctance. As she turned back toward the stew, I called out to her.
“Um, Kurumi. We need to talk.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, and her head swiveled around by itself, like she was a broken windup doll. Her eyes had gone wide.
…Did she figure everything out from my attitude alone? She’s just too good.
Initially, I was impressed by her seeming ability to read my mind. But as it turned out, she was way off base.
Kurumi started quivering, her voice full of anxiety. “Y-you’re not…trying to break up with me, are you?”
“……No way. Why would I be?”
“That was totally the vibe here!”
Was it? I didn’t have a clue. I had no experience with these things, after all.
Besides, we weren’t even dating in the first place, though I decided to leave that thought unspoken. Our relationship was undefined—too messy to put a label on.
And more importantly, this was no time for such a frivolous conversation. Not for me, anyway, and I suspected Kurumi was the same.
“I’ve just…got something I wanna discuss about our resistance movement.”
“That…doesn’t sound like you have a new idea for an attack, huh?”
“Yeah, this is different. Do you have time to talk? I know you’re in the middle of cooking.”
“The meat’s resting at the moment, so I’m good. Just give me a second to turn the burner off.”
With that, she ducked back into the kitchen before reemerging a moment later.
She took off her apron and dropped it on the table. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down.
An oppressive silence fell as we faced each other across the table.
“Um, so, Natsume, what’s on your mind?”
“Right… Just… Where do I begin?”
If I tried to summarize, she might not understand me. So I decided to start from the top—with how I’d tailed Nanaougi to get a read on her motives.
I explained how she’d demanded the teachers do something about our attacks, without mentioning our names, and how she’d said she didn’t like when there was unrest in the school, then swore she was lying only moments later. I left out the kiss—that was unrelated to the topic at hand—but I told Kurumi everything else.
Kurumi sat, her cheek resting on one hand, and listened avidly.
“So that’s why you’re back so late?” she asked. “You could have said something.”
“Sorry about that. I didn’t have time and didn’t think I’d need to.”
“Fair enough. That’s just how you are.” She pursed her lips at me, looking sullen.
Okay, so maybe I had some things to improve on. Noted.
“So?” Kurumi said, urging me along. “You tailed Nanaougi but don’t have much to show for it. That can’t be all you had to say.”
“Uh, no, it isn’t. This is about what happened next.”
Yeah. Frankly, the stuff with Nanaougi was beside the point. We had more important things to consider—bigger problems to face.
Fighting the urge to sigh, I got to the point.
“While I was eavesdropping, I heard Ookuma cry.”
“Huh? She was crying? The teacher?”
“Yeah. And it’s our fault.” The person we needed to think about wasn’t Nanaougi, but Ookuma. “From what they said, she’s in charge of the summer curriculum this year. And since we’ve been relentlessly attacking it, everything came crashing down on her.”
“Oh… So her superiors are demanding she do something about it?”
“Exactly. She even said, ‘I know damn well who’s in the wrong here.’”
“Huh…”
I couldn’t tell if Kurumi was lost or just sulking. I’d probably had the same look on my face when I heard Ookuma crying.
The silence lasted several seconds, but eventually Kurumi collected her thoughts and began to speak, words flowing out of her.
“I get it. I know what you’re trying to say and how you feel about it. It’s hard not to sympathize with Ookuma—or with anyone driven to the point of tears.”
“…Yeah.”
“But it’s just sympathy, right? You can’t believe that Ookuma is some great person. She’s teaching, just like the rest of our school’s faculty, participating in a fundamentally immoral system. Honestly, she deserves to cry.”
It wasn’t just Kurumi’s expression; she was thinking the same way I had, too.
That’s right. Exactly. I’d thought the same thing, told myself the same excuses. But in the end, I couldn’t convince myself—not after learning the truth about Kanae Ookuma.
“Take a look at this, Kurumi,” I said, taking the planner out of my pocket and sliding it across the table.
“What is it?”
“A planner. It’s Ookuma’s. I found it on my way out.”
“What’s this gonna tell me?”
“Trust me. Look at the last page.”
Kurumi picked it up and flipped through it. Soon, her hands stopped.
I could tell she’d forgotten to breathe.
A natural reaction.
At the back of the planner, past the calendar section, was a space for miscellaneous notes. In it, Ookuma had written down a bullet point list enumerating all aspects of Saigou High’s discriminatory system…and an account of one person’s suffering at the hands of this awful school.