“Can you tell that sort of thing just by looking?”
“More or less.” Edamoto-san smiled slightly. “I guess it’s kind of like the intuition of seeing a bird in the distance and knowing what kind it is.”
“That’s not intuition—it’s concrete knowledge.”
Knowledge. In the past, it was something I had relied upon. I thought that if you knew enough, everything would go well.
Even after learning that was a fantasy, I still thought that knowledge was an important thing.
But this mid-drink conversation was contained nowhere in my knowledge or experience.
“Maybe there’s something about you that’s similar to the reflection I see in my mirror every day.”
“I wonder if that’s really how it works.”
I looked at Edamoto-san, feeling a vague, undefinable feeling. I began to understand it in the form of a hunch. It was difficult to explain what exactly I suspected it might be, but…I knew that my affections moved in ways that might be very slightly different from most other people.
That subtle discrepancy, just as Edamoto-san said, was like looking into the mirror.
“So? Do you have a girlfriend?” Edamoto-san asked again. I didn’t need to think deeply about the reason why. But I couldn’t quite say it yet.
“Not at the moment.”
“So that means you used to have one?”
I didn’t think I needed to truthfully answer that sort of question. But right now, oddly enough, there were cracks in my defenses. Maybe it’s because of this? I took a glance at the glass in my hand. I hadn’t drunk that much, but my vision felt floaty and hazy.
“Yes, I did, once. That was the only time I ever dated.”
When I was in high school, I’d carried an unrequited love with me for three years. It was a single, beautifully straightforward line that hadn’t connected me to anyone. And now, as that path carried on without ever connecting to my erstwhile love, it was about to intersect with a different path entirely.
Though the excessively effective air conditioning might have had something to do with it, I felt like I’d been suddenly exposed to a blast of wintery cold.
“What was she like?”
“Well…”
Since she was asking about my girlfriend rather than the person I liked for all of high school, I leapt through many years all at once to think back on the time period I needed to revisit. I passed over high school to junior high. It would be hard to say what was bitterest—my junior high experiences or the beer I was drinking now.
I didn’t want to talk much about the details of what kind of person she was. In retrospect, there were more bad sides to her than good.
“She was the exact opposite of you, Edamoto-san—for the most part.” She was carefree, pale-skinned, and her words and actions always kept me guessing. I needed to stop there or I would start bad-mouthing her. My forehead wrinkled.
“Basically, umm…I’m scared to ask this, but you mean she was cute?”
Why would she be scared?
“Her face was… Well, yes, she was beautiful. I suppose I usually fall for people with lovely faces.”
“And my ranking in that department would beeee…”
“Ahh…yes, I do think you’re cute.”
Realizing what Edamoto-san was worried about, I laughed a little despite myself. I couldn’t blame her for worrying about that, I supposed.
“I’m cute, huh?” Edamoto-san rubbed her cheek and then met eyes with me. “Right…cute. I’ve been told that much before, at least.”
“…By your old girlfriend?”
Since I was reluctant to be the only one who was being questioned, I tried asking her a question back that seemed like it would hit a sore spot. Just as I expected, Edamoto-san made a slightly sour face—even though she seemed fine with the beer.
“I don’t have a girlfriend right now, though.”
“Me neither. We match!” Edamoto-san agreed jokingly. “But, hmm…so she was beautiful. But it didn’t work out?”
“Well, no.”
Since what she loved and what I loved hadn’t meshed, there was no way it could have worked out.
Regardless of that, I had fallen for her… Though by now, I’d spent more time hating her than loving her overall.
That was how my impression of Senpai had settled.
Edamoto-san chugged the contents of her glass dry all at once.
“Then maybe things would work out pretty well with me?”
My underclassman, who had put down her glass, crawled around the table on her hands and knees.
Then, she approached me.
As if to be closer to my side than anyone else.
“Because, right now, I’m in love with you.”
With that finishing blow, she opened up her heart to me completely.
Edamoto-san, literally right before my eyes, was only half-visible to me.
In the other half of my vision, I dazedly thought back to my junior high days.
I’d heard similar words before, at a similar close distance, from a different girl.
And…
“Oh, you looked away.”
“Of course I would…”
This wasn’t a distance from which friends would look at each other—not at a distance where only we would be visible to each other in the world.
And her eyes were fixed on my face, her gaze wordlessly praising it for being beautiful.
Of course it would be difficult to look back at her directly.
“Umm, so yeah…I love you.”
From outside my averted vision, Edamoto-san’s unassuming confession reached me.
“Thank you…”
Was it the effects of the alcohol making my skin feel so hot? My body temperature went up, whereas my head felt as though it had been left somewhere far away, watching the situation impassively.
Maybe it was because I had recalled the time when Yuzuki-senpai confessed to me, after burying that memory for so long.
Goosebumps ran across my skin, as though I couldn’t stand the difference in temperature between my mind and body.
When I lowered my gaze, I saw that Edamoto-san’s arms were shaking as they held up her weight on the floor—so much so that it felt like if I brushed her away lightly, she would fall over. As I observed Edamoto-san’s nervousness, caution churned in my brain.
I did always have the vague feeling that this time would come someday.
And yet, I stayed at Edamoto-san’s side without making much effort to fight it.
Maybe I had been expecting it?
Expecting what?
New love?
Or a person who understood me, with the same point of view?
I cautiously turned my gaze back toward her, like someone hiding behind a wall peeking out at the situation beyond.
Edamoto-san was still incredibly close.
She was bizarrely large in my vision, like a full moon floating in the night sky.
“Doesn’t my breath reek of alcohol?” I asked, directing the question at the reddened tip of her nose. When I tried to look at her, the scene blurred.
“I guess I smell it a little.”
“I didn’t think I’d drank that much, though… Alcohol sure is something.”
If our lips just joined each other, we would end up sharing the taste of alcohol.
That would be a little interesting, I thought.
But Edamoto-san was a minor.
Even though she smelled like alcohol, too, she was still a minor.