Chapter 30

Hirano thought about that for a moment but continued to look puzzled as he said, “You have some kind of problem with that guy?” Oh, so that’s what he thought I was saying. This was tough. Maybe Hirano didn’t quite understand it—he had a small enough personal bubble to live in a dorm, after all. “No, he’s cool.” “Okay… Well, Hanzawa’s got a brother, too. Don’t want him using it, either?” I admired how strong Hirano was, to be able to enter into someone else’s thinking like this instead of turning away. I wondered if he ever found himself brought up short by how hard it was to genuinely talk to people. Not that I had any intention of asking him. “Nah, guess I wouldn’t,” I said. I gave my ever-cooling cocoa another shake to keep it from settling. “Huh. I think I get it, sort of.” “Yeah?” I never would have talked to him like this if graduation hadn’t been just around the corner. It put me in a bit of a funk, knowing it was coming—but it wasn’t such a bad feeling. “Basically, and I guess this is kind of a broad way of putting it, but you don’t want people outside your group—like your friends and family and stuff—to go trampling on your relationships.” “Ahh. Yeah. That might be it. I think that’s the right idea.” It made me feel like someone was intruding into my heart. And the opposite was the same: I didn’t want the stress of knowing things I didn’t have to know. “Heh. I guess if I heard some guy who didn’t really know Miyano spreading rumors about him, I’d be pissed, too,” Hirano said. He looked dead serious. “You feel responsible for him as a senior committee member?” “Maybe. I mean, I’m not sure. I guess if Miyano said he really didn’t care, then I wouldn’t push it.” I felt like I was seeing it for the first time: my point of view, from Hirano’s perspective. “Would you still feel that way even if we weren’t talking about Miya? What if it was someone you were really close to? What if somebody took an interest in that person, and you didn’t know if this new guy was safe or not? Think you could be so laid-back then?” I wasn’t sure why I was asking. I wasn’t that interested in knowing about Hirano. “Dunno. What’s the definition of safe here?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. Not like he was mad. More like he was really trying to understand. “Not, like, someone who would get violent or hurt him. But, you know, someone paying a little too much attention to him.” I guess maybe I didn’t do very well with people I’d just met or didn’t feel close to. I got prickly around anyone who wasn’t open and honest, and I never wanted to feel comfortable with them. If someone I couldn’t feel comfortable around tried to cross that line, it drove me up the wall. “Oh… I’ve never really given relationships and personal distance and stuff that much thought. Sorry, I know I kind of put you on the spot there,” Hirano said awkwardly, and I couldn’t help a wry smile. “Everyone’s welcome, that what you mean?” I asked. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like people think I’m that easy to get along with in the first place. But to start out by assuming you can’t live with someone, I think that’s rude to the other guy. I’m not trying to criticize you; it’s just, you never know what might cause someone to open up.” That was some perspective. But at the same time, Hirano was strikingly oblivious when it came to himself. “Nah, Hirano, you’ve got lots of friends, right? And the underclassmen look up to you… Me, I think it would be a lot of trouble, trying to build those kinds of relationships.” Oh… “Oops!” There I went, talking about trouble again. Hirano heard me mumbling about it to myself and chuckled. “Haven’t heard that word from you in a while. And to think, back in first year, it seemed like everything was nothing but trouble to you!” “I’ve been trying to be better about it,” I said. If you thought of everything as trouble, it started to obscure who you were and what you wanted to do. I wasn’t exactly eager to become some world-beating go-getter, but if I stumbled somewhere short of positivity, my life would get colorless and gloomy. I’d decided I wanted to change that. “But no way a guy who went to an underclass classroom as often as you did could think it was that much trouble!” It sounded a bit like what he’d said before—but back then, I hadn’t been aware of it myself. When something was obnoxious, it really stuck in the memory, but if it was fun, you didn’t think about the work that had gone into it, and it didn’t seem like such a big deal. “Well, it was for Miya…” Huh! Somehow, just picturing his smile inspired me to work a little harder. Our chat was interrupted by the bell. Class was over. Students flooded out of the classrooms, the halls suddenly bustling. “Guess we’d better get back in there,” Hirano said. “Yeah,” I said and trotted after him into the self-study room. I swung my arms and exhaled, feeling my concentration return. Guess it had been a good break. Now I figured I could make it the next couple hours. And when I was done, I would get to see the guy I loved—again.