At my core, I was still the same person I’d been in my childhood: a weak, timid girl without an ounce of self-confidence who always needed someone else to rely on.
People don’t change that easily. I can change my image like I’d change an outfit, but in the end, the person underneath that new outfit will still be the same me as ever.
“Maybe I should call him or send a follow-up text after all... Argh, maybe if I hadn’t spent all that time studying to ignore my problems, I’d know how to deal with things like this...”
If this problem were taken from a textbook I’d have the correct answer ready in the blink of an eye, but of course it couldn’t be that easy. I’ve been doing my best to avoid socializing for what feels like forever, and “my best” was so effective that it earned me the “ice queen” title. Knowing what to do in a situation like this was simply beyond me.
“This is all Kunugi-kun’s fault, anyway! He could at least say something, couldn’t he?! I don’t even care if it’s a good reply or a bad one!”
I knew that lying there and mumbling complaints that nobody would ever hear wasn’t going to resolve anything, but I kept reflexively glancing at my phone regardless. The situation was getting more and more irritating with every passing minute.
Before I knew it, Kunugi-kun and his stupid, obnoxious grin materialized in my mind’s eye. It made me vividly recall everything that had happened between our reunion at Oumei High’s entrance ceremony and now. It made me think about how he always acted like an absolutely clueless dullard, except for the rare moments where his eyes would light up with a sudden intensity or the even rarer moments where he’d allow me a peek at his vulnerable side...
“Aaargh, what is wrong with me?!”
My mind was dominated by a feeling I hadn’t experienced in quite a long time. I didn’t have a name to put to that feeling, though. I’d forgotten it for so long—it felt fresh, like an incomprehensible mixture of happiness and frustration, of irritation and impatience.
I knew that if I let myself indulge in that feeling I might never break out of it, so I mustered up the force of will to grab my phone and open up my contacts list. I barely had any names registered at all, so it only took me an instant to scroll through it, pick out the person I was looking for and tap on her number. She picked up a moment later.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Kotou-san? I have a question for you, if you have a moment.”
In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to call Kunugi-kun directly—at least, not in that particular moment—so I contacted Kotou-san instead.
“A question? A-As long as it’s not about studying, I’ll answer anything!”
“Why do you sound so worked up...? Never mind, it’s fine. So, well, I wanted your opinion on something... Umm, this is something a friend of mine was asking me about earlier.”
“Asking for a friend, huh? Aaah, I see, I see...”
“What?”
“Nothing, don’t worry about it! Go on, ask away!”
I hesitated for just a moment. “All right. So, you see, my friend said...”
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
Meanwhile...
“So yeah, that’s about the size of it. How would you reply if somebody sent you a friggin’ essay like that, Kaito?! Just a reminder, by the way, this is all about a friend of mine.”
“Right, a ‘friend’ of yours and the beautiful, coolheaded genius girl who tutored him. We’re talking about you and Kyouka, huh?”
“N-No, we’re not! We’re talking about my friend and a friend of my friend! Man, why would you think this was about me and Kiryu?! How crazy is that?! Ha ha ha ha!”
Kaito let out a long, exasperated sigh. He was just about to review everything he’d learned at the study party held at his house earlier in the day, but then his best friend called him up to ask for advice in the stupidest way possible.
“Let me double-check something. Kou, that coolheaded beauty went way out of her way to tutor you...your friend, and now she’s mad at him because he hasn’t been reviewing the lesson like she wanted him to. Right?”
“I-I dunno if she’s mad, exactly. It’s a little more distant than that? Like, think ‘detective cornering a criminal at the top of a cliff’—that sorta feeling.”
“That’s not any better.”
“But I did actually study, okay?! It just happened that she texted me right around the time I was wrapping up for the night! If I apologize, it’ll make it look like I didn’t do any studying at all!”
“‘I’?”
“...Is what I would say if I were my friend, who I’m not. Did you say something? Train was passing by, couldn’t hear a thing for a minute there.”
“That train showed up and passed by awfully quickly.”
“F-Forget about the train, okay?! Just help me out here! How would you fix this?”
Kaito sighed again. He couldn’t tell if Kou was even trying to tell a decent lie or not. It would be all too easy to tell him, “Don’t know, don’t care, figure it out on your own,” and he’d been tempted to do so at many times over the course of the conversation, but in the end, he just wasn’t heartless enough to refuse a request from his best friend.
“I think the big question here, Kou, is how your ‘friend’ actually wants to resolve this. Like, what specifically do you mean by ‘fixing’ it?”
“Hell if I know!” He’d completely given up on thinking it through himself. Kaito sighed for the umpteenth time that evening, but Kou didn’t seem even slightly inclined to back down.
Kou was always running off on his own initiative, leading Kaito and his other friends around by the nose, but whenever they ended up interacting one-on-one like this, it felt like he lost even more of his capacity for common sense than usual.
If you wanted to make it sound good, you could say that it meant Kou felt comfortable acting like himself around Kaito, but that didn’t change the fact that it was exhausting to put up with sometimes. That evening was most definitely one of those times, and it was even worse than usual, as if he was making up for the relatively subdued period he’d been through recently.
“Anyway, c’mon, just help me out here, Kaito-mon!”
“Not happening, Kunuta-kun.”
“Kunuta... Kunukunuta... Is it just me, or does that sound like the sorta name a tanuki might have?”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, and are you just gonna ignore the ‘not happening’ part?” Kaito had finally let his actual feelings about the matter slip out, and he decided that with that cat out of the bag, he might as well follow through with it. His tone had progressed past the point of exasperation and had taken on a certain serious edge, which made Kou gulp loudly enough for Kaito to hear it through the phone.
“All right, Kou, here’s what you should tell your friend: If he can think up the perfect solution to his problem or come up with a clever excuse to get him out of it on his own, then fine, go for it. But if he can’t, then he should just be honest about it and admit that he was in the wrong. Even if he really did study, like you said, he still barely kept at it for any time at all before he gave up, right?”
“W-Well, I mean, yeah, but—”
“Then of course she’d be mad! Even Kyouka would get pissed off about that. She was pretty much keeping constant watch over you for the second half of our study party. Imagine putting off your own work to help somebody study, only for them to forget all of it by the next morning... I don’t even wanna think about what she’d do.”
“Eek! S-Stop trying to scare me...”
“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just describing what I imagine is most likely to happen.” Apparently, Kou’s imagination was producing a pretty vivid image of the scene. He’d totally forgotten about the pretense that the story was about his friend. “Get it? Just be honest, okay? Whether or not she gets mad at you for it is totally up to her. All you can do at this point is...I dunno, pray, I guess?”
“You’re heartless!”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Kaito ignored his best friend’s anguished wail and hung up his phone. He waited for a moment, but since Kou didn’t immediately call back, Kaito assumed that he’d been convinced to get a grip, so he put his phone down on his desk.
Whether or not Kou would actually put that advice into action, of course, was anyone’s guess. There was a chance he’d take Kaito’s advice to heart and be honest, but there was an even larger chance that he’d lose his nerve right before going through with it.
“Sheesh... C’mon, get it together, Kou. Summer break’s coming up, y’know?”
He knew there was no way his words would get through to Kou, but Kaito muttered to himself anyway as he sat down and got back to studying.
The summer of one’s second year in high school has a special significance. Being as Oumei High was a college prep school, every single one of its students was aware of that fact. The summer of their third year, after all, they’d be working themselves half to death studying for their college entrance exams.
As such, to Kaito and his friends, the upcoming summer vacation would be both the perfect chance to make some high school memories and also one of the last chances left to do so. Having that precious period eaten up by remedial lessons would be a tragedy that they simply couldn’t let happen... Though the fact that Kou was already scheduled to be subjected to those lessons threw a bit of a wrench into the works.
That’s why Kaito was prepared to throw himself into his studies with unusual enthusiasm...until his phone started vibrating once again.
“Dammit, Kou...wait, it’s not him?” As he picked up, his phone’s display informed him that the call was, in fact, from Kotou Tsumugi. “Hello?”
“Kaito! Help me! Actually, no, help Kyouka! I think everything’s about to get all stupid and complicated again!”
“...Huh?”
Just a little over a week remains until finals begin.
Summer is just around the corner.