Two days later, it was another after-school when committee work had been assigned.
Yukino had just stood up from her seat to head to the empty classroom for the work when it happened.
“Oh, hey, Hasekura-san! Got a minute?”
A group of four girls gathered at her desk, and Yukino frowned slightly.
Lying is an act of deceiving others to extract some benefit, which is to say it’s especially common in groups. Friendships between students who seem particularly close often contain dense lies, and so she found them, a little, frightening.
But she couldn’t very well ignore them. “Yes?” she said, and took out the wireless earphones she’d put in.
One of the four clapped her hands together and bowed her head.
“So yesterday we did the sports festival event assignments, right? And, um, I think I got put in the cavalry battle. Sorry! It’s just— 【I hurt my leg a long time ago, and the doctor said I’m not supposed to carry anything heavy!】 Could I switch to the relay?”
A fairly heavy lie right off the bat, and perhaps because it so clearly intended to deceive her, a sickeningly sticky, sour, complex bitterness spread through her mouth. The taste of vomit. A revulsion welled up like the squeezed-out juice of a rag that had wiped many things, boiled down until thick, and the false front pricked at her stomach.
The leg injury was a lie. The doctor’s words were a lie. But she wanted to change her event to the relay.
And the gazes of the three girls around her were more of a demand than a request.
“Ah… I see. I understand…”
Was this something she could decide on the spot? If it was true, she wanted to be considerate.
At the sight of Yukino pretending to agonise over it, one of the group leaned in close.
“Sorry, I know it’s a pain. 【She got hurt like that before, too.】”
“Please wait a moment. I’ll check a few things and then answer—”
Piling lie upon lie to get a demand through was a standard tactic, but when it was done right in front of her, it only wore away at her ability to think calmly. The lies were so nauseating that Yukino pressed a hand to her chest and went pale.
For the moment, she put aside whether the story was true.
But even if it were, it would be hard to agree on the spot. The number of participants in each event was fixed. If someone moved, someone else had to fill the gap. It wasn’t a change but a swap. In other words, since it couldn’t be settled by one person alone—
“We only decided yesterday, so it should be fine, right? What if she gets hurt?”
As if losing patience with Yukino’s thinking, one of them said this in an overbearing tone, looking down at her to pressure her.
Another sighed, and the girl making the request tapped her fingers on the desk to hurry her along.
Ah, this feels really bad somehow. But as a committee member, she had to stay calm and sincere—
“—I’ll answer for her. A change is possible.”
In the moment Yukino hesitated between revulsion and her sense of duty, those words cut in.
Chiharu, who had evidently been listening, was walking over casually with her bag slung over her shoulder.
At her words, the four girls’ faces lit up, and they said to each other, “Yes!”
Is that really all right? Yukino looked at Chiharu’s face, but of course Chiharu wasn’t going to leave it there.
“However, to balance the numbers, we need someone else to switch to the cavalry battle. It can be directly from the relay, or you can get several people involved and adjust with other events. I’ll give you the roster, so find people who’ll swap with you.”
It seemed Chiharu had spotted the same problem as Yukino, but unlike Yukino, she had a clear answer to it. Naturally, the group of four balked, not wanting to go to the trouble.
“Eh… no, I mean, can’t the committee do that? Isn’t that your job?”
They openly scowled, turning their bodies toward her as a group in an accusing atmosphere.
Again, it was a nasty way of going about it. Yukino tried to cut in. The taste of lies was the worst, but she hated guilt even more. She’d rather take it herself than have Chiharu get harsh words here, but—
“I don’t mind, but if every candidate for the swap says no, I won’t change it, okay?”
Without a flicker in her expression, Chiharu stated her stance plainly.
Her bearing was so unshakeable that one of the four, deflated, pushed back with a falsehood.
“No… 【I told you, the doctor said I can’t】.”
The one who’d started it knit her brows and bared open hostility, but Chiharu casually pinched her chin and made a show of thinking, “Hmm.” Then she smiled.
“Well, true enough. 【If you split a girl’s weight three or four ways, it comes to ten or twenty kilos each. Sprinting all-out in the relay would be easier on your leg than carrying that.】 I see. 【If there’s a reason like that, the committee ought to accommodate it. Understood! I’ll go through the committee advisor and force a headcount adjustment, so to explain it to the teacher, I’d like proof that you’ve been to the doctor. It doesn’t have to be a medical certificate, since those cost money. Let’s see… any document showing you were injured, or a medical expense notice or a receipt will do.】 If you have that, I can persuade him properly. I promise I’ll persuade him.”
A thick taste of lies. Yukino grimaced slightly at the lies Chiharu spun so smoothly.
A lie tastes foul no matter who tells it. It’s unpleasant. And yet, for some reason, for the first time, Yukino felt a sense of duty to savour this discomfort, and a feeling that she ought to taste it properly.
Chiharu wasn’t giving an inch. She had no intention of doing so.
Seeing that come through so clearly, the four girls glared at her in silence with stern faces.
But the group that had tried to prevail by numbers hadn’t prepared any argument that could beat someone who could face them alone without flinching. The deception that goes by the name of peer pressure had now been bent by a reasoned argument with a spine. Even when they pressed on with threats, Chiharu met them squarely, fixed her straight gaze on just one of them, the girl who’d asked for the change, and kept looking at her without looking away, as if one animal were ranking another, waiting for the other to avert her eyes. Then she asked, simply, “Got it?”
“I mean, 【the doctor】…”
The girl still wouldn’t give up. Chiharu, with a quiet expression, cut through all of the pretences.
“—Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter now. Even so, if you’re going to ask to change something already decided for your own convenience, you should show an appropriate attitude. And getting the agreement for that is your responsibility, not our job. If there’s any information you need, I’ll provide it. That’s all. Anything else?”
At the resolutely spoken logic, the four finally gave in completely.
And they promised to get the agreement themselves, and took the roster from Chiharu.
“Th-thank you. That was a big help.”
On the way to the empty classroom for their work, Yukino thanked Chiharu again.
Chiharu put away the edge she’d had a moment ago, like a freshly honed blade, and smiled breezily.
“No problem, no problem. More importantly, we’re doing committee work today too, right? Let’s get it done early.”
“Y-yes! Right. I’m the type who gets her summer homework done early, too.”
They walked side by side in silence for a while, until Chiharu broke it with a sigh.
“Phew… hey, are you the type who doesn’t like talking behind people’s backs?”
She cast a slightly wicked smile at Yukino out of the corner of her eye, and Yukino gave an ambiguous smile and looked away.
“Um… well, I do think it’s not a very good thing to do.”
“Okay, then just one thing.”
What would she have said if I’d agreed with badmouthing? she wondered, and said “Yes,” waiting for the words.
“I bet those four came at us thinking, ‘Let’s all run the relay together and make some youth memories!’”
Chiharu grinned, jerking her thumb at the classroom behind them. “You’re wicked,” Yukino said, her cheeks twitching.
But, now that she thought about it, given the situation, it did seem like there had to have been that sort of calculation.
But the shame of it was that they’d used a transparent lie as their means.
A change was possible for any reason, but it required the agreement of the students who’d be pulled into it. If you used the system to request a change, you needed evidence, and if you negotiated directly without evidence, you needed sympathy. When you were presented with circumstances, overbearingly and without evidence, the only place to land was where they had landed. It had been unpleasant, but she hadn’t wanted to get in the way of their youth.
“I thought so too… but I thought the doctor thing might have been true.”
Yukino wrapped up safely like that, and Chiharu faced forward and nodded slowly.
“Right. But even if so, I don’t like the way and the attitude of someone who forces extra effort on others for their own convenience, without showing any willingness to do what they can and should do themselves, and who pressures the managers overbearingly to push work onto them. Our resources aren’t unlimited, either. If the same mistake is made by many people many times, we’d be worked to death. If you think they should be accommodated because they’re few in number, that’s not the system, that’s the realm of kindness. In other words, I believe cooperation should rest on a minimum of goodwill. To hell with going along with ill intent. Come back the day before yesterday!”
Having reached the same conclusion, Chiharu got so heated that she even flipped a middle finger.
Then, after freezing for a few seconds, she spread her hand open and covered her mouth to hide it, narrowing her eyes.
“Sorry, my language was a bit unladylike. I talked behind their backs. 【I’m sorry.】”
Without the slightest sign of regret, Chiharu offered a pro-forma apology, just enough to close out what she’d said.
“A bit? A lot, I’d say. But you really helped me.”
Even so, helped by that core of hers, Yukino thanked her again.
They went down the stairs from the third floor to the second, and walked along the hall side by side to the empty classroom they’d used before.
“…Relying on someone is the act of entrusting them with a load too heavy for your own hands, isn’t it? Pushing off a load you could carry yourself onto others isn’t ‘relying’, it’s ‘slacking.’”
To fill the silence, Yukino murmured this, gazing into the distance, and beside her there was a snap of fingers, light and crisp.
“Oh, nicely put. Yes, I want people to rely on me if they’re in trouble, but there’s no reason for me to accommodate those who slack. Then again, even as I say that, if talking it out seems like a hassle I end up doing it myself. When you think about grudges and the mental effort, it’s easier to do it myself.”
Chiharu laughed, a little self-deprecatingly. All at once, a question came down to Yukino.
The distance between them, a little closer than the other day, dragged those words smoothly out of her lungs.
“Then why did you refuse them just now, um…?”
Oh, that? Chiharu, who had braced herself, seemed let down, and answered breezily.
“Well, I’m neither a machine nor a saint. When someone tries to force work onto a friend of mine, I’ll at least get some payback.”
—Yukino stopped in her tracks, eyes wide with surprise. At the word “friend,” and at what Chiharu had done. But Chiharu, bewildered by Yukino’s surprise, stopped too and turned around, looking apologetic.
“Was that a nuisance?”
“Friend.” Even for someone as lonely as Yukino, it wasn’t a word she had no connection to.
But had anyone ever stepped in to help her this readily when she was in trouble? Or perhaps, somewhere, there might have been someone, but since she’d never been helped to that extent, she was thrown.
But to the question of whether it had been a nuisance, her reason, her instinct, her whole body answered unanimously.
“No, um, I’m not a good person either. So I was glad. It was refreshing.”
Though she knew it wasn’t good, her face loosened a little, and she gave a restrained clench of her fist.
“Then that’s good,” said Chiharu with a carefree smile, and Yukino was drawn to its brightness.
They started walking again, and at the same time Chiharu brought something up.
“Oh, right. While we’re at it, can I ask a somewhat personal question?”
Jolt. Before she’d even heard it, for some reason her shoulders trembled. Yukino pressed her trembling lips lightly together.
Whether she noticed that tiny change or not, Chiharu went straight to the question.
“I hope you won’t take offence, but, Hasekura-san, are you bad at dealing with people?”
It was so unexpected a question, exactly the point she’d feared, a bullseye that was hard to dodge.
Yukino felt every sweat gland begin to weep and brought her five fingertips together helplessly at her chest.
“W-what do you mean…”
“No, it’s just, watching how you usually interact in class, it feels like you’re really avoiding conversation. Your face often twitches while you’re talking, too, so I wondered if you hate it.”
Such formidable powers of observation.
It made her worry that eventually Chiharu would see through even her constitution.
Now, as for her observation, it was entirely correct. Yukino really was avoiding conversation with her classmates, and when she sensed a lie, her face sometimes naturally twisted. But, naturally, even though she had no intention of revealing her constitution, it was hard to decide whether she should conceal even the fact that she avoided people.
There were pros and cons either way. If she hid it, she could live an ordinary life but would be tormented by Chiharu’s lies. But if she told, she might make her uncomfortable, yet if she could avoid talking to Chiharu, lies would inevitably stay away too.
“Um, well…”
Yukino wavered. She narrowed her eyes and looked away, ground her back teeth restlessly together, and opened and closed the hand at her chest.
Honestly, she ought to hide it. If there were someone who announced “I’m bad with people,” she would think it best for both sides to avoid interacting. Then she might make her feel unpleasant. But even so, hiding it would be a lie. That fact stopped her mouth, which had barely opened.
She didn’t think lies were evil. Even so, Yukino wanted to repay Chiharu’s goodwill.
“To tell the truth… for various reasons, I’m not good at relationships, or rather, at conversation with people.”
Her heart pounded hard and fast. Her head felt hazy. She didn’t have enough oxygen.
To keep up a facade of calm she kept her breathing at the same pace, taking in more air instead.
It was the answer Chiharu had expected. But from that phrasing she arrived at one further possibility.
“…Ah, so is that… the thing? Is it actually the same with me?”
She too must have struggled over whether to go this far. Chiharu’s expression was ambiguous. Caught between whether to laugh or to look solemn, she carefully put the question.
Sweat wouldn’t stop. Yukino thought she was probably visibly flustered even to onlookers.
Now, honestly, if asked whether she was bad at talking with Chiharu, the answer was complicated. “Among conversations with all of humanity, it ranks as extremely comfortable,” but “since the framework of conversation itself contains lies, I have no choice but to say it’s hard.”
No matter who spoke the lie, the taste of vomit shoved into her mouth mid-conversation was beyond description. The desperate face of someone fighting back nausea would make the other person suspect that the conversation wasn’t enjoyable.
“…That is, well. Um, how should I put it.”
Talking with Chiharu was fun, but even so.
As Yukino stood rooted, confronting the watershed, Chiharu peered into her face.
“Honestly.”
“H-honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Yukino drew her face back and sank into deep thought. Conflict swirled around in her head.
And then, suddenly, she found the exit from the labyrinth of her thoughts. It was the voice of the girl who had called her, timid and pathetic as she was, sincere, and it was also the sight of her helping when she was in trouble.
“H-honestly… for really complicated reasons, I’m bad at talking with human beings, without exception.”
The certainty that Chiharu would accept her, and the shameful wish to avoid the disloyalty of a lie.
At that purely true answer, a blend of the two, Chiharu simply widened her eyes and opened her mouth.
“I’m surprised. You talk normally. So there are people like that.”
In Chiharu’s mind, people who dislike communication must naturally be bad at it, she supposed. In fact, perhaps being bad at it and disliking it are linked in a fair share of cases. That was exactly why, if someone you were chatting with so cordially told you, “I’m bad at talking with you,” it wasn’t hard to imagine you’d be quite offended, and Yukino apologised weakly.
“I’m sor—”
As she was about to bow her head, Chiharu’s fist bumped Yukino’s shoulder with a light thump, and the bow stopped.
When Yukino looked up with shaken eyes, Chiharu peered into her eyes with an unburdened smile.
“Well, I am surprised. But I can tell you’re not a bad person, and everyone has their own circumstances, so I don’t mean to blame you or press you for answers. Don’t worry.”
She had hated her ability to detect lies for as long as she could remember. But put another way, it was also an ability to see through the truth of others’ words. Until now, the balance between its benefits and its torment had been heavily tilted toward torment.
But in the moment she understood from the bottom of her heart that those words were true, she was, a little, saved.
Because she was certain that what Chiharu had told her was a sincere feeling without a trace of falsehood, Yukino’s eyes wavered.
“It’s okay.”
Chiharu drew back the fist she’d stuck out to bump Yukino’s shoulder, and turned it into a thumbs-up.
The playful, affected gesture, as if to wipe away any ill feeling on Yukino’s side, suited her very well.
—Not so much a good person as a noble one. Yukino’s tense face eased into a smile.
“Then from now on, let’s keep it a little more business-like. Minimal necessary administrative communication only?”
Chiharu put a finger to her own nose with a “shh,” and Yukino finally came to her senses.
“Y-yes! Um—”
Just from her promising that, it would become much easier to spend time with her from now on.
But if she was going to accept that, she ought to do it properly, and she bowed her head again.
“Thank you. I’m really, really glad.”
Hugging to her chest the comfort of being accepted by someone, she said it.
Then Chiharu neither acted as if she’d done a favour nor stubbornly refused thanks—
“You’re welcome.”
—she answered with a wink.
So the two of them arrived at the empty classroom and started their work right away.
The work that day was truly quiet, and yet a comfortable time.
Most of what they’d been assigned was paperwork, so they sat one seat closer than the other day, doing desk work with two empty seats between them. If there was no idle chatter, there was no reason to put in earphones, and wanting to show her as much of an open heart as she could, Yukino kept listening to the sound of her mechanical pencil lead tapping the desk. Both of their breathing, and the faint, indistinct voices of students leaking in from the hall.
On the schoolyard, she listened to the sound of the athletic clubs chasing white balls as she worked on in silence—crack!, a pleasant sound of a bat striking a ball rang out, and Yukino looked instinctively toward the window. As if they’d arranged it, Chiharu looked there at the same moment, then glanced at her, and their eyes met.
A small laugh soaked into the empty classroom of an early-summer afternoon.
Yukino, for the first time, felt that time spent in the same space with someone was pleasant.
And in the instant she became aware of it, something like a danger she couldn’t identify seemed to be gradually building. It wasn’t the kind that stirred up anxiety, but an intuition of a place from which, once she had gone forward, she could not return.
Perhaps it was something like a defensive instinct, against someone becoming a major presence within her for the first time in her life.