“Sorry for that unsightly display. If I were an alien, I’d zap you with a memory-erasing beam right now.”
Bringing along Sakura, who’d taken about five minutes to stop crying, Aya continued on toward the station. Along the way, Sakura, eyes swollen red, pointed a finger-gun back at Aya from behind. Hands up.
“If a beam like that existed, use it on every other second-year but me. Then I’d be top of the year.”
“Trying to boost yourself by putting other people down — you should probably stop that.”
“Says the person who just did exactly that?”
At Aya’s dutiful jab, a cheerful “ehehe” floated up from behind her. Seemed like she’d recovered some of her usual spirit — a relief.
Before long, the station came into view ahead of them.
They jogged across on a blinking crosswalk signal, just barely making it. Riding the escalator up to the ticket gates, Aya pulled out her phone, its case holding her transit IC card, and turned back to Sakura.
“Tokiwa, which way’s your station?”
“Inbound side.”
“Ah, so we split up here.”
Having finally gotten to hear her genuine feelings, Aya honestly wanted to keep talking a bit longer. But whether it was worth holding her back here, dragging her off somewhere to keep talking, felt like a stretch. There was nowhere to take her, no relationship that called for it. Nothing here needed a rushed answer, and given they’d already closed some distance, it seemed fine to let her feelings settle and talk again another day.
Aya passed through the ticket gate and turned toward the stairs for the outbound side, half-turning back to say her goodbye — “well—” — but when she turned, Sakura’s tear-swollen face was right there in front of her.
She’d apparently plastered herself directly behind Aya with an unabashed expression, and now declared:
“Making someone this cute cry and just letting her go home like that?”
Aya, unable to help it, shot her a flat, half-lidded look. What was this underclassman even saying.
“Don’t twist my words like that. …What, want me to take you to a cafe or something?”
“Eh, wait, are you into me now? Sorry, I don’t think of senpai as more than a friend—”
“You’re really— well, I guess it beats crying, at least.”
Sakura hugged herself defensively as if wary of something, and Aya laughed wryly. The smug smile was bratty but cute. And going from less-than-a-friend to actual friend — probably worth celebrating.
“Want to come to my place, then?”
Her shift didn’t start until tonight. Entertaining her at home for a bit wouldn’t be much trouble.
Aya offered this with that thought in mind, but Sakura, surprisingly innocent about it, misread something entirely, brows furrowing sharply, cheeks tinting faintly, voice cracking into an “eh?!” Caught off guard by the unexpectedly big reaction, Aya blinked, lips pursed.
“No, I mean — chilling out at my place. My parents aren’t home tonight.”
She’d meant “feel free to relax,” but Sakura only raised her guard further, glaring at Aya like a small animal facing down a predator. Feeling like this was somehow being badly misunderstood, but worried that over-explaining would only dig the hole deeper, Aya paused to think it through carefully.
—Then, remembering Yuki, the household’s local tourist attraction came to mind.
“Um, right. My house has a ton of adult goods lying around.”
The muffled shout of “pervert!” that followed, kept quiet enough not to bother anyone nearby, was probably fair.
“You should’ve led with that. Anyone would’ve assumed you were after something physical just now.”
“My bad. That was the first time I’ve ever invited a same-sex friend to my place myself.”
At Aya’s explanation, Sakura, looking not entirely displeased, let out a “hmm” and eased off.
Down the stairs and onto the sparsely populated platform, the two walked side by side. A slightly cold wind made them forget summer already, and the electronic board showed the previous train had just departed.
Drawing on a year-plus of experience, Aya walked toward the spot where the car most likely to have open seats at this hour would stop. Then Sakura tugged at her hem. Turning with a “hm,” Aya found her pointing at the vending machine.
Aya couldn’t help an exasperated look, but Sakura’s eyes lit up as she pointed again.
“You want me to treat you? After stealing my cocoa the other day, no less?”
“That was on the senpai who couldn’t even run an errand properly. This one’s for… um, making me cry, and… also inviting an underclassman to a house full of ero goods.”
“Hey, that’s way too unfair a framing. What, it’s all technically true, isn’t it.”
Before finishing, Aya pulled out her phone and decided to just buy it with electronic payment.
Getting mooched off by an underclassman was a little pathetic, but given she’d covered more than her share of the drink cost the other day, call it evening things out. “What do you want?” Aya asked, tapping her card first, and Sakura pressed the same brand of cocoa Aya had bought the other day, chiming “cocoa!”
It dropped with a clunk, and Sakura, laughing, pulled it out with a “thanks for the meal.”
Watching this, Aya’s own tongue started craving something sweet too, so she pressed the button for her own cocoa first. Just as she went to tap her card again, Sakura beat her to it, pressing her own transit card against the reader first. Before Aya could get out an “ah,” the sound chimed and the same cocoa dropped down.
In front of a slightly dazed Aya, Sakura pulled it out, laughing, and held it out.
“I’ll buy yours. Be grateful, okay?”
What was even the point of that, Aya thought, but wasn’t crass enough to say it aloud. Charmed that she’d do something this cute, Aya softened and accepted it. “Thanks. Appreciated.”
The two of them stood side by side inside the yellow line, waiting for the train. They spent a quiet stretch of time watching the sky, gradually reddening, and the clouds drifting through it, feeling the breeze kicked up by cars passing in the distance.
Just a little while ago, they’d been at each other’s throats — funny how life worked out. Twisting off the metal cap, Aya took a sip of the steaming cocoa, letting out a small breath.
But even with things smoothed over between them, none of Sakura’s actual problems were solved.
She still couldn’t fully give up the path of fashion, and at the same time, probably couldn’t just charge ahead recklessly, disregarding her mother’s feelings either. Her mother, too, probably wanted to affirm her daughter’s choice on some level, but couldn’t easily let go of the stable option either.
If this were a hostile relationship, or purely an internal issue, it’d be simple. But because they genuinely loved each other, the resolution needed care. How should this even be reconciled — Aya, tucking the capped cocoa into her pocket, crossed her arms and sighed.
Then she noticed Sakura, right beside her, staring intently.
“What’s up?”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Dinner menu.”
“Huh, not about me, then.”
Sakura put on a deliberately, obviously sad face, and Aya scoffed, closing her eyes.
“…My family’s a single-parent household. And, not that I’m bragging, but I get along incredibly well with my dad. Pretty hands-off these days, but he affirms basically anything I want to do, and watches over my whole life, failures included, treating it all as mine to live. Honestly, I think I’ve had it pretty good.”
“That’s nice,” Sakura murmured, sincerely, smiling with a hint of envy.
“But — I think that’s only possible because I’ve never had a catastrophic failure.”
Sakura pressed her lips together, sending Aya a serious look, so Aya continued.
“My mom, who divorced my dad over an affair, has been working nightlife jobs since she was a teenager. There’s still an unbelievable amount of settlement money owed. So there’s this baseline assumption in my life that anything money can fix, can get fixed — and without that, I don’t think I could’ve taken as many chances as I have. My reality’s got a bit of a head start built in.”
Aya scratched the back of her head, sighing as if chasing off some lingering gloom.
“Reconciling a realistic view with the dream you actually saw — that’s hard, isn’t it.”
Sakura listened quietly for a while, as if letting the words settle, then eventually softened, a faint smile forming. She narrowed her still-swollen eyes toward the train tracks, thoughts drifting up into the pale blue sky glowing faintly there.
“Honestly… I still don’t know if it’s okay for me to become a fashion designer, and I still think following the stable, versatile path my mom suggests might be the safer bet.”
Then Sakura clasped her hands in front of her stomach and smiled, like something had finally cleared.
“But I’ll admit my approach up to now was wrong. I knew it, but — yeah. I think I can finally properly admit it now — that I’ve been hopelessly stupid about this. And that it’s okay to keep struggling with what my mom said. So—”
The calculated, cutesy smile from when they’d first met was gone; the anguished, conflicted expression Aya had seen a few times since was gone too. What remained was her genuinely cute, clear face.
“Thank you for putting it into words. I feel a lot lighter.”
Aya had kept worrying she might be an arrogant person. — Honestly, she still was, even now.
In the end, both her desire to help Sakura and her desire to hand her the “right” answer to her mistake had sprung from the same arrogant assumption that she herself was in the right. Sakura had just thanked her, but truthfully, Aya had also caught herself thinking of arguments to help win against her mother, entertaining all kinds of misguided ideas along the way. So she couldn’t really convince herself she was some upright, admirable person.
But even so. All that tangled, bothersome self-doubt dissolved completely in the face of Sakura’s gratitude, just now.
“You’re welcome.”