Episode 22: For My Own Single Word to Change Fate Is Just Too Convenient.
“Hey, Makina. That day… the day you got drunk, you kissed me.”
In the dark classroom, listening to the distant noise of the after-party outside, I took one deep breath and finally made myself say it.
“Wh— a kiss…? Wh-what are you talking about, Yotsuka…?!”
In the red light spilling in from the campfire outside the window, I could see Makina visibly shaken, catching her breath.
“…Well, guess you don’t remember. Yeah, it was the alcohol, so it was probably nothing more than a whim to you too.”
I let out a small, self-mocking laugh.
Something deep in my chest ached with a dull, persistent throb, but I forced my voice to stay flat.
“Honestly, I was happy. For just a second, it felt like a dream, and I really did feel genuinely happy.”
“Yotsuka…?”
“But right after that, I remembered. Whether I even had the right to be happy, right beside you. …No. I knew. And I kept pushing you away anyway. I’m not allowed to be happy. I never had the right to, not from the very start.”
“Wait… why…? Why would you say something like that?!”
Makina’s voice trembled, caught somewhere between confusion and a flicker of anger.
But if I lied again here, this time our relationship would break completely, for good.
I clenched my trembling fists tight against my knees, and in a voice on the verge of disappearing, I dragged out the thing I’d kept hidden deep inside my chest all this time — the curse I’d been carrying.
“When we were about three years old.”
“…Three?”
“Yeah. My family and yours, we were all supposed to go out together. We were originally supposed to go to this big aquarium by the sea.”
Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop.
At the back of my mind, the frozen memory that had been looping for over a decade came flooding out, taking on a vivid, unbearably clear shape.
“But I threw a huge fit, crying and screaming that I didn’t want to go. I said I hated the aquarium, that I wanted to go to the amusement park in the mountains instead, being completely selfish, causing everyone so much trouble…”
“…………”
“So the plans changed. Because of me, we ended up going to the mountains instead… and, on the way there—”
For a second, I thought I saw the sharp glare of a truck’s headlights cut across my vision, and everything warped.
A violent metallic screech, the sound of glass shattering, someone’s scream.
The smell from that day, stuck fast in my childhood memory, suddenly rushed back to the back of my nose.
“A truck came… crossing over from the oncoming lane, and hit our car.”
Makina’s fingers curled tightly into the fabric of her skirt.
The firelight outside the window flickered across the side of her face, casting it in an eerie, shifting glow.
“Only my papa and your mom got badly hurt… and then, a little while later, they died…”
Getting that much out took everything I had.
“If we’d just gone to the aquarium that day, like we were supposed to…”
The rest of that sentence never took shape in words, just kept looping over and over in my head on its own.
Nothing should have changed.
I’d thought that, hundreds of times. Tried to redo it in my head, hundreds of times.
And yet, in my head, I always throw the same tantrum, always pick the amusement park, every single time.
My breath went shallow, threatening to stop somewhere deep in my lungs. I bit down hard on my back teeth, fighting to hold back the tears threatening to spill.
“Because I was selfish. Because I made them change where we were going…! That’s why both of them died. It’s basically like I killed them myself…”
A long, long silence.
The cheering from the field, the crackle of sparks — everything seemed to vanish completely, swallowed into total stillness.
“I’ve always thought that. This whole time. I could never tell anyone… Especially not you, Makina. I could never tell you. Because if I really believed I’d taken your mother away from you… I didn’t know what kind of face I was supposed to make, being next to you…!”
The words I spat out fell, dripping heavily into the darkness, carving straight through my own heart as they went.
This is it. This is really the end. Once she knows a truth this ugly, she probably won’t even be able to hide her anger — she’ll disappear from in front of me.
But I can’t bear staying beside her like this any longer, either way.
I was too afraid to look at Makina’s face.
All I could do was drop my eyes and stare fixedly at my own trembling fingers.
Only the deep red light spilling through the window quietly traced the outline of her.
I don’t know how much time passed.
Finally, Makina slowly opened her mouth.
Her voice wasn’t the furious shouting I’d been dreading, nor a tearful scream.
It was unbelievably quiet, and yet more serious than anything I’d ever heard from her. Like she was gently trying to wrap both hands around my still-trembling one.
“…Hey, Yotsuka.”
I lifted my face, hesitant, afraid.
Lit by the red flames, Makina’s eyes didn’t hold a single tear. She was just looking straight at me, steady and unwavering.
“Yotsuka… do you want to make me the villain in this?”
Her brows dropped, just slightly, looking a little troubled.