Episode 13

The classroom buzz showed no sign of dying down. Yudzuki, out of patience, clapped her hands loudly until the room fell quiet.

The moment it did, Momiji, our class’s sports committee rep, stood up to speak.

“Thanks to everyone’s hard work — we took the overall year-group championship!”

The classroom erupted.

My classmates were overjoyed. I joined in, mirroring their excitement. Nobody sat down; everyone stood around talking.

Hinata came over beaming and pressed herself against me in a hug.

“Nanoha, I heard you were incredible! That’s amazing!”
“I didn’t do anything.”

And I genuinely hadn’t.

I had just focused on what was in front of me, and before I knew it the match was over. It was a feeling I’d never had before, and I was still drifting in it, floating.

My classmates were apparently so happy they’d started making noise, taking photos, and the close-knit groups were already talking about an after-party.

“You’re coming to the after-party, right, Nanoha?”
“No, I’m not.”
“What?! You’re always the first one to say yes to stuff like this!”

Hinata peered at my face with genuine surprise. She was right — normally I would have gone along with everyone, then spent the rest of the evening grinding myself down until I was exhausted.

“I’ve got something on. You go, Hinata.”

I said that while gathering my things to leave.

It wasn’t as though I was in any hurry.
Morishita usually came around eight, so even heading home now I’d be waiting three hours or more. Plenty of time to go to the after-party and still make it. And yet I slipped out of the noisy classroom and into the quiet street outside.

Lately, by four in the afternoon the sun was nearly gone, and by five it was completely dark.

Back at the apartment I washed off the sweat from the tournament, then — even though there was no real reason — put my uniform back on. It just felt off to have Morishita in her uniform while I was in regular clothes.

I took my time getting ready, but it was still only six.

Too early for the shrine.

And yet I was already out the door.
Having just warmed up in the shower, stepping back out into the cold was probably a mistake.

I arrived at the shrine shivering — and stopped, half-wanting to doubt my own eyes at what was in front of me.

I ignored the heartbeat hammering up into my throat and went to her.

“Morishita — what happened?”
“I said I wanted to read manga.”
“You’re usually later than this.”
“…I had time today.”
“Right.”

Lucky that today happened to be a day I came early too. I said “let’s go” and reached for her slender arm.

Morishita followed without resistance. Walking beside me, she smelled of something — her usual scent, but somehow stronger, more present.

“Morishita, are you wearing something?”
“Why?”
“You smell nice.”
“Stop sniffing me. I just showered.”
“Right.”

A smile slipped out.

Had Morishita felt the same way I did?
It was funny — two people with completely different personalities, who should have nothing in common, doing the exact same thing.

I kept tugging at her arm as we walked, until she said “I can walk on my own” in a sulky tone, and I reluctantly let go.

We reached the apartment. I turned the lights on in the dark, quiet room and switched on the heater. It would take a little while for the room to warm up.

Morishita perched neatly on the floor of my room.

“Fujishiro…”
“Yeah?”

There was something in her voice — uncertain, almost anxious — that wasn’t like her at all, and I felt myself go still. Something about her really was different from usual today.

“Did your class have an after-party or something?”
“Oh — yeah, apparently. I turned it down though.”
“Because I said I wanted to read manga?”

I’d never heard Morishita say anything this tentative before. I found myself wondering if she had a fever.

Morishita, worrying about me?

That had never happened.

“What’s going on? Worrying about me doesn’t sound like you at all.”

I sat down beside her and poked at her cheek teasingly, and she batted my hand away.

“It’s not like we’re friends or anything. You don’t have to put me first. If there’s something you’d rather be doing, do that. Go hang out with your friends instead of me.”

That pricked somewhere in my chest.

True, I often felt the distance between us — but at the very least, I was more open with Morishita than I was with any of my classmates.

There was so much of me that only Morishita knew.
But to Morishita, apparently, I wasn’t even a friend.

The version of myself that had been quietly getting ahead of things — I found it suddenly embarrassing.

When I thought about it calmly, what we were to each other was probably too strange and lopsided to call friendship.

“I wanted a quiet evening at home today anyway, so it’s fine. What about you, Morishita — didn’t you have an after-party to go to?”
“Not interested in that sort of thing.”
“Right.”

The conversation lapsed. A chill swept through me out of nowhere, and without really thinking about it I leaned against the person sitting next to me. I rested my head on her bony shoulder and found, by some small miracle, exactly the right spot for it.

Her hair floated a lovely smell my way.
Soap. A soft, clean scent that settled gently somewhere behind my nose.

“You’re suffocating. Move.”
“I’m lending you manga. You can lend me a shoulder.”

At that she stopped arguing, so I stayed exactly where I was. Morishita’s shoulder went suddenly, completely still.

She’s holding still so she doesn’t disturb me — but that was me getting ahead of myself again. The heater had started to work, and I didn’t have the energy to keep thinking — my eyelids grew heavy.

Today had taken a lot out of me. But the tiredness was lighter than usual, and there was something like a clean breeze moving through me.

Without noticing, everything went dark.

※※※

I had the feeling I’d slept a long time. I jolted awake with a start — and found Morishita still beside me, turning a manga page with small, careful movements.

I lifted my head from her shoulder and looked at the clock.

I had no idea when I’d fallen asleep, so I couldn’t say how long I’d been out — but the ear that had been pressed between her shoulder and my own weight was numb and tingling, so it had probably been a while.

“Sorry…”
“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

Morishita stood and stretched out on the bed.
That was the usual presumptuous Morishita.
Something about that was a relief.

The nap had cleared my head, and I felt like studying. The tournament was over — starting tomorrow, the sports clubs would shift into inter-school mode. And once that was done, final exams were waiting.

Speaking of which…

“Yudzuki was trying to recruit you for the volleyball club’s inter-school tournament today, wasn’t she? Are you going to do it?”
“Yudzuki? I don’t really know — everyone keeps going on about it. Ran was talking about it the whole time too.”

Morishita’s tone went noticeably flat.

I wasn’t sure what had rubbed her the wrong way, but apparently that topic was a bad one.

Maybe she’d picked up on my concern — Morishita stopped reading and there was a small crease between her brows.

“I keep saying it’s hard because I’ve got to study for final exams and I’ve got my part-time job, but Ran seems genuinely stuck, so I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“I didn’t know you thought about doing things for other people.”
“That’s incredibly rude.”

I said it as a joke and she pinched my cheek for it.

That hurt.
It hurt, but — Morishita does that kind of thing — I was more surprised by that, and I must have been staring at her with a strange expression.

“What?”
“Do you want to play in the inter-school tournament, Morishita?”
“It’s a hassle. But volleyball was fun.”
“Right.”

She really did come alive during the match. And honestly, with reflexes like hers, leaving that to waste felt wrong.

“In that case — do you want me to help you study?”
“What?”
“You want to come through for your friend, don’t you? I’ll work hard to teach you enough to make up for all the time practice takes.”

There was a bit of a conflict going on inside me, honestly.

If it was something Morishita enjoyed, she should do it — I believed that.
I had so few things I found genuinely enjoyable, and precisely because of that, I thought, when something good appears, you should reach for it.

But I didn’t want to lose any of this time I had with her. And more than that — imagining Morishita and Yudzuki getting close made my stomach turn, for reasons I couldn’t quite name.

So this was the option that landed somewhere in the middle of all of that.

If Morishita came to study at my place after practice, she wouldn’t have to give up our time together, and she could do what she wanted.

Though I also worried about her stamina, and didn’t want her to push herself.

Morishita seemed to think about it. She slid off the bed and sat down next to me, and stole my pen.

“I’ll think about the tournament — but yes to the studying.”
“Wait… really?”
“Never mind then.”
“No — let’s study together.”

I didn’t know when something had shifted in her — but this time after school was, right now, the part of each day when I felt lightest. So I was going to do what it took to keep it.

Morishita’s expression didn’t move even slightly. She just said “okay.”