The past doesn’t disappear. I’m sure mine is no exception.
No matter how much one tries to cover it up, it reappears, like snow melting away to reveal the ground beneath. And if there were was someone there to uncover it, it would appear even sooner.
In the classroom, I watched Touko, but not enough for her to notice. Touko was looking at the blackboard during class, just as she normally did. But I could easily turn my eyes away from her, and I didn’t feel the usual magnetic pull. In that moment, simply looking at Touko no longer satisfied me.
Now that I knew what I knew, my heart was muddled with confusion and doubt.
After that day, I went around the school and did a bit of digging. It was a simple enough task to find answers from teachers who had been working at the school around that time. I learned that Touko’s older sister had been named Nanami Mio. And I learned the significance of the student council play. The reason Touko had diligently studied and gone from the person she was in elementary school to who she was today.
I concluded that the Touko I and our classmates normally saw at school was nothing more than a facade. She had neither self-confidence nor a strong spirit at her core. Touko was pleasantly deceiving most people, pretending to be perfect. I had been deceived myself so far. But now, when I looked at Touko, I thought I could see the shadow that lurked beneath.
Now that I had found out, that fact had become an inextricable part of my past and would never disappear.
The question of whether I would be able to love Touko if she ranked lowest during an exam now came back to haunt me. I knew even less about myself than I did about Touko—especially if the thing I sought from Touko hadn’t existed in her at all.
What did I see in Touko?
While I was caught up in all those worries, something else came along to cause me even further distress. It happened just as lunch was ending and I was going back to my seat. When I put my hand into my desk in order to prepare for the next class, I felt the sensation of paper that wasn’t my notebook on my fingertips. Wondering what I had put in there, I found a rectangular piece of stationery in my hand.
Of course, it wasn’t a letter I had written myself.
“What…”
It couldn’t be, I thought, frozen in place. The realization came crashing down on me like a sharp impact to my head.
First, I stealthily returned the mysterious letter to my desk and then propped my head in my hands. I didn’t have the composure to worry whether doing so was rude. I simply closed my eyes. I know what this is . I thought about the first time I had experienced this.
First, I thought about whether they might have accidentally given it to the wrong person. But my desk was far from Touko’s. It’s for me . The thought sent silent ripples of dread through my mind. My skin felt scratchy, and I remembered that day when I once jumped into the pool. At the moment, I felt like I could jump right back in. If that happened, I wondered if she would still be there.
I have a terrible habit, it seems, of always wanting to know the truth. It wasn’t just with Touko. I was just the kind of person who couldn’t stand not knowing things.
The contents could be time-sensitive, so I stealthily took out the letter before class started and opened the envelope. For a moment, I thought a letter seemed old-fashioned for an age where cell phones were ubiquitous, but the person who sent this likely couldn’t contact me by phone. In that case, an antiquated letter was a reasonable choice. That the method had lasted for this long meant that there was some meaning and value in it, I thought.
I looked over the bluish-white letter from top to bottom. To be honest, the handwriting wasn’t very pretty.
“………”
The gist of the letter had been just what I was expecting and told me the person would be waiting behind the school at the end of the day. Though the sender’s name seemed like it was probably a boy’s, I couldn’t recall his face. We were in the middle of class, so I took a stealthy look around, wondering whether he was in the classroom. Though I looked at the sleepy, rounded backs of the boys in the early afternoon one after another, it wasn’t as though they had their names written on them, so I couldn’t pinpoint whether he was among them.
Once I finished reading, I hid the letter in my desk, the words clearly stating that he liked me burned into my eyes like an afterimage. It wasn’t my first time being confessed to, but it wasn’t as though I had gotten used to it, either.
Just like before, the contents of the class wouldn’t remain in my head, and the school day was over before I knew it. Touko, who of course knew nothing of my troubles, came to my desk as always.
I couldn’t calm myself down, though in a different way from usual.
“Sayaka?” Touko tilted her head at me when I didn’t move to stand up or get ready.
“I’m not…certain about today,” I responded vaguely. My choice of words wound up stranger than I intended.
“Oh, do you have something you need to do at home?”
“No, nothing like that. I’ll head over as soon as I’m done.”
After I said it, the pulse in my wrist quickened as I wondered if Touko would guess my reason, since she had been in the same position before.
“Okay. Then I’ll head out ahead of you.” Touko’s reaction seemed only surface-deep, which was nothing out of the ordinary.
Yes, the Nanami Touko I saw during the day was actually just surface-deep, I thought as I watched her go, rooting me in my seat for a while. However, I actually had something I needed to do today.
I had to go turn down someone’s confession of love.