Several uneventful days passed, and then Sunday arrived.
Aya sat on an upturned beer crate, dangling a fishing line into the moat, yawning.
Splash. A fish jumped two spots down.
The fishing pond was a pool hollowed out of a concrete platform with water run through it, with weeds and upturned beer crates growing around its edge in a jumble. Elderly men made up most of the other customers, and for a clear-skied Sunday morning at a fishing pond, there weren’t many people around. It was quiet enough that talking a little wouldn’t bother anyone.
“Apparently they’ll prep any rainbow trout you catch for a hundred yen. Let’s ask them later.”
“Mahiru-senpai, excuse me, but have you heard of counting your chickens before they hatch?”
“Ha ha ha… sssh—fwoo. I thought you’d catch them in droves, splashing around, but it’s actually not that easy. Well, whatever, let’s enjoy the time.”
Sitting beside Aya, Mahiru grinned lazily, her line in the water. Aya gave her an exasperated look, and Mahiru changed the subject.
“So? Anything new lately? Hearing about what you’ve been up to is my number one hobby.”
“Could you not treat other people’s lives as entertainment?”
She fired that back, but since it didn’t bother her as much as the words suggested, she yawned and then answered at a leisurely pace.
“Well, a lot’s happened. For example — I went to see a movie with that doctor-family girl, and somehow a rumor that we’re dating spread through the whole school. Then an underclassman who heard it came to confess to me.”
“Hey hey hey hey. What is that, tell me the details.”
Explaining it all to a leaning-in Mahiru took only a few minutes.
“I want to go to school… I shouldn’t have dyed my hair…!”
Having heard it through, Mahiru left her rod stuck in its holder and clutched her head, groaning in a voice kept low enough not to disturb the other customers. Her blonde hair and piercings glittered in the morning light. The piercings could just come out, but redyeing her hair would be a hassle. Aya spat out an exasperated “idiot,” and then—
“…Still, so you’ve hit your popularity era too.”
Mahiru said this wistfully, and Aya scowled. “Huh?”
“What, not so? You’re surrounded by girls, seems fun.”
“They’re both charming, sure. But we’re not like that. One’s just using me as an outlet for her stress, and the other one — I’m the one approaching her, and she’s not into it. If anything, she probably dislikes me. I’m nosy.”
She thought she’d gotten reasonably close to Sakura, but if asked whether they’d built the kind of relationship where Sakura would approach her, she wasn’t sure. She’d only pushed a stalled girl’s back forward when she hadn’t wanted it. She hadn’t done anything worth being liked for.
Mahiru laughed, relieved.
“So you’re still single, in the end.”
“Nothing wrong with that. It’s comfortable.”
“I’d date you again, you know. The spot’s always open.”
Mahiru spread her arms slightly with a welcoming smile, and Aya shrugged.
“You should find a new girlfriend yourself, senpai.”
“With this personality? They never last.”
“Of course not. — I don’t mind that side of you, but plenty of people would find total lack of possessiveness lonely. They’d start wondering if they’re even loved.”
Aya leaned toward her face a little pointedly as she said it, and Mahiru pursed her lips and went quiet.
“I just want the other person to be as free as I am.”
“If both people are completely free, that’s the same as ‘strangers who have sex.’ That’s why I figured you didn’t need me, and I didn’t need you.”
“Don’t say such lonely things.”
“Just so there’s no misunderstanding, I like you, senpai. I just don’t need a girlfriend.”
Aya’s attempt at reassurance had a follow-up sting in it, and Mahiru shrugged and sighed.
They watched the water in silence for a while. The only person Aya could share this kind of silence with without it feeling stifling was, at the moment, Mahiru. Feeling the autumn morning wind, the two of them fished the clouds swimming across the sky with their eyes.
“By the way.”
“Yes?”
“The sewing girl — is she going to be able to move forward?”
Aya stared blankly at the float for a few seconds, thinking, then let out a breath. She was impressed, exasperated, and grateful all at once at how good Mahiru was at reading people’s insides. — In truth, she’d said what needed saying and pushed her back. But that was, in the end, just an “affirmation of her choice.”
She’d only talked about the value of a wish to a girl who wanted to become someone. Whether that girl could muster the courage was another matter, and whether her mother would nod was another again. In other words, she might have helped Sakura choose the path of fashion, but not helped her realize it.
“I don’t know.”
At Aya’s forced answer, Mahiru looked at her without speaking. Aya looked back.
“I only pushed her back. It’s like I fixed a car’s engine. When the driver hits the accelerator or which way she turns the wheel isn’t something I’ll ever know.”
That surely wasn’t a mechanic’s business.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad, though. Even if forcibly pulling someone by the hand is the same as pushing an easier path onto them, I can’t help wondering whether I should’ve done a little more.”
She added that last bit almost as an excuse, and Mahiru laughed. “Isn’t that fine?” Aya looked at her with a round, blank face, asking what she meant, and the answer came without hesitation.
“It’s a rational trade-off of ‘what should be done, what should be.’ What did you want her to do? If you’d wanted her to pursue fashion, you could’ve interfered more.”
Mahiru glanced at Aya’s serious gaze and, narrowing her eyes behind her sunglasses, said, “But that’s not it, is it?”
Aya, still gripping her rod, narrowed her eyes and let out a deep, deep breath into the distance. The clouds drifted by.
First, she’d exposed the fake confession out of simple curiosity. The next morning, she’d called out to her at the shoe lockers because she couldn’t ignore the gossip. But then she’d heard about the club, overlapped it with her own experience, and — knowing it was arrogant — sympathized with someone whose dream had been forced to end by outside circumstances. The goal wasn’t for her to take up fashion, but—
“I wanted her to get back on her feet.”
Mahiru’s cheek curled upward as Aya murmured this.
“Your arrogance, then, is ‘wanting her to be able to walk her own path again.’ In that case, this is fine as it is. You gave her both the motivation and the means to choose her own path. In the end she might choose something other than fashion, but it’ll be a path she chose herself.”
They watched a distant angler’s rod quiver. Hurry up and get a bite, they both thought, waiting.
“Kids are often compared to blank canvases. Following that — interfering in someone’s life is the same as someone else putting a brush to it. If that happens, it stops being that person’s work. But if a kid wants to paint a beautiful blue sky, and you show her a beautiful sky, or teach her how to mix her paints, it’s still her who sets the brush down. That can’t be a bad thing.”
Mahiru turned her eyes toward the vivid blue sky above and quietly took off her sunglasses.
“Walking away without speaking to a struggling painter might be a little cold and aloof, but grabbing the brush and slapping paint on for her isn’t the only kind of kindness. You’re fine as you are.”
She knew it was simple of her, but those words saved her.
Even if she thought about it deeply, she’d only reach a conclusion similar to Mahiru’s. So she decided that was enough. She looked at the bobbing float and smirked.
“Your canvas must be a mess of colors, senpai. Like the tester notepad in the stationery section of a bookstore.”
“With eight billion people on Earth, one or two of them can be like that. I won’t deny people who want to become someone, but it should be fine not to become anyone, too.”
Mahiru put her sunglasses back on and glanced at Aya sideways.
“What matters is having the right to decide for yourself. That’s worth protecting.”
Not everyone had the will and the ability to live as freely as she did. Some people found comfort in the light leaking from someone else’s path, and some wanted to take the easy way on rails someone else had laid. But — right, what mattered wasn’t being forced, it was making that judgment yourself. Being unable to deny someone’s words and killing your own self because of it — pushed far enough, even that could be called self-judgment, but if being forced to swallow a family’s words counted as judgment, then children made plenty of self-judgments, and in reality ended up doing whatever their parents said.
But parents, too, didn’t want to hand their children the anguish of the path they’d walked. It’d be absurd to make someone precious walk a road you knew had a pitfall. A pioneer’s anguish and a child’s wish collided at times like that, and something broke somewhere; but once you noticed it, someone ought to be there with a splint.
“Oh, right.”
Aya broke off her thoughts at Mahiru’s voice and looked over. “What is it?”
“Going back a bit — did you ever find who started the dating rumor?”
Aya thought it over for a while, then decided to tell her everything.
“No. I made a big deal of it, so I worried it might turn into a lynching of whoever did it.”
“So the culprit got off scot-free.”
It was her usual breezy, joking tone, but Aya sensed a faint edge of fiercer emotion in her delivery. She said “ah…” and let her eyes wander into the air, looking for words.
“I didn’t sense strong malice, so I judged it wasn’t a problem.”
“Not okay. Malice isn’t a matter of strong or weak. If actual harm comes of it and you don’t deal with it, they’ll get cocky.”
“‘Actual harm’ — it’s just a dating rumor. A correction would fix it.”
“Would it? What if it grows into a rumor about illicit relations? Could a correction fix that too? Maybe. But what if — say — it interferes with the doctor-family girl’s university plans? Could you dismiss even that as a leap of reasoning with no malice behind it?”
True. The end of that rumor’s road might well hold something that grim.
But it wasn’t impossible to fix by word of mouth either, and she didn’t think it was something to rush into. That wasn’t optimism; it was the rational answer from the current situation.
“Are you maybe angry?”
At Aya’s troubled question, Mahiru snorted.
“I can’t stay calm when someone’s harassing my precious underclassman.”
“Why are you so serious about other people when you’re so casual about your own stuff?”
“Well, you can’t talk.”
True — she’d been agonizing over Yuki’s and Sakura’s problems while treating her own future so lightly. Aya fell silent, searching for a rebuttal, but Mahiru talked over her.
“Anyway, I’ll do my own thing, don’t worry. Don’t worry, I won’t make a scene.”
There’d be no stopping her now, so Aya sighed and accepted it. Realistically, Mahiru wouldn’t do anything that would trouble her, nor was she the sort to carry out the lynching Aya feared. She judged it fine to leave it alone.
“Well, I trust you second-most in the world. If you say so, I’ll leave it to you.”
“Who’s first?”
“My dad. Third is me.”
“Ah, blood ties are a tall wall.”
That afternoon, Aya went home, showered and changed, and started her shift minding the adult corner from the evening. Most shops are busy at this hour on a weekend, but here it was actually a lot duller than a weekday night. With no customers, she killed time watching videos.
Since Yuki had been chatting with her often lately, the relative boredom was harder to bear, and Aya yawned, just then. Her phone, playing a cat video, buzzed, and a pop-up appeared: “Can I come over now?”
The sender was Tokiwa Sakura, whose contact info she’d exchanged the other day. Aya went blank, eyes round.
Surprised but with no reason to refuse, she opened the message and replied with a panda sticker for “okay.” A moment later, apparently having the same set, Sakura sent back a sticker of the panda sprinting.
About thirty minutes later, a “Arrived” message came. Wondering if she should go meet her, Aya replied “got it” and stepped out through the swing door — and almost immediately, a familiar girl, looking tense, came through the noren curtain. For a moment, Aya nearly said, “Who?”
Naturally, Sakura was in casual clothes. It felt oddly fresh, and Aya found herself staring.
Her appearance was so fraudulently, terrifyingly lovely — nobody would believe such a girl could hide such a sharp tongue. Her chestnut semi-long hair was styled in a loosely braided down-do, and the nape of her neck peeking out was slender and glossy. Over a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled to three-quarter length, she wore a warm-looking beige V-neck knit vest. Below, a gray long skirt reaching nearly to her ankles, its grayscale check spreading regularly along the pleats.
A cute, seasonal outfit, but for some reason it gave Aya a sense of déjà vu. Probably from a fashion magazine or something, she thought — and, ah, so this is what it looks like on the right person.
Facing a dumbstruck Aya, Sakura said, bashfully, “What?” — probably aware she’d dressed up — and Aya, glancing away to cover, said “nothing.”
“Welcome. It’s rare for you to come see me, so I wondered — something up?”
Aya asked directly while ushering her into the adult corner. Sakura let her eyes wander over the pink-lit space, giving a cold look at the underage girl calmly running the register here, and stepped inside.
“Can’t I come without a reason?”
“…It’s not that you can’t, but I didn’t think you’d have reason to want to see me.”
“Of course not. I had a plan to be in the area, so I just dropped by.”
“I see. That explains why you’ve dressed up so much — there’s a chair back here, want to sit?”
Aya opened the swing door and looked at Sakura, who said “ah, no —” and looked troubled, averting her eyes. Aya thought for a moment, and it occurred to her: maybe she really had only meant to stop by and say hello, then leave.
Thinking that, everything clicked, and Aya laughed awkwardly.
“Ah… well. You really don’t have to force yourself to drop in and say hi. We’re not that formal, right? But thanks for coming.”
At that, Sakura’s eyes flew open, and she hurriedly denied it.
“No — it’s not that I was being considerate…”
She trailed off, opening and closing her mouth as if searching for words, and eventually shut it. Ashamed of herself, she drooped her brows, bit her lip, and weakly clenched her fists. She shifted her feet in place.
Her face twisting more and more as she tried to force words out, she finally turned on her heel.
“Um, sorry! I made a mistake. I’m going home.”
Aya had no idea what her words and actions meant, but felt an instinctive reluctance to let her go now. She grabbed the slender wrist peeking out from the rolled sleeve.
“W-wait, wait. What’s going on? What mistake—”
Aya tried to convey with her eyes that there were plenty of things you couldn’t know without saying them, but Sakura shook off her arm, trying to leave. Her ears were red, as if in shame.
Aya, at a loss, tried to sort it out.
She’d said she had an errand in the area and dropped by on the side. But given her behavior afterward, that was probably a lie. So why had she come to see Aya? Presumably she’d had some business. Then why couldn’t she say it? Was it the kind of thing that couldn’t be said?
At this point, Aya suddenly felt déjà vu again looking at Sakura’s back.
As she stared vaguely at her cute autumn outfit from behind, something rose to her throat. Frustrated, she cast her net into the sea of memory over and over, and after repeated pulls and casts, something snagged. Aya’s eyes widened, and she said “ah.”
She reflexively grabbed Sakura’s shoulders and, without a word, turned her around to face her.
Sakura, cheeks flushed, eyes darting, allowed it.
Having found the source of the déjà vu, Aya let go of her shoulders and stared at her, round-eyed. — Not a fashion magazine. The source of this sense of familiarity was:
The sewing room. One of the countless design sketches. The page with the sticky note marking it unfinished.
The clothes she was wearing now were something she’d designed and made herself.
Realizing at last, and exasperated at herself for not noticing the courage it had taken her to come, Aya fell silent. Sakura, having realized from her reaction that everything had been figured out, stayed silent too, looking down.
It would have been crass to confirm it out loud. Aya swallowed her words and thought.
Showing others something you’d made in earnest must have been frightening.
Especially for someone who’d had its meaning questioned by her own family. When your seriousness gets denied, it hurts deeper the closer that person is to you.
Which was exactly why Aya had to understand what it meant that Sakura, once hurt, had brought this thing she’d made to show her.
A pitch-black night road, with no telling how far it went or what lay ahead.
She had mustered her courage and taken a step onto it.
That one step must not be blocked by anyone. Whatever offhand remark someone made, Sakura’s step — freshly resolved, still fragile — would surely be affected. What was needed wasn’t a question, or confirmation, or a joke, or indifference.
Think about what it means that she’s come all this way.
“—I’ll support you.”
She declared it with strong eyes, and Sakura’s eyes grew wet. She looked away and bit her lip.
Sakura reached for a handkerchief, realized she’d forgotten to put the one she’d sewn into the pocket, and started to wipe her eyes with her sleeve.
“Idiot,” Aya said, hurriedly pulling one from her apron and wiping the eyes of the girl who had shut her mouth and tilted her chin up to look at her. Just for that moment, she was as docile as a borrowed cat.
With her eyes wiped, Sakura pinched the hem of Aya’s clothes and said, “Not yet.”
“I haven’t told my mom yet.”
“Mm.”
“I’ll tell her properly someday. After I’ve worked harder, built up skills that would reassure her and satisfy me, and made some achievements. Then I’ll talk to her properly. So—”
Sakura smiled bashfully and said, slightly jokingly:
“Until then, please stay on my side.”
Aya shook her head slightly in reply.
“I’ll be on your side after that too. That much I promise.”
Sakura’s eyes went round with surprise, and then she narrowed them, as if she wanted to say something, and glared at Aya.
Had she said something strange? Aya tilted her head with a wry smile. With a huff, Sakura pouted, dissatisfied, and spread both arms wide. “Sushi Zanmai?”1 — “I’ll hit you.” — then what was it? Aya cocked her head, but Sakura kept the pose and didn’t budge. After a few moments of thought, Aya suddenly remembered Morishita. She’d done this sort of thing too, now and then, whenever she demanded something of Takagi or Watanabe.
Then the answer flashed, and, losing confidence as she recalled her own sexual orientation, Aya hesitantly reached out, as if checking her answer, pulled her shoulders in and embraced her. “Like this?”
Then, like a cat rubbing its cheek against her, Sakura’s hands hugged Aya’s back.
“What, what?” Aya cried out in confusion, having no idea what any of it meant, and Sakura, giving her one last, especially strong squeeze, whispered, “Thank you.” Then she bumped Aya’s shoulder as if shoving her away and pulled back, and to the bewildered Aya she waved goodbye, satisfied and smiling.
“Well, I’m going home. See you.”
With that, she slipped through the noren of the adult corner and left with light steps.
Aya, having lost even the voice to call after her, watched her back go and eventually heard the shop door close.
Touching the front of her apron, where a faint warmth still lingered, she looked around the shop as if seeking an answer from someone, but all that came back was the moaning of an actress in the sample video. Arms crossed, she thought over the intent behind that action. The first thing that came to mind was affection for her, but that seemed too roundabout to be natural. — She’d whispered thanks, so it could be gratitude for what Aya had done. But if so, while she was glad to have had contact with a cute girl, if she did that kind of thing indiscriminately, Aya worried for her future.
Unable to feel fully happy about it, Aya muttered:
“Temptress.”
Translator’s notes:
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“Sushi Zanmai?” — Aya’s guess when Sakura spreads her arms is すしざんまい, a reference to the Kiyomura sushi chain’s famous mascot pose (arms wide open). Sakura’s “I’ll hit you” reply is the joke. ↩