“Then show me around town!” Ai was being pretty forceful, and it didn’t seem like she would give in. At last, I sighed deeply and relented.
“Hang on. Let me go get my wallet and phone.”
“…Okay!” Her eyes sparkled with pure happiness, and once again, I was filled with conflicting emotions.
My house was about two train stops away from the school. If you really wanted to, you could walk there in thirty minutes, but I always took the train. Mom was the kind of person to say, “Rather than spend time getting to school, you might as well grab a few more minutes of sleep,” so she’d bought me a train pass and let me commute. Most of the students who lived in my neighborhood rode their bikes to school, however.
The area around my house was a ways removed from the city center. You could call it a nice, quiet neighborhood, though some might say it was out in the sticks.
There was a shopping district by the station, but it was modest compared to what you might find in the city.
Even though it was the weekend, there weren’t many people in the area. The street was lined with old-fashioned independently owned electronics stores, small bakeries, and other shops. I didn’t hate this area or anything—it had its own charm. But at the same time, it wasn’t the kind of place you’d see a lot of high-schoolers hanging out on the weekends.
And yet Ai’s eyes seemed to sparkle as we walked.
“Oh, the arcade’s still here! We played Extreme Fighter there once together, remember? We were both beginners and it was a total mess, but it was so fun!”
I gazed at Ai as she chatted away happily, matching her pace.
Back when we were dating, we would come here occasionally together. She had even come over to my house to hang out. That was why Mom had recognized her. So you could say this place held some memories for us. But that was all, really.
Just memories, nothing more. We didn’t have anywhere to go together, so why were we walking around like this? Those thoughts kept circling through my head as I walked a step behind her. Unlike me, she seemed so energetic. This was pretty much exactly how it was back in junior high.
She was always happy and carefree…and I was hardly even in her field of vis—
“Hey, Yuzuru?”
All of a sudden, she turned around, startling me.
“Wh-what?”
“Why are you walking behind me? It’s hard to talk to you when you’re back there.” She trotted over to my side and peered into my face.
She was so close that I began to feel embarrassed. I didn’t really like people being this physically close to me.
“It’s just… I dunno.”
“It’s just what?” She didn’t seem satisfied by my vague answer and leaned in even closer. I turned away, blushing.
“I was just thinking you look the same from behind as before.”
All of a sudden, her face brightened.
“You think so? Okay, then, see if I look the same from the side.”
“……”
That wasn’t the point. I started walking without answering so I wouldn’t get caught up in whatever this was.
She fell into step beside me.
“You said I look the same from behind.” She glanced at me as she spoke. “But you haven’t changed, either.”
I felt a throbbing sensation in my chest. You haven’t changed. I knew she was right, but for some reason it sounded insulting.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, and she cocked her head to the side thoughtfully, then answered with a smile.
“Because you’re not pushing me away.”
“…What?” My eyes went wide, and for the first time, Ai frowned a little.
“I did something pretty amazing today, you know?” she said. “I showed up at a classmate’s house uninvited and asked them to hang out. And it wasn’t just any old classmate, either. It was my ex-boyfriend.”
“…Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“It’s kinda creepy that I still had my ex’s address memorized, huh?” she said with a giggle. But it didn’t seem like she was gauging my reaction. It was as if she was simply stating a fact.
That, too, matched my memories of her.
“But you agreed to come with me anyway,” she said, “even if you did complain a bit.”
“It was kind of hard to say no…”
“Hmm. That’s not true.” She shut me down, and I wasn’t sure what else to say. She stared right into my eyes and spoke plainly. “If you really didn’t want to come, you wouldn’t have.” Her eyes crinkled into a smile. “So I’m relieved that you don’t hate me or anything.”
She said this in such a carefree manner that I felt a hot sensation suddenly well up inside me. “Well, you…!” I blurted out. I spoke louder than I’d meant to, startling her. “Well, you don’t hate me, either.”
She blinked several times and nodded. “Is that what you were worried about? You didn’t have to yell, you know.”
“Well…it was so hard for me to keep up with you… I didn’t understand you…and I broke up with you without even asking how you really felt.”
“That’s true.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you, Yuzuru.”
“………What?”
At those casual words, my mind went blank. She saw that I’d frozen up and shot me a puzzled look. “What?”
“What did you just say…?”
“Hm? I said I love you, Yuzuru.”
“But why…?”
“What’s with all the questions? I love what I love! So I’m relieved you don’t hate me.” She didn’t seem to care about my reaction at all and was satisfied to simply tell me how she felt.
I was so overwhelmed that I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. “But I…”
“Yuzuru.”
Here I was, still stuck in the past, and Ai said those words to me like it was nothing.
“I love you.”
It was like she was repeating it for good measure. I was completely paralyzed.
She cracked up laughing when she saw me. “Hey, stop making that face,” she said, and reached over to gently touch my cheek. I was sweaty from standing in the hot summer sun, but her hand felt so smooth and dry. I could feel the warmth of her skin even in the heat.
“Now smile.”
“Oww!”
Suddenly, she grabbed both of my cheeks and pulled them in opposite directions. The corners of my mouth rose, but the feeling of her pinching the thin skin hurt.
She let go of me once she saw I was in pain, and then cackled.
I rubbed my cheeks as she started walking again, still laughing. “It’s the weekend, so we might as well have fun!”
“Y-yeah…” Once again, I’d gotten swept away by her energy. I jogged to catch up to her.
Even though we broke up two years ago, Ai had just told me she loved me.
I had no idea why.
Even so, a part of me was a little happy about it, which just made me feel even more conflicted.
It seemed like, even two years later, my heart was still unsure.
“There are some shops that are different, but this place is pretty much the same.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you…”
Ai happily offered up her opinion as we strolled down the main street. Since this area was so sleepy, only chain stores with strict sales quotas tended to be replaced, and the atmosphere of the town wasn’t likely to change much in only two years.
It was a fact I’d taken for granted, but it seemed to thrill Ai. The way we saw the same things so differently made me aware once again of the uncrossable divide between us. Plus, as I watched her walk smiling through the deserted shopping district, it annoyed me that Ai could find even a place like this so spellbinding.
So much time had passed, but I could tell I was still attracted to Ai. Yet I also knew that those feelings would only tear us apart. Before I knew it, she and I were in front of a steep slope that stretched up from the edge of the shopping district. She stopped and looked at me.
“Is the park still there?”
I knew exactly which park she meant without having to ask. But I hesitated to answer. That was where Ai had confessed her feelings to me, and it was also the place where I’d broken up with her.
“Well? Is it?” she pressed.
Reluctantly, I nodded. “…Yeah, it’s still there.”
“Then I wanna go see it,” she said breezily, and once again I didn’t know what to say.
Honestly, it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to go with her. But she started climbing the slope without waiting for my answer.
“Let’s go, Yuzuru!”
“………Okay.” I nodded warily.
She grinned at me and continued climbing up the hill. I followed close behind her. She didn’t tell me to walk beside her this time, so I stared at her back the whole way up.
The place we were headed now held a lot more sentimental value than the shopping district we’d been wandering around in. But it was also the place that had put an end to those shared memories—that had killed them.
What would the two of us talk about, going to such a place together? Was there something she wanted to say to me there? My thoughts wandered as we both silently climbed the hill, heading toward the huge park at its summit.