“Phew…” I exhaled deeply, trying to let out the heat that felt trapped inside me. Then I opened up my book again. I threw myself into the sea of words in an attempt to calm down my jumbled mind, but all I could see were markings on a page—the words meant nothing to me.
When I heard the final school bell ring, I closed my book. Odajima was on the sofa looking at her phone. She glanced up at the same time as I lifted my eyes from my book.
“Heading home?” I asked.
“Duh,” she said, snorting. “That was the last bell; we have to.” She shoved her phone into her cardigan pocket. Incidentally, it was also against the rules to use phones inside the school building. Then she lightly plodded out of the room.
I locked the windows and pulled the curtains closed, then followed her out into the hallway. I pushed the key into the lock and turned it with a click.
“You weren’t focused,” she said.
“On what?”
“Reading.”
“Is that what it looked like?” I asked. She nodded with a mischievous smile.
“You’ve been a total space case ever since I told you about the transfer student.”
“Oh…,” I muttered coldly, pulling the key out of the lock. I pulled on the knob several times to make sure it was locked properly and then sighed. She was right; ever since she brought up the transfer student, I’d been remembering the girl from my past who shared the same name.
That was how much of a mark that girl had left on my heart.
Once I was done locking up, I started to return the key to the office, but Odajima tugged on my arm. “Hey. So what’s the deal with this Ai Mizuno girl? What is she to you?” Odajima usually wore a big smile on her face that was like a mask; she rarely showed her real emotions. But now she was peering earnestly into my eyes.
It threw me off a bit, to be honest.
I’d known Odajima for a long time, so I knew that face meant there was no use trying to hide anything from her. I thought for a minute about how to explain, and then I told it to her straight: “I don’t know.” She gave me a puzzled look. “But,” I added, “I do know that…I’ll never forget her.”
“Oh, I get it.” She giggled, nodding. “In that case, I hope it’s her.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she was so important to you that you can’t forget her,” she replied casually. I didn’t know what to say to that. When I didn’t reply, she sniffed and leaped out in front of me, her indoor shoes smacking against the floor. “You’re gonna return the key, right?”
“Of course. Just like I always do.”
“’Kay. Thanks.” She nodded and waved, calling out, “Bye!” and then heading for the entrance. I watched and sighed as she left.
She was so important to you that you can’t forget her. I reflected on Odajima’s words as I climbed the stairs toward the faculty office. Was that really true? Maybe I was just caught up in my own feelings of guilt. I’d carelessly gotten close to her, and then, without ever truly understanding how she felt, I’d pulled away. I always wondered if I had hurt her…but in the end, I didn’t even know that for sure.
“Excuse me.” I returned the key to the box in the back of the office and wrote my name on the log-in sheet. It was my usual routine, and once I’d finished, I headed toward the school entrance.
The hallway was dim as I stopped in front of the lockers to change back into my outside shoes. I could hear the chatter of the sports teams in the fields as they cleaned up before going home.
I loved school at this time of day. The tiny measure of time called “today” had ended, and everyone was headed home. And in the process, we were all gradually moving toward “tomorrow.” With a sense of both loneliness and safety, we gradually carved out each day amid the endless flow of time.
Describing it like that made it sound trivial, but if I didn’t lock it into words, this time of day I loved so much would pass right by me, unnoticed and unappreciated.
Plus, whenever something dramatic happened, it tended to be right around now.
Normally, I didn’t pay much attention to the soccer field, but for some reason I looked over at it—and something strange caught my eye.
There was a girl lying on the ground with her arms and legs spread out, and she was wearing a school uniform. The soccer and baseball team members who were cleaning up after practice shot her weird looks, but the girl didn’t seem to care. And I recognized her.
My heart skipped a beat.
I slowly walked over to the field, as if led there by some force.
“What are you doing?” I asked the girl as she lay on the ground. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead as she answered.
“Looking at the sky.”
“But why are you doing that here?”
“If I’m going to be spending every day at this school from now on, I thought I better see how the sky looks from smack-dab in the center of it.”
“Why can’t you look at it while standing up?”
“Because I thought I’d get along with this school better if I lay down on the ground instead.”
The way she looked, her voice, even the things she said lined up perfectly with a certain girl from my past.
I let out a hot breath.
My entire body was covered with sweat as I called her name. “It’s time to go home now…Mizuno.”
Suddenly she gasped and looked at me. And her eyes slowly widened. “…Yuzuru?”
“…Yeah. Long time no see, Mizuno,” I answered with an awkward smile.
She had a strange look on her face as she repeated what I’d said in a murmur.
“Mizuno…”
She seemed confused for a split second by the way I’d addressed her. Her eyes swam around, and then she quickly hopped to her feet and brushed the dirt off the back of her skirt.