“Sorry, I’m not exactly being a great host. Should’ve brought out some tea or something.”
“I don’t mind. You’re sick, and I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort in the first place. I should get something for you, come to think of it—where do you keep your drinks?”
“Kitchen’s right over there, and the tap water’s all-you-can-drink.”
“In other words, tap water’s all you have...?” She sighed, and I could appreciate why she’d be exasperated, but I wasn’t exactly anticipating guests. The only people who ever came over were the aforementioned folks from the Myourenji household, and they always brought some sort of drink or whatever with them as a matter of courtesy. Why would I bother stocking up when I could get everything I needed from a convenience store that was less than five minutes away on foot?
“What have you been eating?”
“Y’know, convenience store lunches. That sorta stuff.”
“Don’t you think you should cook for yourself? Those boxed meals aren’t even remotely balanced, nutritionally speaking.” She seemed to be implying that my poor diet had something to do with my current sorry state. “Are you bad at cooking?”
“I can put stuff in the microwave.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“What, you some kind of master home-cook?”
“I’d like to think I’m competent, at least.” She didn’t seem prideful about it—she was just stating it as a matter of course. Oddly enough, that made it easier to believe she knew what she was doing than if she’d bragged about her skills. Frankly, I thought that was a missed opportunity. Being surprisingly klutzy in the kitchen is a selling point for characters like her!
While I was busy analyzing the odds of her knowing what she was doing, Kiryu opened up my refrigerator and looked aghast to find that it was totally empty. Really wish you’d stop rummaging around in my room without permission, thanks.
“I’ll bring something with me the next time I come over.”
“‘The next time’?”
“I-If there is a next time, I mean!” She spun around and quickly amended her statement. No surprise there—this is definitely an exceptional case. My apartment’s only redeeming quality was the fact that it had a roof to sleep under, so I’d be more than a little surprised if she ever found a reason to visit again.
“By the way, why did you come here?”
“To give you your handouts. Didn’t I already say that?”
“I mean, you did, but isn’t sending someone to my house for that after just one day a bit much? And aren’t you a weird pick for the job?”
“You’re a bit much. You know you’re supposed to turn in your career planning sheet at some point this week, right?”
“Oooh, yeah...” I recalled. “At some point this week” would, of course, mean “no later than tomorrow.” I’d completely forgotten. I figured that since Oumei High was a college prep school I could just write “college” and be done with it, but I never actually bothered to do that in the first place.
“Will you even be able to go to school tomorrow? You look awful...”
“It’s not as bad as it looks; I’ll be there. I’ve run through all my sick leave anyway.”
“High school doesn’t give you sick leave.”
“What, seriously?! How exploitative is that?!”
“Considering we don’t get paid, very.” Kiryu smiled, and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by her for a moment. It was really rare for her to play along with my nonsense.
“Okay, but you still haven’t explained why they sent you.” I was slightly embarrassed about getting caught off guard like that, so I changed the subject. Thankfully, Kiryu didn’t seem to pick up on my motive.
“Would you have preferred if Ayase-kun came instead?”
“I mean, everyone knows we’re friends. He seems like the natural choice.”
She paused, then muttered sulkily, “I’m your childhood friend too.”
“Huh?” I mean, yeah, I guess? Not that I could remember it, unfortunately. I only had Kiryu’s account of our history together to go by. In any case, that history was very specifically between Kiryu and me, and nobody else. I’d only learned about it myself very recently, and since nobody else at Oumei High had known us back then, there wasn’t any other way for the info to leak out. How could that have led to her being singled out for this job? “Did you tell somebody about us?”
“No, not exactly. But, well, I ended up talking with Kotou-san, and...”
“Kotou? So she figured it out after all?”
“You knew?”
“I had a feeling, considering what happened Monday morning.” Kotou Tsumugi was Kaito’s cheerful, beautiful childhood friend. She’d spent quite a long time harboring a (totally one-sided) animosity towards Kiryu (on account of an inferiority complex regarding her bust size), but on the aforementioned Monday morning she’d dragged Kiryu off for a conversation, only to return with her hostility completely cleared away and replaced by an excess of camaraderie.
I assumed that she’d already caught on to our relationship at that point, and judging by Kiryu’s reaction to my speculation, I’d hit the bull’s-eye. Seriously, though, how is that even possible? I’d only learned about it myself on Saturday, and she’d already blown our cover wide open two days later? Just how good is her nose for this sort of stuff?
I sighed. “I swear that girl has a childhood friend fetish.”
“She has a what?”
“She loves childhood friends as a general concept. It’s a whole thing.” Skipping over any speculation about how Kaito might play into that little trait of hers, Kotou always got super hyped up when childhood friends turned up in movies, song lyrics, and pretty much everywhere else, to the point that one might assume she was, y’know, into it. Her love for childhood friends was completely self-professed, so she might’ve been deliberately playing the whole thing up. Whether or not it was genuine, there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d stay quiet about Kiryu and me being childhood friends if she found out.
“But Kotou’s not even in our class! She wouldn’t bust into another class’s homeroom just to make you deliver a bunch of worksheets.”
“W-Well, the thing is...”
“Kiryu?” For some reason, she was acting really bashful. It was weirdly sexy, ahem. It was weirdly, uhh, weird.
“I volunteered.”
“Huh?”
“Kotou-san came to see me at lunchtime. She told me that you’d never skip school without telling somebody about it in advance, that something had definitely happened to you, and that, as your childhood friend, it was my responsibility to go check up on you. So, well, here I am.”
“Sounds like she swindled you.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?! I had no idea what was going on!”
I didn’t know whether she’d volunteered in front of the whole class or talked with our teacher about it in private, but considering how aloof she usually acted, I figured our teacher probably saw her being proactive about getting involved with another student as a great opportunity. No wonder she had given out my address without my consent. Feels like a huge violation of privacy standards, but whatever.
“So, do you, like, want the two of us to be the sort of childhood friends that Kotou always goes on about?” I asked.