“Which is what?”
“Y’know what, never mind.”
“That just makes me more curious! Tell me, tell me, tell meee!”
“Have you been cursed or something? Would you drop dead if you didn’t say everything in the most obnoxious way possible?”
“Pffft! Ha ha ha, as if! You really believe a curse like that could be real? You’re so immature, Kunugi-san!”
“Oh, it’s on...” Yuuta was, as usual, an absolute prodigy in the field of pissing people off. I’m gonna dunk this runt’s head through a basketball hoop one of these days—mark my words!
Hikari, meanwhile, was cracking up. “You two really get along, don’t you?” she managed to choke out between the giggles.
“I guess you could say that!” replied Yuuta.
“Just when did you make friends with each other, though?” she dug deeper, and I froze up for a second. She wasn’t even directing the question at me, but on some level, it still felt like she was probing in a direction I didn’t want her to.
“While you were off from school,” Yuuta answered.
“You weren’t around to feed her, Ayase-san, so she ended up setting her sights on me as your substitute.”
“‘Ayase-san’?” She frowned. “You’re my brother’s best friend, aren’t you? You don’t have to treat me like a stranger.”
“I mean, you basically are a stranger.”
“I don’t mind if you think of me as, like, your little sister! You can just call me Hikari.”
“Why would I ever think of you like that? We don’t even look anything alike! I have a hard time believing you’d actually want that either—you’d be really creeped out if I said we should take a bath together or whatever, right?”
“I’d be creeped out if my actual brother said that too... Wait, don’t tell me he told you about that?!” Oh, crap, that’s right! I didn’t hear about Kaito’s little why-protagonist-why incident from him; I heard it from the younger, more female him!
“Ah, no, Kaito...” I was about to pin it on him anyway, but I stopped myself before I took the plunge. I couldn’t throw him under the bus in front of his own little sister, and the truth of the matter was that he’d never said anything of the sort to me.
“If Hikari’s like your little sister, does that mean I am your little sister?” Yuuta interjected.
“If you’re gonna bust into the conversation without warning, could you at least do it to say something that actually makes sense?” Or so I said, but internally I was super grateful for Yuuta’s conversation-derailing interjection. It was totally incomprehensible, as always, but still. Yuuta, meanwhile, got that incredibly proud, smug look on her face and puffed out her unimpressive chest.
“You can feel free to think of me as your little sister and dote on me like an adorable pet kitty, Kunugi-san!”
“Sorry, I’m a dog person.”
“Like an adorable pet puppy!”
“Tell you what, bring me a frisbee, and I’ll throw it for you.” Offering to play fetch with a girl was probably some sort of emotional abuse—sexual harassment? Power harassment? Maybe domestic violence, if they’re a relative? Doesn’t matter.
I heard somebody snickering at our little farce of a conversation, and it goes without saying that the snickers were coming from Ayase. “You really are good friends, huh?”
“He’s my second friend ever, after all!” Meaning both exactly what she said, and also that I’m the guy who plays second fiddle on her friendship priority list.
“We’re senpai and kouhai,” I clarified, “absolutely nothing more or less.”
“You almost sound like some sort of big, tough guy!” Ayase chuckled.
“We’re comparing me to a pipsqueak, here. I’d come out looking big and tough no matter what I said.” We kept joking around like that for quite a while, and I kept watching Ayase like a hawk the whole time. I was doing everything I possibly could to draw a clear senpai/kouhai line in the sand.
From an ethical standpoint, unilaterally stealing away her memories was probably an inexcusable thing to do. I had plenty of internal justifications for my actions, but they weren’t enough to prevent me from feeling guilty about it. That’s exactly why I felt like I had to take action here—I had to rebuild my relationship with her in an entirely different shape.
This time, I wouldn’t be the target of her affection—I’d be her sorta quirky senpai who also happened to be her brother’s friend. That would be the ideal form for our relationship to take. She had nothing to gain from developing feelings for me, and I didn’t want to ever bring disaster down upon anyone else ever again...
—Koh.
“...Huh?”
For just a moment, it felt like something was squeezing my heart so hard it might burst. I’d felt like I’d heard something—a noise that was nostalgic, that was touching, that reverberated deep within me, tormenting me in perpetuity. I couldn’t have heard it, but I did.
“What’s wrong, Kou-san? Are you still listening?”
That time, it was just Ayase’s voice. Totally normal, nothing weird about it. Disregarding the fact that she’d casually switched from “-senpai” to “-san,” I mean. Still, though, I couldn’t shake it. Why?
Why did I keep seeing her, that white-haired girl I once knew, in Ayase...?
Because she was my best friend’s sister? Or because I’d stolen her memories specifically to ensure that she didn’t end up like her? I couldn’t tell. The two of them weren’t at all similar; they were completely different people in terms of both looks and presence.
But somehow, it just kept happening. Ever since the very first time I met Ayase, seeing her somehow brought her to mind, intensely enough to cause me to irreparably damage a poor, innocent toilet seat.
This time was different, though. It wasn’t like that sudden, trauma-induced onslaught of nausea. This time I felt her presence, clearly and intensely.
“Rei?”
I said her name before I could stop myself. I was incredibly shaken, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Ayase didn’t say anything at all in response—actually, it might be more accurate to say that she was too dumbfounded to say anything. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t tell if she’d frozen up because I’d started spouting incomprehensible nonsense out of nowhere and she didn’t get it, or if she’d frozen up because she did get it, at least on some level.
What I did know was that in that split second, I was absolutely terrified. It was impossible. It had to be impossible, but what if? What if, somehow, she knew something about Rei? What would I do if she did?
My throat was bone-dry, and it felt like my limbs were asleep. I dimly speculated that this must be what defendants in court feel like while awaiting the judge’s verdict. It felt like the next word she spoke, whatever it might be, would change everything from that moment forward...
“‘Ray’? Do they even cover light physics in second-year science?”
And Yuuta jumped into the conversation out of absolutely nowhere.
“Huh?”
“Are you so hungry you’ve totally lost focus? Geez, Kunugi-san, you’re the little glutton that couldn’t!” Confused, I glanced at the clock and found that it was just a little past noon—in other words, lunchtime. I’d muttered the name under my breath so quietly that Yuuta had apparently thought I was gibbering deliriously about my studies.
“Nah, I was just talking to myself,” I retorted. “I’m not that hungry or anything, and don’t call people by titles that make them sound like bootleg children’s books!” She’d inadvertently thrown me a life preserver, and I grabbed on to it without a second’s hesitation. I knew that the odds of Ayase answering with anything other than confusion were somewhere in the region of one in a hundred billion, but I fled from her answer anyway because I’m a goddamn coward.
When she did finally speak, after a moment’s hesitation, it was about a totally different topic. “Yeah, I guess it is just about lunchtime. I’ll ask my brother about his plans.” She stood up and walked over towards Kaito. I, meanwhile, heaved a heavy sigh of relief and gave my savior Yuuta an extremely grateful pat on the head.
“Whahuh?! What’re you doing?!”
“Doting on you like a puppy. Puppies like it when you pet them, right?”
“I-I definitely don’t like this, nope, no way...” I mean, when it comes down to it, little kids and dogs aren’t that different in terms of how you praise them for doing a good job. She’s probably just too bashful to admit she’s happy about it.
Patting her head was helping me scratch and crawl my way back to some semblance of peace of mind, and it wasn’t long before she stopped grumbling and actually started leaning closer to me to make it easier to reach. It was amazing how she could pack that much pet-like cuteness into such an insignificant movement.
In the end, though, nothing had actually been resolved. I still had no idea why I perceived some element of Rei in Ayase Hikari—an element that I’d never felt from anyone else before. Even far from the war and bloodshed, even in a totally different world, even having immersed myself in peace and given my heart all the respite I could offer it, I still couldn’t face Rei—no, I couldn’t face anything that had happened back then. I didn’t have the guts. All I could do was keep running and lying to myself, again and again.