That night. As usual, Aya was minding the adult corner, phone in hand, when a now-familiar face lifted the hanging panel, tension all but gone from her expression.
“Welcome, no one else here right now.”
Recognizing the customer by her clothing as a young woman, Aya called out, peering through the opaque panel.
Yuki, visibly relieved at the sound, rested her arms on the register counter and peeked her face out from under the panel. Meeting Aya’s eyes, she broke into a happy smile.
“Good evening.”
“Yeah, evening. Coming in?”
“Ehe, pardon the intrusion.”
Aya pulled the swing door open, and Yuki slipped through the gap, sitting in the pipe chair Aya had unfolded for her.
Sitting beside her, Aya felt a strange sense of comfort settle over her. She’d been thrust into the spotlight by a dramatic incident that morning, gotten into a verbal spat with a strong-willed underclassman at lunch, fielded even more questions from classmates about the whole thing after school, and now, finally, this.
Quiet time with people she didn’t have to put up a front for — Takagi, Yuki — sank into her bones with relief.
“Studying going okay?”
“Reasonably. Neither great nor bad, just the usual.”
“…Sorry about this morning. My fault. Sorry if it added to your worries.”
Thinking about it, that rumor had only started because someone had seen the two of them together. It could easily have become a distraction for someone who needed to focus on studying.
But Yuki laughed wryly, arms crossed, hugging her own elbows.
“You know, I’m not exactly one to talk here either. It’s not really either of our faults, right? If it makes you feel better to say sorry, that’s fine, but I’m genuinely not bothered by it. Let’s both stop apologizing already. The rumor’ll die down soon enough, it’s not really a big deal.”
Aya scratched the back of her head, mulling this over, and eventually nodded.
“…Yeah. Got it.”
Yuki smiled at the reply, uncrossing her arms and placing her hands on her knees.
Then, as if remembering something, she clapped her hands. “Oh, right.”
“Speaking of the rumor, actually… um.”
Yuki trailed off awkwardly, one hand reaching to rub the back of her neck, eyes wandering. She seemed to be having trouble getting it out.
Something on her mind, maybe. Aya put on a soft expression to make it easier for her, tilting her head. Yuki looked at Aya’s face for a moment, then made a strained “mm,” covering her mouth.
Eventually, wetting her lips, pressing them together, she brought her five fingers together in front of her chest as if to hide her nervousness.
“So, um, are you… dating? That girl?”
For a moment, Aya couldn’t parse the question at all, tilting her head, staring off into space trying to trace her way back to what this meant.
What was she even talking about? After a few seconds of thinking, what floated back up in her mind was the lunch break incident. Having mostly retained the memory of the argument with the strong-willed underclassman, Aya let out an “oh!”
“The Tokiwa thing. Right, that’s how it all started, come to think of it. I’d forgotten.”
“Started…?”
Yuki, sharp enough to catch the loaded word, raised an eyebrow, and Aya answered.
“Yeah — short answer, no, we’re not dating. I’ll skip the details, but she’s not into me at all, and that hallway thing was just a pretext. Don’t worry about it.”
Picturing Sakura’s face as she’d walked away, Aya said this plainly, and Yuki, looking a little puzzled but reassured, seemed to accept it — with something close to relief in her expression, if Aya wasn’t imagining it.
“I see… but a ‘pretext,’ huh? Was she messing with you or something?”
She sounded a little worried, so Aya, to put her at ease, shared a bit of the backstory.
“Not sure how much I should say, so if you hear something weird, just forget it.”
“That’s a pretty unreasonable ask.”
“Short answer — apparently the idea was to become famous by dating me, since I’m currently a hot topic. …I know, I know. I made that face too when I first heard it.”
Yuki’s eyes wandered, unable to genuinely comprehend it, but she nodded anyway, forcing herself to understand, letting the thought follow into words. Wetting her lips, she said, troubled:
“There’s a lot I’m confused about, but — is that really enough to make someone famous?”
“Who knows. It’s not like she wants to be a celebrity or anything, probably. More like — being known around school the way Kayano is.”
“…I don’t really think that’s something to aspire to, though.”
“I think so too. But that’s maybe a perspective you can only have if you already have it. So, honestly, I get her a little. A tiny bit. Just a sliver. That desperation that comes from having lost something.”
At Aya’s agreement, Yuki tilted her head, expression troubled.
Choosing her words carefully, Aya voiced her own take.
“It’s not that she wants a boyfriend or girlfriend as a status symbol, or wants to be popular exactly — from the way she talked, I think what she actually wants is something to be proud of… some kind of shape to herself.”
“Shape… like, wanting concreteness for your identity, that kind of thing?”
Aya leaned forward, propping her chin on her knee with a hum.
“No, how do I put this… like, Kayano, you’re ‘the incredibly smart kid from the family of doctors.’ Last year, I was ‘nationally ranked third in track.’ Shinozaki’s ‘the soccer team ace.’ There’s this — surface, this outward shape someone else sees when they look at a person, that ends up defining who that person is.”
Aya shared this theory she’d apparently been mulling over for a while, and Yuki listened thoughtfully.
“…I think I get it. People do reduce others down to their own scale, don’t they.”
“Right. And once someone’s aware of their own shape, they end up measuring themselves against that shape forever afterward. That’s how it was for me. When I quit track and lost that clear shape, I didn’t know who I was anymore. …Some people would say a person doesn’t need a shape at all, but I don’t think there are many people who can say that after actually having had one and then losing it.”
Someone as unafraid of freedom as Yaehata Mahiru was a genuine rarity.
“That first-year — Tokiwa — confessing to me, maybe it was about wanting to hand herself, someone who’d become nothing in particular, a framework: ‘the girl chosen even over the great Kayano Yuki.’”
Putting into words something that had been vague even to herself, Aya felt the feeling she’d been carrying settle firmly into place. Hand on her chin, eyes narrowed and lowered, she thought it through further. — Right, Tokiwa Sakura had, in the end, gone looking for some kind of shape, and had decided to use the only weapon she had.
Mizuki Aya, her legs ruined, had been fortunate enough to have people around her, and had been able to decide, slowly, to look for a new path.
But Sakura — Aya didn’t know what path had led her to this point, but she was flailing blindly, chasing some new axis for herself with no signpost to follow. Maybe someone needed to point her toward the right path. But then again, wasn’t it arrogant to claim that whatever path Aya pointed toward was necessarily the right one? What was actually right to do about Sakura, Aya honestly didn’t know.
“Mizuki-san.”
Aya surfaced from her thoughts like coming up for air. Yuki’s serious face was right in front of her.
“You really pay attention to people, huh. I thought so back with me too.”
Caught off guard by the unexpected compliment, Aya went blank for a moment, then reflected on herself.
She hadn’t really thought of herself that way, but now that it was pointed out, it did seem like she had a habit of poking her nose into things unasked and getting resented for it. “I’m just nosy,” she said, and Yuki shot back immediately, “I think it’s that you take good care of people,” making Aya wrinkle her nose and turn away, embarrassed.
Having a trait she considered one of her own flaws affirmed like that left her feeling itchy all over.
“…Well, from someone who takes such good care of people, I’ve got to say — I’m a little worried about you too, Kayano.”
Not wanting to just get complimented into oblivion, Aya turned the topic back onto Yuki.
At that, Yuki squeezed her eyes shut with an expression like she’d bitten into something sour, and deflected with “can’t hear you.”
“Well, I think it’s fine for now. But — this is going to sound a bit serious — there are things that catch up to you no matter how much you run from them. The future’s one of them. Even if you freeze in place out of fear of change, don’t forget you’re going to grow up eventually either way.”
Saying this, half to herself as much as to Yuki, Aya watched Yuki let out a resigned sigh.
“I know. Yeah — I know that.”
“Sorry, that’s not really something to say to someone who’s here to blow off steam.”
“No, it’s not that. Talking with you helps me sort out my own thoughts. Honestly, it helps.”
There was something in that slightly self-deprecating remark that lacked the usual brightness Yuki put on to reassure Aya — it felt, instead, like she was simply voicing a truth that had genuinely formed inside her.
But this — this was like throwing cold water on someone who’d come here to dream, forcing reality onto them. Aya was telling herself it was for Yuki’s own good, but there was a nagging conflict underneath — maybe she just wanted to reassure herself, uneasy from watching Yuki like this.
—Mizuki Aya, too, was still lost, without a shape of her own.