Episode 9: Invitation
“…Shiori.”
I murmured her name, and without thinking tried to pull my fingers back. But Shiori tightened her hold just slightly, folding them gently in hers.
“Just for a little while.”
Her voice was calm, slipping quietly into my heart.
If I didn’t resist, I could feel myself about to be carried along by her words entirely.
“…But I…”
I couldn’t find the words. Forgetting about Honoka — I couldn’t do it.
Even entertaining the thought for a single moment frightened me.
But bearing it alone — carrying all this loneliness and anxiety, just holding on and enduring — that was its own kind of agony.
“I wonder what Shiraishi-san is doing right now.”
“…”
The words closed around my heart like a fist.
I took out my phone and stared again at a screen with nothing on it.
There was no reason for a message to come. And yet part of me was still hoping.
I’d been the one to decide to pull back — and here I was, still reaching for her.
“No matter how long you wait, Nanase-san — Shiraishi-san might be somewhere else right now, talking with someone else. Don’t you think?”
Those words cut something open, deep inside me.
Honoka’s gentle smile, turned toward someone who wasn’t me. Just the thought made my chest go cold. The warmth that was supposed to be only mine — maybe someone else had it now. I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t.
“…I know.”
I gripped my phone tight.
“Then — just for a little while — why not turn some of that toward me?”
Shiori’s voice was sweet, carrying something that pulled at me.
“I’m quite fond of you, Nanase-san, you know.”
Those words stirred something in the depths of my chest.
“You have no way of knowing what Shiraishi-san is feeling, do you? So spending all your time worrying over her — that’s just a waste of you.”
Shiori’s words were strangely gentle, and they dissolved something in me, slowly, slowly.
“I just want to help you find a little more ease.”
Shiori’s hand moved once more, fingertips tracing softly over mine.
The movement was like someone carefully, patiently unpicking a knot.
“Hey, Nanase-san. How about we spend just a little time together — right now?”
“…Together?”
“Yeah. A bit of a detour on the way home — it wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
I wavered at her suggestion.
The pull toward where Honoka was. And the pull of Shiori’s words. The two of them pushed against each other inside my chest.
“I just want to talk with you more, that’s all.”
Shiori’s smile was gentle — and yet it seemed to hold somewhere within it a deep and quiet darkness.
— Is it really all right to stay here with Shiori like this?
I couldn’t find an answer. I swallowed quietly, and said nothing.
The after-school classroom held just the two of us.
The evening light slanting in through the windows caught the line of Shiori’s profile and stained it red.
The scene felt strangely unreal, like something seen through gauze.
“What do you want to do, Nanase-san?”
Shiori asked it softly.
What I really wanted was to run back to Honoka.
But I…
“…I don’t know.”
I said it barely above a whisper. Shiori smiled.
“Then — why not stay with me a little longer, while you look for the answer?”
At those words, I hesitated still — and gave the smallest, quietest nod.