Episode 47: An Excuse, or Self-Defense
Blonde hair, swaying lightly, a small figure receding, on the verge of vanishing entirely.
By the time I noticed, I’d already burst out of the café.
“Yuno…!”
I pushed through the crowd, shoulders knocking against strangers, running.
But the figure was already gone.
My feet stopped.
A laugh escaped me, on its own.
Why was I even chasing her.
If I’d caught up, what was I even going to say?
That I’d liked her too?
Too late for that now.
Besides — there’s no way Yuno would be wandering alone at this hour.
She’s probably with Saeko right now, doing——
— Let it go. Just forget it.
In the end, love really was nothing but noise.
Good thing I never put that feeling into words.
If I had, I’d only be more pathetic now.
I kept telling myself that, over and over, in my head.
An excuse, or self-defense — something that could be called either, swirling, filling up my chest.
This was for the best. This.
I went back into the café and smiled at Matsuyama.
“Matsuyama-san, thank you. I’ll be back at work properly from tomorrow.”
Matsuyama looked at me with a complicated expression, then lifted the corner of her mouth slightly and nodded, slow.
＊＊＊
The office, the next day.
At the morning meeting, I apologised to everyone, bowing my head, for the week I’d vanished.
When I lifted my face, the first eyes I met were Saeko’s.
Gentle eyes.
And yet, somehow, a gaze that pierced.
— Yuno’s likeness overlapped, somewhere in Saeko’s face.
Their features were nothing alike, and yet Yuno seemed to show through, faintly, regardless.
I couldn’t look directly at her.
I turned my eyes away, on reflex.
“Reina, do you have time from ten?”
The one who spoke, the moment I sat at my desk, was Saeko.
“I wanted to hand over a week’s worth of things.”
“Ah… you covered for me with all of it. …Thank you.”
“That’s right. It really was a lot.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes.
Whose fault was it. I couldn’t even say that much.
My gaze dropped instead to Saeko’s hand, resting near my desk.
Had that hand held Yuno yesterday too?
Combed through her hair? Pressed lips to hers?
Had those fingers gently touched every part of Yuno’s body?
— Nausea rose.
I couldn’t even look at her hand, at those short, neat nails.
My breath went shallow.
“…! Sorry, give me a second.”
Desperately holding back what was rising, I bolted off the floor.
Maybe it had been too soon to come back to the office after all. The corridor toward the bathroom felt unreasonably long.
＊＊＊
Ten o’clock.
In the president’s office, I received the week’s handover from Saeko.
“Anything addressed to you, I forwarded only the urgent ones, the rest I’ve held. I made a list.”
Saeko turned the tablet toward me.
“Mita-san from ABC Corp contacted us three times. Wants a callback sometime next week. Also, the end-of-month dinner reservation isn’t confirmed yet — might want to move on that soon.”
“…You handled all of that. Alone?”
“Yeah. Well, managed somehow.”
Saeko said it lightly, still working the tablet.
The handover wrapped up in about thirty minutes, and Saeko stood, saying “I think that covers it.”
Hand on the door, she paused.
“Reina.”
Without turning back, I saw her hand tighten, gripping itself.
“I’m really sorry. I didn’t know…”
“…Eh?”
“That the person you were living with was Yuno. That’s why I was so shocked, that day.”
The instant that name left Saeko’s mouth, something gouged at the back of my chest. A dull, deep ache.
“…Ah. Yeah.”
That was all I could manage.
Forget it. Let it be over now.
“…Is she doing well? That girl.”
I kept my voice carefully level and asked it, putting on a front.
I couldn’t tell myself whether it had come out steady or shaking.
Saeko turned back, slowly.
A puzzled expression, faintly troubled.
She tilted her head and said:
“Eh. …Doing well? What do you mean?”
— Eh?
“I mean — that day, didn’t Yuno go to your place? Aren’t you two… living together?”
I asked it, looking straight at Saeko’s face.
Pretending it was nothing. Pretending it was nothing.
But my voice, even to my own ears, was shaking.
“Eh? She’s not living with me.”
Saeko paused for a moment, scratched her head, and said it, almost too easily, too lightly:
“I mean — she turned me down flat, that day.”
— Eh…………?