Episode 41
Surprisingly, food was already laid out on the table.
“Morishita did something indecent so now the food’s gone cold.”
“I didn’t, and what is this?”
“Dinner for a hungry little puppy.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“Never mind that, let’s eat.”
She pushed my shoulder, so I had no choice but to sit down.
Had Fujishiro prepared this while I was asleep?
Something about the food on the table felt off.
Sitting there was completely ordinary stir-fried vegetables, rice, and miso soup.
A normal person probably wouldn’t find that sight strange at all.
“Did you buy this?”
“Made it.”
“Stop lying.”
“Not lying.”
Fujishiro said that firmly, pursed her lips, and brought food to her mouth.
It didn’t seem to be poisoned, at least.
I cautiously brought some to my own mouth, and it tasted like the stir-fried vegetables you’d get at a convenience store.
No, actually milder and softer than that.
“Where did you actually buy this?”
“I said I made it.”
“Liar. Last time you fed me something burnt.”
“Ahaha. That did happen, didn’t it.”
Unbelievable.
There was no way she could cook this well.
My head was full of confusion.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I practised cooking.”
“Practised? By yourself?”
“…Yudzuki taught me.”
“What?”
Unbelievable things kept happening one after another, and my head was spinning.
That Fujishiro had made this was unbelievable.
But even more unbelievable was that she’d apparently harboured such open hostility toward Yudzuki, and yet had gone and learned to cook from her of all people.
“What brought this on suddenly?”
“What did bring it on, I wonder.”
Fujishiro had a somewhat wistful expression, but also gentle and soft. Then she quickly switched to a pleased look and pushed the plate of vegetables toward me.
“Eat, quickly?”
“Yeah.”
I brought the vegetables and rice to my mouth together.
Tasting it properly, it was clear this wasn’t something bought.
A soft flavour that drew out the vegetables’ own natural taste.
I haven’t eaten many different kinds of stir-fried vegetables, but hers didn’t resemble any dish I’d ever had. It felt like something that warmed me from deep in my chest.
“Fujishiro really is an idiot.”
“Really am, aren’t I.”
“Why do you look so pleased about it.”
“I wonder why.”
Fujishiro kept talking with a soft chuckle, and I decided there was no point continuing the conversation, so I ignored her and ate in silence.
The moment I finished, I pressed my hands together and murmured a small “thank you for the meal.”
I carried my empty dishes to the sink, rolled up my sleeves, and turned on the tap.
“You can just leave that.”
“No.”
I put detergent on the dry sponge and rubbed it over the dishes as they were.
The sponge hadn’t been properly wetted, so it barely lathered. That small stress made me scrub harder.
I focused on the washing up as though trying to hold down some feeling steadily welling up.
Outside, rain had started falling without my noticing, loud against the window.
I hadn’t brought an umbrella today.
It’s the rainy season, I should have known to bring one, and I regretted not thinking of it.
“Hey hey, Morishita. Is there still room for food?”
“Eh… a little, maybe.”
“Want to have cake together?”
“Cake? Why?”
“I’m not that hungry, but I want something sweet. Thought if it’s split between two people we could manage it. Please?”
She tugged weakly at my sleeve, saying that.
Just wanting to eat cake, and yet she was being so strange about it, I thought.
When I said “fine,” Fujishiro looked pleased and pulled a single slice of shortcake from the fridge, setting two forks on one plate.
Sitting across from her, she cut the cake into bite-sized pieces with the fork.
“Morishita, you can eat as much as you want.”
“Don’t you want to eat it?”
“I’m full already.”
Fujishiro ate about two bites and handed the rest entirely to me.
What had she even wanted to do, I wondered, bringing the overly sweet cake to my mouth anyway. Once it was in my mouth, I couldn’t stop bringing more.
How long had it been since I’d eaten cake?
Had it always been this sweet?
Had it always dissolved into such a mess in my mouth?
Had it always tasted this good?
I couldn’t remember how old I’d been the last time.
Probably not since my father left. It had been a long time.
Oh no… this might be bad…
“Going to the bathroom.”
“Morishita…?”
I stood up with a clatter and rushed to the toilet.
Shut inside the small room, I scrubbed roughly at the hot liquid that had risen to my face, trying to compose myself.
Fujishiro was making a mess of my heart.
She’s a bad presence for me.
I need to distance myself from her, quickly.
When I went back to the room, the cake plate had already been cleared away.
“I’m going home now. Thanks for the meal.”
“Morishita, why don’t you stay the night?”
“What? Why?”
I know being close to Fujishiro isn’t good for me, and yet her words made my heart race anyway.
At the same time, it was also true that I was afraid of having my heart made a mess of any further by this person called Fujishiro Nanoha.
Crushed, stretched out, rolled into a ball.
That’s how my feelings were being pushed around right now.
“I’m going home.”
“Then let’s play a game? If Morishita wins, you can go home. If I win, you stay the night.”
Fujishiro reached up and tugged the choker she’d put on me earlier, taking it off. Only then did I properly register that the thing had been around my neck this whole time.
“What kind of game?”
“If you can endure whatever I do right now, you win.”
“Endure?”
As she spoke, Fujishiro placed a hand under my chin and leaned in close.
Before I knew it, her face was right in front of mine.
Something tightened painfully around my stomach.
This was definitely…
I shoved her body back hard.
“There, Morishita loses.”
“Cowardly, pervert, trash.”
“Call me whatever you want. You’re bored anyway, aren’t you?”
Fujishiro smiled, spilling over with amusement, and headed toward the bath. Then she pattered around the apartment and brought back pyjamas.
They were held out to me, and my arm was pulled.
I stopped thinking about anything and got into the bath.
“Warm…”
The hot water pooled in the tub warmed my body.
My stomach had been aching, tight, ever since earlier.
I had no idea how to get rid of the discomfort.
If I thought too much in the bath I’d get lightheaded, so I got out and decided to wait on Fujishiro’s bed for her to finish bathing.
Maybe because I’d let my guard down, I apparently fell asleep without noticing, and woke to a light tap on my shoulder, Fujishiro peering happily at my face.
I checked the clock and realised the date had already changed. I’d slept for quite a while.
“Morning.”
“Sorry, I overslept.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. More importantly, can I sleep together with you?”
“No.”
“Guess I’ll have to sleep on the floor then.”
She said that knowing full well I couldn’t just leave her to it.
I was irritated that Fujishiro understood my personality well enough to act on it deliberately like that.
Annoying, but I couldn’t leave her alone either.
I grabbed her arm firmly.
“You sleep in the bed.”
“Sleeping together solves it just as well. Or what, Morishita, are you worried I’ll do something indecent if we sleep together?”
“As if I’d do that.”
I gave up and pulled her arm toward the bed, and she climbed in easily.
Half-asleep, I was talking to her without noticing anything strange, until I registered something odd at my ear.
I touched my ear, and something cold and hard fell into my hand.
“What is this…?”
“It’s yours.”
“What?”
Fujishiro wasn’t looking at me at all, gazing off at an angle, wearing an awkward expression.
“Oh, by the way, it matches mine.”
“That makes even less sense.”
“Friends match things sometimes, don’t they.”
“You’re not my friend.”
“Then what am I?”
“Nobody in particular.”
Right.
To me, Fujishiro is nobody in particular.
“Morishita, you’re really mean. Come on, put it on properly?”
Fujishiro took the earring sitting in my hand and put it on my ear herself, then held up a mirror.
My reflected face looked sleepy, eyes not fully open. But I could tell clearly that the earring dangling and catching the light was very pretty.
“Morishita has a cute face, so this kind of thing definitely suits you.”
“You say cute far too easily, Fujishiro. You probably say the same thing to all your other friends.”
“You want me to say it only to you?”
“No. I just don’t believe words you say to just anyone.”
Fujishiro’s words always get under my skin.
I have no idea why she talks as though I’m the one who wants her.
I think exactly the opposite.
Looking at her, Fujishiro had put an earring on her own ear too.
Even though we were wearing the same thing, hers still looked prettier somehow.
“Anyway, why the sudden earrings?”
“No particular reason? Will you accept it?”
Too sudden, my head couldn’t keep up.
I took the earring off and set it down somewhere obvious on the desk. But if I gave it back to Fujishiro, she’d end up with two identical earrings. There didn’t seem to be any point in that.
“Thanks…”
“Unusually honest of you.”
“Just for now.”
“There’s a ‘just for now’ attached to thanks?”
“Shut up. Going to sleep.”
I curled up on Fujishiro’s bed.
Fujishiro lay down beside me without asking, as always.
It was already past one in the morning, and I was genuinely sleepy.
“Morishita, one last request. Look this way?”
“Why?”
“Please.”
Her voice was unusually weak, and without thinking I turned my body to face her.
Fujishiro kept alternating between smiling and looking troubled.
“What?”
Lying down, I faced her directly.
Fujishiro still had that difficult expression.
“Fujishiro?”
“Happy birthday.”
…What?
No sound came out.
The air left me, no voice attached to it.
Only breath passed through my throat, no words.
I should have gone home after all, I thought.
Filled to the end with an emotion I couldn’t make sense of, I started to crumble, falling apart bit by bit.
Like a tightly built mask peeling away, something dripped from my eyes, drop by drop.
Watching it spread slowly across Fujishiro’s pillow, I scrambled out of the duvet, trying to leave the apartment.
But as if she’d known I would do exactly that, Fujishiro immediately pulled me tight into her arms, and I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t let her see this weak part of me any further.
So I thrashed inside the duvet hard enough to hurt my own body.
Kicking, pushing with my hands, desperately trying to think of some way to get away from her. But no matter how much I struggled, her grip showed no sign of loosening, and even though she was holding me tightly, it was somehow soft and gentle and warm.
Because of my thrashing, Fujishiro let out pained, strangled sounds. But no matter how much I fought, she never let go.
Stubborn even now, so exactly like Fujishiro, and so foolish.
Right… she was the kind of person who wouldn’t let go even with her fingers caught in a door.
“Are you an idiot or something.”
“Calmed down?”
“I haven’t calmed down.”
“I see, good.”
Our conversation made no sense at all, and yet Fujishiro kept stroking my head, softly, over and over.
“How did you know…?”
“I wonder how.”
Fujishiro seemed determined to play dumb forever.
I’d forgotten myself that today was my birthday.
The vague sense that it always just passed by unnoticed.
Because there’s never been anyone to celebrate it.
Even Ran wouldn’t know unless I told her.
And yet, why did this person who was nobody in particular to me know my birthday, and go to the trouble of celebrating it?
Thinking that tonight’s dinner, the cake, the earrings, all of it might have been for my birthday made me feel sick.
The food sitting in my stomach felt like it had been carved into my body, and even while it was digesting, I wanted to bring it all back up right now.
“I want to bring up everything in my stomach right now.”
“Isn’t that a bit much?”
“Shut up.”
“Then…”
Her thumb traced my lips and pushed inside my mouth. She pressed down against the back of my throat, and I held back the urge to gag.
“Want me to make you throw up? Like you did for me?”
Fujishiro’s voice, lower than usual, resonated in my ear, and my whole body tensed.
Fed up with everything, I bit down hard on her thumb, and with a “that hurts,” it left my mouth.
“Fujishiro really is a hopeless pervert.”
“Maybe. Pervert’s fine, but bite me again?”
“Are you an idiot…”
Fujishiro pressed her finger against my lips again, but I gently ran my hand over her stomach instead.
Her ribs were hard beneath my palm, and as I traced further down, her body tensed tight.
“Morishita?”
“Sorry for thrashing around.”
The sound I’d heard from her earlier had been the sound of someone holding back pain.
I think my elbow must have struck her stomach several times.
Calming down, the worry hit me suddenly, and I kept stroking her stomach.
Fujishiro, unusually, had gone red in the cheeks, watching me.
She blinked several times, then quickly returned to her usual expression.
“If you kiss me, I might forgive you?”
“Why are you such a pervert? And why phrase it as a question?”
“Kissing Morishita feels good, so it can’t be helped.”
She’s always sudden and unhinged like this, to the point where I wonder if that’s all that’s ever in her head, pink through and through.
I’m almost impressed she can say something this embarrassing so effortlessly.
“Fujishiro, do you kiss just anyone…?”
“There’s no one but Morishita. And by the way, you were my first kiss too.”
Hearing that she doesn’t do this with just anyone brought enormous relief.
Once relieved, sleepiness came, and my blinks grew longer and slower.
“Sleeping.”
“Not going to do it?”
“As if I would.”
“Then come here?”
I let myself be pulled against her as she asked, and her scent drifted softly around me.
“Morishita, goodnight—”
“…Goodnight.”
I hadn’t been able to say it before, but now I could properly say goodnight back to Fujishiro.
After all that thrashing, after all that pain, Fujishiro just gently stroked my head, and my heart was moving with a calm I found surprising.