Episode 39: Asahina Hiyori, Part 1

She never looked at me. Not really.

What she always looked at was the length of my shortened skirt. My loosened necktie. Out-of-spec socks, things like that.
In other words — not me as a person, I think. Just the disorder. Just the symbol of school rule violation.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Hey, just a moment.”

First year, spring. Morning, at the shoe lockers.
I was half-heartedly chatting with Airi and the others while checking my phone, when someone tapped my shoulder from behind.

I turned around to find a black-haired girl wearing an ugly discipline committee armband.
A face I didn’t know.
Probably… from a different class in first year. Probably.
And yet she was unnervingly self-possessed.

“What? Me? And who are you?”
“Year One, Class Three, discipline committee — Yamami. …Um—”
“Asahina, but… what?”

What is this, a sudden self-introduction segment?
And then, as naturally as breathing, this Yamami girl launched straight into a lecture.

“Asahina-san, your skirt is too short. Your underwear’s nearly showing — fix it properly.”
“…It’s not showing. And isn’t short normal anyway?”
“It’s not normal. You’ve folded it at least three times. Come on, fix it.”
“I mean, why are you even—”

My eye caught the armband on her left arm then.
The characters for Discipline written on it.

“Oh, what, so you’re only doing this because you’re on the discipline committee? Even though we’re not even in the same class?”

Even as I let out an exasperated sigh, she didn’t budge an inch.
Normal people would find dealing with someone like me too much bother and give up.
Even the discipline committee member in my own class hadn’t said a single word to me.

“…Tsk, fine, I get it. I’ll fix it, okay.”
“No clicking your tongue. And that necktie’s loose too.”

I grumbled and started unfolding my waistband, and Yamami’s white hand reached smoothly toward my face.

She caught my collar with her fingers and tightened my necktie with a neat little tug.
That well-put-together face came close, and for just a moment — a faint drift of something like soap.
Her fingertip brushed lightly against my throat, and at that odd coldness, my heart gave a strange little lurch.

What’s this. Weird.

And then Yamami said only “there, that’s better” and walked off toward her own classroom, just like that.

Called out in that earnest voice, treated like just another target for guidance — watching her go, I had this strange, unaccountable feeling. Something like being annoyed, and yet, just a little — something that felt like relief.

◇◆◇◆◇

The irritating reprimands didn’t stop at that one day.
The next day, and the day after that.
Whenever even a detail of my appearance was out of order, Yamami would materialise and correct me immediately.

First button undone on my blouse, she said.
Earrings are a violation.
Your makeup is too heavy.

…Was she a stalker or something??

Our school was supposedly a decent exam-focused school.
But our year was the one where applications had fallen short of the quota, and honestly, even we could have got in — a completely lawless cohort.
So the teachers, and the other discipline committee members, had the attitude of not worth engaging with the bottom of this year’s intake.
Before even grades — people who looked obviously like us were completely blanked.
Getting treated like something untouchable was the default.

But Yamami alone.
Never once ignored me.

When I got home, the room was usually dark.
My family — just me and my mum, and she was almost never home.
On the occasional holiday when she was in the living room, she’d be scrolling her phone with a tired face, and without even looking at me she’d say “welcome home” like a line she had to read, and nothing more.

Nobody cared about the outline of me.
Too much trouble — don’t touch.

And yet — that discipline committee member.
She faced me.

Deep somewhere in my chest, something made an unpleasant sound.
My breath fell a beat behind.

A strange, unnameable snagging feeling I didn’t know how to put into words.

◇◆◇◆◇

After that, I started unconsciously tracking where Yamami was inside the school building.
The school gate.
The corner of the corridor.
In front of the shoe lockers.
The staircase at lunch.

Yamami was always alone, and always working.

One day, out in the corridor—

“Stop filming in the middle of the hallway!”

I’d been halfheartedly pointing my phone at Airi and Yuina messing around during lunch, and Yamami stepped smoothly into my path.

“Ehh~, we were just getting to the good part—”
“Seriously, you’re such a buzzkill~”

Meiko and the others grumbled loudly, but Yamami looked back at them without flinching, straight and steady.
…She really doesn’t waver.

Another day—

“Hey! Don’t use a hair straightener on a corridor outlet!”

Airi was curling her hair in front of the corridor mirror, the rest of us leaning against the wall keeping her half-hearted company, and Yamami appeared again.

“Ehh, my fringe was dying from the humidity, what was I supposed to do?”
“The school’s electricity is not personal property. Come on, pack it up!”

Watching that earnest face bristling with indignation — I felt a sudden, irrational desire to tease her.

“I mean—”

I pushed off the wall and leaned in to peer at Yamami’s face.

“Yamami, aren’t you kind of relentlessly at it every single day? Always so loud about it. Literally like someone’s mum.”
“M-mum?”
“Yeah, yeah. More like… Yamami-mama… is the vibe, I’d say?”

I laughed through my nose and tossed it out casually, and behind me Airi and the others clapped their hands and burst out laughing — “ahaha, that’s hilarious!” “so true, she is literally a mum!”

“D-don’t give me weird nicknames. …Come on, unplug it, now!”

Flustered and going red from the teasing, Yamami rushed us, and I grinned and unplugged the cord, and Yamami let out a small exasperated breath.

After that, every time we passed, I’d deliberately act up and provoke her.
Because if I just quietly behaved, I felt like she might stop correcting me.
If I became a proper Asahina Hiyori, I’d disappear from Yamami’s field of vision.

That frightened me. Just a little.

Like someone’s mum, I’d said.
While my actual parent wouldn’t even look at my face properly.

Putting on a show of messing around in front of Airi and the others, drawing out that exasperated expression from Yamami.
That was all I wanted: to tease her and call her Yamami-mama, and have her sigh at me and still — even sighing — pay attention only to me.

…That was what I’d thought it was, anyway.