Episode 28

With year-end exams approaching, I’d been getting more and more stomachaches from the tension. But the amount of time I spent thinking about unpleasant things had decreased compared to before, probably because there was a girl sitting beside me, looking thoroughly bored as she stared at her textbook.

After the argument with Morishita, days passed when I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her, but I didn’t want to end things in that half-finished state, so I ended up relying on her friend Suzuki Ran.

When I approached her, Suzuki Ran seemed surprised, but she helped me willingly. And apparently she’s been keeping it a secret from Morishita ever since. If she hadn’t, there’s no way Morishita would have stayed quiet about it.

That day, I went to Morishita’s flat for the first time.
Rather impulsively, too.

I’d had a vague sense of what to expect, but Morishita was in worse shape than I’d imagined, alone in that flat.

It might have been sympathy or pity or something like that, but I simply couldn’t leave her there. If I didn’t act then, I had the feeling Morishita might quietly vanish. Just like that.

For better and worse, Morishita moves my heart with no effort at all, it seems.

And I think I’ve become more meddlesome than I ever realised, even by my own standards.

I have no intention of interfering in her home situation.
But Morishita shouldn’t be in that place. I thought that clearly.

We’ll be third-years soon, so it’s the time for deciding futures.

Some good way forward…

This was how I’d started thinking about things beyond just myself.
All Morishita’s fault.
It was Morishita’s fault for barging uninvited into my life.

“Hey, Morishita — is there anything you want to do? Work-wise?”
“That again? Anything is fine. I don’t have something I want to do.”
“I see. When you’re working, will you live alone?”

At that, her ear twitched visibly.

“Haven’t decided.”
“Don’t you want to live on your own?”
“I don’t know…”

She’d become so obviously subdued that I decided to stop asking her questions.

Morishita and I are vaguely similar, I think.

Drifting through life without a destination. That doesn’t mean I fully understand her feelings, and I don’t think she fully understands mine either.

It was something I’d never thought about before, but I’d started wondering whether there might be some way to get out of this life. And if there was a way out, I wanted her to be with me when I found it, if at all possible.

Because having someone alongside makes things easier to bear.

Though there was no point sitting lost in thought, so I turned my eyes back to the textbook and notebook on the desk.

Morishita was quietly working through her studying without a word.
Partly because exams were close, but since the day we made up, she’d started studying beside me rather than rolling around getting in the way.

I wondered what had brought about the change.

I asked her, but apparently it wasn’t that she’d found something she wanted to do, or that she wanted better test rankings.

She just, whenever she comes to my flat, always studies. And so I study alongside her, not wanting to fall behind. That’s the kind of relationship it had become.

“Nanoha, you’re not concentrating.”
“Oh, caught me?”
“Study.”
“A strict supervisor.”

I made a joke but Morishita’s expression stayed sulky, so I decided to keep quiet rather than put her in any worse a mood.

Come to think of it, the days I find things painful had decreased considerably.
Not so long ago, my life felt like wandering through a white fog with no destination. Now it’s different.

Right now I’m working toward the goal of getting first in the year group. Which is also my promise with Morishita. But once I get first, what happens to this life I have with her?

This way of living will probably vanish as naturally as it came.

The fragility of human connections really hits home sometimes.

As I told myself I had to study, a notification came through.
I glanced at it, and it was from Hinata.

Let’s celebrate Yudzuki’s birthday together tomorrow.

Yudzuki’s birthday.
Despite knowing her so long, I’d forgotten.

I replied with just sounds good and closed my phone.

Every year, the three childhood friends celebrate together. That was how it went.

Speaking of which, when is Morishita’s birthday?

“Morishita, when’s your birthday?”
“Do I need to tell you?”
“I just want to know the day you were born.”
“Creepy.”
“Creepy hurts. Come on, tell me.”
“No.”

She definitely wasn’t going to tell me, so I decided the only option was to bribe Suzuki Ran.

“What about Nanoha…?”

The unexpected question made my eyes go wide as if they might fall out.

A question like that, coming from her of all people, who seemed to have no interest in anyone. Maybe it would sleet tomorrow.

“So Morishita does take an interest in me sometimes.”
“I don’t.”
“April twenty-first.”
“Oh.”

She asks, and that’s her reaction.
I’d expected it, but it still felt a little harsh.

Whether she had genuine interest or just asked on a whim without really caring, I couldn’t tell.

Morishita had turned her eyes back to her textbook, lips slightly pursed.

“Do you think you can actually get first this time?”
“No idea. Yudzuki’s genuinely brilliant.”
“Hmm. You really have always had a big gap between you, haven’t you.”
“Hey—”

Nothing I could say to that.
It was true, the gap between me and Yudzuki was large. That’s how remarkable she was. I understood it, and yet there was still a part of me that couldn’t quite accept it.

Morishita had apparently grown bored and was squeezing and flicking her pen over and over.

“You’re bored, aren’t you, Morishita.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so easy to read.”

I poked her cheek with the end of my pen, and she looked at me with a suspicious expression. But then her face turned slightly serious, and I braced myself. Morishita’s slender shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.

“Nanoha, why do you want first place so badly…?”
“What’s got into you today? Have you started taking an interest in me?”
“If you won’t tell me, forget it.”
“No, I was just wondering why you were curious.”
“I thought working hard without a goal probably doesn’t get you very far.”

Those words made something click for me.

She was right.
I’d lost track of why I cared so much about being first in the first place.

It was like setting off without knowing the destination and getting lost along the way.

What was I aiming for first place for?

All of it, to preserve my father’s dignity.
That was why I was living.

Thinking that, I felt a sadness at how hollow and thin a person I was.

But if my father abandoned me too, I would truly have nowhere to come home to, so I had no choice but to keep working.
My father treated me as an inconvenience, but he hadn’t abandoned me yet. Probably because I still had some degree of usefulness to him.

Some other goal to work toward…

“Then, when I get first place, give me a reward.”
“Buy it yourself.”
“Not a thing, like… a reward kiss, for example?”
“There it is. So you really do like kissing, Nanoha.”
“That was just a for-example.”

Morishita was making a face of such profound distaste it was almost artistic.
I liked that face of hers.
A human face.

She made human faces, unlike me.
Not a fixed, pasted-on expression, but one that came out naturally.

I found that expression of hers extraordinarily precious.

“Stop coming up with strange ideas.”
“I don’t see why not. We’ve already done it once.”
“That one doesn’t count, you did it without asking.”
“Well, think of something then. I’ll work hard knowing there’s a reward from Morishita waiting.”
“Don’t decide things on your own.”

Morishita pursed her lips and went back to studying. I watched that scene with a smile, and turned back to my own work.