Episode 53
The science textbook still hadn’t come back.
There’s no science class today, so it’s fine, but…
Should I at least send a message…
I opened my messages with Morishita on my phone and started typing.
Still using the science textbook?
Have it.
Can you return it if I come by the classroom?
Need it right away?
Don’t need it.
I’ll return it after school. I have a shift today, so I’ll be a bit late coming over.
Got it.
Something about it felt a little curt, but as long as she was still coming over after school, I decided that was fine, and closed my phone.
Classes ended, I went straight home, and worked on entrance exam study. A few hours later, Morishita showed up as usual…
“Hey, hey, why have you been ignoring me since earlier?”
“Not ignoring you.”
“If I did something that upset you, just say so.”
“Nothing happened.”
And yet, despite saying that, she wouldn’t even meet my eyes, absorbed entirely in studying.
Of course, I have no illusions that Morishita’s particularly fond of me, but being treated with this obvious a coldness still made something in my chest ache.
Especially right after that kiss…
Morishita’s lips were pursed, clearly displeased.
“Right. The science textbook?”
“Here. Thanks.”
She shoved the textbook back at me carelessly without even looking my way.
Unable to bear it any longer, I grabbed Morishita’s chin and turned her face toward me.
Morishita just kept looking at me with that same cold expression, same as ever.
“What?”
“Tell me what you’re actually thinking right now. Being treated coldly without a word hurts.”
“…With Yudzuki…”
“Hm?”
“…If things are going well with Yudzuki, why don’t you just study with her instead of me?”
“Huh?”
An unrelated person’s name suddenly appeared, and the sound that escaped me was almost like the air going out of a balloon.
Going well with Yudzuki, what did that even mean.
I had absolutely no memory of anything like that.
“Yudzuki and I are like cats and dogs, you know?”
“Liar. Hinata-chan said you two looked totally lovey-dovey.”
“Haah.”
I let out a long sigh.
It’s one of Hinata’s bad habits.
She says things like that far too easily about people close to each other. And on top of that, she’s the one who’s been standing right beside me watching my barely concealed, terrible attitude toward Yudzuki this whole time, and yet she can still call it lovey-dovey.
“It’s not the kind of relationship you’re imagining. If anything, I’m jealous of Yudzuki.”
“Jealous?”
“She’s someone who can do everything, and it makes me envious, makes me feel something close to resentment.”
“Resentment…”
“So the lovey-dovey thing is just Hinata’s own idea. We’re only close because we’re childhood friends.”
“Childhood friends…”
Morishita just kept echoing my words back at me.
But her expression had lost that hard edge, and I felt a small measure of relief at that.
Lovey-dovey with Yudzuki, huh.
If anything, being told I was lovey-dovey with Morishita would sit far more naturally.
I found myself remembering, suddenly, what Yudzuki had said earlier.
My heart pounding.
I wonder, is that what I feel when I’m with Morishita?
Morishita climbed onto the bed right on cue, so I moved to join her there too.
I thought back to the shoujo manga I read often, and the romance novel I’d finished recently.
Maybe if I touched Morishita, I’d feel something similar, I thought, with a rather optimistic kind of logic.
I pressed close, straddling her, and Morishita’s eyes went wide, clearly not expecting something like that, staring back at me.
“What?”
“Morishita, are you not interested in this kind of thing?”
I lifted the hem of her uniform and touched the soft skin of her stomach.
Smooth and glossy, my hand seemed to cling right to her skin.
Sliding it further up, I felt the hard line of her ribs.
If I moved just a little higher…
Just as I was thinking that, my arm was gripped with unbelievable strength, her nails digging in hard enough that it felt like they might leave marks.
“Gross.”
“Gross is harsh. I was just asking a question.”
The pain of her nails scratching in was too much, and I pulled my hand back.
Morishita’s expression was still just as hard as before.
“Is Fujishiro interested?”
“Not not interested.”
“Fujishiro seems like she’d have a strong sex drive.”
“That’s an unfair assumption. Also, that’s rude to say to a girl our age.”
“It’s true, isn’t it. You just did something weird.”
Thinking back over my own behaviour, I supposed it must have looked that way.
I’d only wanted to confirm my own feelings…
Because of me, the distance between us had gone strange and awkward.
But after a while, Morishita looked at me with a serious expression and slowly reached out her hand.
Her cold hand touched my neck, and my body twitched in response.
At that moment, I felt my heart pounding hard.
Was this what it meant to have your heart pound?
Did that mean I’m in love with being strangled by Morishita…?
There’s no way…
Her slender fingers pressed into the skin of my throat, and my head went hazy, floating.
Heat spread from my chest down toward my stomach, warming me from the core.
That just Morishita touching my throat could make me feel this way meant my head had really, thoroughly broken.
But it’s only while she’s strangling me that I can stop thinking about anything at all, floating in that soft, hazy sensation, feeling good.
Addictive, like being slowly dragged down into a swamp.
“Your face is weird.”
“Weird face is harsh.”
“Well, you’re grinning.”
I’m aware of that.
Even so, hearing it from Morishita still stung.
Morishita took her hand off my throat.
Then she picked up the choker sitting beside the bed and wrapped it around my neck.
Once she had, Morishita looked satisfied.
Someone who looks that satisfied putting a choker on someone else is the weird one here.
If I said that out loud, though, she’d probably never put it on me again, so I held my tongue.
“The collar suits you.”
“It’s a choker, not a collar.”
“On Fujishiro it looks like a collar.”
Fine, then, a collar it is.
Since it was Morishita who put the collar on me, I found myself wishing she’d hold the leash and take responsibility for it until the day I die.
I got bored of playing around with Morishita and went back to the desk. Once I did, Morishita quietly settled down to study beside me too.
“Oh, right, speaking of which, are you going to the fireworks festival next week, Morishita?”
“Not going.”
“You should go.”
“I don’t get what’s fun about watching that.”
“I think I understand that, actually.”
Watching fireworks isn’t something I enjoy either, because it always brings back memories of watching them happily with my family, the three of us, when I was small.
Every year, Yudzuki and Hinata invite me for no particular reason, and I look up at the night sky for no particular reason, feeling nothing at all, and summer ends.
I imagined this year would probably go the same way, and kept enduring the miserable summer heat, day after day.