Eleven p.m. The kind of hour minors aren’t legally supposed to be out at, under the youth protection ordinance.
Aya was in a dim, lively, alcohol-scented room. A cue in her hand. A billiards table beside her. Along the wall, a counter, and behind it a bartender in a vest. Several other tables scattered around, with mildly drunk adults gathered near them.
Aya had come to what was called a “pool bar” — a bar somewhere in the city with billiards tables.
Of course, she liked to think she wasn’t so delinquent as to come to a place like this alone at night. She had a companion who’d driven her here. That person — after sinking a carefully aimed shot into the cue ball, several balls dropped from their pockets in a chain reaction. But the one ball that actually mattered didn’t fall.
Watching this, she let out a “hah” of a sigh and turned to Aya.
“Maybe I should go pro at billiards.”
“You’re underestimating pros way too much, Mahiru-senpai.”
Yaehata Mahiru was, in a word, a woman who was hard to pin down but impossible not to notice.
She was a third-year at the same school as Aya. And yet, her messy short hair was dyed blonde, and she wore designer sunglasses. She favored casual outfits — today it was denim pants and a single collared shirt. Piercings in her ears. Tall and slim, but carrying herself with clear core strength, and exceptionally athletic. Case in point: she’d called Aya out with the excuse of “wanting to try billiards,” a fellow beginner supposedly, only to pick it up in no time and start sinking balls left and right.
Watching her turn around with a smug look, Aya, exasperated, took her turn, lining up her cue and grumbling.
“Anyway, why did we have to come to a bar for this? If they figure out our age we’ll get thrown out.”
Her shot grazed the side of the cue ball and sent the object ball flying off at an angle, sinking it into a pocket.
“Internet cafes check ID. If I’m calling you out, it has to be here.”
“You could’ve just gone to an internet cafe alone during the day. You’re not even going to school anyway.”
“Hey now, don’t say something so lonely. Aren’t we in this together? The Night Owl Alliance.”
“Unlike you, senpai, I actually go to school properly, so I’ve got early classes again tomorrow.”
“Man, must be rough getting stuck with a decent homeroom teacher.”
Mahiru swirled her ginger ale in one hand, wearing a mocking little smile.
Normally it’d be the opposite — getting stuck with a bad homeroom teacher would be the thing to complain about — but in her case, the freedom she was currently enjoying was a direct result of running into a bad one, so it was hard to argue with her framing.
“These days you don’t really find teachers corrupt enough to call students out for no reason or pile on assignments out of spite. Your second-year homeroom teacher — what was her name, that Kuni-something-sensei — she’s the exception.”
“Kunizuka-sensei. Ah, she really was a wonderfully human teacher. Losing her was a real shame.”
“You’re the one who gathered the evidence and reported her, though. Justified as it was.”
“Honestly, I didn’t want to do that either. As a teacher, she was trying to save some student who’d said something like ‘I’ve got great grades but no interest in going to college, I’ll just drift along’ — ah, what a waste. But when the principal decided to just cover it all up like some pathetic mess, that killed my motivation to stay quiet about it.”
Aya, thoroughly exasperated, snatched the ginger ale out of Mahiru’s hand as she shrugged sadly and muttered this. She drained the half-full glass in one gulp, handed it back, tapped her own chest, and shot back.
“…So, how’s it feel, having your entire third year off as compensation for your silence?”
“Fantastic. Some easy desk work for cash during the day, hanging out with you at night. I’m happy.”
“And now you’ve even gotten a piercing without me noticing. You have zero intention of ever coming back to school, huh.”
“Isn’t it good, though? The piercing. Does it suit me?”
Yaehata touched her left ear, looking at Aya over her sunglasses, and Aya fell quiet for a moment, studying her well-put-together features. Still just as good-looking as ever.
“Annoyingly, yes. How much did that run you?”
“About fifty thousand yen, I think. Tell me when you want one too, I’ll get yours pierced for you.”
Mahiru said this with a smile, laced with implication. Aya thought back briefly to their old relationship, then brushed it off with a “yeah, yeah” and lined up her next shot.
They traded shots back and forth like that until the game wrapped up, marking a natural pause.
Sitting side by side on a nearby sofa, Mahiru yawned, crossed her legs, and glanced sideways at Aya.
“So — how’s school been lately?”
“You sound like my family asking that. Nothing much—”
The one thing that had happened, really, was the thing with Yuki, but that wasn’t really something to bring up with someone else. Aya closed her mouth on the thought once, then reconsidered, turning a somewhat serious look on Mahiru.
“It’s about a classmate.”
*
“I see. Well… everyone’s got something they’re carrying.”
Aya summarized what she could without identifying anyone, and Mahiru, arms crossed, put on an uncharacteristically serious expression as she took in the situation with Yuki. The dim warm lighting was blocked by her blonde hair, casting a shadow, and behind the sunglasses her eyes held a darkness that seemed to pull you in.
“When you say it like that, senpai, it sounds even more like someone else’s problem.”
“Well, it is someone else’s problem. Don’t you hate people who act like they understand something that isn’t theirs?”
“I’m fairly guilty of that myself, but I think the whole point of ‘empathy’ is understanding something that isn’t yours.”
“Like, acting like you’ve been through it — ‘that must be hard, I get it’? Ha, that’s dishonest, isn’t it. Empathy only carries weight because you’re standing in a position close enough to actually understand. Empathy without that lived weight, that’s what we call sympathy. Though sympathy tends to get a bad rap too — it’s not as terrible as people make it sound.”
Mahiru rested an elbow on the back of the sofa, shrugged, and laughed lightly. Aya gave her a flat look, a contrast to Mahiru’s dark sunglasses, but conceded: “True, I can manage sympathy, but empathy’s harder.” Being an outsider to the situation had felt dishonest to her, but maybe it was actually the opposite.
Mahiru snapped her fingers and pointed at Aya.
“Right. Sympathy, I can do. Personally, I wouldn’t want to run on rails someone else laid down for me. Life should be a car, not a train. You can drive down a road someone else paved, or you can drive down your own rough, chosen path. The second one risks you dropping out entirely, sure, but it might also save you time, or take you somewhere no one’s reached yet. What matters is who’s in the driver’s seat — you, or someone else. That girl’s letting someone else hold the wheel of her own life.”
The sound of a ball dropping into a pocket echoed. Ice clinking against a glass. A glass bottom scraping the wooden table. Ambient noise. Aya slipped her answer into it.
“Might be an arrogant kind of sympathy, but I do want to do something for her.”
She put the vague feeling she’d been carrying into words like that. Mahiru looked at her, eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, as if dazzled. Then, turning her gaze forward again, she quietly voiced her own take.
“—If you want to do something, you should think carefully about how.”
Mahiru took off her sunglasses, folded them, revealing her clear eyes, and tucked them into her breast pocket. Aya, briefly captivated by those eyes framed by long lashes, eyes that seemed to pull you in, asked what she meant.
“How?”
Mahiru smiled lightly and held up two fingers, then three.
“Does this girl hate the idea of becoming a doctor, or does she hate having her life decided by someone else? Or maybe both — dragging her out by force is basically just forcing an easier path onto her instead. Like you said, what matters is her own will.”
Mahiru crossed her arms and gave a faint smile, thinking of Yuki, whose face and name she didn’t even know.
“So, think about the how. So she can choose her own path herself.”
There was a lot to take from that.
“Helping” was usually interpreted as pulling someone along by the hand. But giving relief wasn’t necessarily always the right answer. There was a kind of salvation that only came from letting someone save themselves, and maybe all a person who wanted to help someone like that could really do was point toward a direction. As expected — her senpai really did have a wider view and deeper insight than she did.
“…You get weirdly attractive when you say something serious like that occasionally.”
At that, Mahiru, playing it up, put an arm around Aya’s shoulders and a hand on her leg.
“If you ever want to get back together, I’m always up for it.”
“I’m good for now.”
“Aw, too bad.”
She raised both hands and pulled back, laughing a little wistfully. Aya, watching this with a complicated expression, reached for her drink on the low table to cover it. Mahiru followed suit, resting her cheek on one knee.
“Still — I would’ve thought that girl would seem kind of irritating to you, honestly.”
Mahiru let the remark drop quietly, like water dripping.
She gave Aya a probing sideways glance, then, seeing Aya’s expression stiffen slightly, wore a knowing smile. “Ha, that face — so there was something there,” she said, seeing right through her. Aya, feeling like this was getting a little difficult, let out a sigh to cover it.
“I wouldn’t say irritating. There were a few things I thought about, sure. But that’s my own issue, not something I’d hold against her.”
“Still so earnest. From the perspective of someone who gave up a dream against their will, wouldn’t someone trying to run away from all the things they’ve been given look kind of… spoiled?”
The way she phrased it seemed almost designed to provoke Aya’s true feelings, to poke fun at them — but that was just how she was, probably angling to give Aya a chance to vent. So Aya conveyed with a look that it wasn’t necessary.
“I appreciate you looking out for me, but I really don’t mind. It’s over and done with — and honestly, that whole thing is how I ended up meeting you, senpai. Like you said, everyone’s got their own problems. I don’t think I’m small enough a person to project my own stuff onto her and get mad about it.”
She said this firmly, and Mahiru, closing her eyes as if offering a compliment, shrugged.
“Same old you, huh. No matter what you’re doing, you’re always so completely yourself.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Unsure of the intent but with reasonably healthy self-esteem, Aya chose to interpret it that way, and Mahiru, with a faint smile, said “it is a compliment” and put her sunglasses back on. Aya, still not quite sure what she was thinking, offered a small “thanks” and quietly took a sip from her glass.