Chapter 29

It was a weird feeling. Only one thing made my current self different from who I was a day before: Miya. I thought I’d be on cloud nine when he finally said yes to dating me, but I felt a lot more ordinary than I’d imagined. I was definitely still the same me I’d been before. Well, maybe I was walking on air a little bit. For example, usually after I got up early to help out at the bakery, I felt sleepy again, but today I was wide awake; there was no risk of me collapsing back into my bed. Though I didn’t have to, I decided to head to school. I rode in the same train car I always did, but I didn’t bump into Miya. I wondered why not… And then I remembered we’d traded contact info. I sent him a message: You on the train? But it turned out he’d just gotten off. I could hear his voice in my mind as I read his text: You coming to school today? I felt myself smile. Yeah, I told him. I’ll shoot you a text as soon as I get there. During that part of the year, third-years had optional attendance days, so teachers didn’t call roll in the classrooms, and you had to go to the faculty room to get permission to use one of the open study rooms. It felt a little funny—like you’re half graduated already even though it’s only January. But being at school helped keep me in line; it was more efficient than trying to do stuff at home. “Excuse me,” I said as I walked up to my homeroom teacher, who sat at his desk amid the buzz of morning preparations. He looked downright surprised to see me. “Oh, Sasaki, in again today? You’re very diligent.” Why’d he have to say that? It made me a little embarrassed. All he had to do was give me the key. When I thought back on how lackadaisical I’d been in my first year, being told I was “diligent” now made me feel like a kid. I’d bet guys like Hirano—people who had been good students all along—didn’t have to deal with this sort of thing. “Please don’t give me that look, sir,” I said. “Hah, sorry. That’s true, you’re a proper college candidate now.” “Here’s the written request to use the free study room. Key, please.” “Thanks, I’ll take that.” The teacher picked up the personal stamp resting by his coffee cup and stamped my paperwork. Then he said, “Someone was here just before you, though. I gave the key to him.” I wondered who it could be. If Teach knew him, then was it someone from my class? “Thanks, sir,” I said, then excused myself. As I worked my way toward the door, I saw faculty seated at their desks, standing while they talked on the phone, and having discussions. There was a guy drinking water; that was the teacher I’d had for Classical Japanese my first year. He always got a bad case of dry throat in winter. Huh, so he was still here. It was funny: Once I no longer had that lone point of connection with him—his class—it was like he didn’t exist for me anymore. There were a lot of teachers like that at this school. For that matter, I knew there had to be middle schoolers studying at this very moment to get into this school. Funny how time kept flowing. With the bustle of the faculty room around me, I thought about how annoying it was that someone else had gotten to the free study room before me, and that I’d have to wait if it wasn’t already open. Who could it even be? I hated waiting. Well, okay, I knew I shouldn’t be annoyed about something that hadn’t happened yet. I bowed politely as I left the faculty room. No sooner had I emerged than I found Hirano in the hallway in front of me. “So you just need me to put this on the sofa in the social studies room?” he was asking. I guess someone had asked him to carry something. “That’s right. Thanks, that’s a big help.” “Thanks, Hirano!” The two teachers thanking him were the math and social studies instructors. Good for him, I thought, and I was about to go on my way when someone said, “Hey, Sasaki.” It was Hirano, of course. “Perfect timing. Help me carry this.” “Bah.” “Don’t ‘bah’ me!” Ah well. It was better than getting to the free study room before the guy with the key and having to wait around. Some people went to the college prep room to grab the entrance exam workbook before they came to study, and if that’s what my mysterious keeper of the key was doing, I would need to kill time anyway. This was as good a way as any. “Yeah, okay, sure,” I said. “All right, this way. We’re going to the social studies room.” Hirano handed me a cardboard box. It wasn’t very big, but it sure was heavy. “Yow! What’s in here, a globe? Didn’t know they weighed so much…” I had to hold the box with both hands, and it was dusty to boot. “Yuck…” “Yeah, and there’s papers stuffed everywhere there isn’t globe.” I knew I should have turned him down. Yeah, it’d annoy me to have to stand around when I didn’t even know who I was waiting for. I’d figured carting stuff around would be at least a little better, but if I’d known the load was going to be so heavy, I would have picked waiting. “Come on, pick up the pace,” Hirano said. I suddenly realized he was well ahead of me. Yeah, sure. I trotted toward him. Was this what he called helping him? Looked to me like I was doing all the work. What’s going on here? I wasn’t exactly super focused on Hirano, but every time I looked at him, he appeared to have more stuff in his arms. Did he collect requests for help just by being in the vicinity of the faculty room? “Do they always foist this much work on you?” I asked. Sure, he was on the Disciplinary Committee, but this seemed like more than just teachers leaning on a helpful student. It never happened to Miya, that was for sure. “Nobody’s foisting anything on me. I happen to be going this way.” Geez. I knew Hanzawa could be a little funny, but I guess Hirano was no slouch in the weirdo department, either. “I sorta figured you’d be in the dorm studying for tests,” I said. The dorm had its own free study room; it seemed like a lot of trouble to put on your uniform and come all the way to school just to do test prep. “I usually am,” he said. “But I can’t concentrate if I stay cooped up in the dorm forever.” Well, color me surprised. “You have that problem, too, Hirano?” I said. I’d assumed he was pretty much good to go anywhere there was a desk. “What do you take me for? As long as classes were in session, I was able to strike a good balance between school and the dorm. Anyway, it feels really weird to watch all the first- and second-years go off and just stay there by myself. And I can’t focus for very long, suddenly spending all my time in the dormitory. Besides, the library has collections of past test questions, so I go there sometimes.” There were a lot of those collections around, I guess. “Huh,” I said. He must have been here to study, too. Did this mean I might see him pretty much every day of the free attendance period, except when there were tests? First, we stopped by the nearest math classroom to drop off some of Hirano’s baggage, but on the way there we ran into the Disciplinary Committee’s faculty advisor and he gave Hirano something else to carry. He was starting to look like a delivery guy loaded down with packages. Then we headed for the social studies room. My arms were getting tired. Why would he take on all these little chores when he’d come here to study? At long last we were within sight of the social studies room. After some hesitation, I told him—about how I’d decided to go out with Miya. It had just happened the previous day, so using the present participle, going out with, felt a little funny. I settled on something in the past tense. That seemed to surprise Hirano, but then I heard him make a muffled sound of understanding. I glanced over and saw that his ears were red. “Dammit, I’m no good with that sort of thing,” he said, acting angry, but I could tell he was mostly embarrassed. I told him I knew that, but privately I was relieved to see him react in such a Hirano-ish way. In spite of all that, he was the one who’d gotten in touch with me that day and made it so I could meet Miya. I never dreamed I might get that kind of help from him. Just as I was thinking back, we heard Miya call Hirano’s name. I poked my head out of the classroom, and when he saw that I was there, too, his expression quickly shifted to one of awkwardness. I was actually thrilled—it showed that he really did think of us as dating now. “Gimme that,” Hirano said, grabbing the box out of my arms. I think he was trying to be thoughtful—or maybe hide his own embarrassment? “I get to school just in time to bump into you by the faculty room—and get pressured into helping you do chores for the teachers,” I griped, but he only replied that I was lucky to get some exercise—ruthless as ever. One relationship that had changed, another that hadn’t: a perfect balance. A fulfilled high school life, I thought, almost as if I was observing someone else. And to run into Miya right after I had told Hirano about us—I was able to make a date for today. With my boyfriend, Miya. There was no anxiety between us; I just talked to him and he talked to me. This was what dating meant, I realized. It was more than just kissing and stuff—it was a relationship where you could relax and be yourself. Today, it turned out, felt completely different from the day before. Hirano and I jogged down the stairs and arrived at the self-study room. He calmly took out the key. “I shoulda known. The teacher said someone else beat me to it. So it was you,” I said. “I guess.” He unlocked the room and we went inside; I could feel the air shifting as we entered. It was silent and cool with no one else there. Hirano sat down, and I sat beside him. I didn’t think that hard about it—it was just, like, why not? If someone else came in, they’d probably sit between us anyway. I just got the spot first. Feels kinda…weird somehow, being in the self-study room with Hirano. Especially when it’s just the two of us. Hirano was one of the smartest guys in his class—and he had class with Hanzawa! It wasn’t like I never spent time with Hirano. When I had a few minutes to kill after school, I’d shoot the breeze with him if he happened to be there. And once when I asked him casually what he was up to, he’d said he was going to go check out the basketball team’s practice, so I decided to tag along. And at lunch—it wasn’t like we always sat with the same people or anything, so if we happened to be near each other, we would chat. But in spite of all that, our talk never got really personal. I was aware that Hirano was unusually close with his roommate—come to think of it, how were they getting along? There was an intake of breath; Hirano was about to say something but then thought better of it. He sat at his desk, studiously solving math problems. He didn’t even seem to notice me watching him—man, he could really focus. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the self-study room, after all. For that matter, what was I doing? Most guys didn’t even come to school during free attendance, and here I was, first thing in the morning—but at this rate, I was going to waste the entire day sitting around. The tests are timed. Maybe I should try to see how many problems I can solve in a certain amount of time. There wasn’t much need for self-direction on the mock exams, but at this point, a guy started to want a good benchmark for how well he could really do. Eh, maybe I’ll do it tomorrow. Bring a wristwatch like I would to the real thing. I remembered I had a set of earbuds in my bag. Maybe I could use the timer on my phone to time myself instead of a watch. But I would connect the earphones so it wasn’t obnoxious when the alarm went off. I was about to pull over my bag, which I’d set on the desk beside mine, but then I realized maybe it wasn’t polite to be rifling through my bag right when we’d started studying, so I sat back down. Partly I was afraid to look for them, but partly it was Hirano; I felt bad filling the room with little distractions when he was so focused. I had to get myself into a better headspace, or I was only going to fall further behind. I looked up and saw the clock on the classroom wall. It said 8:40. Guess I don’t need my phone. I put my phone, which I had grabbed in the meantime, back down and turned to the collection of problems in front of me. I worked on them for a while, but eventually I found I couldn’t concentrate. I put my head in my hands and heaved a big sigh. Being so aware of the time made everything more stressful, which made this more tiring than normal studying. Usually, when I was working on one of my weaker subjects, I would go back to the reference books each time I made even a little progress, and that served as a nice change of pace. I wasn’t very good at focusing constantly on one specific thing. Knowing the real tests were just around the corner only made it worse. This was a different kind of pressure from what I’d felt when I was studying for high school entrance exams—did that show that I’d grown to care just a little more about my future? Besides, I had just started dating someone. What if I failed my tests and became this awful burden on Miya? I couldn’t let that happen. I felt the air shift again and looked over just as Hirano set down his pen. (I didn’t think he’d done it because he noticed me turning to him. Just coincidence.) He yawned and stretched his arms over his head. Yeah. He was just taking a short break. “I’m gonna grab a drink. You want something from the vending machine, Hirano?” I asked. Food and drinks weren’t allowed in the classroom, so we would have to have our drinks outside. “It’s cool. I’ll come with you. I’d like to get some fresh air anyway.” “Sounds good. Gonna lock the room?” “Yeah, guess I better. It’s in our names right now.” After school, the self-study room was left open for everyone, but at this hour only people with permission were allowed to use it. Anyway, if no one else had shown up by this point, they probably wouldn’t. No one would come to school this late. I let Hirano hang on to the key. We left our stuff in the room—we’d be right back. I just grabbed my phone and wallet, and we ambled out into the chilly hallway. The closest vending machine was by the school’s front door. I bought a can of hot cocoa and worked my way up the stairs, my body shivering in the cold. “Bit chilly out, huh,” Hirano muttered. I totally agreed with him. “Shoulda grabbed my jacket,” I said. I’d left it in the room. “What’s wrong with you, dumbass?” Hirano said with a bit of a smile. “Aren’t you cold?” I said. “Well, one of us has more muscle than the other.” “Yow, that hurts!” True, when I caught glimpses of Hirano changing for gym class, he was definitely ripped. Even though he wasn’t on any sports teams and looked slim in his uniform. “Sorry,” he said. Me, I’d never made any special effort to improve my physique. I wasn’t flabby, but I didn’t have Hirano’s tone and definition. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I lift,” I said, passing it off with a joke. Still, if I got sick from this and messed up my stomach, I really would look like an idiot, so maybe I’d bring a hand warmer tomorrow. I was a bit paranoid about having a healthy gut, given the business my family was in. Before I knew it, we were back at the classroom. We couldn’t take our drinks inside, so we just sort of stood in the hallway. The hand in which I was holding my cocoa was warm enough to tingle a little. I glanced out the window, but I didn’t see anyone around. It was a weird moment: just me and Hirano standing there in the hallway, during school hours, but not in an ordinary classroom or even the self-study room. The school building was eerily quiet; the smallest sounds seemed to echo. We talked in whispered tones—which wasn’t that different from usual, since neither of us was really the boisterous type to begin with. Hirano, as long as you didn’t make him angry, was a pretty laid-back guy. There was no one else in the hallway. We could hear a teacher’s voice drifting from one of the classrooms. We wouldn’t have to go back through one of those doors for a while. Only when we were getting ready for the graduation ceremony. I thought about what a long way off that seemed. I was officially one of those students whose whole business now was taking tests. I gave my perspiring can of cocoa a gentle swish, then let out a sigh. In the past, I never could have imagined myself like this—just outside the self-study room with one of the smartest guys in class, silently preparing for my tests. Standing outside the self-study room, where I belonged, instead of wandering the halls, even though I was technically on break. It’s not like me. It feels…icky. Maybe I was overachieving a bit too much today. I shook my head, not sure what I was even thinking. Maybe too much studying had knocked a screw loose. Miya has class until noon, right? That gave me more than two hours until he was done, but it also meant I was only halfway through the morning. I could do this, right? “How long you plan to study, Hirano?” I asked. I pulled the tab on my can of cocoa, opening it up, just like Hirano had on his canned coffee. His drink of choice made him look more like a rebel. “Till noon,” he said. Ahh, that’s warm. I could feel the heat spreading around my body. “Hmm,” I said. That was perfect—I would have someone right next to me to keep me from slacking off, until exactly the moment when I planned to quit. My lucky day. Our conversation naturally died away. Two guys who didn’t talk much to begin with weren’t going to become chatterboxes if there was nothing to talk about. The silence didn’t bother either of us. I was consumed with guilt and regret for having tried to put a hand on Miya at school the day before. I could only apologize, but it was just me pushing my feelings on him in a desperate attempt not to leave us distant. And despite all that, Miya had given me his answer. He hadn’t simply said he’d go out with me. He looked me right in the eyes and said he loved me, too, and he’d followed that with more emotional words. Throughout the whole thing, he was obviously trying not to make me anxious, and looking back on it now, I could only be amazed at how thoughtful he was. I couldn’t believe I had met someone like him. We’d come closer. Then we’d kissed. There was laughter; there were tears. In fact, there was a lot going on. It amused me to realize that it was Miya who had gotten us properly dating. Maybe it was the influence of BL on his thinking, but anyway, I adored it. I wondered what class he was in right now. I wondered what Hirano was thinking about, too, even though I had no clue what it could be. Sometimes, in moments like this, I suddenly see myself sort of…trying to look good. I wanted to show my boyfriend my best side. That’s why I was trying to work hard at my studies, at least a little. Well, okay, that wasn’t the only reason. My personal interest leaned toward the humanities, but grades-wise, it was the sciences where I excelled. Frankly, it was a struggle. My one saving grace was that mathematics was one of the elective test subjects—numbers, I could handle. One of my teachers had joked that I should try to pass my exams on the strength of my math alone, but unfortunately, I could never swing enough points that way. I felt like I was studying harder than I ever had in my life. I should have just gone into something math- or science-related, I told myself. But if I picked a program just because I knew I could get in, that would make college no different from high school. I would hate it, and then I would lose sight of why I was even going. When I saw Miya talk so much about the things he enjoyed and was passionate about, I realized that I needed to try to pursue a school that seemed at least a little, the slightest bit, more interesting to me than the rest—or I would probably never find any meaning going there. He said he was rooting for me… The thought made me want to justify his support by working hard and putting my best foot forward. I was a little worried that it was too obvious I was trying to look good, which would make me look dumb instead, but I figured it had to be worthwhile to make at least a bit of effort, rather than just lounging around in my room while Miya was at class. Some guys managed to look totally relaxed even when they were working their butts off, but tests always brought some nerves with them. I don’t think I could have thought this way before I met Miya. I’d always been a bit skeptical about the whole power-of-love thing, about that desire to cherish someone. Maybe there were people around me who felt that stuff, but I wasn’t one of them. Because I didn’t believe in it, I never saw it, and because I never saw it, I never understood the driving force behind that kind of passion. It all just looked like a lot of trouble to me. Hirano abruptly looked up. “You see Miyano after all that yesterday?” This was a surprise. I hadn’t expected Hirano, of all people, to bring that up. “Oh, yeah. Bumped into him at the train station.” Speaking of which, there was something I’d forgotten. I chuckled, my voice shaking a little on the last few words. I’d met Miya, all right—with Hirano’s help. “Aw, shove it,” he said, obviously to cover his embarrassment. It was almost funny how awkward he seemed to feel about this. I remembered, then, that he and I didn’t really share any interests. When we talked, it was usually about classes and our teachers and stuff; we didn’t say much about our private lives. Well, except Miya. He was different. “So, Hirano. What do you think about Miyano?” I asked. It felt like a long time since I’d used his full name. “Hrm?” Hirano didn’t seem to understand the question. Wait—maybe he was getting the wrong idea. I didn’t suspect Miyano of anything! “You know. Remember at the beginning, how you said to keep my hands off your people?” I’d met Miya in July two years earlier, and we’d started getting closer throughout the fall. Back then, one out of every few times I went to see Miya, I’d end up getting an earful from Hirano. I didn’t mind much, but among other things, he told me not to try to put the moves on Miya—he didn’t seem to like me getting too close to his precious junior student. “That was because the teachers were hounding me about who you were and what you were up to when you suddenly started spending all your time in another year’s classroom. You hardly used to get up from your seat, and suddenly you’re leaving our room all the time? And not just to goof off, but to visit an underclassman? Anyone would wonder what was going on.” Gee, that sort of made me sound like an upperclassman who was taking advantage of his seniority to make problems for a younger student. “Ha-ha-ha,” I said. “Was I that weird about it?” I hadn’t realized even the teachers had an eye on me! “You were pretty weird.” Hirano sighed. I started to wonder if I’d looked, you know, dangerous. Miya seemed so mature, and me, well, people said I could look like a bit of a hooligan. Maybe I couldn’t blame them for worrying when they saw me throwing myself at him. Okay…so it was kind of making sense. But at the time, I just hadn’t been paying attention to anyone else at all. I was caught up in feelings I’d never had before and enjoying it. Maybe I’d acted a bit crazed. I was a little embarrassed to think back on it now, but then again, it had enabled me to become friends with Miya, so maybe it was all good. It sure had been fun anyway. “As underclassmen go, Miyano… I guess he can take some minding,” Hirano said, quietly but suddenly. He seemed to be answering the question I’d asked. It made me think of something else I’d heard… “Huh. Speaking of which, Hirano, how are things going with Mister Roommate?” “Huh? The hell is that supposed to mean?” Hirano’s brow wrinkled. “Miya was asking…” “Like I’d tell you,” he grumbled. If there was nothing going on, he wouldn’t be acting this way. At least, I thought so—but Hirano could be a hard guy to read. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll meet him. He’s got another year after we graduate, just like Miyano.” Ah, so there were possibilities here. “Sure, maybe,” I said. But, I thought, that meant there was every chance I would never find out. I didn’t think Hirano seemed like the kind to spill the beans to some acquaintance classmate about a former roommate, and even if Miya happened to know him, he might not realize that it was the very person about whom he was so curious. Wow… I’m really graduating. Maybe it was the chilly air in the hallway, but I was feeling cold again. For a moment there, I’d thought I was warm. The can of cocoa in my hand was tepid at best by now. “Anyway, would you stop calling him ‘Mister Roommate’? He has a name. Why don’t you ever use it?” Hirano asked. Oh! Uh… His name. What was his name again? Wait… Why didn’t I just ask? “Oh, y’know, I’m just not interested in remembering all the names of my friends’ roommates.” No sooner had I said it than I sort of wanted to take it back. Calling him my friend, right out of the blue like that? What was I, a grade schooler? Hirano didn’t seem to mind, but he did give me a skeptical look. “And how exactly did you draw that line in the sand?” It was a fair question—but a tricky one for me. I’d just always felt that way, but I’d never put the feeling into words. Eh, maybe Hirano would understand. “Hmm… I know it’s kind of arbitrary but take Ogasawara’s girlfriend. I know her name, but I don’t wanna use it. I feel like it’s a line I don’t wanna cross, see?” We’d gone to school together, so I talked to her sometimes, and she’d even come to my house—but only with Ogasawara. I didn’t really feel like she was my friend—just someone I wouldn’t have had any connection to if it weren’t for Ogasawara. After a beat, Hirano said, “Are you tellin’ me I shouldn’t use Miyano’s name?” Okay. Maybe I wasn’t quite getting through to him. I knew the whole subject probably didn’t matter that much to Hirano, but once he was listening to me, I felt like I had to explain. “No, it’s fine. I mean, you know him through the committee and everything. But like, for example, Ogasawara’s got an older brother, and I would never, ever want him to use Miya’s name.” Heck, I never even used Ogasawara’s brother’s name. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t want him to find out that Miya existed, but just imagining him acting like he knew Miya when all he had to go on was hearsay tore me up inside. Even if, hypothetically, he was saying something positive.