The next day, after school. Chiharu had packed up her things to finish the little remaining sports festival committee work, when Horiuchi Hanako came over. She had been the central figure of the group of girls who had pushed for the event change yesterday, and she was the one who’d ended up in the cavalry battle. Today she came alone, holding a single sheet of paper.
“Um, Miyazono-san. I’m returning this.”
It was the list of events and assigned students that Chiharu had handed Horiuchi yesterday.
She had spares, so there was no need to return it, but Chiharu took it without comment.
Yukino watched from her seat, timidly, trying not to be noticed. When had she last listened in on a conversation between two other people? It felt like it had been a long time, because of the taste, like bile, that had always killed her curiosity.
Chiharu glanced at the paper she’d taken, then looked up at Horiuchi.
“Oh, right. So? What are you going to do about adjusting the events?”
Horiuchi looked away with the expression of someone swallowing something bitter, and spat out her words.
“I’m not going to. It seems like nobody wants to do the cavalry battle. 【I don’t mind, though.】”
“I see. So you did make a proper effort to sort it out yourself.”
Chiharu seemed to have something on her mind, and nodded a few times with a murmur of approval.
Her words had a faintly parental air, and Horiuchi knit her brows and opened her mouth to snap back. At that very moment, Chiharu’s fingertip pointed to a spot on the paper.
“But nobody’s asked me, though. I chose the relay too.”
Horiuchi’s mouth, which had been about to snap, fell open in a daze, and a blank sound escaped her.
“…Huh? I mean… because, um…”
“Yes.”
She didn’t think for a second that those words came from a genuine question.
In other words, what Chiharu meant was “you could have asked me to swap.” And of course the reason she hadn’t was clear to both of them, and even to Yukino, watching from the side.
“…It’s awkward.”
That was all there was to it. The words Horiuchi squeezed out were swallowed up by the noise of the classroom.
Chiharu gave a “hmm,” nodded slowly, and, without changing her expression in the slightest, looked at Horiuchi out of the corner of her eye.
“True. Then, 【understood.】 So, is it fine if we go with no adjustment?”
Once she was pressed with a confirming question like that, Horiuchi could, of course, tell what Chiharu was thinking.
Horiuchi’s eyes, slightly moist, wavered with conflict, in a sulk.
Since Chiharu was going this far, she might swap if asked. But it was hard to say. The cause was obvious. Yesterday she had tried to push the work onto them with that attitude, saying “it’s your job,” and been talked back at. And now, on top of that, she’d come in a sulk to return the paper, and her pride was in the way, wondering how she had the nerve.
In the end, from beginning to end, the problem lay within herself. Realising that, Horiuchi was struck by an overwhelming inferiority complex, and her face twisted in self-loathing. If Chiharu had at least torn into her harshly, or if she’d offered to swap on her own, she’d have felt a bit better.
Thinking that, she looked at Chiharu, and found that she had stopped moving and was waiting, however long it took, for Horiuchi’s words.
“…Um.”
Before she knew it, her mouth had opened. Because she knew. Her body knew how to wipe away guilt.
“Yes.”
As always, Chiharu neither pushed nor pulled, simply showing that she would take in whatever Horiuchi said and did.
I can’t beat her. Even as she thought so, she realised, only now, that it was never something to compete over in the first place.
“I’m sorry for saying rude things— 【sor】… I’m sorry.”
At first, her pride had tried to say a lip-service apology.
And then she corrected it properly. Yukino watched this in astonishment.
Of course, Chiharu couldn’t know any of that inner turmoil. Even so, her face softened a little.
“Would you swap events with me?”
With her head bowed slightly, Horiuchi made the request to the last relay runner.
This time it wasn’t an overbearing demand that assumed it was their due. It was the stance of someone asking a person on equal footing to take the short end for her sake. And Chiharu took out a pen and wrote swap arrows on the paper she’d just been handed. Miyazono Chiharu to the cavalry battle. Horiuchi Hanako to the relay.
Miyazono Chiharu’s cheeks eased slightly, and she nodded slowly.
“Okay. I’ll handle the rest of the adjustments on this end. Good luck in the relay.”
As if to hide her slightly wet eyes, Horiuchi bowed her head politely.
“Th-thank you. Very much.”
Horiuchi looked up. What met her eyes was Chiharu, giving a playful thumbs-up.
At that, the tension drained from Horiuchi’s shoulders, her eyes got a little wetter, and she returned the thumbs-up, both thumbs raised.
Then she turned on her heel and walked toward Yukino, who had been silently watching. Yukino’s shoulders jumped, but before she could flee, Horiuchi had come close and bowed her head the same way she had to Chiharu.
“Hasekura-san, I’m sorry about yesterday too.”
—Amazing, Yukino thought, watching her.
Of course, Horiuchi’s behaviour yesterday had not been admirable, especially considering that she’d lied. But she was truly sorry from the bottom of her heart. And the one who had given her the chance to be was Chiharu. Both Horiuchi, who had tried to change, and Chiharu, who had stepped in and made the change possible, were amazing people. And this was surely a sight she wouldn’t have seen if she had kept listening to instrumental songs through her wireless earphones.
Yukino adjusted her feelings a little, and nudged Horiuchi’s shoulder, which had dipped along with her bowed head, with her fist.
“No, please don’t worry about it. Do your best.”
After she’d had her raise her head, she copied what Chiharu had done yesterday and just now. Faced with Yukino’s thumbs-up, Horiuchi grinned as if she found it funny, and said, “I will,” raising both thumbs.
*
“Okay. Is that all our tasks done?”
After that, Yukino and Chiharu went to the empty classroom and finished the remaining work.
Today they sat one seat closer than yesterday, two desks over. Chiharu had finished a dozen or so seconds ago and put down her pen with a sigh. She sneaked a look at Yukino’s progress and, the moment Yukino finished, said this.
Chiharu and Yukino differed greatly in processing speed. That they had finished at about the same time might mean that Chiharu had taken more of the work, but if she was hiding it, Yukino thought she should pretend not to notice. With that decided, she glanced over her checklist.
“Let’s see. The notices, equipment management, preparing the order sheet, and submitting the event allocation table for our class. Yes, I think nothing’s missing. Good work today.”
Counting today, it had taken just three working days to finish the tasks assigned by the committee.
This meant there was no more committee work until the sports festival itself.
With a sense of accomplishment as if her wings were spreading, Yukino offered her thanks for the work, and Chiharu returned “You too. Good work,” a purely businesslike thanks without a trace of falsehood.
Then Chiharu held up the finished papers and fluttered them.
“I’ll report in for us, so you can go home first.”
The completed documents had to be submitted to the advisor for a final check, but Yukino, already helped so much by Chiharu, couldn’t rely on her to that extent. Yukino held up the papers she’d just finished writing too, and refused with a smile, shaking her head from side to side.
“No, Miyazono-san is only a class president doing double duty. Please leave at least this much to me.”
It would be silly to argue about it here. And perhaps thinking Yukino had the stronger case, Chiharu pouted, pinched her chin, and, humming, came up with a compromise.
“Really? Hmm… well, it’s on the way home anyway, so let’s go together. 【I don’t have any big plans after this anyway.】 Of course, only if you don’t mind, Hasekura-san.”
A well-formed lie, but a lie meant to deceive someone always has a bad taste, whatever else.
A bitterness clung to the back of her throat. With the taste of Chiharu’s lie filling her mouth, she glanced at the clock. Well, it wouldn’t take much time. Judging that, she nodded with a smile.
“…All right. Then let’s get these submitted quickly.”
So the two packed up their things and headed together to the staff room on the first floor.
On the way, they combined the documents to submit into one set. Yukino leafed through them.
“After this… all that’s left for each of us is guide duty, once each on the day?”
“Right. We cut that down by piling more work onto this side, after all.”
Chiharu tilted her head, peered into Yukino’s eyes, and let a smile slip as she thanked her.
“Thanks to you, the work got done smoothly. Thank you, really. I’m glad my partner was you.”
If she modestly said “that’s absolutely not true,” it would turn into an exchange of pleasantries.
Chiharu truly thanked Yukino from her heart, and Yukino truly respected and thanked Chiharu from hers.
Yukino fanned her neck lightly, as if to hide her slightly rising body heat, and put her hands together at her chest.
“Being praised so directly by a classmate I respect is a bit awkward. Hehe.”
A smile she hadn’t been able to suppress slipped out childishly, and Chiharu gave a “Hmm?” and a smile in return that suggested she didn’t mind at all. And Yukino remembered that this relationship would probably end by the time they reached the staff room. Deciding she should say what she wanted to say while she could, she slipped past the “minimal necessary administrative communication.”
“Honestly, I’m sad too. Because I found time spent with you comfortable, Miyazono-san.”
Hearing it said to her face, Chiharu put a hand on her hip and raised her eyebrows.
“You’re exaggerating. We’re classmates. If we get another chance, we’ll do something together again. Even if we don’t, just talk to me normally… oh, right.”
Having said that much, she finally remembered the “secret” from before, and groaned in thought.
Time with Chiharu was fun, but there was also the opposing worry of not wanting to talk to people.
Feeling guilty for dragging Chiharu around over her own issues, Yukino nodded with a bitter face.
“No… well, yes, right. Yes, there are those circumstances too.”
But then a question surfaced for Chiharu.
She didn’t like talking to people, but she’d enjoyed spending time with Chiharu enough to feel sad about it.
If that wasn’t flattery or pretence, what made the opposing feeling lean toward her?
“But you found it comfortable to be with me? What circumstances are those?”
At Chiharu’s direct step forward, Yukino scowled and groaned “Ugh,” searching for a reply.
It was a natural question and she wanted to answer, but she didn’t yet have the courage to confess everything.
Seeing her agonise, Chiharu added some background to her question, as if to make up for how blunt it was.
“It’s just, if it were only ‘I’m bad at communicating and hate being with people,’ I’d understand, but it doesn’t seem like that. You hate conversation. Being with me is fine. Other people aren’t. What kind of circumstances are those? That’s what I wondered, but, is it even okay to go into this? Or should I hold back a bit more? I want to know about you, Hasekura-san.”
She hesitated. Whether to confess everything or not.
The only people who knew about her constitution were her birth mother and the elderly doctor who had examined her in childhood.
The reason she’d never told anyone was that if people knew, they’d think it creepy, it would make them uncomfortable each time they talked, and if the fact got out, it wasn’t hard to imagine her becoming an object of curiosity. But however short their acquaintance, she couldn’t imagine Chiharu being that kind of person. Of course, since no one could fully understand what another person was thinking, it was nothing more than Yukino’s wishful thinking.
Even so, she thought Chiharu could be trusted.
But she didn’t want to say it. So it wasn’t a disadvantage, but surely psychological resistance.
She was only keeping quiet out of the inertia of not wanting to tell someone, and that could also be called laziness. Chiharu had sincerely faced her feeling of not wanting to be around people, without knowing her constitution. Could she really respond to that with laziness?
After a few seconds of silence and conflict, Yukino shook it off, drew a breath, and gathered her resolve.
“I know this is going to be misleading in many ways, but… I’d like you not to tell anyone.”
Chiharu opened her mouth in slight surprise, then closed it and nodded.
“…Yes, I promise. Though you might think that’s just words.”
Because she knew there was no lie in them, Yukino shook her head and said it clearly.
“No, I believe you. I can believe you, Miyazono-san.”
Taken aback by that firm assessment, Chiharu waited for the rest.
Yukino put a hand on her chest and took a deep breath to tame her nerves.
Before they knew it, the two had reached the stairs and were going down side by side, where few people were. From the open entrance on the first floor, the scent of summer and the warmth of early summer drifted up faintly against their skin.
Yukino stopped on the landing and checked that no one was coming from above or below.
Then, to Chiharu, who had stopped as well, she quietly revealed a part of the core.
“…Hearing people’s voices makes me feel sick.”
Chiharu frowned in puzzlement. Why? Was it a psychological condition? Under what conditions? How badly? Various questions must have come to her, but Chiharu chose her words and replied:
“Is that… the case now, too?”
She meant, was even this moment, talking with her, unpleasant?
“No, well, it’s complicated. But before I said there were no exceptions… but there are people and situations that are close to all right. Your voice isn’t very unpleasant, Miyazono-san.”
She still couldn’t confess everything.
But she believed she had shown the greatest sincerity she could manage right now.
Miyazono Chiharu lies. Whoever it came from, a lie told in earnest to deceive and hide something tasted terrible, and Chiharu was no exception. But those lies weren’t lies of vanity or to put others down.
Her lies tasted bad, but their aftertaste wasn’t something she disliked.
And above all, when they were alone together, she was often honest with her. That was why it wasn’t unpleasant.
Chiharu took those words in firmly and was silent for a few seconds, gazing into the air. Then:
“Ah… I’m gauging the distance. Give me a moment.”
She said that to bridge the silence, and then spent another dozen or so seconds.
After thinking it over carefully, she found words she herself could accept and spoke.
“Is it okay if I’m your friend?”
It was an extremely simple question, so easy it was almost anticlimactic.
Yukino took it in with a blank look, and because it was simple, and therefore clear, she could answer with powerful feeling. She returned the gaze straight on and nodded deeply.
“—Yes.”
“Okay. If I know that, it’s enough for me.”
They were words that respected Yukino’s will to not yet reveal everything.
She had feared closeness with anyone, and yet she’d thought herself selfish for finding loneliness lonely. But Chiharu had gauged the distance Yukino wanted, and stood right there.
“Let’s talk again soon, just the two of us. That would be fine, right?”
Yukino watched in a daze as Chiharu said this with a laugh and started walking.
Her black hair danced glossily on the landing. Her unburdened expression was full of ease.
Parting from Chiharu was lonely, but it would be hard to be openly friendly with her and enter her circle of friends. What she had offered Yukino was something special, “talking just the two of us.”
Yukino followed Chiharu’s back on unsteady feet, stroking her heart as it pounded fast. Her cheeks were hot. She even felt something like a sense of danger, that this might not be good. Biting down on the feverish sensation, she said, in a thin voice:
“Y-yes…”
—An unidentifiable sense of danger, with each throb, gradually built.