Chapter 19

“Are you sure you should be telling me this, though? Maybe the news was just for you,” she said. “I made sure to ask if I could tell you,” I said. I didn’t want to spread gossip—there was no pride in that. Despite this fact, though, she still looked thoughtful. “Did they agree right away?” she asked. She was a sharp one. “Maybe not right away,” I said. “And how much did you pester them?” I devised a simple means of not having to answer immediately: I sipped my coffee and studied the hem of the curtains, refusing to meet her gaze. Yuki, however, scooted around so she was looking at me. When I averted my eyes, she moved again, without a word. She left me no place to run. Also, she was way too cute. I saw no option but to plead the Fifth—although it seemed likely to be a useless gesture against my girlfriend, who had pressed me this far already. “I know you, Tasuku. I’m sure you gave them those puppy dog eyes of yours until they gave in.” She sounded pretty sure. She should be—she knew firsthand how persistent I could be. “I wouldn’t say I was that obnoxious,” I said. “Oh, really?” “It’s okay! Miyano said I could tell you,” I reiterated. And I know he would say no if he really didn’t want me to, I added silently. She munched on a cookie, then blinked. A little surprised sound escaped her. She put her hand to her mouth, then finally asked, “Did you hear about that when you were at the hospital visiting me?” “What makes you say that?” I asked. It so happened that she was right, but I was surprised she’d hit the nail on the head. She was too perceptive for me. “There was that one time when something seemed a little off with you. You checked your texts, then jumped up. I asked you what was wrong, but you said you would tell me another time… That was the moment, wasn’t it?” “I’m impressed you remember.” “You made such a loud noise when you jumped out your chair. It wasn’t like you. It stuck in my mind.” She smiled, full of confidence again. I should have realized. I was always paying attention to the things she did, but I should’ve known she was paying just as much attention to me, too. She was watching so closely that she could shock me and feel good doing it. I was a little embarrassed that she could even tell when I was trying to hide my embarrassment, but that feeling was overwhelmed by the knowledge of how fortunate I was to have a girlfriend who understood me so well. “Thanks,” I said. She responded with a gracious smile. “Sorry. I admit I’m just a little bit jealous.” A tinge of discomfort entered her expression. It bugged me, and before I knew it, I was studying her carefully. “Really?” I asked. “Uh-huh. But I mean it when I say I’m more happy than anything.” I felt something like heat rising in me. She seemed to take the way I was fixated on her shy smile as some kind of demand, because she took a little sip of her coffee and said, “I know you turn your friends down a lot when they ask you to do stuff, Tasuku. You come to see me in the hospital all the time, and you spend most of your weekends with me except when you have tests. But even if you don’t go out with them much, your friends keep inviting you to things.” “I guess so. Now that you mention it.” I prized Yuki above everything else, so I turned down invitations quite frequently, but people never stopped asking just because they assumed I would say no. She was right, but I hadn’t realized how special that was until she pointed it out. “When I think about how you really only get to be that close to people by seeing them often, I can’t help but think how lucky you are. Stuff like who’s going out with who, that’s not something you talk about except when you have friends in common.” I could see why she’d be envious—I got personal info about Miyano’s dating life while she spent most of her time studying on her own. She was in touch with the other kids she did her schooling with, but you didn’t get the same intimacy you did by seeing each other in the classroom every day. Maybe you wanted to show them how much they meant to you, but it would always be easier to just…not. Yuki knew the names of all her classmates, even the ones she hadn’t gone to middle school with, so I knew she had more love in her than average. I was reminded that this was the reason she wanted to hear about my life at school. “I promise I’ll introduce you someday. I owe it to Miyano anyway.” “You do?” She gave me a surprised cock of the head, no longer following. “He gave me a lot of advice about which manga to get for you. Sometimes you need someone who actually reads them if you want to know what they’re about and which ones are popular.” I kept up with a fair amount of the newest manga myself, but if you wanted to know, say, which series to read if you liked something specific, then you needed someone who was steeped in it. “I didn’t know that. I’d like to thank him.” “What, like on LINE? Over the phone? Don’t tell me… In person?” “Oooh, is that a note of jealousy I hear? But you promised to introduce me!” “It’s not… I mean, I wouldn’t call it jealousy…” I trusted Yuki, of course, and Miyano, too. I didn’t think anything would happen between them. I just felt like, if they got to talking about BL, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the conversation. Okay, so maybe I might get a little jealous. But that wasn’t the point. I furrowed my brow, nodded to myself, and grunted. Alienation, maybe that was it. Being left out. I knew it wasn’t very big of me, but I wanted to be the one she talked to, the one who was with her. So it’s true, I didn’t like the idea of a conversation I wouldn’t be able to take part in—but that didn’t mean I wanted to rain on her parade. It was all a little depressing, for sure, and I was having trouble figuring out how to put it into words. I would never say she couldn’t do it. It was more like, should I be there? Could I be there? “Oh! Maybe, like, a LINE group chat!” I said. “Oh, come on. You’re such a worrywart,” she said and grinned at me in a way that swept away all my anxieties. “What?” I said. A worrywart? How? About what? “I can hear it in your voice. It sneaked out.” I reflexively slapped my hand over my mouth and looked at her. “You don’t mean that.” “Hee-hee! Feel free to join us, Tasuku.” “That’s what you—? Argh…” I was mortified. The sheer humiliation wiped out everything else in my mind. It was like my childish thoughts had been overheard while I was the most discombobulated I’d ever been. My eyes went to the floor. Yuki shuffled a little closer to me. “Tasuku? I think it would be nice to spend time with you, more than with anyone else. I mean now…and in the future, too. I’m trying to get healthier so I can do that.” In the future? More than with anyone else? The simple words sounded like a proposal to me, utterly true and sweet. But wait… Was I sure? Was I really understanding her right? Today was Valentine’s Day, after all. Somewhere along the line, my glasses had slid back down the bridge of my nose—I felt like I’d straightened them a second ago. I gently pushed them back up. Weird. I’d just had them adjusted over winter break—were they getting loose again already? “You’re all red, you know,” Yuki said. “What do you mean? What is?” “Your face, Tasuku! So… What do you say?” Yikes! My facial expressions weren’t usually so…obvious! Eventually I managed, “I think, uh, it’ll take me some time to figure out the best way to answer you.” She laughed, louder than usual. “Ha-ha! I’ll wait as long as you need.” As long as I need. It was hard not to read into that. I told her my throat was dry, which I guess I didn’t really need to say, because the next thing I did was pick up my cup.