Episode 45: I’m Going to Be a Proper Girlfriend.
The following morning.
In the classroom, the winter break barely over and morning greeting duty not yet resumed, I sat with a perfectly innocent expression, eyes on the paperback in my hands.
The words weren’t going in. Not a single line.
I was simply holding my breath and waiting, every nerve drawn taut, for the sound of the classroom door.
Clatter.
The door was flung open with force.
Asahina Hiyori stood framed in the doorway.
The noisy classroom went silent all at once, as though someone had thrown a switch.
“…Oi, you’re kidding. Asahina’s done up every button including the top one. And she’s got her tie on properly.”
“Her skirt’s long too — hang on, her hair’s jet black… Did hell freeze over…?”
The whispers from a few of the boys were entirely understandable.
The girl who normally sauntered in with her flashy ash-grey hair swinging, uniform worn as slovenly as humanly possible — was standing there today with hair so black it was almost suffocating, every button done up perfectly according to the school rules.
(Hiyori, she really…)
While the class fell into an uproar around her, I hid my face behind my book and quietly, privately, let the corners of my mouth give way.
No matter how much fuss everyone kicked up — the reason she was dressed this seriously today was something only I, in this whole world, knew.
◇◆◇◆◇
“Hey, what should we do with this video?”
When I murmured it, flourishing my phone screen at her, Hiyori went scarlet and shrieked.
“That’s my line!”
The day it all began. The very first day.
The same words she had said to me.
When she’d said it to me, everything had gone dark before my eyes. But now it was different.
“…What do I have to do.”
Through tear-blurred eyes, Hiyori glared at me, and I smiled sweetly back.
“I want to see it. …Hiyori, being a proper well-behaved girl who follows every school rule.”
“Wha—…! That’s impossible out of nowhere! My hair’s this colour too…!”
“Hmm, if you don’t come in tomorrow with it fixed… I wonder what might happen to this video~”
I made a show of fiddling with my phone.
“A-all right, fine! God, this is exactly what I deserve! I’m going home first!”
Hiyori snatched up her own uniform and threw it on in a rush, face still blazing, then fled the discipline room as though making her escape.
With that level of panic, she’d probably gone straight to the pharmacy and bought some black dye…
◇◆◇◆◇
Yes.
The reason she had come to school today looking so impeccably serious that the whole class recoiled — that was nothing other than my blackmail.
Hiyori blanked the entire uproar around her and walked straight to Airi and the others’ desks.
She stood before all three of them with an unnervingly grave expression and let out a long, measured sigh.
“…Sorry, everyone.”
“What’s got into you, Hiyori, you’re awfully buttoned-up today.”
“From today on, I’ve decided to… live for love. I’m going to be Maya’s proper girlfriend.”
A grand declaration, with the air of someone who had just made a momentous solo life decision.
(Wait a moment?! I told her to follow the school rules, but who said to announce ‘we’re going out’ in front of the entire class?!)
Internally I was screaming, while outwardly fighting desperately not to fall off my chair.
But Airi, scrolling her phone, didn’t even look up — answering with a yawn.
“Yeah, yeah. I figured that was coming sooner or later.”
“You two were basically married from the start.”
Yuina chimed in with a weary sigh of agreement.
At the pair’s spectacularly unbothered reaction, Hiyori — who had been building herself up with full tragic gravity — froze completely in her tracks.
“Because whenever Hiyori went to wind up Mama-pi, she could never hide the stupid grin. Like a dog wagging its tail.”
Meiko delivered the merciless finishing blow to the bewildered Hiyori.
“Hiyori probably thought she was hiding it well, but from the outside it was completely obvious. …Well, the one person who mattered, Mama-pi herself, genuinely hadn’t noticed a thing and was sincerely furious about being wound up.”
“Right~”
With that, all three of them swung their heads around at once.
Three knowing, predatory grins zeroed in on me from across the room.
“…Huh?!”
I let out a strange squeak and froze.
“So? What happened yesterday? Did Mama-pi make our Hiyori cry?”
Airi lobbed this grenade with a vicious smile.
“Wha—?!”
“N-no, that’s — what are you even—!”
My voice and Hiyori’s tangled together in a mortifying heap across the classroom.
“Ahaha, Hiyori’s face is so red! Transparent~!”
“Mama-pi’s frozen solid too! Wait — seriously?!”
Faced with the gyarus’ merciless teasing, the two of us went beet-red in tandem and had nowhere to look but down.
Yeah yeah, get a room — Yuina and Meiko were clapping and laughing when Airi alone peeled away from the group, left the short-circuiting Hiyori behind, and walked over to my desk.
She leaned in close to my ear and dropped her voice so Hiyori couldn’t hear.
“Hey, Mama-pi.”
“W-what…”
“Hiyori talks like that all the time, all that breezy stuff, but. She’s never actually gone out with anyone. So be properly good to her, okay?”
— Never?
Those words connected with every memory at a terrifying speed.
Never been out with anyone?
Then what — all that composed, practiced-looking ease?
The way she’d blackmailed me and then consumed me with such rough, relentless thoroughness — all of that…
(… she was going entirely on book knowledge?!)
Every forceful kiss. Every confident, unhesitating hand.
The utter wreck of her, crying as she reached for me.
All of it — all of it — I had been her first?
“…Ah — aaaaahh—!!”
“Whoa, Maya?! Why is your face even redder than before?!”
Hiyori, who knew nothing of any of this, rushed over to my desk in a fluster and began rubbing my back with worried hands.
That kindness — and even the body heat coming through my uniform — was too much for me to take right now.
How I survived the rest of the school day, I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Only that every time I caught a glimpse of the unfamiliar jet-black hair in the seat diagonally ahead, and the neatly fastened blouse and the clean line of her nape —
I felt such a helpless, swelling fondness that I thought I might actually combust.
◇◆◇◆◇
After school.
Committee duties done, the discipline room empty of everyone else.
The two of us were sitting pressed together on the sofa, as though that were simply where we belonged.
“Ahhh, awful… I was so sure I was playing it cool and keeping the upper hand the whole time, and it turns out I was completely Airi’s entertainment all along… And what’s all this about a dog wagging its tail…”
Hiyori grumbled under her breath, picking at the ends of her unevenly dyed black hair with one finger.
“Well, that just means you liked me that much, doesn’t it.”
On the same old sofa that had groaned and protested plenty the day before, I murmured it with deliberate cruelty, and Hiyori made a small wounded sound and turned her face away.
Then, as though trying to hide even her scarlet ears, she pushed out her lips in a sulk.
“…Shut up. And anyway, Maya — no cheating on me with Sasaki-chan or anyone. You’re my girlfriend now.”
“…Hm? Sasaki-san?”
At the name appearing out of nowhere, I blinked — and Hiyori’s fingers, which had been picking at her hair, went utterly, unnaturally still.