Episode 46
Walking home with slow, dragging steps, the light had shifted into that dazzling stretch of evening.
I narrowed my eyes against the red glare and kept walking.
Checking my phone screen, there was a message from Morishita.
Congratulations.
Such a flat, typically Morishita sentence.
And still, more than enough to make my heart race.
My body has become something that rises and falls entirely at Morishita’s mercy.
I understand well enough that it isn’t good to blame someone else for that, and yet my head has gone foolish with nothing but Morishita. Morishita. Morishita.
Foolish enough that I’d ended up neglecting the childhood friend who had always, always been beside me.
I’d never seen Yudzuki that shaken before.
I’d never seen Hinata look that serious either.
How do the two of them see me now?
Since getting involved with Morishita, I realized, I’d stopped paying attention to how I appeared to the people around me.
At the same time, it’s undeniably thanks to Morishita that I managed to take first place on this test.
What’s good and what’s bad in all this, I can’t judge right now.
Either way, right now, I wanted to see Morishita.
I messaged her to come over.
A few dozen minutes after getting home, the intercom rang, and Morishita came inside.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but she seemed more subdued than usual.
She sat quietly on the floor, not even reading manga, just staring blankly at nothing.
I sat down beside her without a word and found myself staring blankly at the wall too.
“I’m glad you got first.”
“Yeah.”
“So, as promised…”
Morishita moved as though about to go somewhere, and I was hit with a suffocating feeling, like drowning.
Sunlight pressing through a wavering, transparent scene, and no matter how far I reached, my hand couldn’t touch it, only that same breathless feeling continuing on and on.
For now, so she wouldn’t run, even knowing she’d hate it, I climbed onto her lap.
The action was apparently too bold, because Morishita’s eyes wavered, staring at me.
It’s Morishita’s fault that things went wrong with my childhood friends.
Nothing had ever made me feel properly alive before, and it’s Morishita’s fault too that my emotions have become this violent, this uneven.
Invading my life without asking.
No, it’s more accurate to say I forced Morishita into my own life.
Even so, since she’d stepped into it too, I wanted her to take responsibility for it with me.
I didn’t want her doing something as frightening as going somewhere else.
“Fujishiro? Is this about wanting a reward for taking first?”
Morishita was still staring at me, eyes wide.
Right, I’d asked for a kiss as a reward if I ever took first.
Of course I wanted it.
…Wait, what was I even thinking, wanting a kiss from Morishita.
My head was too crowded, pleading with itself to stop thinking altogether.
I placed a hand on Morishita’s cheek and brought my face close.
Morishita slowly lowered her eyes, maybe out of some sense of obligation.
Such an honest, foolish person.
She could have just brushed off what I was saying as nonsense.
I let my face pass by hers instead, and pressed my lips to her ear. I pulled her in tight and let out a small, quiet sound, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“Morishita, study with me until exams are over. That’s the reward I want.”
“What? That’s…”
“I know. Don’t say something like that just because I took first once. But it was because Morishita was with me that I got first. I feel like if Morishita’s with me, the entrance exams will go well too.”
“But…”
The force behind Morishita’s voice weakened.
I know.
She’s kind, so if I plead weakly enough, she’ll go along with what I say.
I know full well it’s cowardly to exploit her conscience to keep this relationship going, but this was the only method I could think of.
I also understand that if she refuses, it’ll hurt me.
Treated as unnecessary by everyone, and if Morishita told me I was unneeded too, what would become of me?
The thought frightened me, that it would be so easy, easy enough to make everything I’d agonized over until now feel absurd, to just throw my own life away.
That’s how much I needed Morishita right now.
“Fujishiro’s unfair.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not what we promised.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
Even as she spoke, Morishita kept pushing against me, and I could feel her wanting to put distance between us right now.
Still, so she wouldn’t get away, I wrapped my arms around her and held tight.
“Can’t breathe. Let go.”
“No. Not until Morishita gives me a proper answer.”
“I said it’s not what we promised.”
“I know, but, please…”
I threw away every defense I had, pleading desperately.
This unguarded version of me, exposed enough to break apart at the slightest attack from any direction.
But please, just for now, I wanted her to accept me.
Knowing I wasn’t going to let go no matter what, Morishita pinched my stomach, pulled my hair.
Even so, I clung on desperately, and then an unbelievable pain shot through my neck.
It seemed I’d been bitten.
Her teeth ground into the skin of my throat. I could feel her lukewarm heat through the place she was biting, and thinking it felt good, even, made me wonder if I’d gone insane.
But her teeth kept sinking further into the muscle, and the pain became unbearable.
A contest of endurance, whichever of us gave in first, Morishita, or me unable to stand the pain any longer.
The pain was bad enough to force a low sound out of me, but it was Morishita who broke first.
The moment her fangs let go, I loosened the arms holding her too.
My throat throbbed like a second heartbeat, and heat spread from there through my whole body, warming my face.
Morishita’s brow was furrowed, glaring at me sharply.
I felt a small pang of regret for my own forcefulness, but I thought, if I backed down now, it felt like Morishita would slip away easily, so it couldn’t be helped.
“Fujishiro’s unbelievably foolish.”
“Foolish, so study with me.”
“There’s no benefit to you having me around. I’d just be in the way.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I took up Fujishiro’s time, so you have less time to spend with your friends. Because of me…”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
There was something clouded in the way Morishita said it.
Something in her words caught on me, and I couldn’t help but ask.
“Hinata-chan came to me.”
“What did she say?”
“That Fujishiro’s been strange lately. She asked if I knew anything, but it felt like Hinata-chan’s eyes were blaming me…”
“That’s…”
Thinking about how Hinata had acted earlier, I could imagine her attitude toward Morishita.
I felt a deep regret that I hadn’t talked things through properly with Hinata and Yudzuki before dragging Morishita into it.
Because I’d been acting without considering the people around me.
Because I can’t manage relationships gracefully.
The number of people I’ve made uncomfortable had grown.
That fact hit harder than I’d expected, and I sank into real dejection.
But there wasn’t time to stay sunk in it now.
I hugged Morishita again.
This time, gently, wrapping around her.
“Sorry for dragging you into this.”
“You really should be.”
“I won’t drag you into anything else, so please think about studying with me until exams are over.”
I tried to soften my expression as much as I could and looked at Morishita. I let the tension out of my face, but held back the tears gathering in my eyes so they wouldn’t spill.
Morishita’s eyes went wide the moment they met mine, glancing between my neck and my face, and she looked away, guilty.
“Sorry for biting.”
“That’s fine, really.”
“It’s a mess…”
I checked my phone to see how bad it actually was, and the mark was a worse reddish-purple bruise than I’d expected.
Painful-looking, ugly, and yet the mark that suits me best right now.
And if it’s a wound Morishita gave me, I can accept it without complaint.
“Ahaha. You really went at it like you wanted to bite clean through.”
“…Sorry.”
“So, keep coming over like normal from now on, okay?”
“…Probably.”
Relieved by that answer, I climbed down from her lap and spread out my reference books like nothing had happened.
Of course I pushed Morishita to study too. Bewildered, she opened her own reference book and started working.
Honestly, I was on edge the whole time, terrified that at any moment Morishita would say she hated this and walk out the door.
Of course I pretended to concentrate on studying, but I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye.
But Morishita ended up more absorbed in her reference book than I’d expected, showing no sign of leaving.
Taking advantage of that, I leaned against her partway through, played with her hair, as I always do, and she didn’t complain at all, staying completely straight-faced the entire time.