Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 11 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Sagamicizm of the Pretty Pigeon

“Oh! Is that you, Sagami?”

I’d caught a bus at the stop right in front of Sakuragawa Girls’ Academy, rode it all the way into town, and had just gotten off at the stop closest to my apartment building when I ran straight into Hatoko.

Okay... For real, though—isn’t my encounter rate set just a little too high today? The number of acquaintances I’d bumped into at random so far was getting to a seriously implausible level. It felt like I was stuck in a real-life visual novel, clicking on characters’ faces on a map to view their scenes in sequence. Maybe it was all just a coincidence, sure...but if I had to come up with an explanation that didn’t involve random chance at play, one came instantly to mind: there was a very real possibility that this was all being brought about by Hinoemata’s power.

At the moment, Lost Regalia was preventing any of Andou’s friends from reaching an understanding of what a terrible dilemma he’d been thrust into. That said, according to Takanashi, all the members of the literary club—plus Kudou—were currently searching for him, on account of him having abruptly dropped off the face of the earth. They didn’t seem to be taking the search especially seriously, to be fair, and it seemed likely that when night fell, they would give up and go home...but in the meantime, I had to wonder if Lost Regalia was using me as a means of buying time.

The longer they searched, the more time they’d have to think about the situation, and the more their anxiety and misgivings would build up. Having them bump into an acquaintance as a random encounter, however, would distract them from all those doubts. Maybe at the same time I was running into Hatoko, the rest of their group were all having their own coincidental meetings...though, of course, there was still always the chance it really was a coincidence and I was just overthinking things.

“Hey, Hatoko. Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

“Yeah. What a coincidence,” said Hatoko before pausing for a moment. “Oh! Hey, Sagami, have you seen Juu today?”

I’d more or less expected her to jump right to asking about Andou. Once again, I played dumb and lied my ass off, saying I had no clue.

“Oh, okay,” Hatoko said dejectedly after I’d finished giving my spiel. “Where could he have gone off to? I asked Machi, and she said that he hadn’t been home at all yet today...”

“I wouldn’t worry about him too much. Andou’s not a kid, after all,” I said, trying to dispel her concerns as well as I could.

“Yeah...” Hatoko muttered. Clearly, my effort hadn’t borne much fruit.

“Anyway, this kind of takes you back, doesn’t it? It’s been a long time since the two of us talked like this,” I said.

“Huh...? Ah, yeah, you’re right,” Hatoko agreed with a nod. “It really has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

It really did feel a little nostalgic...but at the same time, it felt paradoxically fresh. Most likely, Hatoko was experiencing the same mixed feelings. Back in the eighth grade, the four of us—me, Andou, Tamaki, and Hatoko—had done all sorts of things together, but as far as I could recall, Hatoko and I had never met up without at least one of the other two present. That’s why talking with her felt familiar, but talking with her alone felt quite new.

“We hung out a lot in the eighth grade, but I guess we drifted apart from the ninth grade onward, didn’t we?” I said.

“I-I guess we did,” Hatoko replied.

“More precisely, we drifted apart when Tamaki and I broke up. Andou cut ties with me, and you went with him as part of the set. He and I ended up associating with each other again some time later, but the two of us remained estranged.”

“Y-Yeah...”

“Of course, the two of us were more or less just friends of friends from the very start. We never exactly had much we could talk about without Andou or Tamaki around. No wonder I don’t even know your contact info, even though we go to the same school and everything!”

“Please, Sagami, just stop! This is really, really awkward for me!” shouted Hatoko, nearly in tears.

All right! Now there’s the reaction I was hoping for.

“I-I wasn’t avoiding you or anything, you know...? It’s just that we didn’t have any good chances to chat, and... So, umm... L-Let’s trade phone numbers, okay?!” Hatoko shouted, frantically pulling out her phone. I’d only been teasing, but apparently she’d taken it all totally seriously. She somewhat awkwardly pulled up the QR code that let her share her contact info, which I scanned.

“You’ve got a smartphone these days, huh?” I said after the exchange was finished. I distinctly remembered that she’d had a flip phone back before summer break when Kiryuu and his gang had kidnapped her—that is, when I’d surreptitiously lifted her phone from her pocket.

“Yeah,” said Hatoko. “I finally took the plunge just a little while ago. Chifuyu’s parents bought her a smartphone, so I decided to ask my mom to buy me one at the same time.”

“Oh? Chifuyu got one?” I said, a little taken aback. A grade-schooler with a smartphone? Seems a little early, but maybe that’s just normal these days? “Come to think of it, what’s Chifuyu up to right now? Is she searching for Andou with you?”

“No, Chifuyu went home. It’s late, after all.”

Not much of a surprise that the grade-schooler would be left out of the manhunt, I suppose. There wasn’t much risk of her being pulled into trouble, considering she had her power, but her parents would still almost certainly frown on her wandering around the city for too long.

“Hmm. I see,” I said, then I paused to ponder. So, what should I do now? I could always say goodbye here, but that would feel like something of a waste. Maybe I should stick around and chat for a little while longer? Assuming this encounter really was brought about by Lost Regalia, it might be fun to do what I can to play out the role it’s bestowed upon me. “So, Hatoko—not to change the subject, but are you familiar with the Late Queen Problem?”

On impulse, I decided to use the theory I’d only learned shortly beforehand as small talk fodder. Even though Takanashi had only explained the whole deal to me that very same day, I talked as if it were a school of thought that I was deeply, intimately familiar with...but it wasn’t long at all before I realized that I had made a grave error in my choice of subject matter. Specifically, it took about three minutes in total.

“...So what I’m saying is... I mean, like... Like I explained a minute ago, there’s no way for the detective to know if the ‘truth’ that they come up with is actually the true truth, right? Because no matter what they do, there’s always a chance that there’s a mastermind behind the criminal that they found...”

“Um... So, there really is another criminal? Do they get revealed in a sequel?”

“No, that’s not— The thing is, we can’t say for sure that there’s not another criminal. We also can’t say for sure that there is one, though! That’s the whole point, basically.”

“Okay, so... Okay. Huh... Sorry, but...what does all that mean, in the end?”

“It means... Okay, look. The detective can solve the mystery, but there’s always a chance that the real mystery hasn’t been solved at all because them solving the first mystery was the goal of a real criminal who’s hiding out there somewhere.”

“But...isn’t that something that the author would decide? If the author says that somebody’s the criminal, then they’re the criminal, right?”

“I mean, if we’re bringing authorial intent into the conversation, then that’s a whole different... You know what? Never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Do you know about The Butterfly Dream, Hatoko? To keep it really simple, it’s a theory that shows how there’s no way to tell whether or not the lives we’re living are actually just one big dream that a butterfly’s having.”

“Huh? Do butterflies dream?”

Aggghhhhhh! This is such a pain in the ass! How far from being on the same page could two people possibly be?! This girl’s totally hopeless!

...Well, no, not really. It wasn’t that Hatoko was hopeless in general—it was just that trying to have a conversation like this with Hatoko was hopeless. It was almost comical how thoroughly I wasn’t getting through to her. It was like she didn’t understand what I was talking about on the most basic, fundamental level. It probably didn’t help that I was working with underdeveloped secondhand knowledge that I was doing a terrible job explaining, of course. All I could do was hope that she’d finally reach an intuitive grasp of the concept, and the longer she failed to do so, the more stressful the whole attempt became.

“You know what, Hatoko?” I finally said. “Never mind. Let’s just forget we ever had this conversation.”

“S-Sure,” said Hatoko. “Umm... I’m sorry, Sagami.”

“No, it’s fine. In fact, I’m sorry too...”

It wasn’t her fault. It’s not like there was anything wrong with her either. Our perspectives were just fatally out of sync. She was a perfectly ordinary girl—nothing even close to being a geek of any sort. It was like she just didn’t understand how to go about enjoying this sort of discussion. If you brought up Schrödinger’s cat, she’d probably say “Why not just open the box?” and the conversation would drop dead on the floor.

“Do you, you know...have conversations like this with Andou?” I asked. “Like, conversations about weird, obscure, pseudo-philosophical trivia?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Juu talks about sort of complicated stuff an awful lot, really. It usually turns out like it did just now, though—I don’t really understand, and the conversation sort of just ends,” Hatoko said with a somewhat awkward smile, much to my confusion. Surely this wasn’t the sort of thing you’d smile over?

Conversations where one party doesn’t understand what the other is talking about are more than a little stressful for both sides of the equation, and I had a distinct feeling that Andou liked talking about this sort of thing even more than I did. Enjoying stories, tales, laws, problems, paradoxes, and aphorisms was a characteristic that every chuuni shared. I shuddered to think how many times Hatoko had been subjected to Andou rambling on and on about something in this general territory, and I was certain that every time, she’d been left with a massive question mark hovering over her head.

Their interests were just too mismatched. They were terribly suited for each other...or maybe it was the opposite way around? Maybe being mismatched with each other for over a decade had made it all circle around, and now they’d become very well matched in a counterintuitive sort of way? I was no fortune teller, so I couldn’t read their compatibilities with one another, but there was one thing I could say with confidence...

“You really do love Andou, don’t you?” I said.

I’d meant it to be a casual comment, but it seemed to hit Hatoko with the force of a freight train. At first she let out a little “Bwuh?” and looked shocked, but then a vivid blush began spreading across her face as she flapped her hands in a flustered panic. “H-H-How’d you know, Sagami...? Ah! No, that’s not what I meant! Er, umm...”

“It’s very obvious.” So obvious, in fact, that I wanted to ask how she had ever thought I wouldn’t notice.

“N-No, it’s not what you think! We’re childhood friends, so...it’s not that I love him so much as, umm, well...”

“You don’t love him?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“So, you do love him.”

“I... Well... Y-Yeah,” Hatoko finally admitted with a powerful nod as she pressed her flaming-red face into her hands. She paused to peek restlessly around the vicinity, then pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh! This is a secret, Sagami! You’re not allowed to tell anyone, okay?!”

Gah! It was like I’d been shot straight through the heart. This was one area in which Hatoko excelled. She was just so cute, in...a pure sort of way, I suppose. The way she could be just a little bit ditzy really hit in just the right way, and her simpleminded, innocent affection made my heart pound like crazy. Still, I held myself together well enough to say “Don’t worry—I won’t say a word” with a smile, then paused to think before speaking up once more.

“Hey, Hatoko,” I said, “you’ve always seemed to really enjoy listening to Andou ramble away. His little chuuni fantasies are so convoluted that not even he really understands them perfectly, though, right?”

“Yup. Juu always does his best to explain everything to me, so I—”

“Do you really enjoy all that, though?”

“Huh...?”

“I’m sure that talking with him must be fun on a basic level, of course, but you have no idea what makes the conversations themselves interesting at all, do you? Are you sure you’re not just faking it? You’re not just pretending to be interested in whatever he talks about?”

Hatoko didn’t reply.

“Ah, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, for what it’s worth! I was just wondering if playing along like that was ever hard on you.”

Maybe that was a mean thing for me to ask her. After all, there was just no way it wasn’t hard on her. She would feel the gap between their perceptions each and every time they spoke, yet she’d have to keep up a fake smile in spite of it all and play the part of the perfectly understanding girl—how could that be anything other than incredibly stressful? I could confidently say she was under pressure because I knew she had, in truth, already exploded once before. She’d held back, pushing and pushing as her stress had built and built until, finally, the pressure had been too great and everything had burst out all at once—you’d think that if it was bad enough to make her blow up like that, she could’ve just not let it all build up in the first place though.

Judging by what I’d heard about that whole incident, most people involved had reached the conclusion that it had all been Andou’s fault for presuming upon Hatoko’s kindness. Andou himself seemed to have decided the same thing...but I wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t Andou the real victim in that whole scenario? All he had done was believe in what she’d told him and taken her smiles at face value, so why had he ended up getting excoriated by everyone around him? Were guys supposed to always understand the hidden meanings behind girls’ words? It’s not like they made it easy—a girl would put on a whole act while hoping that the guy involved would see through it, for whatever reason. It made no sense.

Back then, when I’d talked to Andou on Hatoko’s phone, I’d been rather harsh with him because I’d wanted to make sure he really understood the nature of the problem he was dealing with. The truth, however, is that deep down, all I’d really thought about the situation was “Man, Hatoko’s seriously such a pain in the ass.” Just like how that was all I’d been able to think when Tamaki had ended up shouting at me...

Suddenly, a thought struck me—one that, frankly, should have struck me quite a long time ago. The moment I had lost any and all interest in Tamaki was the moment that I’d learned she’d cheated on me...but even if that hadn’t happened, I realized now that, in the long term, our relationship would have collapsed regardless. I could say that with complete certainty. Either I would have gotten bored with Futaba Tamaki as a heroine, or she would have reached her limit and become unable to deal with the stress of playing the perfect girlfriend any longer. One of the two would have broken us up, no matter what we did.

Why? I wondered. Why is it that girls never stop acting, even when it only brings pain to them and their partners?

“I’d be lying if I said it’s not hard at all...but it really is true that I enjoy it too. It’s not like all of it’s an act,” said Hatoko with a smile that I couldn’t quite read. “It’s a little complicated, isn’t it...? I’m not even totally sure just how much of it’s an act and how much is me being sincere, to be honest. And it’s not like I think, ‘Okay, it’s time to put on an act’ every time I talk to him. It’s never been like that—not even once. It’s more like before I know it, I’m carried in that direction because I’m trying to be considerate or friendly, and it all just builds up together...”

Maybe, I reflected, that’s all that building up a persona was, in the end. Aki had seemed to draw a fairly clear line between her various personas, of course...but that didn’t necessarily mean that everyone was as deliberate about the varying identities they created. Most people, in fact, probably never bothered defining them at all, simply letting themselves passively shift between a mishmash of personality aspects as the situation called for them. And, if I had to guess why that was...

“Let me guess... You do that because you don’t want Andou to hate you? Because you want him to like you?” I asked, making use of the piece of new knowledge I’d gained just a short while beforehand.

Hatoko thought for a moment. “I think I felt that way a little, maybe...but I also don’t think that’s quite right,” she finally said. “I think the biggest reason’s because I was frustrated.”

“Frustrated? About what?”

“About not being the person Juu wanted me to be. It frustrated me to think that I didn’t match up to his ideals.”

“...”

“I think that, really, I just wanted to become Juu’s ideal girl.”

She’d wanted to become the ideal partner for the boy she loved—and so, she’d constructed a persona. She’d built up a false self, then endeavored to become it. She’d put on an act, tailored to her chosen partner’s tastes. Could there be a more beautiful way in this world to tell a lie? Could any other falsehood seem so sublime? In any case, however, none of that brought me any closer to understanding her.

Hatoko looked sad for a moment, but then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned her usual cheerful smile toward me once more. “But not anymore,” she said. “I’ve stopped doing all that.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. I’m done. I’m not forcing myself to try to be his perfect girl anymore. I realized that I was only doing it for my own satisfaction in the first place, so I quit cold turkey.”

“...”

“I think...I got this idea in my head that I had to think that everything Juu told me was super interesting. I thought he’d abandon me if I didn’t understand each and every little thing he said in a heartbeat—that if I couldn’t be like Tomoyo, he’d never learn to love me...but I was wrong. That whole time, I’d just come up with an idea of who Juu’s ideal girl would be out of nowhere and forced myself to try and be that way. I’d thought that I was thinking about him, but really, he’d barely been part of the equation at all...”

“This...really is complicated, isn’t it?” I said. In other words, even if you try to become someone’s ideal, all you can really do is try to become the person you believe would be their ideal.

“So I decided to just stop pushing myself! I wanted to try really looking Juu in the eye instead.”

“So you’ve stopped putting on an act and started facing him as the real Hatoko?”

“Hmm... Maybe? I’m not forcing myself to put on an act anymore, but I don’t think that quite means that I’ve completely stopped, necessarily...? I guess I just play that part by ear, really!”

“You play it by ear?”

“It’s like if a comedian comes up with a character to play that’s a huge hit with the audience. You know you can’t just keep dragging that same bit out forever if you don’t want to end up as a one-hit wonder, but you also can’t just give up on the character your audience wants to see you play, since that’s just not how it works when you’re a pro performer.”

“I...can’t say that metaphor made any sense to me at all.”

“I’m trying to make an identity for myself that’s not too overbearing, that accounts for how he feels, and most of all, that accounts for the person I want to be. I think that if I can keep that up, then eventually, I won’t need to put on an act at all anymore!”

To negate the need to put on an act—what could that mean other than that you’d become the person you wanted to be? The idea that you had to obsess over acting out a persona in order to negate the need to do so struck me as a rather clever bit of rhetoric, all around.

Hatoko’s expression was as bright and clear as could be. She gave the impression that she wasn’t held back by the past at all. She was facing forward—unlike Hinoemata Tamaki. The two of them had both pushed themselves because they wanted the person they loved to love them back. They’d both suffered from a similar buildup of stress, stemming in both cases from a very similar motive. One of them, however, had moved on, while the other was still trapped in her past.

I had to wonder: Did their different outcomes arise from who they were as people? Or was it something much simpler...the difference between the two boys they had fallen for?