Episode 40: Asahina Hiyori, Part 2

The beginning of winter, when breath had started coming out white.
I lost one of my favourite earrings somewhere at school.

Normally I’d look half-heartedly and give up.
But I stopped Maya in the corridor after school and more or less forced her to help me search.

“An earring? It hasn’t been handed in to the discipline room… And you should really ask your own class’s committee member about that sort of thing.”
“It’s fine, whatever. Yamami-mama was right there.”
“Right there… Honestly! Besides, technically a possession that violates the rules — even if we found it, I should be confiscating it!”

Grumbling the whole time, Yamami came to my classroom with me to look anyway, asking “where did you last have it?”
The classroom after school was empty, and felt oddly cold.

“Did you check around your own desk?”
“Mm, should have been there though…”

Yamami got down on her knees and started crawling around under the desk to search.
I could have helped look. Instead, for some reason, I just stood there staring down at her back.

She’s always so upright and full of herself when she’s lecturing me — I’d never noticed.
The width of her shoulders through the blazer was surprisingly slight. The white nape of her neck visible where she’d bent forward, defencelessly exposed.

“…Got it!”

Suddenly, Yamami looked up.
Still crouching on the floor, looking up at me from below.
Without a care for her slightly dust-streaked skirt, she cupped the found earring in both hands and smiled — soft and open, like a flower coming into bloom.

“Here, Asahina-san. Found it.”

Thud.
My heart made the loudest sound it ever had.

I reached down and pinched the earring from her outstretched palm.
At that instant — my cold fingertips brushed the very edge of Yamami’s skin.

Through that point of contact, an absurdly warm body heat reached me.
Those straight, dark eyes looking up at me.
The clean, soap-like scent drifting faintly off her.

She wasn’t a substitute for a mother.

What was smiling up at me defencelessly right now.

Was just a single girl — so earnest it was almost ridiculous, warm, so much softer than me, who tried so hard without even pushing me away.

“…Thanks. Oh — and let’s not make this a confiscation thing.”

I felt my face go hot all at once.
Bad. Not like me at all.
…I fled the classroom.

“Hey, wait, Asahina-san! You should put it away in your bag—!”

The earnest voice at my back — I didn’t even have the room to turn around.

The soft warmth left in my fingertips.
The sweet smell when her hair had moved.
That defenceless smile that had looked straight into only my eyes.

I’d just wanted to tease her and call her Yamami-mama and have her pay attention to me.

That was what I’d thought was enough.
But from that day. In that after-school classroom.

The discipline committee member and the problem student.
It wasn’t just that ridiculous back-and-forth.

Wanting to just — call her Maya normally, go to a café in front of the station after school, laugh together about nothing at all.

Dreaming of something like that… I was helplessly, irreversibly wanting all of Yamami.

◇◆◇◆◇

So, one day after school.
I made up my mind and tried to invite her to the Starbucks in front of the station.
But on the way to the discipline room, I stopped dead in the corridor.

Through the slightly open door.
Yamami was with the other discipline committee members, sorting through logs and printouts, laughing easily together over something inconsequential.
Not the exasperated face or the angry face she showed me. A soft, natural smile — like any other high school girl.

I looked down at myself.
My shortened skirt. Out-of-spec socks. The smell of perfume.

The words that had almost made it to my lips — let’s go home together — turned heavy as mud and sank to the bottom of my stomach.

Someone like me, walking beside her like a normal girl?
…That was too much to ask. Laughably too much.

But what if I fixed my uniform, dyed my hair back, became a normal girl?
…No good. If I did that, Yamami would never look at me in that special way again.
I’d just become another serious discipline committee member and anonymous background student, cleanly and completely ignored.

The only condition under which I could occupy the centre of Yamami’s field of vision was to remain the most troublesome, worst-behaved student.

If I’m messy, I can’t walk beside her.
If I become proper, she won’t look at me.

…So.
I chose to stand out more than anyone.

From the next day, I shortened my skirt further.
Changed my nails to deliberately louder colours.

To keep lodging myself in her field of vision as the most glaring foreign object.

◇◆◇◆◇

Second year, spring.
We ended up in the same class.
Summer break came and went, and Yamami had become discipline committee chair.

“Asahina-san, good morning. Cutting it close again.”
“Ugh, Yamami-mama. Give me a break, I made it in time.”

The same classroom. Desks only a few metres apart.
But those few metres felt endless as eternity.

What I understood from being in the same class was this: our classmates relied on Yamami as committee chair, but that air of being too correct built an invisible wall that kept anyone from getting close to her as a friend.

During break, there was always no one around Yamami.

From the back of the classroom, I’d scroll my phone with Airi and the others — same class again this year — and steal glances at that isolated back.

Nobody spoke to her. Nobody could breach that personal space.
So the only person who could boldly step into Yamami’s field of vision and straight through the invisible wall was, ironically, me — the one who carried school rule violation as a free pass.

“Hey, Yamami-mama, if you go around frowning that hard first thing in the morning you’ll be an old lady before you know it~”
“And whose fault is that, exactly. …It’s still summer uniform season — what’s with that out-of-spec cardigan? Take it off.”
“Ehh, but the classroom air conditioning is killing me, I’ll literally die of cold. If the committee chair gives me a hug to warm me up, I’ll take it off?”
“Stop messing around. Come on, off.”

…I wasn’t messing around, though.

To Yamami Maya — alone, beautiful, unreachable by anyone’s hand.
I wanted her to warm me. To touch me.

But every word I said was processed as just another piece of light banter, and slid right off the smooth surface of Yamami’s heart.

It didn’t reach.
No matter how much I closed the distance, even in the same class — we were still the one giving guidance and the one receiving it. That was all.

I’ll never be anything special to her.
Hiding that despair under loud nails and a smile.
I went on laughing from the corner of the classroom today too, to keep dirtying Yamami’s correct world.