“…Yes?”
“You told me that sometimes people have feelings they can’t express in words, right?”
I felt my body tense up.
She was smiling, but for some reason, her demeanor felt cold. “You’re good at drawing those hard-to-express emotions out of people with your kind words. But…”
She narrowed her eyes as they bored into me. “I think you should know that there are people out there who don’t want anyone to understand them. And those kind words of yours can really screw them up.”
As I listened to her speak, I thought about a certain classmate of mine.
“Is that…how you pushed Sousuke away?” I asked.
Her eyes glinted. “What did he tell you?” she asked sharply.
I shook my head in response.
She snorted and put on an ominous smile. “I get it now. That’s the reason you asked me if I smoked.”
“……”
She took my silence as affirmation.
“There’s nothing between me and Andou. There wasn’t before, either. But…I guess he still cares about me.” She spoke so flatly I honestly couldn’t tell what she was feeling.
I’d never seen Sousuke act so suspiciously about anyone except for Ai, so there must have been something between the two of them. But she insisted there wasn’t, and her tone said that if there had been something, it was trivial at best.
I stared at her profile in silence. Then she turned and made eye contact with me.
“You really like to think up stories, don’t you?”
“Huh?”
“You think everyone has a story with emotions that drive the narrative forward, and that it’s all so precious.”
She slowly narrowed her eyes and fixed me with a sharp gaze. It felt like someone was grabbing hold of my heart.
“I don’t have a story,” she said firmly. She stared at me with a faint smile and that cold look in her eyes. “So, would you please leave me alone already?”
She gave off an indescribable pressure that left me speechless.
My mouth opened and closed fruitlessly—I couldn’t think of a response. I knew that whatever I said wouldn’t make a difference to her anyway.
After a few seconds of silence, she clapped her hands together and smiled. “Just kidding!” In the blink of an eye, she was back to her usual persona.
Heading back into the building again, she reached for the doorknob and said, “Next time I see you, give me back the box cutter you took from me. It doesn’t belong to you.”
And with that, she waved and left the roof.
I could never tell what she was thinking.
She’d said that some people didn’t want anyone to understand them and that my words could screw them up. I wasn’t really sure what she was trying to say, but at the same time, her words filled me with fear.
I didn’t understand a thing about what was going on between her and Sousuke.
“Yuzuru!” The sound of Ai calling my name brought me back to my senses.
I turned and saw her giving me a look.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I got caught up in that conversation.”
“It’s fine. C’mere!” She beckoned to me, and I nodded and walked over.
The two of us sat side by side, leaning against the fence.
“…Do you know that girl?” she asked, and although she had a smile on her face, it looked kind of awkward.
“Yeah. She’s a member of the literature club, though she’s never been to a meeting.”
“Oh…” Ai nodded vaguely and looked over at the door, as if staring at Nagoshi’s now-absent back. “She’s kinda…scary.”
“Huh?” I’d never heard Ai talk like that before, so I was surprised.
She gasped, as if just now realizing she’d said that out loud. Then she unwrapped her lunch on her lap. “Anyway, let’s eat!”
“O-okay…” I nodded and unwrapped my lunch, too.
We both clapped our hands together and then dug in.
She picked up some white rice with her chopsticks and put it in her mouth. It seemed like a pretty big bite, but she shoved it in anyway. She looked like a cute little chipmunk.
Eating like that, she inevitably got some grains of rice stuck to the side of her mouth.
“You’ve got rice on your mouth,” I pointed out.
“Do I?!” she exclaimed and started chewing faster. “Where is it?” She turned toward me.
She could’ve just felt around with her finger. Hesitantly, I reached out toward the corner of her mouth.
“There.”
She cocked her head to the side like a little bird. “Where…?”
“I said, there.”
“Will you get it for me?”
“Huh?” I drew back my hand. I had reservations about doing stuff like this. Not because I thought it was gross, but because…it made my heart pound just thinking about it.
Ai didn’t like my reaction and pouted. This brought the grain of rice lower on her face, and the sight of it was so funny I burst out laughing.
“What?! Why are you laughing?!”
“Because the rice… Ha-ha-ha…”
“Get it already!”
“F-fine!”
I could tell that she wasn’t going to let me off the hook, so I hesitantly reached toward her mouth. I touched the grain of rice, and it stuck to my fingertip. My fingers were trembling because my heart was pounding so hard.
“There, I got it.”
“Mmph.”
“Wha—?!”
Before I could move, she’d eaten the rice right off my finger. I was so startled, I made a weird noise. The soft feeling of her lips lingered on my finger, and I felt my face flush red.
“Hee-hee. Thanks!”
“…Ai.”
“Did I make your heart race?”
“…Haah.” I sighed, and she laughed.
This exchange made me realize she was no longer the innocent girl I’d known before. Now, she used that innocence to go on the attack. Some part of me wished I could be as open with my feelings…but after trying to imagine it, I realized it was impossible for me.
If I was as bold as she was and acted on every impulse I had, we would already be dating.
…I remembered my conversation with Kaoru before I came up to the roof. I was definitely attracted to Ai. The feelings I had for her were almost certainly romantic. But at the same time…I barely knew anything about her.
Simply saying she was mysterious didn’t cover it. She had a kind of deep spirituality that couldn’t be dismissed with such a basic word.
I didn’t want to make another mistake and get close to her again without understanding that part of her… I wanted us to take the time to get to know each other better before we gave our relationship another chance.
As those thoughts ran through my head, I noticed Ai was looking up. I followed suit and felt like the clear, cloudless sky was swallowing me up into a field of blue.
“I’m glad Kaoru came back to school again,” Ai said quietly.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I hope she starts coming to club meetings again, too.”
“Yeah.”
Her words shot up toward the sky, and as they fell back down toward me, I nodded in response. It felt kind of like a game of catch, and I liked it.
“Yuzuru?”
“Yeah?”
She tilted her head toward me. I looked back at her, and she narrowed her eyes gently. “Did Kaoru say she loved you?”
“…What?”
She giggled when she saw how clearly flustered I was. “She did, didn’t she?”
“No, she…”
“Good,” Ai said plainly.
I widened my eyes. “What do you mean, ‘good’?” I asked, and she gazed up at the sky again.
“She seemed like she was really hurting.” Ai was calm as she spoke. “It’s really painful to part ways with someone without expressing your feelings and then come to regret it. I know how that feels…” She turned toward me again. “I didn’t want Kaoru to regret anything.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “But if I told her that…she’d only clam up more.”
I stared at her wordlessly.
It seemed like she saw things much, much clearer than I did.
“Follow your heart, Yuzuru,” she said.
“Huh?” I stared at her, not understanding. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“Well…” She reached over and took my hand. Her palm was warm. “I mean, make sure to date the person you really love.” She squeezed my fingers.
I didn’t know how to respond. I never imagined she’d say that to me.
“I really love you and I want you to love me back, okay?”
She’d said that to me before. At the time, I’d thought it came from a kind of innocent confidence, like she was certain I’d love her back.
But did this mean that Ai had considered I might fall in love with Kaoru?
“Promise me, okay?” She turned her whole body toward me this time and wrapped both hands around mine, like she was praying. “I don’t want you to regret anything again, either.”
I inhaled deeply.
…She felt the same. She felt the same as I did.
I didn’t want to have regrets over anyone else ever again. Not over Ai, and not over Kaoru.
And Ai felt the same way.
If I decided to be with her while harboring regrets over someone else, she’d regret it, too.
Since we’d started talking again…I had to be honest with her about my feelings until the very end.
I nodded. “Okay, I understand.”
She flashed me a satisfied smile. Then she took a lemon-colored tamagoyaki from her lunchbox and held it out to me with her chopsticks. “Here you go, Yuzuru.”
“Huh?”
“Say ‘ah’!”
I froze and she pouted, shoving the tamagoyaki toward me again. “Ahhh!”
“O-okay. Aahhh…”
“Hee-hee. Is it good?”
“I-it’s sweet.”
“You don’t like them sweet?”
“I don’t hate it, but…”
“You prefer them savory?”
“Y-yeah, if I had to choose.”
“Okay. Next time I’ll make you a savory one.”
The entire time we were talking, my heart was pounding like crazy.
When I broke up with Ai in junior high, I never would’ve imagined this day would come.
“About what I said before…” Ai smiled. “Make sure you fall in love with me, okay?”
She was always so straightforward. I smiled shyly and scratched my nose. “I’m not sure how I should respond, considering the conversation we just had.” I chuckled wryly, and she smiled at me.
Life with Ai beside me and club meetings with Kaoru were both things I’d come to take for granted. But at some point, I’d have to choose between them. And the thought of that made my heart ache a little.
A tinge of bittersweet pain had seeped into the sweetness of my daily life.
I thought, This must be love…