“But c’mon, that can’t be it. I mean, we had nothing to do with them coming over,” Touka said with a confidence drawn from thinking everything was fine.
But Yoriko could only murmur weakly, “Maybe you’re right.”
After lunch, Touka went on her own to the bathroom, vomited up everything in her stomach, and gulped down some water.
When she returned to the classroom, nearly empty since most students had left during lunch, the girls that had been glaring at them earlier were gathered around Yoriko. Just as she wondered what they were talking about, she heard their voices loud and
clear.
“You looked so happy when they were telling you how great you were. Is that why you cook, to get boys to like you?”
“Even you oughta know that Mayuhara likes Yamamoto. So what are you trying to say?”
“That was so affected, though!” The girl laughed.
“But, I didn’t—I never meant to—”
Mayuhara was the girl who had been staring at Yoriko and Touka the most. And Yamamoto was the boy who had eaten a piece of Yoriko’s fried chicken earlier.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Touka rushed over to them and started interrogating Mayuhara, the leader, in a firm tone of voice. The other girls flinched at Touka’s sudden arrival, but Mayuhara did not move. Instead, she looked at Touka and laughed.
“Oh, Kirishima, you came back.”
“I asked you, what do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean, what? We’re just talking. What about it?”
Her faux innocent act made Touka’s expression even sterner.
“I heard everything you guys said to Yoriko,” she said.
“If you heard everything then you didn’t need to keep asking what we were doing, now did you?” Mayuhara replied, only adding to Touka’s anger.
“Huh?”
“God, she’s scary. Hey, Yoriko, your little friend’s boiling over, can’t you do something?”
“Oh, uh … Touka, I’m fine, so don’t …”
“How the hell is this fine?”
Touka’s rebuke made Yoriko jolt in surprise. Touka slapped her hand over her mouth without thinking, and Mayuhara smirked, looking at her like she was sizing her up.
“Kirishima, you just got mad at Kosaka, didn’t you?”
“What?!”
I got frustrated, but you’re the one to blame, Touka thought. However, Mayuhara kept on.
“You guys are so different. I bet you get frustrated with her a lot when you’re together, don’t you?”
“Just shut up …”
“And I mean, when you eat Kosaka’s cooking you just always look so grossed out.”
“What?”
Touka was thrown for a moment by this attack from an unexpected angle. That’s because I can’t eat human food. But I can’t tell you that.
“Kirishima, you’re the kind of girl who doesn’t need anyone but yourself, and there are lots of boys who’d go out with Kosaka. But I heard you two are going to the zoo together? So childish. You can’t really be into that.”
Touka looked at Yoriko. She had gone pale. Without a second thought, Touka grabbed Mayuhara by the collar. The other girls who were nearby screamed.
“If you say one more word …”
“But I don’t hear you denying it. I hit the nail on the head,
didn’t I?”
Mayuhara’s words hit Touka right where she was most sensitive—her identity. She couldn’t say Mayuhara hadn’t the nail on the head.
“How nice of her to stick up for you, Kosaka,” Mayuhara said to Yoriko, who was only able to stand there, pale-faced, and look on. Yoriko’s eyes were brimming with tears. Touka once again tightened her grasp on Mayuhara’s uniform collar, her fists pressed against the girl’s chest.
“Seriously, if you say one more word—” I’ll kill you.
The words were on the tip of her tongue. But before she could say them out loud, she heard a man’s voice in the classroom.
“What are you girls doing?”
It was their history teacher, Mr. Tsuruda. One of Mayuhara’s friends had gone to get him.
“Ouch! Stop, please, I’m sorry, forgive me!”
The first to react was Mayuhara. She threw herself to the floor, coughing violently, her hands clasped to her chest.
“Wha—”
“Kirishima! What did you do to her?”
Naturally, Mr. Tsuruda put the blame on Touka.
“No, sir, it wasn’t like that, Touka was just …”
“Ow …” Mayuhara whined. “Mr. Tsuruda, sir …”
Yoriko again started to leap to Touka’s defense, when Mayuhara started wailing.
“Nothing makes me cry! Kirishima, you’re just awful!”
“Mayuhara, are you all right? Are you in pain?” Mayuhara’s friends got her to stand up as if they were supporting her weight, providing cover for her. All the girls were sharp-tongued. The way they talked, whatever Touka tried to say would come back at her ten or twenty times worse.
“No, it’s not—Touka was just …”
“Kirishima, staff room—now!”
Mr. Tsuruda grabbed Touka’s arm and began pulling her after him.
When they walked past Mayuhara, she said, just loud enough for only Touka to hear, “Hilarious.”
There was only malice in her words.
“Touka!”
When Mr. Tsuruda’s sermon was over and Touka stepped out of the staff room, Yoriko was pacing confusedly along the wall in the hallway. Did she follow us?
“I’m so sorry, this is all my fault …”
“You did nothing wrong, Yoriko,” Touka said bluntly. She started heading toward the classroom, but Yoriko stayed glued to the spot.
“Yoriko?”
Her face was downcast; she had her shirt tightly clenched in her fists.
“Seriously. You did nothing wrong. Mayuhara’s the problem,” Touka added. “Anyway, I only made her cry once.”
I hate when people are always fake like that. And she’s the kind of girl that if you turned your back, the same thing would happen again. Before lunchtime’s over, I’m gonna settle this once and for all.
“No, Touka, you can’t!” Yoriko saw what Touka was up to. “Whatever you’ve got in mind, you can’t.”
“Why not? If someone said that to you, you’d hate it too.”
“I did hate it. But maybe it’s kind of true.”
“What? What did you just say? Why would you say that?” Touka heard what Yoriko said as a defense of Mayuhara, and it made her angrier. “Anyway, she’s gonna pay for this.”
Talking won’t get me anywhere.
“You can’t!” Once again, Yoriko put a halt to Touka’s impatience.
Touka paused. “Yoriko, that dumb bitch wouldn’t know something to cry over if it hit her. If we don’t settle this she’ll think she’s won!”
I’m only doing this for Yoriko, so why does she want me to stop?
Her tone of voice, which had ended up sounding like she was yelling, had made Yoriko start shaking.
“I’m …”
Yoriko’s lips were tightly drawn, as if she were holding back something. But a thin film had formed over her blinking eyes, and the corners of her eyes gleamed in a way that wasn’t normal.
By the time Touka realized what she’d done it was too late. Her emotions, running wild in this unexpected situation, started to come back under control at the same speed as Yoriko’s teardrops fell.
“I’m happy you care so much, Touka,” she said, stringing the words together between sobs without even wiping away her tears. “But … but … ”
The tears spilled down her cheeks in heavy drops.
“But whatever you do to her won’t make me happy!”
In my cursed life, the number of people I’ve crushed is uncountable. All the screaming, the rage, the sorrow. I’ve experienced extreme situations with all five senses and come through the other side, but here I am, frozen by the words of a mere human, a powerless girl.
There was one more thing.
Why?
Yoriko’s tears and cries overlapped, in Touka’s mind, with the way she’d seen Hinami cry during the battle with Mado. And Hinami had sobbed, “Revenge doesn’t matter to me, I’m just sad.”
After that, Yoriko’s attitude changed. It wasn’t that she blatantly avoided Touka. It was just that she didn’t have the same smile as before when they spoke. Touka saw signs that she was trying to say something in her own way, but the words didn’t come out.
And it was the same with Touka. She was puzzled by the way Yoriko was distancing herself from her, when she’d always been so gentle and positive toward Touka before.
“Having a pastry again today?” Yoriko asked one lunch hour, seeing Touka opening the plastic wrapper of a pastry from a convenience store.
“Oh. Yeah …”
Yoriko’s expression was somehow hardened.
The conversation ended, and quietly Yoriko started eating her own lunch. Before she would’ve told me I needed to eat more and given me some of her own lunch …
A Ghoul’s body won’t accept human food, so on a physical level, this was all probably for the best. But on a mental level, it was a completely different story.
And there was Mayuhara laughing with her friends as if nothing had happened. She hadn’t really cared that Touka and Yoriko were too close to the boy she liked. When Touka saw her laughing away despite the pain she’d inflicted on them, she was filled with the urge to kill.
Dammit.
It took a day, maybe two, before she saw the solution.