Episode 63
Our homeroom teacher was speaking, his eyes welling up.
So this is the face he makes — I found myself staring, taking it in properly for the first time, absurdly late in the game.
Some classmates cried right along with him, riding the wave; others just stared blankly ahead, unreadable.
After the teacher’s closing words, the classroom filled with noise.
Among the graduates, some had their futures decided already and some still didn’t know pass or fail, so by unspoken agreement nobody touched the subject — instead everyone talked about nostalgic memories of their school days.
“Nanoha! Let’s take a picture!”
Not caring that the whole class’s attention swung her way at once, Hinata barged into the room. I gathered my things and, shrinking a little, went over to her.
Yudzuki fell in behind me as though it were only natural, and the three of us, surrounded by each other, took a commemorative photo.
Once the photo was taken, Hinata pulled out a postcard-sized print.
In it were three middle-school girls.
“Looking at this, we’ve really grown up, huh. Nanoha, haven’t you gotten super cute or something?”
“I thought the same thing.”
“You think so too, Yudzuki!? Did you go and get yourself a crush or something?”
I could never tell whether Hinata said things like that knowing exactly how I felt, or completely by accident.
I answered with a wry laugh, “No, nothing like that.”
Stepping out of the school building I’d miss, I found the cherry trees lined up, their buds swollen and heavy. Knowing I’d never see these particular blossoms open left me feeling faintly hollow.
“I’m glad we’ll all be in the same prefecture even once we’re at university. Good thing all three of us got our schools settled early.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to agree wholeheartedly with what Hinata said, offhand as it was.
Hinata was going to a private university near the one I’d gotten into, and Yudzuki and I had ended up at the very same school — even the same faculty, which left me feeling a little awkward.
I was glad to have the two of them nearby, but if you asked me whether an unchanged environment counted as a blessing, I wouldn’t know quite what to say.
“Well, I’m heading home.”
“You’re so quick to cut and run, Nanoha. And here I was thinking we could all go get food after this.”
“We’ll get to see each other plenty even once we’re at university.”
“True enough.”
I managed to come up with some excuse or other and slipped out through the school gate.
I’d never set foot in this school again, so I probably should have lingered a little longer over it — but my feet felt strangely light, as though I’d just been set free from something.
There was only one place I was hurrying toward.
The place where I’d first met Morishita.
I’d promised to meet her there today.
I hadn’t yet told Morishita that I’d gotten into university.
I’d called her out to tell her that, and to tell her that I wanted to keep seeing her even after we became university students.
I hurried to the park beside the shrine, and there was Morishita, swaying gently on a swing, clutching the tube that held her graduation certificate.
Noticing me, Morishita climbed off the swing and came toward me.
“Morishita, thanks for waiting.”
“Mm. So what did you want to talk about?”
“I got into my first-choice university.”
“I see. Congratulations.”
A typically brisk, Morishita-like word of encouragement.
I’d pictured getting this far.
All that was left was to tell her I wanted to go on seeing her.
But even though it was such a simple thing to say, my whole body shook violently.
I’d been pushing Morishita, using studying as an excuse, forcibly holding together a thread that kept threatening to snap — so just saying plainly that I wanted to see her, because I wanted to, felt agonisingly difficult.
I thought: this is the bill coming due, for all the ways I’d been running from what Morishita and I actually were to each other.
Without meaning to, I looked down and gripped the hem of my skirt tight.
Again and again, I pushed at my own heart, telling it to hold firm.
“Um… so, Morishita and I…”
“Fujishiro, thank you—”
“Eh?”
I looked up at the unexpected words from Morishita.
Wrapped in a faintly cold spring breeze, Morishita’s face wore an expression of calm I’d never seen on her before.
“For… what?”
“I don’t know, right now I just feel like a bird flying free through the sky.”
“Sorry, what?”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Morishita say something so nonsensical, and my mind went blank enough that I forgot what I’d been about to say.
“I just meant — if it weren’t for you, Fujishiro, this graduation wouldn’t have felt this clean, this refreshing.”
Morishita rattled the words out quickly, one after another — a way of talking utterly unlike her usual unhurried self.
I blinked over and over, my eyes going wide.
My existing had actually been of use to Morishita—?
Was there anything else that could make me this happy?
Wherever I was, I’d always doubted whether I had any reason to exist at all.
No matter how hard I tried, I’d believed no one would ever really acknowledge me.
But Morishita had acknowledged me.
For me, it was words that held my heart up more than anything else could.
Seeing me still unable to hide my astonishment, Morishita started to laugh softly.
Her smile was so beautiful it felt like it could pull me right in.
“I didn’t really do anything—”
“I figured you’d say something like that, Fujishiro.”
She ruffled my hair, carelessly.
Morishita’s hand was warm, gentle enough that I wanted to cling to it.
I caught the hand resting on my head and held it there, so she couldn’t get away.
“Hey, Morishita!”
I stood rooted in front of her and held her gaze steady.
Morishita tilted her head, looking puzzled.
Ah… I really do love every single thing about her.
Morishita surely acted without any of it being intentional at all — and yet everything about her, every last part, filled my heart to overflowing.
I didn’t want her to hate me.
But I didn’t want things to stay the way they’d always been, either.
I didn’t want to trouble her.
But this feeling had already reached its limit.
I pulled Morishita into my arms.
Still holding her, I drew in a deep breath, and let the sound ride out on the air as I exhaled.
“I love you, Morishita—”
“Eh…?”
“I love you so much. I really love you. The kind of love where I don’t want to be your friend, I want to be your girlfriend. I want you to go out with me.”
Once the first word was out, all those months of being so hopelessly timid might as well have been a lie — the rest came pouring out smoothly, one after another.
When I lifted my face and looked at Morishita, her eyes were wavering, plainly shaken.
Well, of course she’d be — considering how she must be feeling.
I hadn’t even meant to tell her how I felt, not really.
But with Morishita, whom I loved this much, standing right in front of me, there was no way I could have held it in.
“Sorry, out of nowhere like this.”
“No, it’s…”
“That’s just my honest feelings, is all.”
Morishita’s brow furrowed deep with distress.
Thinking back on it now, I realised I’d never done anything but trouble her.
The silence stretched on, and then, for whatever reason, Morishita pushed me back. Her brow was still knit tight.
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t know?”
“Liking someone, all that.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I’d never once heard Morishita say she liked anyone, and I knew perfectly well she didn’t feel so much as a millimetre of that toward me.
So this, I decided, was simply where I would start.
“I’m going to work hard, so that you’ll come to like me, Morishita.”
“Work hard…”
“That’s right. I’ll do everything I can until you love me so much you want to kill me for it.”
“What is that!”
When I struck a playful pose, the tension went out of Morishita’s shoulders, and the corners of her mouth lifted.
I’d braced myself for Morishita to shove me away outright in rejection. I’d been ready to be told she never wanted to see my face again as long as she lived.
But Morishita seemed just the same as always.
“Walk partway home together?”
“Eh. Y-yeah.”
Morishita’s answer came out awkward, but she stayed silently at my side all the way to where our paths split.