Episode 7

What was I doing.
I’d come home, and here I was putting my shoes back on, standing in the entryway getting ready to go out again.

“Haah……”

Fujishiro Nanoha——

She was a source of nothing but trouble.
She was always forcing decisions about my life on me.
I knew I should just ignore her — but ignoring people apparently wasn’t in my nature.

Well. I’d get the handkerchief back and leave immediately. That was the plan.

With that thought, I stepped outside.

I walked down the road, accompanied by the chirping of crickets, and reached the shrine in a few minutes. In the park on the shrine grounds a girl was swinging back and forth on the creaking swings.

She must have had nothing to do — whenever I came, Fujishiro was always there.

The moment I entered the park gate, she noticed me and came running over.

“You came.”
“Just give me the handkerchief.”
“It’s drying at my place. Come over.”
“What?”

Fujishiro was, I thought, taking things entirely too far. I had no time to spare on a person like this — I turned my back on her, and had my arm grabbed.

“Like I said before — humour my selfishness.”
“You’re pretty spoiled, aren’t you, Fujishiro?”
“A little selfishness makes the world go round.”

Fair enough.
It was true that suppressing everything you wanted to say didn’t do you any good. But that was a separate matter from me accommodating Fujishiro’s selfishness.

“Haah……”
“Don’t sigh like that. I want to talk to you, Morishita.”
“I have nothing to talk about.”
“I have nothing but things I want to talk about.”

Why Fujishiro was so fixed on me remained completely unclear, and I could only wish for the day she’d lose interest in me and move on.

In the end I was pushed into it, and came to Fujishiro’s apartment again. Same as last time — it was past eight at night, and there was no one else home.

A too-large room with just the two of us in it.

Fujishiro led me not to the living room but to her own bedroom. It was neatly kept — a bed, a study desk, a bookshelf, and one round table in the middle.

“I’ll get you some juice.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Let me be a little hospitable.”

When exactly I had become a guest I didn’t know — but Fujishiro was radiating something unmistakably bright and eager.

Completely different from yesterday.

Yesterday during volleyball, Fujishiro had gone completely pale. And in fact, thinking back on it, she’d seemed frightened of something for the entire PE lesson.

The Fujishiro who was around me and the Fujishiro at school were quite different impressions.

Spending time with her here, I felt like I was with a different person entirely from the vice-president in the hallways.

A glass appeared on the round table — something cloudy and white, filled with ice.

“Can you drink apple juice?”
“Yes.”
“Have some then.”
“Okay……”

It seemed wasteful not to drink something she’d gone to the trouble of getting out, so I took a sip. My dry throat was moistened — but almost immediately my mouth felt sticky, as if it was parched again.

The Fujishiro in front of me had started fidgeting, clearly wanting to say something.

“What?”
“Here……”

What was held out to me was the handkerchief I’d given her yesterday.

I took it back. My task today was complete.

I should have left immediately — but this room had a comfortable quality to it, and I found I couldn’t make myself stand.

Fujishiro was unusually quiet and still.

With nothing else to do, I let my eyes travel around the room. When they reached the bookshelf, I found a row of titles I recognised.

It was the collected volumes of a weekly serialised manga I used to read standing up in convenience stores when I was small.

Once I was old enough to know better, I’d stopped reading manga that way, deciding that hopping between different convenience stores to read for free wasn’t right. But I’d been wondering ever since how it continued.

I stood up quietly and drifted toward the bookshelf. I knew it was rude to touch someone else’s things without asking, but my hands moved on their own, and I found myself leafing through the pages.

The nostalgia……
And I want to read it properly……

I was absorbed in the manga before I knew it, and at some point Fujishiro had come to stand beside me, smiling with quiet amusement.

“That one’s good, isn’t it. Do you want to read it?”
“Sorry for touching it without asking. I used to read this, and it brought back memories.”

I moved to put the volume back on the shelf, and my hand was stopped.

“You can read it.”
“What?”
“Call it thanks for the handkerchief.”

I almost let myself accept that — but held back.

Something was different about Fujishiro today.
Someone this unhinged being suddenly kind could only mean she was plotting something.

“What are you scheming?”
“What do you think I am? I’m not scheming anything.”

As she said it she took out the volume and pulled me by the hand.

“Everything in here is yours to read whenever you like.”
“If I start I’ll want to read to the end.”
“Then stay until you finish.”
“Excuse me?”

That was too much to ask, quite apart from the fact that it was probably more volumes than I could read in a single night. Staying that long in someone else’s home was an imposition — even right now it was past eight and already an imposition.

“Come over any time you want to read.”
“That’s too much in exchange for a handkerchief.”

I did very much want to read the continuation — but I didn’t want to owe Fujishiro anything and put myself at a disadvantage.

When I said so coolly, Fujishiro fell into thought, and then her expression brightened with some idea.

“Then — how about this……”

She moved toward me with a pleased look, and her striking face filled my vision.

She has everything I don’t, and a face like that on top of it — genuinely irritating, I thought. And then from this genuinely irritating person came words I hadn’t expected.

“Give me your contact details.”
“What?”
“If you’re feeling fed up, Morishita, or if you fancy reading some manga, message me. I’ll head to the shrine. And then you can come to my place and relax.”

The words when you want to read manga, message me moved something in me.

Ugh…… I suppose I can’t resist the desire to read something interesting…….

I opened my phone and shared my contact details. Fujishiro smiled with obvious delight. I was a little annoyed at being exactly where she’d wanted me — but I told myself it was for the sake of something I wanted to read, and let it go.

“You can use the bed too, whenever you like.”
“I’m not that presumptuous.”
“You don’t have to be so reserved.”

She pulled at my arm forcefully enough to throw my balance off, and I toppled onto Fujishiro’s bed with a soft thud.

Fujishiro’s scent drifted up gently around me.
My tie was digging in a little. I reached up to loosen it — and Fujishiro’s hand got there first, untying it for me.

Her own uniform was perfectly in order. Mine was now dishevelled.

“Is the vice-president allowed to mess up other people’s uniforms?”
“I thought your collar looked uncomfortable. And this isn’t school. Also — stop calling me vice-president.”
“Okay, okay. Looks like you’re uncomfortable too, Fujishiro.”

I reached toward the throat of the girl leaning over me.
I tugged at her tie, and Fujishiro made a slight expression of discomfort.

Looking at that expression on her face, I thought I could hear the sound of blood rushing through my veins — but I ignored it and loosened her tightly knotted tie as well.

“Ugh — Morishita’s turned me into a delinquent.”
“You’re the one who said this isn’t school.”
“I’m a diligent person everywhere I go, for your information.”
“Then be less diligent.”
“Ha. You’re a funny person, Morishita.”
“What’s funny about it. You’re the one who’s unhinged, Fujishiro.”

A person with quite a few screws missing, I thought.
Also — I wished she’d get off me.

She wasn’t heavy, but I couldn’t move in this position.

“Fujishiro — get off.”
“Hmm, I wonder if I should……”
“You’re heavy.”
“That’s cruel.”

Fujishiro finally climbed off and went quiet.
I ignored her and started reading the manga.

At this point, I thought — whatever — and stretched out across her bed with the volume open.

There were plenty of nostalgic scenes inside, and I got far more absorbed than I’d expected.

The sound of pages turning felt loud to me, which told me how little of Fujishiro’s presence I was hearing. The ambient sounds of her life had faded to almost nothing.

Curious, I glanced over at her — and found Fujishiro with a vocabulary flashcard book, apparently having started studying at some point without my noticing.

“You’re so diligent, aren’t you?”
“Unlike Morishita, I’m not a dunce.”
“Hey——!”

I wouldn’t say studying was a strength of mine. But I did make a genuine effort to follow along in class and managed to do reasonably well for my level. Compared to Fujishiro I was probably at the bottom, but something about the way she said it still irritated me. My test scores actually landed fairly consistently in the upper rankings.

“I’m all about balance. Work hard when it’s time to work.”
“Morishita is so carefree.”
“For someone who calls herself diligent, you’ve got a surprising number of manga, Fujishiro.”

Honestly — I hadn’t expected the Fujishiro known for being rigidly serious to own this many volumes. And beside the bookshelf, what looked like video games.

“I wish I didn’t have to study and could just read manga forever……”

Fujishiro stroked the manga piled on top of the bed and said it with a quietly lonely look.