Beneath the sky, the confines of the buildings around us seemed relatively distant. And yet, in spite of all that space, Edamoto-san and I were the only ones there. The wall of sound formed by the cicadas’ voices barred all other footsteps, erasing their existence. Yes, of course—we really were alone.
In that space with just the two of us, Edamoto-san made a rare show of shyness.
“Mind if I talk about myself a bit?”
“That’s what I came here to talk about.”
That was one thing I would never learn in a lecture. Edamoto-san hid her mouth with her bag.
“Well, you might’ve guessed something like this already, but…” Edamoto-san hugged the bag closer and went very stiff. “The first day I met you, Sayaka-senpai, she had just dumped me.”
I felt something snap, like putting my finger on a taut thread.
I hesitated, wondering whether to leap up or remain still. In that moment, my skin and voice lost their warmth.
“Oh, I see.”
My response ended up being clipped. For a lot of reasons, I was on guard.
“She said that since coming to college, she felt self-conscious about how others saw two girls being together, I guess… Something like that, anyway”
What an awful reason. Internally, I sympathized with Edamoto-san.
I’m sure that her mind must have gone blank when she heard those words. She probably barely heard the girl’s voice after that, without clearly knowing whether the reason was rage or the sense of loss.
I could imagine it as clearly as if it had happened to me.
“I was sad enough to cry back then, but I’m not bothered by it one bit now. Though I might be a little upset that we can’t be friends anymore, I think.”
Her tone sounded indifferent, as if she’d simply accepted reality. It would be strange to try to transition straight into a friendship after breaking up, so of course there was awkwardness still between them.
If it were me, I don’t think I would even want to go back to being friends.
Once a relationship transformed, going back to the way it used to be was incredibly difficult. My decision not to forgive Senpai was one example. Relationships were like piling up rocks, one after another. There was an element of chance…something that made each one unique. If the stack crumbled, then purposefully piling it back up by hand in the exact same way was close to impossible.
People can’t just start something over.
That was why my best friend had been just that from the time I met her, and was still my friend even now.
Nothing wavered in that relationship.
Nothing changed, no matter how much I wished it would.
“Well, that’s all there is to that story.”
“It’s got to be more complicated than that, hasn’t it?”
“Nope, not anymore.”
Edamoto-san looked at me and smiled meaningfully. The eyes of my underclassman’s young face seemed to be at the same height as mine, I thought.
“So yeah, I like girls.”
“…I see.”
I felt the surface of concrete within my voice. I didn’t know when that might begin to crack.
“So…” Edamoto-san started to say something and stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to press her to continue.
The rest of the sentence was lost, as if our voices had been sucked into a vacuum.
“But since that led me to you, Sayaka-senpai, I just think…that’s pretty amazing.”
“Amazing?”
When I expressed my doubt at her sudden lack of vocabulary, Edamoto-san averted her eyes somewhat bashfully.
“It’s like we were connected by something…umm…I dunno, exciting, I guess?”
Edamoto-san’s eyebrows drew upward, and she looked to the sky in consternation.
“It’d be kinda dramatic to call it destiny, but I can’t think of any other way to put it.”
“…Like we were fated to meet?”
“Right, that. A cute-meet.”
You’ve got the order of that wrong. I hesitated a bit over whether to point that out. But we were away from lecture, certainly not in a grammar class, and we were having a very serious discussion… My train of thought was trying to run away from the topic at hand.
“Back then, um…I saw you through my tears, Sayaka-senpai, and you were really pretty. That’s all.”
Edamoto-san put her hand on the bench and stretched out her legs. The bag she’d been clutching was still crumpled up as it sat on her knees. She looked like a cat hunching its neck.
“You were so pretty…”
“Don’t say it twice—you’ll embarrass me.”
Edamoto-san smiled a little, as if she’d been hoping for that reaction.
“I think you can repeat compliments lots of times and never get tired of hearing ’em, either.”
That manner of thinking was very typical Edamoto-san. I had gotten to understand her to the point that I knew this much—at least, it seemed that way to me. Yes, that’s why I had come here.
Because I wanted to know about Edamoto-san herself, and hear her story.
Now what?
Since I had now stepped partway in, what should I do next?
Now what? I was stuck on the question.
I needed to face what came next.
As the scorching summer heat drew ever closer…
“So, Sayaka-senpai…”
While I was still agonizing, Edamoto-san spoke up first. She really never hesitated to make her move.
“What is it?”
“Your hair is long, huh?”
Edamoto-san’s eyes were on the back of my neck.
“It is…”
Since graduating from high school, I’d gotten the occasional trim but never cut it short.
It wasn’t as though anyone would actually say this, but I didn’t want anyone to think that I cut it because I’d had my heart broken.
I hated that I felt that way, but I just kept letting my hair grow longer.
“What about it?” I asked Edamoto-san.
“I like it.”
As Edamoto-san said that, she stood up from the bench. Her voice and movements were light.
The affection that she had put out there as though it were no big deal reached me slowly, like a drifting balloon.
And by the time it touched my heart and began to push, Edamoto-san was already moving.
After putting some distance between us with her quick pace, Edamoto-san turned around and waved her hand at me with a smile.
Though we had parted ways a number of times, it was very rare for Edamoto-san to be the one to leave me, I thought.
“Well, thank you for that…”
I watched her leave and only finally murmured that once I was alone, touching the hair flowing down my neck.
It was the evidence of my past that still remained within me just a little—and she said that she liked it.
Like.
The faint echo made the cicadas’ cries seem distant.
I was bewildered—as though she had confessed her love to me.
And maybe, just maybe, she had.
>>Are your cats doing well?<<
>They are.<
>Both of them.<
>But they’re taking it easy since they’re getting older, of course.<
>>Taking it easy, huh?<<
>>I wonder if they’d let me hold them now.<<
>They’re still quick when they’re running from that.<
>>Well, it’s good they still have energy.<<
>Yeah.<
>>I’d like to see them again.<<
>That would be nice.<