Episode 8

“W-well — there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Um… why would someone like you say something like that — like go out with me — to someone like me?”

“We barely had any connection before all this, and I think you could get along wonderfully with someone far more… worthy of you…”

I’d meant to draw the story out of her in a calm, composed voice — measured, like a proper senpai. Instead, all I could manage was something small and uncertain.

A weekday afternoon. Nothing coming in from outside. The silence wraps itself around a room with just the two of us in it. A world of only two.

I watch her without looking away.

Won’t say — or can’t say.

Ten seconds. Five minutes. An hour.

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. But this wasn’t the moment to rush her.

She was probably, right now, in the middle of choosing.

“The reason — I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

But. A voice wrung thin, pale and fragile.

“I have only ever looked at you, Hiito-senpai. The whole time. The whole time…”

The whole time. Always. Always…

Something snagged. I reached for it and it slipped through. Maybe I was just grasping at something I couldn’t see at all.

“I’m sorry for pushing so hard. I regret that.”

“But I love you. More than anyone. More than I love myself.”

“I see… Well — I won’t deny it caught me off guard a few times. Um…”

I understood now that there was no malice in her feelings. And I understood that some reason lay behind them. Which was precisely why I couldn’t find the words to give her back.

I don’t want to hurt her. Because we work in the same office. Because she’s a capable junior who worked herself to exhaustion to help me. Because she’s a likeable, popular person.

Which of those applied?

It felt like all of them, and none of them.

Choose. I had to choose. I couldn’t make this not have happened anymore.

“I’m glad you feel that way — so… what if we just stay close, and keep working together well going forward — how would that be…?”

This is fine. She’s a capable junior colleague who, for whatever reason, has feelings for hollow me. I can’t turn her down bluntly and hurt her.

Settle into a relationship that causes as little pain as possible, with as few waves as possible.

I must not reach for her colour.

“Senpai. Can I ask you one thing?”

A serious voice.

“Why do you always look like you’re in pain? Just that — please tell me that.”

My heart lurched.

I didn’t understand what she was saying, and yet my body understood what she’d said.

“I think it can’t be helped that you’d reject me. But… long before that night, you’ve always looked like you were in pain.”

“If you tell me that — I’ll give up on you. I promise.”

A lie.

You’re the one who looks like you’re in pain right now.

Her face says she could never give up. And yet she goes this far — she reaches this far — just to know me.

If it’s her — I could tell her. It isn’t something I’m forbidden to tell anyone. She probably won’t understand. She might think I’m strange. But that’s all it would amount to.

If it’s her — someone willing to give up something precious just to reach me.

I’ll say it. I’ll let it out.

Even if it breaks things between us. Even if it breaks something in me.

“Okay.”

“I don’t think I can tell you everything. But — I want you to hear it.”

She looks at me, her large eyes gone wide and round.

“…All right. Let me make some tea — just wait a moment.”

I watch her back quietly as she moves toward the kitchen.

Aiming for colourless and transparent — always choosing whichever way has the least stimulation, the thinnest colour. As long as I do that, at least I won’t have to know that pain again.

Who in the world could understand a way of living this warped?