“Ooh, right! You always did love reading!”
Odajima glanced over at me when Ai said that. I met her gaze only for her to quickly look away again.
“So? What are you doing here?” I asked impatiently, wondering why Ai had turned up all of a sudden and started talking to us. I could feel our other classmates staring. Honestly, it made me uncomfortable.
“What am I doing here…?” Ai repeated, then said casually, “I was walking down the hallway and I saw you, so I came to say hi.”
“…That’s all?”
“Yep, that’s all! I’m gonna go to my classroom now. See ya!” She smiled cheerfully and waved at both me and Odajima, then jogged out of the classroom. My classmates immediately started whispering.
Odajima turned back to me and said, “Why’d you two break up? She’s clearly crazy about you, Yuzu.”
“……”
Without answering, I turned back toward my desk and started getting out my things for class.
“Hey, say something.” Odajima poked me from behind, but I ignored her.
Thankfully, the school bell rang.
…Back then, it was exactly the same.
Ai would be super friendly and wave or come over to talk to me every time she saw me. She was like a puppy clinging to its mother.
But at the same time, she was like a cat. She’d get really absorbed in something else all of a sudden and then forget all about me.
She did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to. Paying attention to me was just one of her whims. And every day, I was subject to those whims.
I believed her when she said she loved me, and that’s why we started dating. But at the same time, she always prioritized her momentary interests over spending time with me. After a while, I found it hard to keep up.
I do believe she had feelings for me. No—I’m certain she did.
It’s just that, back then, there wasn’t ever an opportunity for me to really feel that.
“…Are you mad, Yuzu?” I heard a meek voice from behind me and sighed.
Honestly, I found Odajima grilling me about Ai annoying, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.
I turned around and shook my head. “I’m not mad.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry I asked you so many questions all at once.” She bowed her head, a guilty look on her face.
“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry, too.” It wasn’t nice of me to ignore her like that, so I apologized. She sighed in relief.
“Well…if you ever wanna talk about it, I’m here,” she said quietly. That was really kind of her, so I smiled and nodded.
“I will, thanks.”
Just as our conversation ended, the bell rang signaling the start of class, and Hirakazu Ogasawara, our Japanese and homeroom teacher, entered the classroom.
“Everyone, bow,” he called out in a bored monotone.
The class president relayed the command. “Everyone, stand and bow.”
Amid the relaxed atmosphere that accompanied the start of first period, Hirakazu carelessly plunked his textbook onto his desk. He barely paid attention to the students’ lazy greetings.
“I was going to chat for a bit before we started, but I can’t think of anything to say… So let’s continue from where we left off last time.”
The class booed him in unison, but he didn’t seem to mind. I absently stared at the chalkboard as he covered it with a messy scrawl.
I was thinking about Ai again.
“Let’s see…,” Hirakazu began. “Last time we left off at the part where Toyotaro met Elis, who he found weeping at the old church in Klosterstrasse, so this time…”
Several years had passed, and yet it seemed like Ai hadn’t changed at all. She was still carefree and innocent. You could never tell what she was thinking.
At the same time, I thought maybe I hadn’t changed much, either.
“It makes you curious why Elis was crying, doesn’t it? Well, to be honest, I don’t really care, but you all should. It’s more interesting that way.”
I never said what I was thinking or showed it with my actions, yet I selfishly demanded those same things from others. I was behaving in the same childish way as I had back then.
What did I think about Ai’s reappearance? What did I want her to do, and what did I want to do?
If I didn’t even understand myself, how could I know what I wanted to do next?
“…da. Asada!”
“Yes?!”
I was so absorbed in my own thoughts that I didn’t realize Hirakazu was calling on me. I hastily stood up. My classmates all snickered at my reaction.
“Start reading from the third line on page 156. And stop spacing out.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry…” I felt my face flush as I flipped through my textbook and began to read.
“‘The coward in me was overcome by compassion and sympathy, and without thinking, I went to her side. “Why are you crying?” I asked. “Perhaps because I am a stranger here I may be able to help you all the more.” I was astounded by my audacity…’”
Once I had started reading, my heart felt strangely calm. The flow of the words on the page seemed to comfort me.
At any rate, I decided to forget about Ai for the time being and focus on the task at hand.
After school, I walked to literature club like always. Normally, Odajima would only show up when she felt like it, but that day she went straight there with me.
“It’s unusual for you to come two days in a row,” I observed.
The moment I opened the door, she dived onto the sofa. Pouting, she looked at me and said, “Who cares? It’s not like there’s anything to do at home anyway. I might as well kill some time here.”
“Yeah, but if you’re just looking at your phone, what’s the difference?”
“Oh, stop being so picky and read your book!” Odajima shot back. She then began tapping on her phone screen as if to say the conversation was over.
I glanced at her, then took my novel out of my book bag and opened it up.
I’d loved reading ever since I was a child. Following the words on the page opened a door into a new world and taught me things I’d never known before.
Once I started reading, I began to drift along a sea of beautiful words, unbothered by anything else. I loved that comforting feeling.
Come to think of it, I believe I always struggled with uncertainties. But there were no lies in books.
There might be tricks designed to mislead the reader, such as those in a mystery book, but the truth was still there—it was just hidden. Even if the characters inside the story lied, the story didn’t lie to the readers.
Sometimes an error would later be discovered in an academic text, but for the most part, those were genuine mistakes and not an attempt by the author to deceive. And besides, the reader, too, bore a responsibility to verify the information contained in what they read.
But while I was afloat on the sea of words, all I had to do was surrender myself to their current. And to someone like me, who preferred that certainty, navigating social relationships was very difficult.
The way people felt and the things they said were ever-changing. It wasn’t easy to figure out what lay deep down inside them. Especially when it came to free-spirited girls like Ai.
Though I loved certainty, somehow I’d ended up drawn to a girl who was like uncertainty incarnate.
How did it end up like this…?
Suddenly, I realized that I was just skimming the text and wasn’t really reading it. I sighed.