In a short time, I had fallen completely to pieces, but Kanba smiled warmly at me. He furrowed his brow, as if to say we had no other choice, and patted me gently on the head. “Well, that’s okay. Hold onto that kind heart of yours, for Himari’s sake. Yeah?”
Before I could tell him to wait, he urged Penguin No. 1 along and entered the room.
“Aniki…”
As I forced my body forward, the door shut in my face. I stood there, lost, unable to give any reply.
The courtyard of Oukagyoen Girl’s High School was gorgeous, with well-tended quads decorated with white benches. It was a bright and lively place whenever the students were assembled.
The moment Oginome Ringo entered the courtyard, she saw a shrub trimmed into a neat, round sphere. It reminded Ringo of the ring of fate.
“Hey, hey, want an update on that hot guy we saw the other day?”
Yukina, who was the tallest among the three assembled on the bench, with full, mature lips, opened her mouth. The three girls each spread their bento out on their laps, and the school’s midday break, lengthy enough to both let a lunch digest and allow the girls sufficient time to talk, began.
“Huh, what?! Tell us, tell us!” Mari—who had the same kind of cuteness as a small animal—leaned forward.
Ringo, once again, was elsewhere. Once she finished gazing at the circular shrub, her head filled with her plans for the day, which had warmed her heart since this morning. She did not even register the flavors of the sandwich she nibbled on.
“This is just between us,” said Yukina, putting her hand to her mouth in an exaggerated gesture.
“Definitely! This stays here!” Mari grinned conspiratorially.
“I heard from a friend from cram school that that guy used to date Kuho Asami!” said Yukina, in a ‘How do you like that!’ tone.
“Kuho Asami?” Mari asked, tilting her head.
Ringo vaguely remembered the name, but she did not say so. For a moment, the image of Kuho Asami briefly interrupted the flow of her thoughts, but the shape of it soon vanished back into memory as more important matters returned to the forefront of her mind.
“No way, you don’t know her? She was in Sixteen magazine!”
“You mean that model? What? That’s ridiculous!” She placed extra emphasis on the last word.
Wow, neat, Ringo replied internally on cue without batting an eye, her thoughts still adrift.
“Yeah, but here’s where it gets good! That guy flat out dumped her! ‘Girls who’re nothing more than their appearances bore me,’ he said!”
“Whoa, that’s kind of cool!”
Right? Isn’t that cool? The pair nodded fervently at each other.
Ringo began muttering the words flowing through her head, counting on her fingers.
“Potatoes, carrots, celery, and pork. Kuho, no, apple jam.” And then, she thought, lifting her head. White clouds in a white sky. As she thought of his gentle smile, a faint grin crept to her face without her notice.
This was by no means the first time that Kanba had been inside a woman’s room. He had slept in the bed of such a room’s owner, and he had taken her clothing in his hands, and had his taken in hers. He had sometimes shared kisses immediately after entering such a room, while other times it had abruptly turned to that after thirty seconds of light conversation.
Every woman’s room smelled different. However, they were always sickly sweet, and spending too long surrounded by a woman’s favorite things always started to give him a headache.
Oginome Ringo’s room overflowed with assorted decorations and objects, all of them following a sea creature theme. Kelp and tropical fish hung amongst the glass beads of the curious, octopus-themed chandelier, and on the floor was a large pillow in the shape of a crab. Atop the bed sat old kappa and otter plushies, looking for all the world as if they owned the place. The suspended beaded curtain was primarily blue and translucent, with starfish mixed in here and there. Her jewelry holder, which seemed to have been crafted of coral wholesale, was hung with large-beaded accessories with the same sort of translucency as the curtain, and there was a cannister full of shells.
“She sure is thorough,” Kanba muttered. He thought vaguely to himself that a girl who lived in a room of such single-minded taste must have a real one-track mind and it was not at all surprising that she would be a stalker.
He took a deep breath and pulled open her desk drawer, gesturing to Penguin No. 1 to start searching it while he investigated the closet. He did not find anything unusual. All of her clothes and underwear and socks and handkerchiefs looked incredibly normal. If he were to force an assessment, he might say that she had a bit of an excess of clothing with cutesy patterns along the hem. Still, that was all.
“Hey, you.” Kanba turned around to see how the desk was coming along, and then immediately had regrets. “What the hell kind of investigating is that?”
The contents of the desk were poking out slightly from every drawer, and Penguin No. 1 itself pulled out the textbooks stacked atop the desk, attempting to open them.
Scratching his head, Kanba carefully shut the closet, and picked up a notebook that had fallen on the floor.
“Hm?”
Atop the windowsill was something that did not match the aesthetic of the rest of the room. It had nothing to do with the sea or sea creatures; it was not even blue. It was in the shape of a peach. It was a perfectly pink peach, like a peach manju, the sort of peach that would appear in a picture book adaptation of Momotaro.
Curious, he moved to the windowsill, picking up—was it an alarm clock?—but there was nothing strange about it. He put it back on the windowsill, assuming it had been a gift from a parent or some other relative, someone who would be offended if the girl didn’t make use of it.
Kanba rolled his neck. His head hurt. He really did have a headache coming on.
Shoma was right. Shoma was always conscientious and bright. But always doing the right thing was not necessarily going to guarantee someone’s happiness. But there was still a solitary softness in Kanba that would not allow him to blame Shoma for this, deep down. If Kanba were to lose this final softness, the balance of his humanity would probably be destroyed.