Beyond the door lay darkness.
Yet within that dim shadow, we could make out a figure taller than us.
That silhouette began approaching us.
An arm reached out towards me.

“Oi, where the hell have you been wandering off to this whole time?”
“Hmph!”

He grabbed me by the collar.
　It was a strength I’d never felt before.
My body froze.
Being pulled so close brought the other person’s face into sharp focus.
Our eyes met.

“Eh? Ah, eh? Who are you?”

The man seemed to realise, upon seeing my face, that the person he’d roughly grabbed by the collar wasn’t Amamiya Tōru, but an unfamiliar girl – me.
His hand snapped away.

　Kyuu

This time, my sleeve was grabbed from behind.
It was Amamiya Tōru, crouched behind me.
Her eyes no longer reflected me; it seemed she only saw the bewildered man before me.

The man noticed Amamiya Tōru.

“Ah, you—!”

　This time, the man’s hand reached out precisely for Amamiya Tōru.
The grip on my sleeve tightened.
Instinctively, I pushed the Amamiya Tōru hiding behind me and took a step back. By a hair’s breadth, the man’s hand missed her.

The man looked at me again.
I stared back into his sunken eyes.

“Er—”

He scratched the back of his head roughly.
As if about to begin a tedious task. Listlessly. And without any attempt to hide his irritation.
He stared at me and asked.

“Who exactly are you?”
“I’m Tōru-san’s partner.”

I answered without hesitation.
Confidently. Chest puffed out.

“Partner? What’s that?”

This time, I faltered when asked.
At first, I’d instinctively tried to say something like Amamiya Tōru’s lover, or best friend, or something else. But when asked if we were actually dating, even though we clearly liked each other… I remembered we hadn’t properly confessed to each other. So, was I her best friend? We certainly were best friends, but our relationship felt far more than that.
　That’s when the word “partner” came to me.
A life partner.

“I don’t think you’d understand. Not you.”
“Oh oh. We’re supposed to be meeting for the first time, yet you’re quite the feisty one, aren’t you?”
“Have you forgotten what happened seconds ago? The man I’d just met grabbed me by the collar out of nowhere.”
“………”
“You know, I could report this assault to the police.”

　A hair-trigger situation.
The atmosphere perfectly matched this expression.
My tightly clenched hands trembled.
This was me putting on a brave face. Truthfully, I was shocked by the sheer strength of this grown man – the first I’d ever experienced – and scared out of my wits.
To think Amamiya Tōru had endured even greater fear than this before… That cruelty made my trembling worse.

“I’m sorry, I apologise for pulling your clothes. Did I crease them? Or get them dirty? I’ll pay for the dry cleaning. How much do you need? Tell me. Thirty thousand yen should be enough for new clothes, right? …Right? So please, I’d rather you didn’t call the police.”

The man took a folded banknote from his trouser pocket and tried to hand it to me.

“Thirty thousand yen. Thirty thousand. That’s a lot for a student like you, isn’t it? With thirty thousand, you could do so many things you want. Here, take it.”

He grabbed my trembling hand, trying to force the money into my palm.
I pulled my hand away reflexively.
I didn’t want to be touched. I simply didn’t.

“Tch. ……… Sigh, could you move along now? I need to have an important talk with the girl behind you.”

I flinched.
Amamiya Tōru’s shoulders jerked noticeably.
Glancing back, I saw her shaking her head small but repeated movements.
She was rejecting him.
I felt relieved.

Simultaneously, heat lodges within my body.

“Tōru-san says she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“This is a family matter. There’s no right to refuse.”
“A family matter…? What exactly are you to Tōru-san?”
“Her father. Blood-related family. Not some vague, ambiguous ‘partner’ like you, but a proper, solid family registered in the household register.”
“Oh. So you’re the parent, then?”
“……”

Was I provoking him too much?
Anyway, driven solely by the desire to shift the man’s attention from Amamiya Tōru to me, I suppressed my trembling voice, flashed a smirk, and taunted him.
The man raised his hand.

!

I squeezed my eyes shut.
He was going to hit me. That’s what I thought.
　This was the flow I deliberately engineered. If he resorted to violence against me, a stranger, I could finally take it to the police for sure. That was my scheme, provoking him excessively.
But the moment I thought he might actually hit me, my body froze so rigidly I thought my breath might stop. Terror overwhelmed me, making even breathing properly impossible.

………But the pain I’d been waiting for didn’t come.

　Slowly opening my eyes, I saw that while I’d closed mine, the man had seized Amamiya Tōru’s arm.

“N-no! Stop it, Dad!”
“Shut up. You’re disturbing the neighbours. And we’re in front of your friend here? Stop reacting in a way that might cause misunderstandings.”

As if the entire conversation moments before had never happened, the man ignored me and dragged Amamiya Tōru away.

“No. Nooo. I’m sorry!”

Amamiya Tōru’s anguished cries reached my ears.
Only that sound echoed in my mind.
My head went completely blank, my vision threatening to turn pitch black.
Stunned by the sudden turn of events unfolding before me, I somehow managed to speak.

As if to stop the man.
As if to chase after him.

“W-wait! Stop doing this to Tōru-san! I’ll call the police!”
“……”

The man showed no reaction.
He simply kept pulling Amamiya Tōru’s arm, advancing deeper and deeper into the room.
I was being treated as if I didn’t exist at all.

I hurriedly pulled out my smartphone.
Just as I pressed “110” on the emergency call screen and was about to tap the call button, the man’s voice came through.

“Like I said before, this is a family matter. You haven’t done anything quite yet, strictly speaking. And if it’s about my daughter, I can make some case to the police. It’s tricky for them to get involved. You probably don’t know this, but family problems are nothing but a hassle.”

So it’s pointless, he was saying.
That’s how it felt.
My hand froze.
　If anything happened, relying on the police as a last resort would solve everything.
Even as a child, I had absolute trust in the police.

That lifeline felt like it had just been cut clean through.

My breathing grew shallow.

“No. Nooo!”

Amamiya Tōru had been in a state of panic since earlier.
Tears streaming down her face, she was moaning desperately.

　My chest felt tight.
My vision blurred.

Haa, haa, haa!

I couldn’t draw oxygen into my body properly.
The number of times I exhaled just kept increasing.

Then.

My eyes met those of the crying Amamiya Tōru.

“Help me. Mashiro.”

Snap.
I thought I heard something snap inside me.

The heat I’d been harbouring swelled within my chest.
Amamiya Tōru’s plea. That was the trigger. The emotion coursing through my body became ‘hatred’. Dyed solely in that colour.
What drove my body forward was hatred ignited by that harboured heat.

　Honestly, it didn’t matter what I grabbed.
I simply picked up the torch shaped like a lantern that happened to catch my eye.
I gripped its handle tightly.

“Oi, you’ve been noisy for ages now. You weren’t the type to cry like this, were you? What a pain.”

I moved towards the man focused on Amamiya Tōru, trying to make as little noise as possible.

　A balance lay within my mind.

A scale I’d pondered long ago.
Should I shatter the bright future of a girl barely seventeen?
Or sever the future of a middle-aged man, likely awaiting nothing but tedium, to protect that girl’s future?

I stood behind the man.

I raised the hand holding the torch.

High above my head.