“What else was I supposed to do? We needed to get it out of there fast, and sticking it to myself was the only thing I could come up with…,” said Kumori.
The girls had found a faucet in the park and washed Kumori’s wound in some clean water.
Now the two of them were walking side by side. They were going to a local hospital, one by the train station. Hinata didn’t stop crying or trembling the whole time.
The Injury Peeling Cream was gone. There was no peeling the cut away. Kumori was stuck with it.
“If…if I knew this would happen to you, I’d have given up on my stupid revenge plan…”
Hinata knew this was her fault. It had happened because she wanted revenge. Because she couldn’t let go of the past. And she’d ended up hurting the person who mattered most in the world to her.
Kumori didn’t seem all that upset, though.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she told Hinata. “Failing and being wrong aren’t the same thing. Sometimes you can do everything right and not get what you want. Just because you didn’t get your revenge, it doesn’t mean you were wrong to try.”
Even now, despite all the pain she must have been feeling, she was still the same calm, collected Kumori as ever.
Drip, drip, drip…
A steady flow of liquid fell onto the sidewalk as the two friends made their way along. Some of it was dirty water from the river. Some of it wasn’t.
Hinata moaned and shook her head over and over. “No, I was wrong. Right from the start, I was wrong. This is proof of that. You getting hurt this bad is the worst possible thing that could happen. This is all so, so wrong…!”
Hinata screamed at the top of her lungs. Kumori stayed by her side, smiling gently.
✦ ✦ ✦
…Hey, Hinata. Can you hear me?
I know, I know. You’re going to regret what you did no matter what I say. Nothing I can say now will change that. Do you think you’ll feel this way for your whole life?
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that Injury Peeling Cream.
I think a demon must have invented that stuff. It happens all the time in stories, right? A person gets some kind of mysterious item with weird powers, and everything goes wrong. Because right from the start, it was designed to make humans unhappy. If someone buys the item and does what the demon wants, the demon wins. If they use it in a different way and become happy, the human wins instead. I guess that means you lost this time. So long as you keep regretting buying that cream, you’re playing right into the demon’s hands.
But you know, if I’d been the one who bought it instead, I think we would have won. Even if everything else played out exactly the same. You know why? Because I understand how important revenge was to you. For you to want to give up on that, to say you were wrong for even trying…that shows how much more important I am to you, doesn’t it?
I’m sorry that you have to suffer like this, Hinata.
But right now, I can’t stop myself from smiling. I’m so very happy, from the bottom of my heart.