Chapter 4

I mean, I liked it, and that made it enjoyable, but let’s put that aside for now. “So it’s true. I can feel it,” Kuresawa said, nodding with what seemed to be admiration. But the warning bell was about to sound, and he urged that we should get going. It had been several days since the incident. They still hadn’t been able to pin down the culprit; in fact, the case was going cold. Other than missing gym class, Kuresawa seemed pretty much normal. He and I started talking a lot, and by now he was one of my better friends in class. Partly that was thanks to proximity—being in the same classroom—but more importantly, we had something in common to talk about: BL. I was a little surprised Kuresawa had figured out that I liked BL. I hadn’t gone out of my way to hide it, but I didn’t exactly shout it from the rooftops, either. It turned out his girlfriend liked the stuff too, and after my attempted dodge tipped him off, he pressed me until I fessed up. “So your girlfriend’s a fujoshi, huh, Kuresawa?” I said. Kuresawa didn’t seem, like, biased or anything—he hadn’t teased me about liking BL even though I was a guy, for example—but this was an interest I didn’t share with a lot of people around me, and I couldn’t help but have some nerves. It put me on edge, but Kuresawa rolled with it. “I’ll let you meet her on one condition: You keep your dirty paws off her,” he said evenly. I realized he was playing with me, and it sort of ticked me off. He was obviously the kind who enjoyed observing people’s reactions. In other words, he was a perfectly decent guy. “What are you— Of course I wouldn’t touch her! She’s someone else’s girlfriend!” I said. “Ha-ha-ha!” I felt myself relax. At least I didn’t have to pretend around Kuresawa. As we bantered back and forth, I even started to feel like we’d been talking together forever. I was so glad it had turned out all right, even when my little hobby had come to light. I was more worried about the incident of the beating. It was looking like summer break would come without any progress tracking down the perps. I’d all but given up hope—but then things changed. During lunch one day the next week, there was some kind of commotion behind the school, which just happened to be adjacent to the first-year classrooms. I heard angry voices, and then a smack of something hitting something else. I hurried to the window, but all I saw was Sasaki standing there by himself. He was bent over, clutching his stomach, obviously in pain. There wasn’t much I could do for him. He wanted to hide this from Hirano (“If they find out, I’ll have to write a self-reflection essay”), so I couldn’t exactly call anyone for help. The most I could do was give him some of the adhesive bandages Kuresawa had with him. I wondered if this had to do with the notorious incident, although from Sasaki’s tone, it sounded like maybe he fought a lot. I wasn’t in any position to scold him about it; I just told him to make sure he went to the nurse’s office later. He made some awkward jokes about how I was cute and asked if I would go out with him. It made me realize he could be pretty laid-back. But I’m a guy. As if I was going to stumble into a BL cliché like that! I heard the homeroom teacher telling everyone to take their seats, so I ducked away, Sasaki’s jokes still swirling around in my head. The day after that, I learned what had really happened. Hirano filled me in when we met in the Disciplinary Committee room. When Sasaki had come back to the classroom, Hirano had pressed him about his injuries. Eventually, Sasaki admitted that he’d been attacked by a group of guys. It wasn’t a committee-meeting day, but Hirano decided to make time to ask more questions after school. Sasaki’s attackers had been the same guys who had cornered Kuresawa. Sasaki hadn’t laid a finger on them, just absorbed the hits. Just like he had last time, as it turned out. In other words, they were out for revenge, and he had simply taken it. As Hirano talked, I felt myself go numb. Why had I assumed it was a fight? I knew that Sasaki was kind enough to intervene to stop an act of violence; I knew that he always came across as a good person. Nothing like a short-tempered brawler. How could I not have realized that Sasaki had gotten hurt without dishing it back out? With the attackers still on the loose, I should have known they would come after the guy who had jumped in to stop them. I wished I had dragged Sasaki to the nurse’s office instead of just telling him he should go. Why had I thought he fought a lot? I was still depressed as the talk moved on. Hirano, who was both Sasaki’s friend and a member of the Disciplinary Committee, was on the warpath trying to find out who had done it. Even the vice chairman of the committee, the normally unflappable Hanzawa, seemed pretty mad. Although some of their frustration appeared to be annoyance at Sasaki himself, who’d misled them by claiming that he’d “been in a fight” instead of simply “been attacked.” “He can’t stay out of trouble, that guy” was Hirano’s assessment. It sounded like if someone hadn’t gone after the perp, Sasaki would simply have let himself be beat to a pulp. The thought pained me. But why? We spent the entire committee meeting on the incident, naturally. It resulted in us spending lunchtime looking for any witnesses. People tended to eat lunch in the same place each day, so we went around to any groups sitting on benches near where the attack took place and asked anyone who might have been walking by around that time for information. We knew the perpetrators were first-years, and this time Sasaki had gotten a pretty good look at them, so we had a lot of circumstantial evidence. We also called on Kuresawa again, as a witness to the previous incident. We were going to figure this out. It would help that Kuresawa had a doctor’s note attesting to his injuries. “Is it true Sasaki got attacked, Miyano?” Kuresawa whispered to me as soon as I got back to the classroom after lunch. I nodded discreetly. “Yeah. You probably heard already that they want you in the Disciplinary Committee room again after school today.” I hadn’t told Kuresawa exactly what had happened to Sasaki at lunch two days before. He only knew he’d been hurt. At the time, I’d said a friend of mine had scraped himself up and asked if Kuresawa had any bandages. I even kept quiet about the fact that Sasaki was sitting just behind the school. “Yeah, I heard,” Kuresawa said. “This is all my fault.” “No, it isn’t,” I said, thinking of Sasaki. How brave he looked protecting an underclassman. The gallantry he showed by refusing to lay a hand on the bullies even though he was bigger than they were. But also the indifference to his own welfare that could make him a magnet for trouble, just like Hirano said. I don’t understand him, I thought. Just moments after he’d been beaten up, he’d been laughing and joking about whether I would go out with him. He’d practically looked like he was enjoying himself. That was why I’d assumed he wasn’t very serious. “You’re being pretty quiet, Miyano.” Shoot. Was it that obvious? “I was just thinking, I was virtually on the scene. But I didn’t realize what had happened until Hirano spelled it out for me today. I can’t help thinking that if I’d figured it out sooner, I could have called a teacher, and we might have caught those guys already.” The regret almost suffocated me. “How was our upperclassman doing at that moment?” “Uh, pretty much fine, I guess. He was laughing.” “Then I’ll bet he didn’t want you to take it too seriously. Don’t let him see the look on your face right now!” “Maybe. But…” “But you want to crack this case, right?” I nodded. He was right. Sinking into a depression wouldn’t change anything. Something might even happen to Kuresawa at this rate, and anyway, I didn’t want to rely on Sasaki forever. As a member of the Disciplinary Committee, I had to do what I could. Sasaki, I thought. I could still see him laughing, having fun. I didn’t know him very well yet, but I knew one thing: I wished he could always laugh like that. “Wanna go out with me?” It would be a while before I discovered his offer was no joke.