Episode 16

“Are you and Nanoha close, Mei-san?”

The sudden question set my heart beating. I kept myself calm, wiping away the sweat from practice with a soft towel.

“We’re not close. Why? And you don’t need the -san.”

Yudzuki — student council president and volleyball club captain both — always had a smile on her face that looked like it had been put there. Honestly, something about her produced a faint feeling of unease in me. The type of person you should never let get too close.

My instincts were telling me that.

“Then Mei-chan it is. You can drop honorifics with me too — nice to meet you.”
“Sure.”
“So here’s what I was curious about — in the PE volleyball class, when Nanoha got a nosebleed, you were the only one who went pale and rushed over, and Nanoha just let you take charge. Nanoha is absolutely the type who never leans on anyone when she’s struggling, so I was really surprised that time.”
“If you hurt someone it’s normal to be concerned. And I don’t know anything about Fujishiro, and I’m not interested.”

I was getting quite uncomfortable.
I couldn’t see what she was after. Whatever I answered, I had a feeling it would play into her hands.

“What is it you actually want to know?”
“Scary, scary. Don’t make that face. I just got curious about how Nanoha and Mei-chan ended up close when you had no connection to each other at all.”

Yudzuki smiled — a bright, somehow unsettling smile.

An unpleasant sensation ran down my spine.
Why did taking an injured Fujishiro to the nurse’s office in PE count as being close?

“We’re not close, like I said.”
“Is that right. Nanoha and I are childhood friends, you know. We are — and yet I was a little jealous, thinking Mei-chan had somehow gotten further in with her than I have.”

Another smile, directed at me.
I decided then to stop having any visible connection to Fujishiro at school. At the very minimum, this person called Yudzuki was going to be trouble.

I drank down my sports drink and ended the break.

I jogged out onto the court and Ran drifted over toward me.

“I’m so happy you’re getting along with Yudzuki, Mei.”
“We’re not getting along.”
“Really? It’s just — I’ve never seen you talking to anyone else before. It’s kind of refreshing.”

Ran reached up and patted my head a few times, happy about it.

She treats me like a child fairly often. I’m not entirely satisfied with that, but it’s the shape of our relationship — and it’s part of what makes it close.

Practice after that was running the court, chasing down balls, driving spikes. Honestly, being invited to play as a sub for the volleyball club had made me happy.
Moving my body is enjoyable.
There are so many new things to experience. And I’m not left alone to let time drag.

Until recently I’d been living as though trapped, going back to that apartment, flinching through each day in fear of my mother.

Now I can feel it myself — something buoyant has entered my daily life.

Fujishiro is irritating in a lot of ways, but for this particular idea I should be grateful. She’s been helping me study, and because of that I’m able to do club activities too.

Lately I’ve been running myself until my body gives out — practice, then my part-time shift, then studying.

The days I used to drift through aimlessly now carry a kind of aliveness.

Practice for the inter-school tournament was heating up. Doing match-format drills made it clear just how much of the team ran through Yudzuki. She took most of the points herself. But I pushed just as hard for them. The sets from the volleyball club were so much cleaner than the ones in PE class — everything clicked into place more easily, and it made the game that much better.

After a good practice, today too I headed for Fujishiro’s.

I’d made a habit of eating one rice ball before going. If I didn’t, Fujishiro would start talking about cooking something, which was exhausting.

She had not a single dish she could make properly, and yet she persisted in trying to feed me, like an idiot.
The nuisance of it was beyond measure.
How many times had her cooking given me a stomach ache.

I arrived at her building, rang the intercom, and heard no voice in return — just the auto-lock clicking open. I got in the lift and rode it to the upper floors, feeling the familiar slight pressure deep in my ears.

Out of the lift, down the familiar corridor, and I opened Fujishiro’s door — as always, unlocked.

“Excuse me.”

I walked in, washed my hands without asking, went into her room without asking.

“Hey~”

Fujishiro greeted me vaguely, eyes fixed on the reference book on her desk, not looking over.

A word of appreciation wouldn’t go amiss, I thought — but this was our distance, and that was fine.

“You can help yourself from the fridge.”

“That’s pretty casual.”

“Oh, bring mine while you’re at it.”

I didn’t want to do anything for this presumptuous person, but I was the one in her home, so I couldn’t exactly act superior. I took a glass from the cupboard.

Something about the cupboard caught my attention.
It was lined with a large variety of dishes. The kind of quantity you’d expect in a home where someone cooked properly and often. Several glasses too.

But I had never once seen anyone other than Fujishiro in this apartment.
The strangeness of it registered faintly as I took the glass, let it pass, poured barley tea from the fridge, and brought it back to her room.

“Thanks~. How was practice?”
“Exhausting. Also, I talked to Yudzuki.”
“Oh? How did that go?”

Fujishiro, who until a moment ago had seemed interested in nothing but her reference book, suddenly found me very interesting. She came toward me at considerable speed. Her face pushed into my field of vision.

I hadn’t showered before coming today, so I smelled of sweat — I wished she wouldn’t get so close.

“Hey, what did you talk about?”
“Oh, various things.”

It had been about Fujishiro — but I had a feeling bringing that up would make things complicated, so I left it. I regretted having mentioned it at all.

I ignored the restless Fujishiro and started studying. Once I began, she settled down better than I’d expected and went back to her reference book.

“Fujishiro, I don’t get this part.”
“Which?”

She explained what I didn’t understand carefully and thoroughly. My efficiency had improved considerably because of it. Working alone, resolving things took a long time and I was always inefficient — but having someone clever explain things made me understand how much time that saved.

Two hours of studying with her and it was past ten, and suddenly time to go home.

I had apparently been concentrating more than I’d realised — and when I looked up, Fujishiro had folded her arms on the desk and fallen asleep.

I’d never seen her like that before.
Awake, she was noisy and said nothing but irritating things — but asleep, she was simply a beautiful girl.

My hand had reached out toward her light-coloured hair without my deciding to.
I touched it. Soft against my fingers.
Even so, her eyelids didn’t stir.

She must have been very tired.

Looking at her pale, soft cheek, her full cherry-blossom lips came into view.

When I’d asked Fujishiro why she had kissed me, she’d answered in the moment of kissing, I feel alive — a response that made no sense.

I’d thought it from the first time we met at the shrine — she was someone with a screw loose. She said she wanted to die, and yet she chased after the feeling of being alive. A strange creature.

I was quietly drawing closer to her.

First my body, then my face.

Her beautiful face filled my whole field of vision.

My heartbeat, which I usually couldn’t locate at all, was now moving so fast I knew exactly where it was. The movement travelled all the way up into my head. With every pulse, I felt my thinking stop.

My lips touched her soft cheek.

Thud-thud-thud-thud —

Fujishiro’s eyelids didn’t open.
The relief I felt at that was immense.

What was I doing…?

Whatever the reason, I knew it was something I shouldn’t have done.

But that day, just a little — I understood what Fujishiro had meant by feeling alive.

My heart was moving hard, my breath was short, and I felt, clearly, that I was a human being with blood running through me.