Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 7 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 ★ July and a Girl Who Lights Up the World Go To...

The promised day arrived before I knew it—that is to say, the day that Andou and I had planned to go to the local pool together.

It felt like the span of time since we’d made that promise had simultaneously been as long as could be and over in an instant, but one way or another, I’d spent all of it in a state of agitated unrest. One minute, I’d be shouting “I-If you’re gonna get here, then do it already!” at my calendar, and the next I’d be shouting “Wait, I only have so-and-so days left?! Crap! I haven’t even bought a swimsuit yet!” and flying into a panic. I’d been through all sorts of ridiculous internal drama and conflict, but at long last, the day finally arrived.

I’d done everything I could think of to prepare myself. I’d spent ages agonizing over what swimsuit to buy, and I had what I’d say when he complimented me for it memorized by rote. I wasn’t going to act bashful in the slightest. I was just going to give him a look, say, “Oh, you think so? Hee hee—thanks!” and put on a show of how composed and mature I was. And if he didn’t compliment me...I mean, I figured I’d smack him upside the head or something, probably.

I knew I couldn’t let myself be late, so I went to bed at nine the evening before. I’d come pretty close to going full nocturnal ever since summer vacation started, so I hadn’t been able to sleep at all at first...but eventually, I somehow managed to force my way into a slumber through sheer willpower.

I was all ready. Finally, the long-awaited promised day arrived...

...and then a record-breaking downpour rolled into town.

It was raining so hard, it felt like someone had overturned an enormous bucket high up in the sky. It’d started in the early morning and just wouldn’t stop, pounding away at the ground with such relentless persistence you’d think the ground had murdered the rain’s parents and sent it on a lifelong quest for revenge. According to a news bulletin, it was a localized freak storm that totally defied all weather forecasts.

The roaring of the rain was incredibly loud, even from inside my room. Thanks to that, I’d woken up around four in the morning. Hours passed, nine o’clock rolled around, and the rain wasn’t showing the slightest sign of letting up. According to the news, the storm was supposed to carry on for the rest of the day.

Finally, an hour before our meeting time, I called Andou.

“So, the plan’s off, huh...? Yeah, I guess it would be.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Considering the weather and all...”

I’d been the one to propose our outing, so it felt like it was my responsibility to call it off. The fact that it had turned out this way felt just, well...like, of all the things, you know? Yesterday and the day before—and last week and the week before that, for that matter—we’d had day after day of clear, cloudless skies. Why did today have to be the one specific day that got singled out for a massive downpour?

“Hey, Tomoyo,” said Andou. “How about tomorrow, or the day after? Can’t we put a rain check on it instead of canceling it altogether? I heard the weather’s supposed to clear up tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” I sighed. “No can do. My ticket expires today.” I’d wanted as much time as I could get to prepare, so I had scheduled our outing at the last possible second to facilitate that. Who knew that choice would come around to bite me in the rear?

“Ahh, gotcha. Hadn’t considered it could expire,” said Andou.

“Yeah. So, umm... Wh-Whatever, okay?! I just thought I might as well go since I got the ticket for free and all! It’s not like I was that hung up on going to the pool, really!”

“...”

“Okay, bye!”

Andou still seemed like he had something to say, but I said a quick goodbye and hung up on him before he had the chance to spit it out. Then I let out a deep sigh and flopped over onto the bed I’d been sitting on. Maybe it was just because I didn’t have the phone call to distract me anymore, but it felt like the rain was louder than ever now.

I’d never minded the rain. It gave our town a whole different look than it had on clear days—there was a certain charm to it, I guess—and I loved reading in my room with the sound of the rain as my background music. Oh, and I also liked that our gym classes got canceled on rainy days. I was bad at pretty much everything that fell into the broad category of athletics, so I always wound up spending the day before our field days and marathon runs desperately carrying out rainmaking rituals and making rain-warding charms, which I then hung upside down to bring in the rain instead of driving it away. Also, I’ll admit...I didn’t mind the rain because I kinda liked being the sort of person who didn’t mind the rain.

And so, this was a first for me. It was the first time I’d ever looked out at a rainstorm and found it to be utterly loathsome.

Between my distaste for the weather’s whims and my distaste for my own miserable luck, I ended up deciding to just go back to bed and nap the irritation away. It took my mom calling me on the phone from downstairs to get me out of bed again. As it turned out, she’d just wanted to say that lunch was ready. She’d signed us up for a family plan that let us call each other for free, and we’d taken that as an excuse to use our phones whenever we needed to get in touch, even if it was just from one end of our own house to the other.

“Man... It’s lunchtime already?” I groaned. I’d gone and napped the entire morning away, it seemed, and I mildly bemoaned my own laziness as I plodded out of my room and downstairs.

My mom was setting the table for lunch when I got to the living room. She was serving sunny-side up eggs, toast, salad, some yogurt, and some seafood paella that was left over from last night’s dinner. Lunch in the Kanzaki household pretty much always ended up having that “This feels more like a breakfast, actually” sort of feel, mostly on account of me not bothering to eat breakfast more often than not.

“Morning, Tomo,” said my mom. “Just getting up, Little Miss Sleepyhead?” she added with a chuckle. Apparently, the fact that I’d just crawled out of bed was written all over my face. She was well into her forties, by the way, but you’d never know it from how she looked and acted. Even her choice of apron was cutesy in a way that didn’t exactly suit her age.

“I’m jealous, you know? I wish I got a summer vacation too,” my full-time housewife of a mom jabbed. She was busy with her housework, just like always, while I’d been using the long summer break as an excuse to live a life of slothful indulgence. I felt a little bad about that, honestly...but on the other hand, that’s just how it goes sometimes. Summer vacation’s just like that, y’know?

“Oh, right,” my mom continued. “Weren’t you going to meet a friend at the pool today? Seems like a bad day to be sleeping in this late.”

“We canceled,” I said as I sat down at the table and spread a layer of jam over my toast. I’d tried to sound indifferent, but I felt like my words had ended up coming out with a certain air of dejection instead.

“Oh... Well, I guess that stands to reason in this weather,” my mom said with a sympathetic nod, then she sat down across from me. “That’s a shame, though. You were so excited for today.”

“N-No, I wasn’t!” I snapped.

“Oh, please,” said my mom. “Do you realize how long we spent picking out your swimsuit when we went shopping the other day? It took hours!”

“Th-That was just, um...y-you know, I barely ever buy that sort of stuff, so I wanted to make sure I got a good one.”

“You also started doing a bunch of crunches and push-ups out of nowhere.”

“I-I just realized I haven’t been getting enough exercise lately, that’s all.”

“Then there’s the little fashion show you put on in your room last night. Trying on your swimsuit, picking an outfit...”

“H-How do you even know about that?!” I shrieked. I’m positive I locked my door! I closed the curtains too, and I spent the whole time tiptoeing around so she wouldn’t hear me! I took every possible precaution to keep it secret! A-And, wait! W-W-Wait, j-just how much of it did she see?! Not that pose?! Or...oh god, not that one?! “Y-You’ve got it all wrong, mom! I-I just saw someone posing like that on the cover of a book somewhere! There’s no way I was actually planning on doing it in public, or—” I shouted, my mind going blank from the shame of it all as I babbled desperate excuses...until I noticed the big, broad smirk on my mom’s face.

“Oh? So that really is what you were doing,” she said. It was at that moment that I realized I’d screwed up. “Hee hee! Oh, Tomoyo, you’re just the cutest!”

“You set me up, didn’t you?” I grumbled.

“Well, now I’m just plain curious! What sort of pose was it?”

“Agggh! J-Just drop it!” I shouted. I could tell that carrying the conversation on any longer was just going to make the shame worse, so I slammed the door shut on that topic, scooted an egg onto my toast, and took a bite...then remembered that I’d just finished slathering said toast with jam. “Blech! Ugh, gross...”

“Ha ha ha! Come on, Tomo, pull yourself together! Here, have some water.”

My mom handed me a glass, then she grinned as I washed the taste of jammy egg toast out of my mouth. She kept using my plans for the day and the way I’d been acting lately to poke fun at me for the rest of my meal, but eventually, our lively little lunch came to an end.

“Oh, come to think of it,” my mom said as I helped her clean up the dishes, “have you heard from Hajime lately?”

For a moment, I was silent. Kiryuu Hajime was four years older than me and didn’t share my family name, but he was my brother nonetheless. He was brilliant, athletic, and attractive to boot, though when it came to his fashion sense, and sense of aesthetics in general...I’ll just say no comment. He was in college, though he was currently taking a break from school—and from living with the rest of us at home.

One year earlier, on April Fool’s Day—the day Hajime had turned twenty years old—he took his leave from the Kanzaki household. Since our academic calendar started and ended in April, being born on the first made Hajime one of the youngest students in his grade level, and turning twenty had felt like it was a long time coming for him. That was the age at which society acknowledged his adulthood...and the age at which he just packed up and went away, leaving behind a single phrase: “There’s something wrong with this world.”

I’d tried to stop him—to tell him to quit with the cryptic playacting—but nothing I said got through to him. He hadn’t completely broken off contact with me or anything, but I never had the foggiest idea where he was or what he was doing at any given moment.

“Nope,” I said. “Haven’t heard a peep from him since I bumped into him at that restaurant the other day. No calls, no texts, nothing.”

“Oh,” said my mom.

“Why? Did something happen?” I asked.

“Hmm. Well, it’s not a huge deal or anything,” my mom said a little hesitantly. “I was transferring his living expenses for this month into his account the other day, and I noticed he’s been making more withdrawals than usual lately. I was a little worried he’d run into some sort of trouble.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. My mom was a worrywart, and Hajime was totally reliant on my parents’ money. They’d been sending that moron a monthly allowance via bank transfer, even though he’d run away and still hadn’t bothered coming home even once. To make matters even more embarrassing, he had the debit card for his account, but my mom kept a hold of his bankbook for him. It was a setup you saw pretty often with college kids, since it let her transfer money into his account with ease, but it also meant that my parents had access to a detailed record of exactly when and for how much he made his withdrawals.

Hajime, please...try to be just a little independent, okay? Nothing good comes from a bum like you leeching off our household finances.

“I’ve been thinking of giving him a call, but, well...nobody likes a helicopter parent, right?” said my mom. “I thought that you might’ve heard something from him, though.”

“...Nope. He hasn’t told me squat.”

“Well, okay. Hmm... I hope he’s doing all right. Maybe I should send him a little extra this month?”

“You’re spoiling him way too much, mom,” I sighed. I really didn’t want her to let my idiot brother take advantage of her even more than he already was. “Just let him figure it out on his own. Hajime’s a grown-ass adult. If he really needs money that desperately, he’ll probably just come home on his own.”

“You’re always so harsh with Hajime, aren’t you?” my mom commented.

“You just let him get away with too much,” I countered.

“You’re so distant these days too! The two of you used to be so close before you started high school. I remember how you used to love playing with his old toys when you were a middle schooler...”

“Can you not bring up middle school, thanks?!” I yelped. Just the thought of what I’d done in my middle school days with the things my mom viewed as “old toys” was...was...

Agggh, I don’t even wanna think about it!

It felt like my old, forbidden memories were about to rise up to the surface for a second, but I shook them away and immersed myself in washing the dishes. My mom, meanwhile, chuckled and shook her head as she dried the dishes I’d finished cleaning.

“You really should try to get along with him more! The two of you’ve got the same blood flowing through your veins, you know?”

For just a moment I came to a dead halt, a dish still clasped in my hand. I knew my mom probably hadn’t meant to imply anything major when she’d said “the same blood flowing through your veins,” but I found myself reflexively reading into the wording anyway. Haijme and I were only partially related, biologically speaking. We shared a father, Kanzaki Tadashi, but we were born to different mothers. In other words, we were half-siblings.

Hajime’s mother was named Kiryuu Rei. She and my dad had gotten divorced right after Hajime was born, apparently, and she’d taken Hajime with her. A few years later, my dad and my mom met, got married, and had me. And then, a few years after that...Hajime arrived at our home.

I’d never gotten the full story about how it’d happened. I could only imagine what sort of circumstances my parents, Rei, and Hajime had been going through to make things turn out that way. I was still just a kid at the time. It wouldn’t have made sense to bring me into the loop back then, and even though I was a high schooler now, I’d sorta just never asked.

Regardless of how it’d happened, from that day onward, our family had gained a new member. I think that transition went perfectly smoothly too. The three of us accepted Hajime as if he’d been part of our family from the very start, and Hajime opened up to us before we knew it as well...yet no matter how close we grew, how much of a family we became, Hajime never stopped using his birth mother’s family name. He was obstinately, pathologically attached to the Kiryuu surname.

“I wonder why...?” I muttered before I knew it. “Why did dad and Rei get divorced?” I didn’t really understand what I was saying. The question had just sprung to mind and slipped out of me unprompted.

“Where’s this coming from?” asked my mom.

“Nowhere, really... I’m just sorta curious,” I said. Why had I been born into this slightly strange shared-father half-sibling relationship? It stood to reason that the answer to that question would be the same reason Kiryuu Rei and Kanzaki Tadashi had gotten a divorce.

A moment later, though, I realized my mistake and kicked myself. Considering how I’d phrased my question, it’d probably sounded like I was dissatisfied with my parents’ current relationship. That wasn’t how I’d meant it at all, and I frantically searched for the right thing to say to make that clear...

“Hmm. Let me think.”

...but then I realized that my mom didn’t seem to have taken it personally at all.

“I think only your father and Rei know the answer to that question,” she said. “After all, they were already divorced when I met him.”

“Yeah...makes sense. Sorry. That was a weird question to ask,” I said.

“It’s fine! I don’t mind at all. But, well...” my mom said, then trailed off for a moment as a faraway look passed across her face. “If I had to guess, I’d say there was no real reason.”

I felt my eyes widen. “There...was no reason? How does that work? That doesn’t make any sense!”

Marrying someone meant making a vow to spend the rest of your life with them, and getting a divorce meant crumpling up that promise like a piece of wastepaper and walking separate paths once more. In my mind, that wasn’t something you did casually. It meant that something was out of the ordinary. There was just no way you’d do it for no reason at all.

“Oh, sorry,” said my mom. “You’re right—of course there was a reason. But, well...I guess a better way of putting it is that I don’t think there was any single, specific reason that they’d be able to pick out as the one. I don’t think any reason they could come up with would explain things for anyone other than the two of them.”

I gave my mom a blank stare, and she carried on. “You see reports on gossip shows about celebrities getting divorced all the time, right? And they always try to pin some sort of reason or story to it—one of them cheated, or their personalities clashed, or they couldn’t reconcile their values, or what have you. Personally, though, I think that reasons like that are just one part of a bigger picture.”

“A bigger picture...?”

“The way I see it, divorce happens when all sorts of things build up over time, little by little, until it all becomes too much to bear and you decide that you’d be better off apart,” she said, her eyes narrowed and a gentle smile on her face. It wasn’t a totally happy smile, though—there was a trace of sadness to it, an inkling of sorrow for how cold people could be and for how fleeting and ephemeral the relationships we have with each other are.

“Mom...? Have you, umm...ever thought about divorcing dad?” I asked.

“I have,” she replied immediately. So immediately, I sort of wished she’d hesitated a little. “More times than you could count.”

“More than I could count...?”

“More than you’d believe.”

“More than I’d believe...?”

“And you’d jump if you saw how hopping mad I got those times.”

“I’d rather we keep our feet on the ground...”

I’d inadvertently touched on a dark, unknown side of my parents’ relationship, and I was feeling an awfully complicated set of mixed feelings about it when my mom added in one last word.

“But,” she said, “even when I’ve wanted to divorce him, I’ve also wanted to stay with him even more. That’s why we’re still together to this day,” she concluded with unhesitant confidence.

It felt like her words had overwhelmed me—like they’d caught me off guard and gotten the better of me, in a weird sort of way. I don’t really know how to say this, but, well...I suppose they made me realize that my mom really was a mom after all.

After lunch, I went back up to my room. I’d offered to help my mom out with her chores, but she told me that she had those covered and I should go do my homework instead. I hadn’t had a good argument for that one, so I headed back upstairs to shut myself in my room like a good little student.

Yeah, okay. She has a point. I should probably get to work on my homework one of these days. When summer break started, I’d been so preoccupied by the contest I’d submitted my story to that I couldn’t focus on anything else, and I had ended up spending all my time working on the novel I’d been writing for fun in an effort to keep myself at least vaguely mentally stable. As for the past few days, I’d, well...been super busy getting ready for today’s pool trip. I’d bought a swimsuit, worked out to get my figure in shape, and taken great pains to make sure I’d be mentally prepared for the trip. It had been a pretty rough few days, honestly!

In short: as of yet, I hadn’t so much as touched my homework.

This is bad. Yup. I’m preeetty screwed, actually. I should put together a list of everything I have to do, I thought, resolving myself to get that done at the absolute least as I threw open the door to my room, walked over to my desk, and opened up my bag...then, because I was a modern girl living in modern times, paused to check my phone, which had been charging on my desk. That’s when I noticed that Andou had sent me a text.

I’d made first contact with Andou during the spring of my first year in high school.

Ah. Wait. Technically, that’s not exactly right...I guess? I’d actually met with him once before, back when we were in middle school. That meeting was, well...let’s just say I don’t want to think about it and set it aside. The point is that we had met once already, so it’d probably be more appropriate to call our first encounter in high school our second contact.

About a year had passed since that first chance meeting, which had ended without either of us actually introducing ourselves. I don’t know whether it was a coincidence, or fate, or what, but one way or another, we’d ended up reuniting in our high school club.

“An admission test?”

“Yes, that’s correct. An admission test.”

It was springtime, shortly after I’d joined the literary club. I was in our club room after school, and Sayumi had just told me an incredibly strange story.

“Does this club have an admission test, Takanashi?” I asked. Yes, I was still calling her “Takanashi” back then. Takes me back just thinking about it. “I definitely didn’t take one of those...”

“Ordinarily, we do not,” said Sayumi. “However, I’ve chosen to make a special exception in Andou Jurai’s case.”

“Why?”

“Well, because...he irritated me, I suppose.”

All I could think was, Wow, this girl sure doesn’t mince words.

“Frankly, I’d prefer to spare myself his idiocy—ahem. Frankly, I believe that admitting an individual who lacks the ability and character to excel in our club would not be to the benefit of anyone involved in the equation. I intend to have a thorough discussion with him and ascertain whether or not he has the right disposition to join us,” she continued.

She called him an idiot. She totally called him an idiot just now. I could only imagine how rude this “Andou Jurai” must have been when he met her to prompt this sort of reaction. What can you even do that’d make someone hate you this much, this quickly? I wondered, and although part of me was starting to conclude that Takanashi might be just a little scary at the time, when I heard the whole story, I ended up coming down a hundred percent on her side.

Yup. Definitely Andou’s fault for speaking to a senior like that during his first meeting with her. That was all on him.

The next day, Sayumi administered Andou’s admission test. She wanted to have a one-on-one conversation with him, so I ended up stepping out of the room and wandering around the school, exploring the hallways I hadn’t had the time to get used to yet and generally killing time.

I’d asked Sayumi for a little more of an explanation and found that she wasn’t really planning on staking his admission on the results of the test. It was “an interview in name only,” in her words. As such, I ended up wandering back toward the club room about five minutes before their interview was technically scheduled to end...just in time to witness Sayumi burst through the door, clutching a hand to her mouth. She looked like she’d barely made it out of there alive.

“Wh-Whoa! Are you okay, Takanashi?!” I asked as I dashed over to her.

“I-I’m sorry... I can’t take it any longer,” Sayumi replied with great effort. She had both of her hands clasped over her mouth now, and her whole body was trembling. “He got me. Oh, did he ever get me...”

He “got her”...? D-Don’t tell me he attacked her?! Is this Andou guy the sort of person who’d get violent with a woman?! What a scumbag!

My rage was rapidly moving from a simmer to a rolling boil, but Sayumi...

“Pff... He he, he he he...”

...had an incredibly crooked, half-suppressed smile on her face. Her cheeks were spasming too. Best as I could tell, she was desperately trying to hold back an intense fit of the giggles.

H-Huh? Is it just me, or is she enjoying herself? Like, a lot?

“He got me...well and truly,” Sayumi gasped.

Back then, I’d found myself at a loss for a reaction. Just recently, though, when we were cleaning out our club room, we found the résumé Andou had submitted to her, and suddenly, it had all made sense.

Andou had put everything he had into writing that résumé. He’d opened by identifying one of his hobbies or skills as “people watching,” combo’d that straight into claiming that an area he excelled in was his “disinterest in other people,” then dealt the coup de grâce by claiming he fell short in regard to his “lack of emotions.” It was a spectacularly executed full combo that dealt devastating damage to Sayumi’s usually resilient abs, leaving her laughing so hard she wound up gasping for breath.

“I’m sorry,” said Sayumi, “I need to step out for a moment...and go laugh myself to death somewhere nobody can see me...he he he!”

And just like that, she staggered off to who knows where, leaving me confused and bewildered. I would’ve felt weird about just going home, so for lack of a better option, I decided to step into the club room. Just when I was about to open the door, though...

“Huuuh? Hey, what’s going on, Takanashi? And wait, what about the rest of my interview?”

...somebody opened it from inside a second before I had the chance.

“Huh?!” I gasped with astonishment as I saw the boy before me. I didn’t exactly keep my chill, but can you blame me? After all, I’d met him before. Back in middle school, when I was still in the darkest depths of my chuuni phase, during one of the monthly bike rides I took to the park near my house to, well...“conduct a ritual,” as I would’ve claimed. Basically, I’d been going full-cringe, and he was the guy that I’d met on that ritual/self-satisfaction ceremony’s final day! Our club’s new member—Andou Jurai—is him?!

“Hmm...?” Andou grunted as he finally noticed me. “Ah. Wait, are you...?”

I gasped once more. The moment he looked at me, a violent tremor welled up from somewhere deep within me, and then a second later, I stiffened up. O-Oh, god, what should I do? What should I do, what should I do, what should I do?!

I’m screwed! He knows the old me! He witnessed the lethally cringey antics I got up to at the height of my chuunibyou! Aggh, this is the worst! I got over all that crap! I worked so hard to turn my life around and get a fresh start in high school! How was I supposed to know that he’d end up in the same school as me? And the same club, at that!

My high school life was supposed to be gilded with flowers and sunshine, and I could not have my sordid past cast a pall over it, no matter what happened. I’ll have to shut him up before he has the chance to spill the beans... Actually, I’ll have to silence him permanently!

While I was busy trembling with furious terror and working out the early stages of an appallingly violent plot, Andou finished his thought. “Are you here to take the literary club’s admission exam too?”

“...Huh?” I grunted.

“Man, that’s a relief, seriously! I was starting to think I was the only one who had to test into the club, y’know? Kinda hurt my feelings for a minute there!”

“...”

“Anyway, have you seen Takanashi? She ran out halfway through the interview and never came back. She looked like she was in pretty bad shape when she left too—think she’s okay?”

“...”

“Huh? Hey, why aren’t you saying... Ah! W-Waait—I thought you were in my grade, but...don’t tell me you’re an upperclassman?! Gah, crap! S-S-Sorry, was I being rude?! You just look so young, I sorta assumed... Ah, no, I mean, like, in a vibrant, youthful sorta way!”

“...”

Huh?

Has he...not realized who I am? He’s sure acting like this is our first time meeting each other... And now that I think about it, the last time we met I was wearing a pretty wild outfit. Specifically, I’d been wearing Hajime’s sunglasses, Hajime’s silver wig, Hajime’s black trench coat, and Hajime’s fingerless gloves, while riding Hajime’s bicycle...oh, and I’d had my own scarf on too.

Looking back on it also had the side effect of hitting me with a nearly lethal dose of self-loathing. Seriously, how did I go out in public looking like that? I’m surprised nobody called the cops on me! In this one particular moment, however, my creeper-tier fashion sense had actually worked out in my favor. My outfit had kept the majority of my face covered up, and if I was reading the situation correctly, there was a chance he hadn’t put the pieces together.

“I’m not an upperclassman, no,” I said. “I’m a first-year too. First year, class 1, and my name’s Kanzaki Tomoyo.”

“O-Oh, okay. Man, you had me freaked out for a second there,” Andou sighed.

I hesitated for just a moment. “Hey...do you recognize me?” I finally asked, just to be on the safe side.

Andou gave me a blank stare. “Uh...no? Why, are you famous or something?”

“Nah, nothing like that,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Oh, then are you going for, like, a stuck-up snob sorta image? Trying to be one of those ‘Every last person on this planet should know my name!’ sorta girls?”

“Hell no!”

“Okay, then you must be one of those people all the boys start passing around rumors about right after the opening ceremony and making a fanclub for and stuff, ’cause you’re just that hot... Okay, no, scratch that. Probably not that one.”

Wow! What a dick! Sure, I wasn’t just that hot or anything, and sure, there were plenty of girls out there who were cuter than me...but that didn’t make it any less indescribably frustrating to have him give me a long, appraising look and then say that as if it were the only rational conclusion.

“Well, if you don’t know me, then that’s fine,” I said. One way or another, the fact that he hadn’t recognized me was a blessing. I didn’t have to worry about concealing my identity or going around walking on eggshells anymore, so I finally faced him and gave him a proper look in the eye. “And, by the way, no, I didn’t have to take an admission test. You’re the only one who got one of those.”

“Ugh!” Andou grunted. “Crap, I had a feeling! Damnations! Why only me...? Actually, wait. Maybe it’s the opposite of what I’m thinking? Like, when only one person out of the whole club gets singled out and hazed, isn’t that, like...kinda awesome, actually?! Like how the two leads in Haikyu!! ended up fighting right after they joined the volleyball club!”

“Nah, you just pissed Takanashi off, that’s all. This definitely isn’t her giving you a hard time because she has high hopes for you, I promise,” I calmly jabbed before his little ego trip could spiral out of control. “Speaking of, if either of us is famous, it’s probably you. Well, notorious, anyway, and only with me and Takanashi. What the hell did you even do, uh...Andou Jurai, right?” I asked, casually using his name.

“Mwa ha ha,” the boy before me laughed. It was an odd, idiosyncratic laugh, and he took great care to clearly enunciate every syllable. It had me flashing back to the “kye ki ki” laugh I’d gone out of my way to use back in middle school. “‘Andou Jurai,’ is it...? Yes, I see now. Indeed, I suppose that is the moniker I’m known by in this realm.”

I took in a sharp breath as a terrible chill raced down my spine. A sense of awkward discomfort rushed through me, and a sense of pathological revulsion bubbled up from deep down within my core like a seething lake of magma, overwhelming my heart. I knew where all that discomfort and distaste was coming from: I saw myself in him. The fact that I’d known what he was going for in a split second—that looking at him was like looking at myself in a mirror—filled me with burning, overpowering shame. I sympathized with him so keenly, it was like our hearts were as one. I could feel it in all of my senses, like some strange sort of synesthesia.

There’s no doubt about it. The old me is right here in front of me. This guy—this boy, Andou Jurai...

“Mwa ha ha! Hear this, woman: you’ve caught me in a good mood today. Weep with joy, for I shall grant you the ineffable honor of hearing my true name!” He proudly declared as I stood there, gaping in stupefied silence. “My name—”

That was my second meeting with Andou Jurai. That was our second contact. He thought that it was our first meeting, I’m sure, and even now, well into the summer of our second year in high school, he still showed no signs of remembering the moment of our first contact. He didn’t even seem to have considered that there might be more to the story.

Given how long he’d gone without coming even close to figuring it out, I’d more or less assumed that he’d never realize the truth. I sure as hell wasn’t planning on cluing him in. That was a period of my life I wanted to stay forgotten, after all. It was a dark stain on my past, and I was content to let it stay enshrouded in shadow for all eternity.

The weather on the day of the summer festival wasn’t quite perfectly clear and cloudless, but it wasn’t bad by any means. The sky was about half full of clouds, which was actually pretty nice, considering the incessant period of brutally intense heat we’d just been through. There was no sign of rain either, even as the evening began to set in.

Oh, good. Like, seriously, what a relief. If another freak rainstorm had blown in today, I honestly didn’t think I would’ve ever recovered from the emotional shock.

I sighed with relief as I loitered around the shrine’s main archway. Dusk had arrived, and as I glanced around at the sunset-lit shrine grounds, all I could think was, Yeah, I guess it would be this crowded.

Our local shrine’s summer festival was a big enough affair that everyone who lived in the vicinity knew about it. Pretty much the whole town got together to turn it into the biggest event of the summer. I knew a bunch of people in my class who were participating—some of them would be joining in on the Bon dance, some would be playing drums, and our school orchestra and light music clubs had performances scheduled. Apparently, participating in something along these lines was standard practice for the sort of kids who took a proactive approach toward their high school lives. For introverted high schoolers with borderline shut-in energy like myself, however...honestly, the event just didn’t have all that much going for it.

I’d never liked crowds, the food stalls were run by people who weren’t exactly professionals and didn’t exactly keep their workspaces up to a health code level of cleanliness (but charged an arm and a leg anyway), the stalls that sold trading cards were staffed by people who didn’t know the first thing about their merchandise, and even if you managed to scoop up a goldfish, the ones you got from festivals always seemed to die right away, no matter how you tried to take care of them. There’s pretty much no way you’d have caught me going to one of these festivals on my own initiative. Not unless someone had invited me.

“Heeey, Tomoyo!”

I heard someone shout my name, and I looked up to find Andou jogging toward me, dressed in guys’ staple summer festival outfit, a jinbei.

“’Hey! Been a while, huh?” said Andou.

“Yeah, guess it has,” I replied.

“Anyway, what’re you doing here so early? I thought I was way ahead of schedule. I mean, we’ve still got thirty minutes before we were supposed to meet up! Err... We were meeting at six, right?”

“Yeah, that was the plan. Don’t worry—I just got here too,” I claimed, though the truth was that I’d been waiting for a half hour already. Something about meetings like this just compelled me to show up early. “S-So... Hey, Andou, umm,” I stammered.

Say it! For crying out loud, just say it!

“Th-Thanks. Thanks for inviting me today,” I finally spat out, then pumped an internal fist. All right! I’d promised myself that I’d thank him the moment we met up, and I’d actually managed to see it through!

Andou was the one who’d proposed our visit to the festival today. I guess he couldn’t stand how depressed I’d been about our trip to the pool getting rained out, so he’d suggested we go to a different event to make up for it. I’d never liked summer festivals much, in all honesty, but I’d also never been to one of them with a boy before, and in the end, I found myself more nervous and excited for the excursion than I would’ve believed was possible.

“Oh, no problem! Thanks for taking me up on it,” Andou said casually, then paused to take a very long look at me, inspecting me from head to foot.

“H-Hey, think you could try not to stare so much? I’m not used to wearing this sorta stuff, okay...?” I grumbled as I folded my arms in front of my chest out of sheer embarrassment—not that I really thought there was any point to covering it up.

“Oh, my bad,” said Andou. “I was just thinking, like, ‘Huh! Guess even Tomoyo puts on a yukata when she goes to these things,’ that’s all.”

That’s right. I wore a yukata to the festival. That was a big part of why I’d ended up arriving an hour early, as a matter of fact. I wasn’t used to wearing the yukata itself or the wooden sandals I’d put on with it, so I set out nice and early just in case, only to arrive with a ton of time to spare after it’d turned out to not be an issue after all.

“I-I don’t look weird, do I...?” I asked. “My mom helped me put it on, but, like, I dunno...”

“Nah, no need to worry about that. You, umm, well... I mean, y’know, it looks good on you...I guess?” Andou said, scratching his cheek awkwardly as he glanced away from me.

Come on, if you’re gonna get all weird about it, then don’t compliment me in the first place! If you wanna say I look good, then just say it! Doing it like that just... I-I mean, now I’m really embarrassed too!

“Really? You’re sure?” I pressed. “I don’t smell like mothballs, do I?”

“Wow. You’re seriously worried about that?”

“W-Well, I mean, I bought this thing a couple years ago... And it doesn’t line up with this year’s trends at all either...” I’d wanted to buy a new one, really, but since I’d just gone and bought a new swimsuit, I was bordering on bankruptcy already.

“Ahh, right, guess girls care about all that stuff,” said Andou. “Hatoko went and got a new swimsuit this year too, when you put it that way. Then there’s me—I’ve had this outfit since I was in middle school, and I’m still wearing it on the regular! My sister adjusts it for me whenever I’m about to grow out of it, so I’ll probably be wearing it for years to come.”

That struck me less as a difference between guys and girls and more as a matter of personal priorities, if I had to judge. Some people value fashion enough that they’re willing to pour their money into it, and some people value making the most of what they already have. But wait, though...did he say Hatoko? Hatoko bought a swimsuit?

“Andou...? Did you go to the pool with Hatoko?” I asked.

“Yeah. Well, kinda? The ocean, technically,” said Andou. “Our families take a trip to the beach together every summer.”

“O-Oh?” I grunted. Well, they’re old friends, so of course they would. Totally normal for their families to do stuff together. Normal. Yup. Normal. Just when I was ready to brush it off and move along, though...

“I did go to the actual pool with Chifuyu though. Then I went again with Sayumi,” Andou added.

That I couldn’t brush off. “You seriously went to the pool more than once?! Wh-Why?!”

“I mean, y’know,” Andou said with a shrug. “’Cause they invited me?”

“I spent the first half of summer shut in at home! I didn’t go anywhere!”

“Sounds like a you problem.”

“You didn’t go with me!”

“We got rained out, remember?”

Ugh. Yeah, he’s got me there. The downpour had been a freak incident. It had been out of his control, and really, it wasn’t any of my business whom he went to the pool with in the first place...

But still, ugh... I just... Gaaah!

I just couldn’t swallow it, somehow! I don’t know whether or not Andou could tell that I was having a moment of internal conflict, but one way or another...

“So we’d better have a blast today to make up for that canceled pool trip, right?” he said.

I paused for just a moment. “Yeah,” I finally replied with a quick nod.

With that, we set off into the crowd.

Neither of us had eaten dinner yet, so we decided to kick things off by finding something to eat.

“Feel like anything in particular, Tomoyo? This was my idea, so I’ll buy you something,” said Andou.

It felt like the offer had come out of nowhere, and it sort of put me on the spot. “N-Nah, you don’t have to do that! I don’t wanna mooch off you, and, like... I mean, you treated me last time, right? You know, after I got past the first round,” I said.

It was only then that I finally remembered what the point of all this was—why I’d invited Andou to the pool in the first place. My primary goal had been to tell him that I’d been eliminated in the competition’s second round. The pool trip had theoretically been an excuse for me to get that done as well, but at some point along the way, my priorities had gotten flipped around. I have to tell him this time, for sure...

“It’s cool, honestly,” said Andou. “Well, as long as you don’t pick something super expensive.”

“But, I mean...” I mumbled. What should I do? I’m glad he’s offering, sure, but I’d feel bad about saying yes... Though, then again, I’d probably seem really standoffish if I kept saying no, right? Aren’t girls supposed to be all “Aww, for me? You shouldn’t have!” or whatever at times like these?

I ended up glancing around the area as I waffled, and by pure chance, my eyes landed on just the answer I needed.

“O-Okay then, how about we make it a challenge?!” I said as I pointed toward a nearby shooting gallery. “We’ll each take a turn, and whoever does worse has to treat the other to something!”

“Oh? I like the sound of that,” said Andou.

“It’s on, then! No hard feelings, okay?”

Andou seemed to be into the idea, so I went right up to the guy running the stall, got his attention with a “Hey, excuse me!” as I handed over two hundred yen, and received an air rifle and five corks to take my shots with in exchange.

“Hmm... A toy gun and corks for bullets, is it?” said Andou as he received his rifle. “I’ve fought my way across a thousand battlefields! Wielding this little peashooter’s nothing more than child’s play in my war-weary eyes.”

“I mean, it’s a toy. Like, this is literally child’s play,” I sighed. “I guess that means you’re pretty confident, huh?”

“You have to ask? I’ll have you know they used to call me Spellshot Sagittarius! It’s a rare privilege to see my sniping firsthand, so you’d better savor it while you can.”

“Wait, what? I thought your sign was Cancer. Like, don’t you get the crab no matter what system you use?”

“Don’t call it the crab!”

“...”

“Damnations... Why must every one of you keep going on about that stupid crab, anyway...?”

To be fair, I could understand why he had a whole thing about his star sign. I, incidentally, was an actual Sagittarius. I got a star sign that played a major role in Saint Seiya and Gransazer. Heh heh heh.

“Seriously, this sucks,” Andou grumbled. “And wait, why do you even know my sign?”

“Wh-What, I need a reason?! I just happen to know, that’s all!” I definitely never checked to see how compatible our signs are or anything! And I definitely didn’t check the thirteen-sign system after I learned that the twelve-star system said we’re a bad match!

I took a second to collect myself, and then we turned our attention to the shooting gallery. We played rock paper scissors to see who’d go first, and Andou ended up taking the lead.

“Hiyah! Quickdra...ugh, dra—dra...draw!”

Andou let out a weird, stilted shout as he took his first shot. I figured he was trying to shout “quickdraw,” given the way he held his gun at his side in an imaginary holster and everything. His goal was probably to draw it at a speed too fast for the eye to follow and nail his target in one swift movement, but the actual motion ended up being pretty slow and clunky. He had to give it a couple tries, and he totally missed the trigger at least once.

The one thing his little act did accomplish was denying him the time to actually, you know, aim. His shot ended up flying nowhere even remotely close to the toys and figures set up at the back of the stall, instead bouncing off the ceiling and plopping to the floor.

Oof... That was just pathetic. Even the stall guy’s snickering at him.

I gave Andou a look, and he immediately started making excuses. “N-Nah, I didn’t miss as badly as it looked! I was trying to bounce the bullet, y’know?! Going for a ricochet shot!” he babbled, then loaded up his second cork.

This time, he actually took a moment to hold out his rifle in a one-handed grip, then turned it sideways to take aim. It was a stance that always looked cool in fiction, but I knew for a fact it was super impractical in reality, and I was proven right when his next shot wildly missed the mark as well.

“That...would’ve totally worked in a real firefight, for the record! I, like, you know... I have this thing where I can shoot in any direction and my bullets home in on my enemy automatically! Y’know, like how Judgment works in D.gray-man,” Andou muttered as he loaded his third shot, which missed too. “Y-Y’know, it’s because I’m not pulling the trigger with my little finger! I just can’t shoot right any other way. Yup. That’s how I always shoot... Plus, not using two guns totally ruins the symmetry. No way I can aim right like this...”

This time, he flipped his gun all the way around and pulled the trigger with his pinkie. Needless to say, he missed. He’d taken four out of five shots so far, zero of which had landed. Apparently, that finally drove in the fact that he was in a bad spot, since he didn’t say a word and took up a perfectly normal shooting stance for his final attempt, leaning forward as far as he could to get as close to the targets as possible. It was just on the verge of foul play, but the point was sorta moot because in the end, he missed anyway. His cork sailed right past the figure I assumed he’d been aiming at.

Andou Jurai: 0/5 hits.

“Wow...you suck,” I commented as Andou collapsed to his knees, overwhelmed by the shock of his perfect failure streak. “Like, how is it even possible for your aim to be that bad? How many battlefields were you supposed to have been through, again?”

“Look...this wasn’t my field, okay? My specialty’s point-blank gunplay, that’s all...”

His “specialty” is shooting at point-blank? That’s so short of a range that it’s just plain pathetic. What sort of military would even take in a sniper like that?

“By the way, Andou, did you know that shooting at ‘point-blank range’ doesn’t actually mean shooting at someone who’s right next to you?” I said.

“Huh? Wait, really?” said Andou.

“Yeah. When you’re actually close enough to press your gun up against someone, it’s called a contact shot. ‘Point-blank’ was actually an artillery term at first, and it means the range at which your shot will hit the mark without you having to adjust its elevation—so, basically, the range at which you can count on it flying in a straight line. Most of the time, bullets fly in an arc because of gravity’s influence, so you have to take that into account and aim higher than your target, but when you get close enough, gravity’s impact is effectively zero, so you can aim directly at whatever you’re trying to shoot.”

That was what point-blank range meant, initially. After so many years of the term being misused in so many works of fiction, though, I wasn’t necessarily sure I could say that the popular usage even counted as wrong anymore. Language is fluid, and the definitions of words are ever-changing, after all.

“Oh, huh! You really know your stuff,” said Andou.

“Heh heh—I guess I know a thing or two, yeah! I’m pretty picky when it comes to gun trivia.”

“Right...and I bet you learned all that trivia from Wikipedia, didn’t you?”

“Sh-Shut up! No I didn’t! I learned about it from my dad on a trip to Hawaii!”

“Yeah, and I bet your real name’s Kudou Shinichi, huh?”

That was enough trivia for the moment. Now it was my turn to take a shot.

“You’d better watch closely, Andou. I’ll show you what real shooting form looks like,” I said as I stepped up to the booth, jammed a cork into my rifle’s barrel, pulled back its lever to load it with air, and took up a pretty darn authentic stance.

“To start with, you’re supposed to hold your gun in both hands. Stuff like firing one-handed and dual-wielding only happens in fiction, really. If you have a stand to rest the gun on, use it. It’ll be way better for stabilizing your aim than your arms would be on their own. Keep the stock pressed up against your shoulder to help compensate for recoil, then line the sights up with your target to aim. See those little bits of metal at the tip of the barrel and by its base? Those are called iron sights, and you’re supposed to line the bump in the front portion up with the indentation in the back one. Using them to aim is as basic as it gets.”

I paused for a moment, breathing as shallowly as I could while I lined up my shot.

“Some people close one eye, some don’t—either works. Closing an eye tenses up your facial muscles and can make your open eye’s pupil dilate to match the closed one, but having both of them open means more visual noise to distract you, so both styles have their drawbacks. The best way to deal with it is by using those sniper goggles that let you block off just one eye...but, I mean, it’s not like I’m carrying a pair of those around. What else...? Oh, there’s also the wind to think about. Wind is a sniper’s worst enemy. We’re in luck, though—it’s a windless night. Perfect shooting weather,” I said. A voice in the back of my mind wanted to know what the hell I was talking about, considering my target was maybe a bit over a meter away, but I just couldn’t stop myself.

I blocked everything out, immersing myself in a world in which only I, my gun, and my target existed. As I sank into intense concentration, it felt like the din of the festival faded into the background. Eventually, it almost seemed like my gun and I were one and the same, leaving only me and my target remaining. I’d reached the fabled state: the sniper’s high. I felt like I could nail an ant right between its eyes if I had to.

“There!” I shouted, and before my internal voice could even ask Where? I’d pulled the trigger. The cork erupted from its barrel with a dry pap! that shook my eardrums, and I felt the vibration of the stock race through my arms. The cork shot out, propelled by a stream of pressurized air...

...and sailed a solid half meter off to the side of the figure I’d been aiming at.

My cork thudded into the back wall of the stall and pattered to the ground. It was, in a word, a miss. A pathetic miss, if you wanted to spring for two words.

Andou and I stared at the cork in silence. Even the stall guy clammed up this time. The handful of passersby who’d stopped to listen in on my extended lecture were silent as the grave too.

I stood up, gently set my rifle down on the table, and spun around on the spot.

“...Bye!”

“Wait, no! Stop! Don’t leave! I understand what you’re going through excruciatingly well, but don’t go!”

Screw this! God, this sucks so much! Just let me go hoooooome!

I’d experienced such a lethal dose of humiliation that I genuinely almost walked right on home then and there, but Andou just barely managed to talk me out of it in the end. I did go back and take my last four shots, and I managed to land just one of them, knocking some little toy off its shelf. That made our final score one to zero in my favor. I really wasn’t happy with how things had turned out, but a win was still a win.

“Welp, tough break! Guess I really will have to treat you to something,” Andou said, making it sound like he felt incredibly put upon. Of course, this whole contest had started with him saying he’d treat me out of nowhere, so when all was said and done, nothing had actually changed at all. “All right, Tomoyo, what’re you having?”

“I’m good with pretty much anything,” I replied.

“You know that’s the least helpful answer possible, right?”

“Okay, then... I want something from a stall that isn’t being run by a lady with weirdly long fingernails nor a guy who won’t put down his newspaper to talk to his customers, that doesn’t have a dog leashed up to it, and that actually bothers clearing out its trash can often enough to keep it from overflowing.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that you don’t get asked out much, do you?”

“O-Oh, screw you! That sorta stuff bothers me, okay?!”

“You sure are picky for a type B, seriously.”

“Wha— My blood type has nothing to do with this! Put a sock in it, crab!”

“My star sign has even less to do with this than your blood type!”

“Hah! You think a puny little crab has the right to talk back to a mighty Sagittarius?”

“Ugh! Grr... D-Damnations, she’s right... The crab’s doomed in that matchup, no matter how hard it struggles!”

And so, Andou gave in. The star sign caste system didn’t work on everyone, but for the people it did work on, it was almighty.

So, back on topic! Ultimately, I went with the most innocuous option available and had him get us some takoyaki. We also picked up some yakisoba, baked potatoes, crepes, and a couple other things, then found a spot under a nearby canopy where we said our thanks and got to eating.

I started with the takoyaki that Andou had paid for. It was...fine. Fine in the most generically nondescript way possible. Fine in the way where you just knew that you could make a way better version at home without even having to try particularly hard. The fact that I found myself thinking, “Man, we paid a few hundred yen for this?” probably just proved that I wasn’t cut out for these festivals.

I ended up in a sort of weirdly subdued mood, but just then, I noticed that Andou, who was sitting right next to me, had started staring at me. Ah, crap! He bought this for me, and I don’t think I was making it look like I was enjoying it at all!

“Ah. No, it’s not like that! They’re not bad or anything! It’s just, umm,” I frantically stammered, but Andou shook his head.

“Oh, it’s fine! Like, who even cares how the food tastes, right? Festival stall food’s great ’cause of the atmosphere, not the quality,” he said. “But, well, I was also thinking, ‘Huh, she’s eating that takoyaki like it’s nothing.’”

“I’m... Huh?”

“I told you that I went to the beach with Hatoko, right? Well, she really loves the yakisoba at this place by the beach we always go to. She eats it every year, but this time, she decided not to. I asked why, and apparently, she didn’t want the seaweed to get stuck in her teeth.”

I just stared at Andou as he carried on. “So, yeah—I got kinda curious about whether that stuff bothered you too, and nope! That takoyaki had a ton of seaweed flakes on it, and you ate ’em like it was nothing. It was kind of a relief, honestly? Like, ‘Oh, guess I don’t have to worry about that after all.’”

At that point, I gasped and slapped a hand across my mouth. Are you kidding me?! Wait, wait, wait! This is the first I’m hearing about any of this! Are girls supposed to worry about getting seaweed in their teeth?! How was I supposed to know that?! And, like, who eats takoyaki without seaweed flakes on it?! It doesn’t work without them—yakisoba and okonomiyaki too! I wasn’t thinking about this stuff at all when I picked them out, but... D-Don’t tell me that casually eating takoyaki in front of a boy is one of those things that gets your girl card revoked? Did I just blow all my girl points at once?!

“H-Hold on a second!” I yelped, then I spun around, fished around in my pouch for a hand mirror I was carrying, and checked my teeth. All right! We’re okay—no seaweed after all. Jeez, that had me freaking out for a second!

I slowly shifted back to my former position and started eating again, this time taking care to display as much girly grace in my table manners as I could manage. As for the takoyaki...I just tried to chew it with my back teeth whenever possible.

“Ugggh,” I sighed.

“What’re you getting all depressed for? I don’t think a little seaweed’s that big of a deal,” said Andou.

“It is a big deal, but it’s not about the seaweed. I’m disappointed with myself. I mean...Hatoko’s been paying attention to all that stuff, right? She doesn’t make it look like she cares, but in the end, she still—” I said, then cut myself off with a start.

In my mind, Hatoko was the sort of girl who’d chow down on food with seaweed flakes on it without hesitation. The thought that she might actually take care with stuff like that made me feel like a slob for never sparing it a thought...but then it hit me. I realized why my image of Hatoko hadn’t lined up with reality. Andou had said that she’d only started caring about the seaweed on her yakisoba this year, which meant the explanation was as simple as could be.

Hatoko cared because she was eating in front of the guy she likes.

She’d come to see Andou as a boy, and she had decided to start acting a little more girly in front of him in turn. That’s why she’d taken a hard look at behaviors she’d never actively thought about before, and she was trying to correct them where necessary...something that I’d never even considered doing.

“Oh, right! Speaking of Hatoko,” Andou said, then hesitated and awkwardly mumbled. “Did you two, like, get in a fight or something?”

Suddenly, my heart felt like it was beating so loudly I could just about hear it. “...Huh?” I grunted.

“It’s just, well... I didn’t get any details or anything, but Hatoko seemed like she felt bad about it, whatever it is. Like, she said something about how she did something mean to you...”

I hesitated for a moment. “It’s fine,” I finally said. “Yeah. Nothing to worry about. It wasn’t really a fight or anything like that.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess that’s good,” said Andou, but I couldn’t agree. It would’ve been so much easier if it had just been a fight. When you get in a fight, all you have to do is make up, and that’s the end of it. If only this could’ve been that simple.

The things Hatoko had told me back then—the expressions she’d made, the feelings she’d unveiled...they couldn’t be summed up by calling it a fight or saying she’d been being mean. The look in her eyes had been so pointed, so full of resolve...but behind that resolve was a profound frailty that’d just barely slipped in and out of view. She’d been so overwhelmed with anguish and internal conflict, but she’d faced all of it head-on, treating it with the importance it’d deserved as she’d asked me her question.

“Hey, Tomoyo—do you have a crush on anyone?”

I hadn’t been able to give her an answer in the end. I hadn’t said anything at all. I just ran away. I was scared. Scared of her. Scared of the seriousness in her gaze, so unlike how she usually looked. I hadn’t been able to stand another second of it, and in my fear of facing her, I ran away.

What should I have done back then? How had I really felt within the deepest reaches of my heart?

After we finished stuffing our faces, we spent a while wandering around aimlessly and simply enjoying the festival. We fished for water balloons and cut elaborate shapes out of thin sheets of candy (I did better than him at both activities, by the way—it turned out Andou was pretty clumsy with his hands), got worked up when we spotted a local news crew filming a story about the festival (and chickened out of trying to make it in frame), and went to see acquaintances from school performing with their bands and taiko drum groups (“acquaintances” in the sense that I knew their names, anyway).

At some point over the course of our evening, a sort of sad expression came across Andou’s face. “We went to this festival with Sagami and Tamaki once, back when they were together,” he muttered, seemingly more to himself than to me.

“Tamaki’s the girl we met outside the bookshop the other day, right? Slender build, crazy-thick Fukushima accent?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s her,” said Andou. “Hatoko and I went to this festival with the two of them.”

Tamaki was Sagami’s ex-girlfriend. She had a taste for long, billowy clothing, claimed to have been Andou’s friend when he was in the eighth grade, and spoke in an almost impenetrable dialect.

“Yeah... We really had a blast,” said Andou. He was smiling, but something about his expression felt unnatural to me. It was like he was forcing it, and it was so painful to look at that I almost asked what was wrong, but then hesitated, not wanting to come across as nosy.

Meanwhile, the festival was moving toward its close. As the Bon dance—the festival’s main event, for a lot of attendees—drew closer, people started to gather around the area with the stage in it.

“Gah, yikes,” I grumbled as the crowd grew denser. I wasn’t used to walking around in the wooden sandals I was wearing, and the tide of people almost swept me up, but at the last second, Andou grabbed me by the wrist.

“Whoa! You okay?” he asked.

“Y-Yeah. Sorry, and thanks,” I replied.

“Better be careful. If we get separated in this crowd, we can kiss seeing each other again tonight goodbye,” Andou said as he let me go, paused to think for a moment, and then added, “So, uh, should we hold hands?”

I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything at all, and Andou frantically tried to explain himself as he held his hand out. “I-I mean, it’d be a huge pain if we got separated, right?! I’m not trying to imply anything weird over here!”

“I-I know, okay?!” I shouted as I felt my face ignite. W-Well, what should I do? I mean, actually holding hands would be stupid embarrassing...and, like, how would we even do it in the first place? Overhand? Underhand? Fingers interlaced like we’re a cute little couple?

There had been moments when we’d held hands or touched each other as a natural consequence of our club activities, but doing it here felt like it would carry a whole different sort of meaning. I could barely even handle the embarrassment brought on by just thinking about it. A limitless wellspring of shame emerged within me, refusing to allow me to take his hand. And on another level...I felt that as things stood—having not been able to answer Hatoko’s question—I didn’t have the right to hold his hand, even if I’d had the guts.

“O-Okay, then, how about this?!” I said as I held out the pouch I was carrying to Andou, offering him one of its drawstrings. If he took hold of that, it would link us together indirectly. “No getting lost this way, right?! Yeah! Great idea, me!”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Guess this’ll work too,” said Andou as he grabbed on.

My pouch’s strings were pretty short, but they were barely able to keep us together in the crowd...although I soon realized that the arrangement I’d thought up was pretty embarrassing in its own right.

“So, what do you wanna do next, Tomoyo? Join in on the Bon dance? Or dance to the beat of your own drum by not dancing at all?” Andou asked. He turned back to look at me...and I stopped in my tracks.

I’d been putting this off for more than long enough. If I didn’t tell him now, the evening would end before I got around to it.

“Hey, Andou? Follow me for a second.”

While all the other festival attendees gathered up for the dance, we set off in the opposite direction, pushing against the flow of the crowd. It was surprisingly tough going, and the trip wasn’t without its close calls, but thanks to the strings of my pouch keeping us chained together, we made it through without getting separated. Eventually, the crowd thinned, and we arrived at a paved road that led into the woods.

“Hey, Tomoyo,” said Andou, “how far are we going, anyway?”

“Just keep quiet and follow me,” I gruffly replied.

We walked through the gloomy woods for some time before finally emerging into a more well lit clearing, where we found ourselves behind the shrine. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and it was remarkably quiet. The tumult of the festival had been almost dizzying while we were in the thick of it, but here, it sounded far away enough we could hear the rustling of the trees in the wind.

“Oh, huh,” said Andou. “I had no idea this is where that path went! I’m surprised you knew.”

“I found this place when I came here with my family one time,” I explained. Though, really, Hajime had been the one who’d actually discovered it.

“Oh, and I can probably let go now, huh?”

“Ah, right! I forgot.”

“Right?” Andou said as he let go of my pouch’s string. “So? What’s the deal? Why bring me all the way out to a place with no one else around?”

For a moment, I found myself at a loss for words. Andou, meanwhile, wrapped his arms around himself in an exaggerated, theatrical attempt to hide himself from view.

“Don’t tell me...you brought me here to take advantage of me?!”

“G-Get real, dumbass!” I yelped.

“J-Jeez, I was kidding! You don’t have to shout at me...”

“There are some things you just can’t joke about!”

“I mean, I know that.”

“This wasn’t one of them, by the way.”

“It wasn’t?! Then why all the shouting?!”

Our moment of nonsensical banter had helped me calm down a little, and I finally resolved to get to the point. “I got dropped in the second round of the contest,” I said.

Maybe dragging Andou all the way out to an abandoned corner of the shrine was a waste of effort, but I didn’t want anyone to hear this—not even random people I didn’t know. I didn’t want anyone other than Andou to hear it, really.

“Huh? You got dropped? From a contest?” Andou repeated in obvious confusion. I’d sprung the topic on him apropos of nothing, so I suppose I couldn’t blame him for not getting it right away.

“The light novel contest. I didn’t make it through the second round of judging. Honestly, I’m so frustrated I can barely stand it,” I explained.

“Ah...” said Andou. “Oh, that contest. The one you were all excited about passing the first round of...”

“Yup, that’s the one. You went out of your way to celebrate with me, so I figured I had to tell you how it turned out. That’s why I invited you to the pool, actually.”

“Oh, huh,” said Andou.

“Sorry,” I said. “It really took me an age to spit it out.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Nothing to apologize about.”

“You got me cake and everything, remember? Just, y’know...sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that either.”

With that, our conversation stalled out. An awkward silence fell over us, and the atmosphere took a heavy turn. I quickly started to realize that going somewhere abandoned for this might’ve been an awful idea.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him after all. I’d thought that I had a responsibility to keep him in the loop, but if I’d been him in this scenario, I wouldn’t have known how to react. He might’ve forgotten all about the whole contest thing to begin with.

Eventually, Andou broke the silence with a few words. “So, y’know...I was actually pretty curious. I wanted to know how your submission was doing. I thought that it’d be obnoxious if I kept harping on you about it, though, so I was trying not to bring it up on my own... But, man. You didn’t get past the second round, huh...?” he said, then turned to look at me. “Thanks for telling me. I know it couldn’t have been easy to bring up.”

I was stunned. I’d never expected him to thank me, so I found myself at a loss for how to react. “Wh-What do you mean, thanks...? There’s gotta be something else you should’ve said first, right? L-Like, come on, I’m depressed, aren’t I? Cheer me up, or whatever! I know—how about we throw a whole pity party and you treat me to cake again?” I said, impulsively turning the whole thing into a joke...but Andou didn’t bite.

“Nah. I’m not gonna try to cheer you up,” he said with a totally serious look on his face. “I mean, no matter what I say, it’d just piss you off, right?”

Andou looked me in the eye. His gaze was purely earnest, and incredibly straightforward.

“I know you tried your hardest on that story. All the labor you put into it and all the frustration you’re feeling right now’s yours. I don’t wanna pretend that I understand, or get all condescending and pity you, or anything like that. If there’s one thing I never want to do, it’s try to identify with your feelings when I know I can’t go all the way with it. Telling you to cheer up would be easy, but I don’t wanna take the easy way out.”

“...”

“You didn’t tell me about this hoping that I’d cheer you up or comfort you, right? That’s not you—you’re not into the idea of people viewing you as a creator, so you wouldn’t want that kind of treatment. You only told me because you thought you had a responsibility to. So, yeah. Thanks.”

“...”

Seriously. Just... Just seriously. What is this guy’s deal? How does he always find the perfect way to make a mess of my heart? He knows exactly what I want him to say, and exactly what I don’t want him to say on top of it. He just proved exactly how much attention he’s been paying to me this whole time. He hasn’t been making assumptions or seeing me through his own distorted biases. He’s been seeing me for the person I am and nothing else.

That thought—the thought that I had someone who saw me for who I was—soothed my disappointment more than any amount of consolation ever could’ve, and it stirred my emotions into an excited turmoil. Okay, yeah. This might be a problem. I’m so happy, I don’t even know what to do with myself.

“U-Umm... Oh! Right, speaking of novels,” Andou said. He seemed a little panicked by my extended moment of silence, and he hurriedly tried to change the subject. “You’re writing a novel for fun too, right? What’s it like?”

“...Huh?”

“Oh, umm, see, Sayumi told me about it. She said that you were writing something that you weren’t planning on submitting anywhere.”

I had, in fact, told Sayumi about that story. We’d talked about it right after I joined the club. She’d asked me whether I’d ever tried writing a novel before—just the sort of question you’d expect to be asked in a literary club—and at that point, I was still so nervous about talking with an upperclassman like her that I hadn’t had it in me to make up a lie. I’d told her everything about my hobby novel without holding anything back.

But, wait...she told Andou about it? I hadn’t asked her not to mention it to anyone, but I also knew that Sayumi wasn’t the sort of person who’d spread people’s private information around for no good reason. So then, why would she...?

“Oh, I mean, you don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to!” said Andou. “I’m not gonna try to pry it out of you, or anything.”

Normally, there was no way in hell I would’ve opened up to him about this. I’d written that story purely for my own self-satisfaction. It was not the sort of work that anyone else was supposed to read. Plus, the fact that Andou in particular was asking about it dramatically changed things. I mean, we’re talking about that novel...

“...All right. I’ll tell you,” I said. I never, ever would’ve opened up about this under ordinary circumstances...but after everything that had just happened, I was in high enough spirits to convince myself to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. My shyness had been beaten out by my curiosity about what would happen if I let him know.

I took a quick breath, held it, and let it out again. Then I looked him in the eye and began to speak, telling him the tale of the self-indulgent, downright masturbatory novel I’d been writing in my free time.

“Genrewise, it’s more or less a battle adventure sorta deal. The setting jumps around a lot too—it goes back and forth between the real world and a fantasy one. The main character’s a middle school girl...and yeah, I know, light novels with girls as their protagonists aren’t in style these days, but I’m just writing it for fun, so who cares, right?” I explained, barely even stopping to breathe.

“So,” I continued, “the main character, right? She’s...well, she’s pretty over the top. Cute, strong, and super popular to boot—a real Mary Sue, basically. Anyway, it turns out that she’s not actually a human: she’s descended from a family line that traces back to the ancient era of the gods, and she has divine blood flowing through her veins. Thanks to that, she gets to use magic that most humans can’t, but she also pays a price in the form of her body ceasing to develop past a certain point.”

“Oh...? That’s one hell of a setup you have going,” said Andou.

Wait, he’s actually into it? No, stop! Don’t make me enjoy this!

“The main character’s basically great at everything she does, but there’s one thing she’s good at above all else: mounted combat. She doesn’t ride a horse though. She rides a Technosanct Beast, which is a divine creature that’s been turned into a cyborg using a special sort of magitech. Her personal Beast is modeled after a divine wolf. The sight of its jet-black visage as it races across the battlefield, its rider’s silver hair whipping about in the wind as she strikes down her foes, is feared by ally and enemy alike.”

“Hmm.”

“She also has an older brother from whom she was separated at birth. They end up meeting, and he becomes her mentor in magic and a role model whom she aspires to be like. Stuff happens, though, and her brother ends up succumbing to his dark side and turning into the final boss...but that doesn’t happen until, like, the second to last volume, so whatever, doesn’t matter right now. The important part’s that the main character inherited her wolf-type Beast from her esteemed elder brother.”

“Hmm, hmm!”

“Her Beast cuts a mighty, imposing figure that strikes fear into the hearts of all who see it, but the truth is, it’s actually a girl. Oh, yeah, Technosanct Beasts have genders—it’s a whole thing. Anyway, her Beast’s name is the Plaintive Dame Dolor.”

“Hmm, hmm... Hmm?”

Andou’s expression began to shift, but I ignored him.

“The main character has a name too, of course, but she hates telling people who she is. They tend to treat her like a hero if she does, and that bothers her, more or less. All her accomplishments keep building up, though, and she gets so famous that everyone ends up talking about her whether she likes it or not. Before she knows it, the people give her a name and title of their own that expresses the inherent contradiction between her way of life and her way of battle. That name is the Witch of Antinomy Who Smirks in the Face of Twilight: Endless Paradox.”

“Huh? I... Wha? W-Wait a sec. Wait, wait, wait...”

No, I won’t wait.

“She also has a special move—a forbidden technique that consumes her very life force. It’s her ultimate trump card that she only busts out when she really loses it. It removes the threefold seal that was placed upon Dame Dolor, allowing her to surpass her artificial limits and return to her original form, while also enhancing her with an additional incantation. Maintaining two spells at the same time like that is a feat only those with the blood of the gods can achieve, and when the protagonist does it, Dame Dolor transforms into her final, ultimate form: the Sainted Princess Honor.”

By that point, Andou had fallen totally silent. He was just standing there, stock-still, but I wasn’t finished yet.

“That final form can only use a single attack. That’s right—just one. The protagonist stakes everything on it, pouring every ounce of her being into a forbidden, superlatively powerful deathblow.”

Then I shouted the attack’s name out loud—just like I’d done three years before.

“Superterminal Climax: Winged Blades of Brightest White!”

Another voice rang out in time with mine. As I began to shout, Andou started shouting too, yelling out the exact same words I was reciting. I guess attacks are pretty memorable when they send you flying across a park.

“No way... Seriously?” said Andou, his jaw agape and his eyes wide.

“...Kye ki ki!” I cackled. Andou still seemed unable to believe what he was hearing, and that, I hoped, would settle the matter. That was how I always used to laugh in middle school, though these days, I thought it came across as pretty darn cringey. I still pulled it off well, though, in spite of how long it’d been since my last attempt.

As I’d hoped, that laugh dealt the finishing blow to Andou’s disbelief. His eyes widened even further, and he looked downright thunderstruck. “Huh? Huuuuuuh?! No, no, time out! Wait, seriously, I don’t get it! I can’t keep up with this at all!” he shouted as he clutched his head, eyes still glued to me all the while. It was like he was inspecting every inch of me, from top to bottom, and it was making me feel really awkward.

Come on, this isn’t the time to snap at him... J-Just deal with it...

“Tomoyo,” Andou finally said. “Don’t tell me...that was you?”

It was about as vague as a question could get, but nevertheless, I nodded. “Took you long enough, moron,” I quipped, crossing my arms and looking away with a harumph.

“R-Really?” said Andou. “You were really the person from back then, who did all that stuff in that one place...?”

“That wasn’t nearly specific enough, but yeah, probably.”

“The one I fixed a bike chain for?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“The one who did all that super painfully cringey crap?”

“Y-Yeah, that’s right.”

“The one who ran me down with a bicycle?”

“That, uh... Th-That doesn’t count! It hurt me as much as it did you, so it zeroes out!”

“Really, Tomoyo...? Are you really the God of Chuunibyou?!”

“Now that’s a new one for me! What the hell sort of god is that?!”

“Ah, right... Sorry, I need a second to work through this...”

Andou pressed his hands to his head and leaned backward, staring up at the sky. This was definitely hitting him pretty hard on a psychological level. To be fair, I was in the exact same boat. I thought that chapter of my past had been closed shut for good, but now everything was starting to match up and come unveiled, like we were making a clean sweep of a memory game.

“So, the full-blown, chuuni-to-the-max girl I met way back then was you...? You went out to LARP as the self-insert main character of the ultra self-indulgent novel you were writing, wearing an outfit that really should’ve gotten the cops called on you, and riding a bike you called by name, all for the sake of carrying out some nonsensical ritual every month...?”

“Y-Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

“So, the full-blown, chuuni-to-the-max girl I met way back then was you...? You went out to LARP as the self-insert main character of the ultra self-indulgent novel you were writing, wearing an outfit that really should’ve gotten the cops called on you and riding a bike you called by name, all for the sake of carrying out some nonsensical ritual every month...?”

“Oh my god, stop repeating it! I get it, okay?!”

Gaaaaaaaaah, the shame! Somebody, anybody, please, kill me now and spare me the agony!

“S-So then, Tomoyo...did you know it was me? I was dressed normally back then, so...”

I hesitated for just a moment. “Yeah,” I eventually said. “I knew right away. I figured it out the very first time we met in the club room.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“As if I could! I’m done with that chuunibyou crap! I was trying to get a fresh start in high school—you think I’d drag it all up again?!”

“O-Oh, right, yeah...that makes sense. Ah, wait—you asked me if I recognized you back then, didn’t you? So that’s why... And when you were going on about your kinsman, you must’ve been talking about Kiryuu,” Andou muttered. It seemed the pieces were all starting to click into place, but it was taking some time for him to sort out all his memories, and as he stood there, nodding to himself...

Boom!

...a noise rang out from above, so deep and loud I could feel it in my eardrums. I looked up reflexively just in time to see a flower of light bloom in the sky.

“No way—the fireworks are already starting?!” I gasped.

The thunderous explosions continued, and one burst of light after another filled the sky. We could only see a small portion of it from behind the shrine, but eh, it wasn’t the worst view I could’ve asked for. I gave it a passing grade, just barely.

“They’re so pretty...” I muttered.

“Hey, Tomoyo! Wait up a second!” Andou snapped. “Why’re you going into firework show mode?! We’re still talking here! I’m nowhere near finished—”

“Oh, put a sock in it. It’s the fireworks’ turn right now.”

“Ugh, you little... Sure, get what you want and unilaterally declare the conversation over, why don’t you...?”

I hadn’t gotten what I’d wanted, really. I was just, well...sort of overwhelmed, just like he was. If I hadn’t put our conversation on pause for a minute to watch the fireworks and let myself reset, I probably would’ve passed out or something.

Andou spent a minute clenching his fists with frustration, but eventually, he sighed and let all that tension drain away. “Okay, you win. You’re right—it’d be pretty crappy to ruin the fireworks by pitching a fit. I have so many questions I wanna ask, but I’ll hold off for now. But,” he added, “there’s just one thing I wanna say first. Then I promise I’ll shut up.”

Then, for some reason, Andou took a few steps away from me. For a moment, I wondered what he was playing at...but then he started posing it up. He held his right arm aloft, lifted up a leg to balance on one foot, and tried on all sorts of expressions, working blindly through trial and error toward the coolest pose—by his standards—he could manage. Eventually, he seemed to settle on a pose that satisfied him, and fixed that stance in place, facing me with a confident grin.

“Mwa ha ha! Weep with joy, woman, for I shall grant you the ineffable honor of hearing my true name!”

In the blink of an eye, I flashed back to that moment in my first year of high school—to that chance encounter at the door of the literary club. To our second meeting. Our second contact.

“My name...is Guiltia Sin Jurai!”

And just like during our second contact, he gave me that name. It was a name I’d heard over and over and over again over the course of my time in high school.

Andou Jurai’s true name: Guiltia Sin Jurai. The actual truth was that it wasn’t his true name, or even truly a name at all. I was certain he’d poured hours on end into coming up with it himself. He’d probably invented all sorts of his own vocabulary and tried to spin his real name into it, as well. I knew that very well because I’d done exactly the same thing, once.

His “true name” was nothing more than your typical chuuni excess. It was a perfectly meaningless fabrication. And yet...when he said it, here and now, I knew that it carried a definite significance.

“As of yet, I have no name.”

“And so...I’ll have to think one up.”

“When next we meet, I’ll declare my name to you with pride!”

He’d made a promise to me on that day, and now, at long last, he had seen it through.

“It’s been a while, Eternal Paradox,” said Andou. We’d been together this whole time, but he was acting as if we were long-lost comrades in arms, reuniting for the first time in ages.

“Yes... It has indeed, Guiltia Sin Jurai,” I replied, matching the tone he’d set. Speaking as someone who’d already cleared their chuuni phase, talking like that was lethally humiliating, but even clearer than the humiliation was the sense of fulfillment it granted me.

“Mwa ha ha...”

“...Kye ki ki!”

And then we laughed. What started out as sneering, cackling affects soon transitioned into genuine, open-mouthed laughs. We completely lost it, and for a moment, we just had to stand there, clutching at our sides until the giggles subsided and we looked up toward the sky. There the fireworks were still blooming, sparking and flaring with glorious, maddening brilliance.

“Hey, Tomoyo?” Andou said, his eyes still turned upward. “Thanks. This is the best summer festival I’ve ever been to.”

That’s my line, stupid, I said, but not out loud. I murmured it internally, shutting it away in my heart—but my heart was already so close to full, the words came dangerously close to spilling back out and escaping into the world.

When I turned to look at Andou’s face, my chest grew so tight I felt like I was suffocating. It wasn’t an uncomfortable sort of sensation though. It carried pain, and frustration, and bitterness, but within all those discomforts, there was a sweetness so potent I found myself spellbound.

It finally hit me. Just like Andou had finally realized my true identity, I, too, was having a realization. Just as he had met with me countless times without ever linking my face to that of the girl he’d encountered three years ago, so too had I failed to put the pieces together and comprehend my own feelings. My feelings had been there all this time, but it was only now that I could truly see them. They’d always seemed hazy, distant, so lacking in presence that a gentle breeze could carry them away, but now, they came together into a clear and definite shape. It felt like, if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch them.

I was in love with Andou.

I was frustratingly, maddeningly, excruciatingly in love with him, but I’d never let myself see it before. I’d turned a blind eye to my feelings and refused to face them. I’d never felt this way about anyone before, and those feelings had frightened me. They’d been like a hideous monster that had left me trembling and terrified, my eyes clamped shut. I’d been scared to realize how I felt about him.

Plus, I didn’t think it was right for me to fall in love so easily, and admitting that I was in love after all this time was just so embarrassing! And, I mean...I wanted my love to be foreshadowed, to happen after going through all sorts of events with him and stuff! Basically, I had a whole pile of nonsensical feelings that’d been driving me away from the truth and clouding my perspective.

But now, none of that mattered anymore. It was just like my mom had told me.

“I don’t think there was any single, specific reason that they’d be able to pick out as the one. I don’t think any reason they could come up with would explain things for anyone other than the two of them.”

“The way I see it, divorce happens when all sorts of things build up over time, little by little, until it all becomes too much to bear and you decide that you’d be better off apart.”

I still didn’t get divorce just yet. I had a feeling, though, that love was the same way. Sometimes people just want to break up, and on the flip side, sometimes people just want to be together, never having a clear reason behind their desires at all. There’s no way they could ever have the sort of single, specific reason that would tie it all up in a pretty bow for someone else to appreciate.

I couldn’t explain why I’d fallen in love or when it had started. Just like I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped believing in Santa Claus, I couldn’t give a precise answer as to when I’d fallen for him. Maybe it was when he’d accepted my dream for the future without laughing at me. Maybe it was when Hatoko had disappeared and he’d gotten so frantic trying to find her. Maybe it was when he let his name get dragged through the mud for Chifuyu. Maybe it was when our powers awakened and he did everything he could to help us through it, even going so far as to fight with Sayumi. Maybe it was when I realized how much he reminded me of Hajime, or maybe it was the very first time I’d ever met him.

Or...maybe it was all of those moments combined. Maybe all sorts of things had come together to drive me hopelessly, undeniably in love with Andou.

I thought back to what Hajime had told me once.

“Your talent, your effort—and for that matter, your environment, the era you live in, and your genes as well—none of them mean anything except in retrospect.”

“The present does not exist by virtue of the past—the past is born by virtue of us, here in the present, seeking answers that lie there.”

“Just as we only rationalize our dreams to be dreams at the moment we awaken from them, so too do we begin with the result then seek out an explanation—a process—that can convince us and others why said result turned out that way.”

I didn’t know if that was really the way of the world or not...but I was pretty confident that it was the way of love. Everything begins with a result—with love itself. First come your feelings of affection, and only afterward do you turn around and seek the reason why you felt them, thus bringing said reason into being. Everything about the person you pine for just looks so lovable to you that your feelings quickly seem to be too complex to sum up in a single phrase. You start frantically looking for an excuse or a rationalization for your feelings...but all the while, the result alone remains present, clear, and undeniable.

I’m in love with him.

The festival’s fireworks show was approaching its climax. Countless blossoms of light, a whole field’s worth, bloomed and faded in the night sky.

“I love this,” I said, still gazing up into the stars.

“The fireworks?” asked Andou, not looking over at me either. “Yeah, same. Summer’s just not the same without them.”

“Yeah... I really love it.”

Before much longer, the fireworks would end and the festival would come to a close. That knowledge made me feel so overpoweringly wistful that, in spite of myself, I reached out for Andou’s hand and ever so gently took it in mine, just barely interlacing my fingertips with his. Andou looked over at me in shock, but I ignored him and kept my eyes glued to the sky. All I could do was pray that the glow of the fireworks would be enough to hide how much I was blushing.

Andou didn’t say anything. He just silently returned my grasp. I could feel his warmth through his hand, and while part of me was embarrassed, it was also nice and comforting—enough so that I found myself wishing the moment would last forever. There wasn’t any need to worry about getting separated by the crowd now, and even with that pretext I’d hesitated before, but this time, it felt like I had the right to hold his...

Ahh, nope. There I go again with the pointless, obnoxious rationalizations. Let’s go with something a little more simple and straightforward this time.

In short: I was with the boy I loved, and I wanted to hold his hand. That’s all there was to it.