Episode 22

Today too, my ill-mannered houseguest has taken over my bed.

Well. I was the one who said she could.
I keep telling myself that, but being made so entirely at home does get on my nerves sometimes.

“Morishita, come over here and study.”
“Busy.”
“You’re just reading manga.”

Of course, I’m genuinely happy that she reads the things I love. When I ask Morishita for her thoughts on a manga, she gives me a proper response, which I appreciate. But there are times I want her to study alongside me.

When I complained, Morishita let out an exaggeratedly heavy sigh and dropped down beside me with a thud. She seemed to have made up her mind to study after all, and quietly spread out her textbook.

The sound of her mechanical pencil running across her notebook reached me, and something stirred in me. I rode that feeling into focus and decided to concentrate on studying too.

I think I’ve done considerably more studying this year-end than last. That’s all thanks to Morishita coming over.

Having someone else here drives some mysterious sense of duty in me and makes studying feel urgent.
Last year, alone, I was lenient with myself, playing games and reading manga most of the time.

Unfortunately, an hour was apparently all Morishita’s concentration could sustain.

“Bored.”
“That was fast.”
“Bored is bored.”

I thought she’d go straight back to manga, but she surprised me. Instead she leaned over and peered at my notebook with what looked like genuine curiosity.

“You have surprisingly neat handwriting, Nanoha.”
“What kind of handwriting did you think I had?”
“Sort of round.”

She probably meant girly handwriting. Her read on me is sometimes quite far off.

Apparently bored to an extreme degree, Morishita started doodling in my notebook.

What she drew was a rabbit with a gentle expression, nothing like the sharp-edged Morishita I knew.

“What is this?”
“A rabbit.”
“I can see that. Why did you draw a rabbit?”
“Because Nanoha is like a rabbit.”
“The face?”
“No, the personality.”
“Excuse me?”

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Still talking to me, Morishita drew another rabbit just like the first beside it.

“The part where you get so lonely you look like you might die. That’s really just like Nanoha.”
“If you could die of loneliness, life would be simple. And by that logic, Morishita would be a rabbit too.”
“I can live just fine on my own, even if I’m lonely.”

My words made Morishita’s expression turn sullen. I’d put her in a bad mood and didn’t know what to say, so I sat staring absently around the room. By then Morishita had apparently tired of doodling in my notebook too.

She reached out and touched my hair.

“You haven’t curled your hair today.”
“Did you actually like that style?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, weirdo.”

Something had rubbed her the wrong way, and she pulled away from me, flopped down on the bed, and went back to reading manga.

Lately Morishita seems to have become absorbed in the girls’ manga I have. I’d wondered whether she was interested in romance, so I asked, and she told me it wasn’t so much romance as the depictions of people’s emotions shifting and moving that she liked to see.

A very unusual personality, I thought. But she gives good responses, so I let her get on with it.

“What scene are you reading now?”
“A confession scene.”
“That part’s so good. I cried so much.”
“Hmm, it’s average.”

My concentration had gone too, so I leaned against the bed and took a break.

“What’s your type, Morishita?”
“Don’t know.”
“You can pick a favourite character from manga if you want.”
“Too many to answer. What about you, Nanoha?”

She asked in a tone that meant she didn’t particularly care but was asking anyway. Even so, I thought about my answer to her seriously.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve thought about it either.”
“I’d have thought someone like you would get a boyfriend easily without even needing manga.”
“Why?”
“People confess to you all the time.”

How does she know these things.

If that was what I was known for, it struck me as a little unpleasant.

It was true that a fair number of people had told me they liked me. But being told someone liked me always left me feeling vaguely at a loss. I wasn’t dismissing the feelings of the people who confessed to me, but the person they liked was the surface version of me. If they knew the real me, everyone would find me repulsive, unhinged. That’s what I believed, and so I could never quite take their feelings in, and here I was.

“How do you even know that, Morishita?”
“Heard it through the rumour mill.”
“Hm. Would it bother you if I started going out with someone?”
“Not really. Do what you like.”
“If I started going out with someone, Morishita wouldn’t be able to come here to read manga anymore, you know.”
“Then I’d just find somewhere else to go. That’s fine.”

It felt like being hit over the back of the head with a bat.
To Morishita, I was someone who could be replaced by anyone. That was what she was saying.

I really do find her infuriating.
Well, I was the one who decided to let her use me as she liked, but being used quite this thoroughly does get under my skin.

I had started to want Morishita to need me specifically.

I climbed up onto the bed and lay down beside her. Even with me right next to her, her interest stayed fixed entirely on the manga.

I pulled at her cheek to get her attention.

“What?”
“Morishita, pay attention to me.”
“Focus on your studying, you attention-seeking weirdo.”

She pinched both my cheeks in retaliation, and pulled with what felt like enough force to tear the flesh clean off. My eyes watered from the pain.

“That hurts.”
“You started it.”
“I want you to feel the same pain I felt.”

I reached for her cheeks with both hands to grab them back, but we ended up wrestling and I lost my balance.

I ended up draped over her, and her face was right in front of mine, pale skin vivid and close, and my heart lurched.

I scrambled for words to cover my embarrassment.

“There was a scene like this in the manga just now, wasn’t there.”
“Was there? Get off me.”
“The scene where they just go ahead and kiss. Should we do that too?”

Before Morishita could open her mouth, I traced her soft lips with my index finger. They were moist and should have felt odd, but they were so soft my finger moved as if drawn in.

Morishita’s blank expression suddenly snapped back to life, and she bit my finger hard.

I yanked my hand back in shock, but my index finger was throbbing and hot, with a clear bite mark in it.

“That hurts.”
“Because you were doing something disgusting.”

Morishita let out a sigh so large it seemed almost deliberate, climbed off the bed, and started getting ready to leave.

She was heading for the entrance at an unbelievable speed, so I followed after her. I felt a flash of anxiety that she might actually hate me now. But at the front door, putting her shoes on, she had the gloves I’d given her firmly on her hands, and I felt a wave of relief.

“I’m glad the gloves are getting some use.”
“I didn’t ask for them. I’m using them because it’s a waste not to.”
“I see. Come again.”
“If I feel like it.”

Morishita pattered off and out the door.