Episode 2

The chirping of birds drifted in.

It was unusual for me to wake before the alarm.

My finger found the phone screen on the pillow beside me just as the alarm began to sound. My body startled in reflex — but I silenced it quickly and stared up at the ceiling.

Yesterday felt like a dream. My mind still hadn’t processed it.

The girl who called herself Fujishiro had been wearing the same uniform as me. Which meant she’d be somewhere in school today.

The thought of going made the reluctance inside me swell, and I lay there stuck to the mattress, debating what to do with myself.

My stomach let out a long, groaning rumble.

Everything was a bother.

But staying in this house meant waiting for my mother to come home — and I knew that would only be worse. So I dragged myself out of my room.

Bright light was flooding into the living room, filling it with a cheerful kind of warmth. It was impossible to believe this was the same place my mother had been crumpled on the floor last night. It felt like stepping into a completely different world.

I opened the refrigerator. The cold air hit my face.

Empty.

I’d known it would be, but I checked anyway.

I washed my face, pulled my uniform on, and left the house.

The puddles that had been scattered all over the pavement last night were gone. The dry road stretched out ahead, straight and clean.

I walked the familiar route with my light bag, minding nothing in particular.

The air was colder than I’d expected. I drew my neck down into my collar — and then something soft and heavy landed against my back, and a warm scent of laundry detergent drifted around me.

“Mei! Morning——!”
“Morning, Ran.”
“School is such a drag today, isn’t it——”

The girl beside me had her regulation tie loosened and her top button undone — her uniform worn as freely as ever, and her energy, as always, unfazed. I fell into step with her.

“Mei, did something happen? You seem kind of down.”
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“Why does morning even exist, honestly.”

She covered a wide yawn with her hand and walked happily beside me, same as any other day.

Maybe it was strange of me — to react so intensely to such a throwaway line.

I want every day to be morning.
I pray, with real force, that night won’t come.

Because at night, the dark hatred I feel toward my mother rises up inside me——

— no. I wasn’t going to think about that.

Suzuki Ran was in the same class at the same school. She was my only friend.

Ran looked like a completely ordinary high school girl — her most distinctive quality, maybe, was that slightly delinquent way she wore her uniform. But she was unbelievably reserved inside the classroom, which was probably why I’d been able to become friends with her at all.

As we walked, more students in the same uniform appeared around us, all of them flowing toward the same place. Ran and I passed through the school gate.

Up to here, it was the same as any morning. But the moment I stepped inside, my body went rigid.

“Ugh. They’re doing uniform checks.”
“Yeah.”

Ran was hastily buttoning her top button and tightening her tie.

I kept my eyes on the ground as I passed through the row of student council members standing at the entrance.

“Good morning!”

They called out to us as we went by. I’d usually manage a small nod in return, but today even that was beyond me.

“Ah — just a moment, please.”

A pair of regulation school shoes appeared at the edge of my downward gaze. I moved right to avoid them — and those shoes shifted right to match me.

The irritation of it made me snap my head up.

“Your tie is crooked.”

Slender fingers reached for my collar, and the flash of last night hit me all at once — my whole body locked up like a rabbit caught in something’s grip.

But nothing like what I feared happened. The tie was quickly, neatly straightened and released.

I think I was glaring at the person who’d touched my collar. After glaring them to death, I moved right and passed her.

“Wow — Nanoha-chan’s intense. Getting called out just for a crooked tie? That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
“Do you know Fujishiro-san, Ran?”
“Eh?! She’s, like, extremely famous? She’s the one in our year who has it all — the looks, the grades, the money. Plus she’s the vice-president of the student council. I can’t believe you don’t know who she is.”
“I didn’t.”
“Mei, is there any fixing how completely uninterested in people you are?”

Ran laughed loudly at that.

I was the kind of person who didn’t know who someone this prominent even was.

I’d learned of Fujishiro Nanoha’s existence for the first time last night.
I hadn’t wanted to learn it either.

The fact that she was the same year as me was, I had to admit, a mild surprise.
I’d been calling her Fujishiro-san earlier without thinking — but I didn’t owe her the -san, I decided. Not really.

The face Fujishiro had shown me just now was nothing like the one from last night. Bright. Arranged into a smile. Not a trace of the unsettling quality I’d felt then — enough to make me wonder if last night had been a dream after all.

Morning homeroom ended, and I spent the day in the quiet classroom, half-listening to a teacher who was, as always, boring. It shouldn’t have been worth paying attention to — it shouldn’t have been doing me any good — but I copied everything down into my notes with desperate concentration.

And then my stomach growled. As it always did — always choosing the exact moment the teacher stopped speaking and the room went silent.

I was used to it by now. I ignored the looks.

Staying focused like that made the time pass faster. When the lunch bell rang, Ran was at my desk in an instant.

“I’m starving——”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to the tuck shop, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m coming too——!”

Ran always came with me for these lunch runs.
That made me both glad and pained, in ways I kept separate.

We left the classroom together and walked down the corridor.
My heart gave a heavy knock.

The worst.

I’d been living my ordinary life just fine until I’d encountered one particular person — and now even my quiet school routine was becoming intolerable. She had begun encroaching on my life, and she hadn’t even done anything to me.

“Oh wow! I always think this when I see it, but Nanoha-chan’s bento is incredible?! She apparently makes it herself!”
“So impressive! She really has it together, it’s honestly amazing.”
“It’s nothing really——”

Glancing sideways through the open door of Class 2-B as we passed, I could see Fujishiro surrounded by classmates. I couldn’t see the bento itself, but everyone was talking in high, excited voices, so it had to be something remarkable.

She hadn’t done anything awful to me.

That was true. And yet something in me that felt like jealousy and hatred was quietly forming around her.

She had everything I didn’t. The looks. The grades. The money. Everything.
And yet she wanted someone to kill her — which, as far as I could see, meant she was simply using me as some kind of game.

I fixed my eyes back on the floor the same as I had that morning, shut my ears, and walked with Ran to the tuck shop.

I handed coins to the mildly bad-tempered woman behind the counter and received a croquette roll and a vegetable juice, then carried them back to the classroom.

When I got back, Ran had spread her lunchbox open on my desk and was already eating.

“I always think this, but you seriously eat so little, Mei. I’d never survive on that.”

Ran was talking through a mouthful of food, entirely without malice.

I lined up excuses that wouldn’t make her suspicious.

“I just don’t really get hungry.”
“Lucky you, honestly. Oh — are we studying together after school today too?”
“I’ve got work today.”
“That’s right, I forgot!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it——!”

Ran went on cheerfully eating, chattering away.

Her bento was always full of colour. I’d never told her that I made a point of not looking at it.

It always looked so good. It felt like it was full of a parent’s love — and that feeling made me look at her with something I couldn’t quite call admiration.

I turned my face away and bit into the croquette roll.

The afternoon passed the same way — trying desperately to follow along, having occasional moments of what am I even doing with my life — and then it was over.

After the final bell, Ran and I said our goodbyes at the classroom door, and I hurried off to work.

My part-time job was at a small, modest bookshop near the house. I’d chosen it because the shifts were flexible, and because the time disappeared when you were surrounded by books.

“Thanks again today, Mei-chan.”
“Thank you.”

The owner, Kameyama-san, was a woman who looked to be in her fifties. She’d hurt her back the previous year and found it increasingly difficult to manage on her own, which was why she’d put out the call for part-time help. I’d happened to spot the listing at the right moment, and we’d now been working together for nearly a year.

“Same time next week?”
“Of course. Thank you.”

I spent the shift tidying shelves and working the register for the occasional customer. Then my hours ended.

When I stepped outside, it was already dark. My heart was beating hard and fast, almost close to palpitation. I breathed in deeply, slowly, trying to bring it down.

I stopped at the nearest convenience store for an expensive bento and a rice ball, then headed straight home.

The front door opened with its familiar grinding of rust against rust.

I said I’m home in a voice that was barely audible — and heard welcome back come from somewhere inside the house, in a voice a little higher than mine. Something in me loosened.

Today was a relatively good day for my mother’s mood.

I went quickly to the living room. She was hunched over inside the kotatsu.

“Here. Dinner for you.”
“Oh — something this nice? Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”

I set down the most expensive bento from the shop, then pulled a few notes from this month’s wages and held them out to her.

“This month’s.”
“Mei-chan, thank you as always. I’ll eat and then head off to work.”
“Okay. Take care.”

She pulled me into a tight hug.

My chest went warm. My eyes pricked with heat.
Because when she does that — I know for certain that she loves me.

But she let go almost immediately, and turned her attention to counting the money, then the bento.

The warmth left my chest just as quickly.

I left her in the living room and took the remaining rice ball to my room in its oversized plastic bag.

The hunger had gone on too long — my stomach ached with a tight, cutting pain. To dull it, I peeled back the wrapper, listening to the crisp sound of the dried seaweed, and took a bite.

I was chewing slowly, carefully, when a crash from downstairs shook the air — followed by sharp, frantic screaming.

I ran toward it.

“Mum…?”

I hurried to her side, worried — and only noticed too late the shards of broken crockery scattered across the floor. My foot came down on one of them.

A slow heat spread through the sole of my foot.

I looked down. Blood was welling up, vivid red.

I couldn’t go any closer to my mother.
I shouldn’t, I thought.

“I won’t be home for a while.”
“What…”
“Be a good girl and wait for me, all right?”

A strange smile crossed her face, and she moved toward the door.

I could only watch her go.
I’d tried to stop her once before, when she’d looked like she might go off somewhere like this. The pain that had followed was unimaginable.

The front door clicked shut. The house went quiet.

At least I hadn’t been hit today. That was something.
But then a sudden dizziness swept through me.

Nausea followed, and I lurched to the bathroom. The few bites of rice ball I’d managed came back up, ruined.

I curled into myself against the bathroom wall and let out one small, muffled sob after another.