“H-hello? Um — I heard you’re at Mizuki-senpai’s place right now.”
The moment the call connected, that was the first thing Sakura asked.
Something inside Yuki gave an audible lurch.
Cold sweat breaking out, Yuki searched for some excuse but found no room for one, and, without even the composure to wonder how Sakura had gotten that information from Aya, tried to offer a proper apology.
But just as Yuki started with “um—,” Sakura spoke over her, sounding anxious.
“Well, that part’s fine, actually.”
Fine? Yuki’s mouth hung open, and she tilted her head as Sakura, still anxious, got to the point.
“Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask… um, the reason you haven’t been coming by the bookshop lately — that’s not, by any chance, because you’re being considerate of me, is it?”
Yuki stayed silent, mouth open, dumbfounded, and, confusion still unresolved, barely managed an answer.
“Um, well… more or less, yeah. That’s why I feel bad about today.”
At that answer, a deep, almost blatantly deep sigh came from the other end of the line.
Bracing herself, expecting to be scolded, Yuki drew her shoulders in at Sakura’s forceful “Look—!” and squeezed her eyes shut. But what followed was nothing like what she’d expected.
“Sorry. That’s entirely on how I put it. There was a misunderstanding.”
Yuki, braced to be scolded, found her thoughts momentarily blank, unable to parse the meaning.
“When I told Kayano-senpai about it — that wasn’t a warning saying ‘I’m the one who fell for her, so back off.’ I just thought you might also have some feelings, at least a little, so I said it as a precaution, to keep things proper. I never meant for you to do anything specific about it.”
Struck as if hit sideways in the head with a hammer, Yuki’s eyes went round, and she fell silent.
—Was this just a kind excuse meant to lift her spirits? But thinking back, Sakura really hadn’t ever made a demand like that, and it was doubtful she even knew this much about Yuki’s circumstances in the first place. More than anything, the tone in her voice, even over the phone, was full of guilt and urgency.
“Ugh, seriously… I’m so sorry! I should’ve realized sooner. I basically took away a precious place you had to rest… this doesn’t sit right with me, so I’m coming to apologize in person! Are you at the shop right now?! I’ll head over right away, just wait a bit!”
“N-no, it’s fine, really fine! It’s already gotten pretty late!”
Coming back to her senses with a start, Yuki managed to voice some kind of restraint, and Sakura reluctantly accepted it. Relieved to have somehow calmed her down, Yuki was still a little dazed.
—She’d guessed at what Sakura wanted to say on her own, gotten anxious on her own, acted on her own assumption of what would help, hurt herself on her own, and, on top of all that, ended up getting apologized to by an underclassman. Organizing it that way, she suddenly found herself hopelessly pathetic, and felt heat rush to her face. Her tear ducts loosened without her permission, and she bit her lip.
“I see… sorry, it’s me. I went off on my own thinking it’d help Tokiwa-san, and just made a mess of it.”
A few seconds of silence continued on the other end.
“I’m happy about how you feel. Really happy. But it doesn’t sit right with me.”
Saying this, Sakura continued, sounding a little bashful.
“I do like Mizuki-senpai, and I’m genuinely happy you’re rooting for me, cooperating for that sake. But I refuse to let Kayano-senpai take a hit for it. Even though you have your own stuff going on, senpai properly listened to my problems that day, and I’m grateful for that.”
Yuki looked down, eyes welling with tears, and listened earnestly to Sakura’s words.
“So please, just stop doing that.”
A tear dropped onto her knee. An unstoppable sob slipped out, and a startled voice came back.
“W-wait, are you crying?! Um, sorry, I think I went a bit too far…”
“…No, that’s not it. Sorry, there’s a lot going on.”
Yuki desperately wiped her tears and spoke, half-explaining herself.
“I’ve just… kept assuming things, hurting myself over nothing. Thinking I only ever cause trouble for people. But because everyone’s so kind, even though it’s pathetic, I end up happy anyway, and my emotions are just a total mess right now…”
At that, Sakura let out a troubled “hmm,” then laughed and said:
“Well, I caused you plenty of trouble myself the other day too. No point worrying about that kind of thing now. I think it’s healthier if we can both just say what we want to say to each other, clearly.”
Trouble — did she mean listening to Sakura’s problems with her future?
But that had only happened because Aya had stuck her meddling nose in and Yuki, happening to be there, had gone along with it. Certainly, both sides opening up about their circumstances had brought them closer. But that felt like a one-sided assumption on Yuki’s part, and there was no real reason Sakura would go this far to say so.
Thinking this, Yuki fell silent, and Sakura, sounding a little embarrassed, her voice cracking slightly, said:
“I mean… personally, I’d sort of already assumed we were friends… is that just me?”
Yuki’s downturned, silent face stiffened.
—She’d recognized Sakura as a precious underclassman. Yes, but still, ultimately, as a senpai and underclassman — a relationship where each showed the other consideration born from getting to know each other. But a relationship bearing the name “friend” meant something else — one where, regardless of standing, people could speak their minds honestly and spend time together as equals. Murmuring the word to herself, its ring so beautifully clear that, driven by pure longing, Yuki nodded and let tears fall.
“No, me too. Sorry for making you worr—”
Yuki stopped there and chose her words again.
She’d been sealing off her own life with her own assumptions. Narrowing her own view, cursing her own hardship on her own.
But if she just lifted her head a little and looked ahead, her view widened surprisingly far — and standing there, before she’d even noticed, was a friend.
And yet she’d gone and suffered over things this friend never even wanted, all on her own — how stupid.
But because someone had called an idiot like that a friend, Yuki was able to choose her words again.
“—Thank you. For calling.”
Rewording it that way, a happy-sounding breath came from the other end.
“You’re welcome!”
Unable to hold back her joy, breaking into a helpless grin, Yuki heard an equally cheerful voice come flying back.
“This is kind of embarrassing, but I’m happy. Let’s go hang out somewhere together sometime, just the two of us.”
“…Yeah. But I’m strict about promises. If you say it, it’s a promise, okay? I’ll be mad if you break it.”
Wiping the tears from her eyes with a finger, Yuki declared this. “I’ll do my best,” came back the teasing, laughing reply, and Yuki, finding it funny, covered her mouth.
For a little while after that, until Aya came back, the two of them kept up an idle, meandering conversation.
—”Hey, free today?”
Answering Aya’s call, Mahiru opened with that carefree question, oblivious to the situation.
Aya laughed wryly, leaned her weight back against the dim hallway wall, and answered with arms crossed.
“Sorry, I’m a bit busy. Might be hard today.”
“Oh my, that’s rare. What, don’t even have time for a call?”
“No, I’ve got that much room — it’s about that doctor girl thing I mentioned before.”
When Aya explained, staying within the bounds of not compromising Yuki’s privacy, an excited “ah, that one!” of recognition came back.
“I see, you should prioritize that. No need to worry about me.”
“I appreciate the consideration. I like it when you’re quick on the uptake like this, senpai.”
“—So? Sounds like a situation where hearing you out would help. What’s going on?”
As always, she really was quick. Grateful, but following her lead in keeping things brief, Aya skipped the compliments and went straight to the point.
“…Honestly, I’m torn.”
“Oh?” Mahiru’s prompt came back, and Aya narrowed her eyes at the frosted glass light spilling from the living room door.
“She has doubts about the doctor path her parents laid out for her. Wants to choose her own path too. In principle, I think I should affirm what she wants. But — setting reality aside, doctors are generally seen as successful people, socially speaking.”
“True, that’s a hard thing to argue against.”
“Meaning, I think affirming her wish to turn her back on that would have a huge negative effect on her life. Especially since I’ve personally owed a lot to doctors myself.”
Bending forward slightly and putting a hand on her knee, there was no discomfort at all.
Even gym class, aside from some unconscious holding back, she could manage almost without issue now. When she’d suffered the injury, what had crossed her mind first hadn’t even been the track question — it had been the disruption to daily life itself. Now, she’d recovered enough function that she’d almost forgotten the despair of that time.
That gratitude had transformed into admiration for the profession of doctor, distorting her rationality.
“With the sewing underclassman… I had an arrogant confidence, ten-to-one odds, that it’d work out positively. So even knowing it was meddling, I could push her back. But this time… it’s more like helping someone fall backward in life, and on top of that, what can someone who can’t even take responsibility actually do?”
The more she talked, the more keenly she felt her own ugliness, her voice cracking as she forced it out.
“Aya.”
Mahiru called her name, short but with a resonance that irresistibly drew her attention.
“Choosing a negative outcome is also that person’s choice, and that person’s life.”
Eyes wide, staring at the floor, Aya still narrowed her eyes, unable to digest the words. Her eyes wandered as she tried to make sense of it herself, and eventually she scratched her head. Her tone sharpened without meaning to.
“So — are you saying I should just let it slide? That pushing her was the right call?”
“If someone close to me is heading in a bad direction, I’ll stop them. I think that’s what love does. But stripping away the very right to head in a bad direction — that’s overreach, and arrogant.”
At the smoothly prepared answer, this time Aya truly understood, and fell silent.
A sensation like some gear that had been slightly off in her chest finally clicking back into place.
The logic dropped, with a thud, right into her gut, and Aya let out a breath.
Conveying a wish to someone, and forcing that wish on them, were fundamentally different acts. The latter, needless to say, wasn’t tolerable; the former might well, irresponsibly, negatively affect someone’s life too. But the right to choose still, undeniably, belonged to the other person.
“What matters is where you draw the line. Everyone wants the people they care about to live freely. But if you know that freedom leads to ruin, you stop them; if you’re worried, you speak up. Forcibly restraining someone falling because they want to fall is an obnoxious overstep, but forcibly helping someone falling who doesn’t want to fall is a rescue that should be affirmed. In other words, what matters is how much of a situation calls for how much interference. People draw that line unconsciously, which is exactly why they get it wrong, and end up with regrets.”
Struggling just to grasp the logic in her head, Aya gave a nod that carried no real conviction, unable to respond in words. But as if sensing this, Mahiru, without taking offense, continued smoothly.
“Be conscious of it, and draw your own line yourself. Someone with your personality is going to run into a lot more people in trouble over the rest of your life. Get the choice wrong, and you’ll both end up deeply hurt. So — build an axis inside yourself. Something you decide is absolutely right, no matter what.”
There was probably no such thing as an absolute rightness in this world.
But even if it didn’t exist in the world, maybe it could exist inside herself.
“Whenever you talk about your own actions, you always describe them in the worst possible light, on purpose. Sure, what you do is meddling. You could call it uninvited interference. But if there are people who’ve been saved by it, you’re allowed to stand a little proud about that. There should be a real answer here.”
Aya, phone still to her ear, straightened her posture in silence, closed her eyes, and sank into thought.
As a premise, setting Yuki aside — she believed she hadn’t been wrong to say what she’d said to Sakura. Though, admittedly, that conviction came with the benefit of hindsight, from the fact that Sakura had ended up moving forward positively.
Back to Yuki, then. The desire to somehow do something about her current situation was real.
She wanted to respect Yuki’s wish to choose her own path, rather than devote her life to her parents’ decision.
But she held just as much skepticism about steering her away from the path of medicine.
These were extremely irregular, jagged “lines,” with vague start and end points, plainly built from raw emotion.
So Aya faced her own feelings head-on and searched for their “intersection point.”
What she could be certain hadn’t been a mistake in her past actions, what she wanted to do going forward, and what she absolutely couldn’t allow — she searched for the justice that could stand within herself where all of these held true, and built the logic from there.
Suddenly — thinking about justice, Anpanman’s face floated up in her mind. A nostalgic face. Watching that movie with Yuki already felt like ages ago. He offered his own bread to someone starving, and if the source of the problem stood before him, he removed it with his own strength.
His absolute justice was to fill people’s stomachs, and help those in trouble.
So — what about hers? Asking herself this, Aya quietly opened her eyes and laughed wryly. Then she answered.
“Taking a lost kid to the lost-and-found. That’s probably right, I think.”
A small laugh came from the other end of the line, and Aya laughed too.
“—If someone’s stuck, frozen in place, arrogant as it is, I’ll grab their hand and drag them back to the path I believe is right. If someone’s walking toward a cliff, I’ll call them back with everything I’ve got. But if that person has a path they absolutely want to walk, no matter what, then I’ll root for that dream, doing whatever I can to help it take the best possible shape.”
That was Aya’s conclusion. After a few seconds of silence, Mahiru tested it further.
“Even if, in the end, that path leads to ruin?”
Aya, eyes steady, looked at the living room door and answered.
“As long as I’m within reach of them, I’ll do everything in my power to keep that from happening. I understand now — that’s what it means to have a say in someone else’s life.”
Heard from the outside, that might be a hopelessly naive way to take responsibility.
But if she couldn’t stand to accept the unreasonableness in front of her, there was no other way to do it. It was the one single intersection point among the countless lines inside her.
After a stretch of silence, Mahiru, without saying whether it was right or wrong, laughed softly.
“Then that’s your choice. I’ll follow your lead and root for it too.”
Aya, taken aback, tilted her head back, and, without meaning to, felt her cheeks flush faintly as she pressed a hand to her forehead. Her senpai’s maneuvering, in moments like this, really was unfair.
“Go on, do your best. Do it properly, okay?”
Sounding almost like a guardian, Aya let out a breath, shifted her mindset, and nodded.
“Thank you.”
—Ending the call there, Aya took a single deep breath on the spot.
Opening the door and stepping from the dim hallway back into the living room, Yuki, apparently having just finished her own call, looked over, eyes faintly damp. Somehow, her expression looked brighter — bright enough that it seemed like Aya’s own words might not even be needed anymore. Or maybe, from Yuki’s perspective, Aya’s own face looked similar right now.
“Kayano.”
Aya decided to get straight to the point before Yuki could say anything.
“Skip school with me tomorrow. Let’s go out.”