But Touko’s reaction was more dramatic than I had anticipated. She seemed surprised at herself too, and quickly explained as though she were trying to save face, “It’s just that I’m bad at rock-paper-scissors.”
“You are?” I wondered if there was even such a thing as being bad or good at it.
“Mm-hmm… Maybe I’m just too easy to read.”
She loosely waved her fist, smiling awkwardly. For some reason, something about it felt artificial to me.
“Well, now I really want to play it with you.” I went along with it. If she wanted to hide something, then I would let her.
“You’re so mean.” Touko’s mouth softened. She seemed somewhat pleased as she slowly held her fist out in front of her. I couldn’t see what move she would choose based on observing her hands and shoulders. It wasn’t as though paper or scissors were written all over her face, either. She wasn’t easy to read at all.
Nanami Touko was still a mystery to me.
I readied my hand by thrusting it out. Just before we started, Touko absentmindedly looked at her own hand.
“Rock.”
Touko’s arm went up and down weakly.
“Paper.”
Up and down, up and down.
“Scissors.”
I threw paper, and Touko scissors.
Victory…for Touko, that is. I looked carefully at our hands and made sure of it: I really had lost.
“You’re not bad at this at all.”
I wonder if she was being modest when she said she was bad. At that moment, I was sure I looked ridiculous. Touko’s eyes were fixed on my open fingers.
“Yeah…or maybe you’re just even worse than I am, Sayaka?”
“Now that’s a mean thing to say so casually…”
Though she had won, Touko’s fingers were bent half-heartedly, still in the loose shape of scissors. She pulled back her hand and stood up.
“Are you okay with black tea?”
“Huh? But I’m the one who lost.”
“Now that I think about it, you made tea last time. I couldn’t make you do it again.” Touko laughed lightly and headed towards the kettle.
What was the point, then …? Left behind, my paper drifted in midair with no place to go. I hesitated over whether to go help her but decided to observe her instead.
Touko didn’t falter as she prepared the tea with her back to me. She worked briskly, but it was like she was detached from her consciousness, moving almost mechanically. I wondered what inner conflict she was dealing with at the moment. She was her usual self on the surface, but there was something subtly different about her.
It seemed unusual for someone to have an emotional attachment to rock-paper-scissors, but Touko clearly had no intention of showing anyone what was bothering her. I’m sure she had her reasons…but I wanted her to share those reasons with me.
I wondered what I needed for that to happen. Trust? Friendship? Or was it love?
After a while, Touko finished preparing everyone’s tea and came back. After putting down the cups in front of the second years, the president included, she headed over to me, delivering me a hot mug of tea with her usual smile.
“Thank you. I’ll do it next time.”
“Ahaha…I guess there was no point to playing rock-paper-scissors.” Touko shook her head lightly. She sat back down in a seat and put her hand on her forehead, parting her bangs, and then let out a large sigh. In that moment, I felt like her carefully maintained attitude relaxed very slightly.
It was a small vulnerability that I’m sure most people would have missed if they weren’t always paying attention to Touko like I was. When I saw that, I knew that Touko really had been trying to hide something. I knew it.
I kept my attention on Touko until we quietly finished our assigned work for the day.
“Sayaka, can I talk to you about something?”
After we finished clearing away the materials we had been passed along, Touko spoke to me. She was smiling, back to her usual self. What was that about earlier, then? In any case, it was easier to talk with her when she was this way.
“Okay.” I could never turn down an invitation from Touko.
We left the student council room together. Touko led the way to the bench behind the student council building. It was a useful location, since people rarely came there. Touko and I could be alone together just by ducking behind this wall.
I brushed off the bench, gathered up my skirt, and sat down. I had seen a bee flying near the student council room earlier, so I was extra cautious of my surroundings. I had never been stung by one before, so I was all the more afraid of the potential pain. Besides, the buzzing sound of their rapidly beating wings always put me on edge.
“This is the opposite of before, isn’t it?”
Touko smiled as she referred to both the order in which we sat on the bench and who invited who. Before, I mused to myself as I remembered the cloudy sky from that day. We certainly were sitting in opposite positions compared to then.
The only constant was the distance between us.
“Maybe we should go into town and chat over tea once in a while.”
I wondered if Touko had blurted that out because the sun still felt warm on our skin even as we sat in the shade. The early summer had started to pour over us, and not a single cool breeze visited us under the cover of the trees.
“Let’s do that next time, then.” I was happy to spend more time with Touko after school, but I would prefer to keep hanging out separate from this kind of conversation. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
I could think of three prospects for what Touko might want to talk about. I wondered which it would be. If it were completely outside of my expectations, I would have trouble responding.