Kazuki, in contrast, seemed to have no such sense of restraint. Her body could be in pieces, and it still wouldn’t be enough to keep her spirit down. Thanks to that, she could keep going till the absolute furthest limit of her physical capability until she literally collapsed. Yeah, this girl’s a monster for sure.
“I used to collapse all the time,” she elaborated, “but it’s been ages since I’ve really worn myself out like that.”
“’Cause you have more stamina now?”
“That’s part of it, but the main reason’s that my club takes up a ton of time, so I don’t have much left to actually exercise.” She exercises less now that she’s in an athletic club? What a peculiar, mysterious life form I’ve discovered. “Plus, it’s really hard to find people who’re faster or have more endurance than me, so I don’t get many chances to push myself to my limit. And speaking of, you were awesome, A-senpai! I’ve never run like that before—it felt like my life span was draining out of my body right along with my sweat! It was like I was running myself to death! It ruled!”
“Yeah, sorry, really can’t relate.”
“The closer you get to death, the more you appreciate the fact that you’re alive!”
“Stop, that’s terrifying!” Fixating on death doesn’t make you more alive; it just brings you closer to dying! And the only thing waiting for you beyond that point’s, well, death.
Although, I suppose that barely making it through by the skin of your teeth does have a way of making you appreciate how nice it is to be alive... That’s probably what she was trying to say in the first place. But I couldn’t really see things from her perspective and didn’t really want to either.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I guess we never really talked much before now, but now that we have, I know one thing for sure: you’re a huge weirdo.”
“Oh, like you can talk, Senpai.”
“What? I’m a perfectly normal, utterly average high schooler!”
“Well I’m a perfectly normal, utterly average high schooler too!” Or so she claimed, but I was having a really hard time imagining her fitting into that framework.
Even if you disregard her dedicated field of expertise, she was cute enough that rumors about her were even floating around in my grade level. Popularity like that’s hard to ignore. Incidentally, her sporty, boyish style garnered a fair bit of attention from some of the girls. Supposedly, they treated her as their “prince,” but mentioning that felt like it’d be kicking a hornet’s nest, so I decided against it.
“Kunugi-kuuun, Renaaa, dinner’s ready!”
“Ah, I’ll help set the table, mom!” I noted how she sounded even more boyish when she dropped the semi-polite tone she used to talk to me as she leapt up from the sofa. I followed along after her and volunteered to help as well.
“Ah, that one’s my cup, Senpai! You can put it right over there.”
“Gotcha.” She ended up handling most of the actual table-setting while I just followed her orders. Her mother let a chuckle slip as she watched us at work.
“You know, I can’t help but think that the two of you look less like lovers and more like siblings!”
“Huh?” I reacted with confusion while Kazuki let out a strangled gasp. We both froze up. I didn’t drop the plate that I was holding, but honestly, that was more luck than anything else. I was so shocked that it would’ve been totally unsurprising if I broke it—cliché though it would’ve been.
“We’re not dating, mom! Jeez!”
“Oh, you’re not? Weren’t you telling me about the upperclassman boy you’d taken an interest in, though?”
“That’s a different boy!”
“Oh, my!” She looked over at me, waiting expectantly. Best I could tell, she thought Kazuki was just too embarrassed to admit it.
“We’re not dating, ma’am.”
“Oh, not you too, Kunugi-kun!”
“No, seriously, I’m not kidding. We’re, well... The guy she’s into is a friend of mine.” The full story was a bit too complicated to sum up that easily. Kazuki had already confessed to me that she’d given up on her crush, after all. Glancing over, she looked a bit conflicted but was managing to cover it up with a slightly strained smile. Her heartbreak was still pretty fresh, and talking about it like that probably felt like pouring salt in the wound.
“Oh, is that so? I’m sorry, I suppose I was jumping to conclusions.”
“See, mom? C’mon, stop being rude to my senpai!”
Objectively speaking, I’d say that getting mistaken for Kazuki’s boyfriend was closer to an honor than an insult, but I couldn’t bring myself to joke around that flippantly considering the circumstances. It wouldn’t be funny, and unfunny jokes are basically never a good way to back people up.
That indescribably awkward atmosphere persisted as we moved into dinnertime. Kazuki’s mother served us a nice helping of curry. It’s the weirdest thing—curry’s normally considered Indian food, and yet when you make it in a particular way and serve it with a helping of rice, it becomes so Japanese that it’s practically our national comfort food.
“How is it, Kunugi-kun?” asked Kazuki’s mother. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah, it’s super tasty!”
“Heh heh, Senpai, you sound like a little kid!”
The curry she’d made really was delicious. It was my first time experiencing that sort of simple-but-maternal home-cooking flavor, and I was genuinely sorta moved. I felt like I might start crying if I let my guard down. Kazuki might’ve assumed that my overenthusiastic response was sarcasm, but the gentle, almost protective smile her mother turned towards me made it clear she was under no such misapprehension.
“You have quite an appetite!” Kazuki’s mother giggled. “I made plenty for you to have seconds, so don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Okay!” It suddenly struck me that her curry was the first proper meal I’d eaten all day. The thought that I’d almost fallen prey to Renge’s hellish cooking made me all the more enthusiastic about scarfing my meal down. Kazuki and her mother were both smiling in their own distinctive manners, which was a little embarrassing, but hunger brings out the honesty in people. I ended up polishing off a full five plates’ worth of curry. In other words, way too much!
“Thanks again for cooking...” I moaned.
“You’re very welcome,” replied Kazuki’s mother. “Rena’s my only child, but it’s sort of nice to have a boy around who can eat as much as she does!”
“Seriously, Senpai, where’d you put it all? Guess I ate a ton too, though!” She really did—a full three plates of curry. Funny how “three” sounds small on its own but huge when you’re talking about plates of curry.
“Do you have any siblings, Kou-kun?” asked her mother.
“Huh? No, I don’t.”
“I see, I see! Like I said, watching you and Rena chat makes me imagine what she’d have been like around an older brother if she had one. I think it’d be a lot like how she is with you!”
“I dunno about that,” said Kazuki. “Maybe if it was Ayase-senpai.”
“Ayase-kun is the boy you have a crush on, isn’t he?”
“Ugh... Y-Yeah, mom.” Even if she’d never actually asked him out, telling her parents she’d been heartbroken would still be a pretty tall order. Part of me wondered why she’d told her mom about her crush in the first place, but that sort of made sense too. It’s natural to want to talk about the good things in your life and hide the bad stuff.
“How about you, Kou-kun? Do you have a girlfriend or a crush on anyone?”
“Nope. Neither.”
“Oh, I’m surprised.”
“You are? Why?”
“Well, you’re quite the cutie, after all!”
“I-I am...?” I almost never got complimented on my appearance and could feel myself blushing. She was probably just flattering me, of course.
“Looks like you’re pretty bad at handling my mom, huh, Senpai?” cut in Kazuki.
“Wh...? H-Huh?!”
“Feels like you’re juuust a bit weirdly focused on her, you know?” She smirked as she called me out. It’s not like I didn’t like her mom, and I certainly wasn’t trying to fixate on her, but now that she’d pointed it out it was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Oh, my! You know you can always join the family, Kou-kun.”
“C’mon, not you too, mom!” I retorted sarcastically.
She let out an amused little shriek, then slapped me on my back. “‘Mom’?! Oh, Kou-kun, you rascal!” I guess that joke landed better than expected; she was really getting into the whole thing. It didn’t hurt, but it did make me feel really awkward again. Meanwhile, Kazuki Junior was still smirking at my expense.
“I think I found one of your weak points tonight, Senpai.”
“Shut it,” I grumbled. Turns out girls, and particularly mother/daughter combos, are pretty tough. They had me completely at their mercy, and all I could do was put on a strained smile and stick it out as they toyed with me. On the other hand, though, it got me thinking.
What would my life be like if I had parents?
Renge’s father, Gouki, viewed me as the son of his relative. He never treated Renge with the sort of familial intimacy that Kazuki and her mother expressed for each other—or at least, he never did so in front of me. That was probably partially just how their relationship worked and partially out of consideration for me on account of my own lack of parents.
As such, it sort of felt like this was my first time witnessing a real family. It was my first time experiencing the certain, distinctive warmth that comes along with it.
I never knew my mother or my father. My former self took all those memories with him when he vanished. I’d seen them in videos that were left over in the Myourenji household, but I couldn’t think of the people I saw on the screen as anything other than strangers. It seemed somehow right to think of them that way. I didn’t feel anything as I watched them, least of all pain.
And yet, for some reason, in that moment I felt a slight, sudden impulse to learn more about my parents. It wouldn’t help me feel the fact that they were my parents, and I knew it, but I still wondered if it might help me understand.
Maybe it would help me understand why the curry Kazuki’s mother made was so delicious.
Maybe it would help me understand why their smiles were so warm and dazzling in my eyes.