Episode 36: I’ve Definitely Gone Back to Normal.

Hiyori no longer stands beside me.

The sleeve-tugging ambushes in after-school corridors — gone.
The mornings of spraying that sweet perfume onto my ankle — over.

I’ve gone back to my ordinary life as the discipline committee chair.

…Yes. Back.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Hey, what’s going on? You haven’t been with Mama-pi lately.”

In a corner of the classroom.
Airi laughed and glanced over at Hiyori.
At my own desk, notebook open, I sat very still and held my breath, straining to catch every word.

“Mm, nothing really. Just felt like it.”
“Huh~? Did you two have a fight or something?”
“Sort of, maybe.”

I thought Hiyori glanced over in my direction for a moment.
But her gaze passed over me as though I were part of the scenery, and swung straight back to Airi.

During break, we passed each other in the corridor.

She didn’t spare me a single glance.
Instead, drifting faintly:
not that heavy musk — a surprisingly fresh, floral scent brushed past my nose.

A smell I didn’t know.

A smell with no trace of having been obsessed with me. As if it had never existed.

The pit of my stomach turned over, sourly, hotly.

As though only I had been left behind, and she had become an entirely different person.

◇◆◇◆◇

Released from the blackmail.
The chain of the video: gone.
I’ve returned to being the honour student I was.

— Or I should have.

But something has been wrong, continuously, ever since.

Quiz scores, dropping on things I can’t believe I missed.
Arithmetic errors absurd enough to make even me laugh — a whole digit off.
Submission deadlines I’ve traced over and over with my fingertip in my planner, and still somehow forgotten to actually submit.

…I have to pull myself together.
The more I think it, the more something inside me seems to splinter, audibly, and it frightens me.

In the corridor, the homeroom teacher called my name.

“Yamami-san, are you really all right?”

I looked up a beat too late.

“…I’m sorry.”

The words of apology came out, but nothing behind them kept up.
A thin fog seemed to have settled permanently over the inside of my head.

“Lately, with Asahina-san—”
“I’m not involved with her anymore.”
“I see…”

With Hiyori gone as a source of noise, I should be back to my old self.
And yet the me right now was emptier — so much emptier — than I’d ever been before Hiyori was ever beside me.

◇◆◇◆◇

After school.
Committee work done, walking the corridor, I heard Hiyori’s laughter burst bright from behind an open classroom door.
Same space. The distance, impossibly far.

— Right. That’s how it was.
We were always this far apart, from the very start.

Thinking back, there was never much reason for me to speak to Hiyori beyond reprimands.

“Asahina-san, no running in the corridors.”
“Asahina-san, you could at least put your phone away during class.”

That was all.

A pretext for two people who had no business touching to touch, just for a moment.
But now — even those words of reprimand catch in my throat and won’t come out.
Every time I think of calling out to her, it feels like I’d be confirming the decisive distance of strangers with my own voice, and I’m frightened.

Every time we pass each other, I find myself searching, without meaning to.
For a smell that should be there.
For a musk that she’s no longer wearing.

In the moment of drawing breath, I find I’m expecting it, somewhere.

…What am I even thinking?
That makes no sense.

Even to me, honestly.

◇◆◇◆◇

The school, with the second-term closing ceremony just around the corner, had a restless, weightless energy.
I had finished sorting documents and was locking up, when Sasaki-san came over to me, hovering uncertainly.

My shoulders jumped.
Between us there was that day — Hiyori and me, caught kissing — and then her offer of help refused, and…
I’d assumed she despised me, that we’d parted ways for good.

I’d been avoiding her out of awkwardness myself, but — wary and thrown, I braced myself, and she peered up at me with careful, probing eyes.

“Um, Yamami-senpai. …You haven’t been with Asahina-senpai lately.”
“…It’s finished. All of it.”
“Finished — so you’re not being blackmailed anymore?!”
“Yes. …The video was deleted. So there’s nothing between me and Asahina anymore.”
“Oh — is that right?!”

Sasaki-san’s face lit up, suddenly radiant.

“I’m sorry for worrying you. Thank you.”

When I smiled at her, she burst into tears, covering her mouth with both hands.

“I’m so glad… I’m so relieved, I really am—!”
“I couldn’t do anything for you that day, and it’s been weighing on me… but you sorted it out yourself, senpai. You did so well. You really did.”

— Not quite.

I didn’t sort anything out. She ended it, on her own whim.
The words rose to my throat and I swallowed them back behind something vaguely like a smile.

“Senpai, do you want to stop somewhere after this, just for a little while? Let me buy you a cake! A celebration!”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“It’s fine! I have a part-time job!”

At Sasaki-san’s suggestion we ducked into a café near the station.
It was bright inside, cheerful Christmas music playing, the heating going properly — and after the cold wind outside it seeped into my bones with almost painful warmth.
She was happily drinking a sweet frappuccino piled high with whipped cream.

“Senpai, this tart is incredible, you have to try it!”

Sasaki-san held out her fork, eyes crinkling with pleasure.

“Mm, it really is. …Oh, the Earl Grey chiffon here is lovely too.”
“Ooh, can I have a bite? …Mmm, it’s sweet! You can really smell the tea.”

She held the fork in her mouth and broke into a delighted, slightly sheepish smile.
Then she took a sip of her own tea, exhaled, and peeked up at me.

“Winter break — are you doing intensive cram school, senpai? Next year’s finally entrance exam season, isn’t it…”
“Yes. My last mock results weren’t great either. If I slip this early, my recommendation could be at risk.”
“What? You were always top of the year! You’ll be absolutely fine. Don’t go overloading yourself.”
“…Thank you. But I need to make up lost ground.”
“Rest is important too! …Oh, I know. If you ever want a break, just message me any time. Films, shopping, anywhere — I’ll come wherever, whenever.”

Sasaki-san leaned across the table toward me, and for some reason she reminded me of a baby chick.
Unreservedly bright, wholesome, with not a trace of poison — a pure, uncomplicated affection.
Nothing like the sweet, suffocating daily life I’d spent with Hiyori.

I wrapped my cold hands around the cup of hot tea.

◇◆◇◆◇

“…Thank you for the food, it was so good! Wasn’t it amazing, senpai!”
“It really was.”

Stepping out of the café, the day had fully fallen, and the cold winter wind cut at my cheeks.
Walking toward the station, Sasaki-san walked beside me, her face half-buried in her scarf.

“…It’s gotten cold, hasn’t it.”
“It has. We might even get snow.”
“Maybe it’ll be a white Christmas~”

Then Sasaki-san’s feet stopped.

“…Um, Yamami-senpai.”

I turned back. Under the streetlamp, she was looking directly at me.

Her breath came out white, clouding in the cold air.

“I’m so glad you’re back to your normal self. Really.”
“…Yes. Sorry for worrying you.”
“No, I’m the one who couldn’t do anything, and it’s been eating at me.”

Sasaki-san took one step closer.
From her coat, the clean smell of fabric softener drifted softly over.
The kind of smell that puts anyone at ease. Warm as a patch of sunlight.

“Um, so — I want to keep being here for you, senpai. Not just for committee work… I mean… would it be all right if I stayed closer to you?”

Straightforward words.
Clear, unclouded eyes.

“…Sasaki-san, I—”

Before I could say anything.
As though startled by her own boldness, Sasaki-san’s face went scarlet and she rushed ahead, tumbling over her own words to cut me off.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot! A-anyway, I’ll definitely message you! For sure!”
“Oh, wait—”

Half-forcibly.
Sasaki-san’s palms wrapped around my cold fingers.
Warm. Soft hands.

— But different.

“It’s getting cold! Sorry for keeping you out! Your hands are freezing, senpai! Should we hurry?”

What came through those joined hands was only an ordinary body heat.
None of that suffocating, heavy warmth.

So standing beside Sasaki-san, the air came easily.

Which was unbearably,

breathless.