My Stepsister is My Ex-Girlfriend - Volume 12 - Chapter 4.1

Chapter 4

There’s Only One Guy for Me

Kogure Kawanami: The Envoy of Truth

I drowsily opened my eyes and saw Minami’s face filled with joy.

“Morning.”

“Morning...” I replied out of reflex, my voice hoarse.

I couldn’t remember when I fell asleep, but it felt like I’d finally gotten some proper rest for the first time in a while. But that was only natural. The night before last night, I’d just fainted, and the night before that I couldn’t even remember what happened. Neither of those experiences were really me sleeping.

I still felt groggy, so I just stared at Akatsuki Minami’s face, and she silently looked back at me. I’m not even sure how much time we spent simply staring at each other before I finally snapped back to my senses.

“Are we...okay on time?” I asked.

I wasn’t really familiar with how love hotels worked, but I was assuming there was a checkout time.

“I think there’s enough time for a shower at least.”

“A shower...”

I could see the bath through the glass behind Minami. It was a bit too much to deal with this early in the morning.

“Maybe another time...”

“Time to wake up, then?”

“Yeah.”

Minami put her hand on the bed sheets and vaulted over me to get off the bed. As she did, there was a soft sound as Minami’s sky blue panties fell off the bed.

“Oh.” Minami reacted as she looked at her feet.

They were around her foot like a ring toss. Seeing this made me remember what had happened. Last night, I took off her panties and then fell asleep. From what I remembered they should’ve been around her knees, but most likely they fell off while we slept.

“Ha ha... Oh, right,” Minami said sheepishly before pulling them back up.

There was a second when I could see her butt through a gap in the bathrobe, which made me gulp. Minami turned around and looked at me.

“Uh...” she said awkwardly, but kind of jokingly. “Want some help with that?” she asked, pointing at my crotch.

I hesitated with my answer.

We paid at a machine at the front of the hotel. I wasn’t sure if this was to be expected or pathetic, but we split the cost evenly. Minami and I both got a decent amount in terms of allowance and we both did part-time jobs every now and then, so we had money. Even so, our wallets were about the same amount of empty right now.

“What should we do? I still have some money left on my train card,” she asked.

I fell silent. We had to go back to Kyoto. I knew that. We couldn’t stay out for days on end, but if we went back to Kyoto, I’d have to deal with Makoto...and myself. Could I do that? I felt a lot better than yesterday, but at my core I still felt scared. I was frightened that I might lose myself again and return to the pain I’d felt.

Minami had said that I was cured and that I simply hadn’t realized it yet. But even so, I couldn’t believe that I was better. Though it was true that I didn’t get hives when I was around Minami anymore, it didn’t make sense that I was still reacting to Makoto. If Makoto was flirty with me again, wouldn’t I just be in pain again?

At the very least I wished that someone could prove to me that that wouldn’t happen. And conveniently, such a person was waiting for us outside the entrance of the hotel.

“Finally,” they said.

There were two very unexpected people standing outside of the hotel. A couple like them that had a pure and bright romance seemed so out of place in the deserted backstreets where we were. They’d been waiting for me as I emerged from the dark.

“Y-Yume-chan?! Irido-kun too?! Why are you two here?!” Minami’s eyes widened with surprise.

Irido-san smiled weakly. “We came straight here after coming home from the countryside early this morning. I’m glad we made it before you two left.”

“How did you know we were here? This place isn’t even on love hotel apps.”

“I heard from a certain ‘bad’ upperclassman. I contacted her on a whim, and I dragged it out of her.”

Oh yeah, now that I think about it, Minami said that she heard about this place from a ‘bad’ upperclassman too. I’m assuming it’s that girl from the student council. The one who’s all over Todo-senpai. I guess Minami hangs out with her a lot.

I was surprised by how strong Irido-san looked compared to a year ago. She used to be a timid honor student, but now she seemed very formidable. Maybe spending time with Irido or the student council made her grow up.

“Irido...” I said, walking to him as he stood there with his arms folded. “Why did you come all the way here?”

“Because you were playing victim, deep in your own delusions, over the phone.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Delusions?

“I knew it. You’re not aware of it yourself.” As Irido said this, Minami awkwardly looked away. “You said over the phone that Makoto Koyama was all over you in the bowling alley and that she fed you takoyaki at karaoke, right? That’s how she was flirting with you?”

“Y-Yeah...”

“That never happened,” Irido decisively declared. “All the things you spilled over the phone were figments of your imagination—delusions.”

Kogure Kawanami: The Real World

Staying too long in that part of town was a bad idea, so we left and went to the closest metro station. While we waited for the train to Yodoyabashi, Minami and I came clean about everything. We talked about how we used to date in middle school, how I got ulcers from how overbearing she’d been, how I developed an allergy to romance after that, and how Minami had since then tried to cure it with exposure therapy.

Minami seemed so small in her seat after revealing her true nature to Irido-san.

“I’m sorry for keeping this from you all this time, Yume-chan...” she said in such a soft voice that the sounds around us threatened to drown her out. “I still haven’t fixed my old bad habits. I’ve done some creepy things while trying to make sure you didn’t notice...”

Irido-san was surprised to hear the dark side of the usually bright and cheerful Akatsuki Minami that she knew, but it wasn’t long before she was wearing a gentle smile.

“I don’t mind at all. It’s normal to keep a secret or two from your friends. You’ve always been my bright and cheerful friend, and I don’t think there was any lie about that.”

“Yume-chan...”

“Also...”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you were doing a good job of hiding what you were doing anyway.”

“Huh?!”

You really thought you were? You wear your desires on your sleeve.

“An allergy to romance, huh?” Irido mumbled while rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s a little hard to believe, but it makes sense if it’s like a form of PTSD. It’d also explain how you were acting yesterday, Kawanami.”

“Can you tell me already what exactly I was imagining? Also what basis do you have for saying that everything was all in my head?”

Right as I asked that, the train we were on arrived at Yodoyabashi. From here, we would transfer to the Kyoto line and take it straight to Kyoto.

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s get off the train. It’ll be a little quieter in the station,” Irido said, getting off the train, the other two following suit.

I slowly got up and shuffled off as if there were lead in my legs. After walking past the Osaka metro turnstiles, we went down the long tunnel back to the Kyoto line. As we did, Irido began talking.

“My reasoning is simple. There were contradictions in your story.”

“Contradictions...?”

“It was hard to visualize. There were parts of your story that wouldn’t make sense if they’d actually happened.” Irido turned around and pointed to his mouth. “So there was a summer festival where I was yesterday and I had some takoyaki.”

“Wow, what a coincidence... I had some too yesterday. After I called you, we had some at a famous place in the American Village.”

“They were hot, weren’t they?”

“I mean, yeah...”

I casually replied, but then I realized something. That wasn’t the only time I’d eaten takoyaki yesterday...was it?

“Yesterday, you told me about how this Makoto Koyama girl fed you takoyaki, and you mentioned how she put them into your mouth, but you never once said anything to me about how hot they were. Usually, they’re so hot they can burn your mouth. If she did actually feed you takoyaki, then your mouth would’ve been burned and you’d still be feeling it.”

“S-Sorry...” Irido-san said, an awkward look on her face.

I wasn’t sure why she was apologizing, nor did I have the mental bandwidth right now to ask.

“So, Kawanami, tell me, did you burn your mouth after eating takoyaki at karaoke yesterday?”

“N-No...”

I couldn’t remember that happening. When I had takoyaki at the American Village, I noticed that I almost burned my mouth, but I couldn’t remember anything about burning my mouth at the karaoke place.

“There’s another contradiction that’s even stranger,” Irido said, continuing despite me still being confused.

“You said that this Makoto Koyama girl sat next to you when bowling, right? But that’s impossible.”

“Huh...? How can you be so sure?”

“Well, first off, you said that there were four spots. Usually when you go bowling, there are four people to a lane, so that makes sense. You also said that all the guys from your mini reunion were there. So, logically that’d mean that Shoma, Sota, Yamato, and you would be there, right?”

“Yeah, but what are you trying to...”

“There were four spots at the lane, and each of you sat next to one another, right? If each of you had a seat, where could the fifth person sit?”

I gasped. Wait...yeah. But— “What if we switched seats with whoever’s turn to bowl it was? Then it’d make sense that Makoto sat next to me, right?”

“No, because you said that Makoto Koyama was already sitting next to you, and then Shoma got up to bowl. If he was getting up for his turn, then at that point all four seats should have been filled. How could she have been already sitting down if all four seats were full?”

But then... That can’t be... But now that he mentions it...

“This is just my own theory, but there was probably another set of seats in front of your group and that’s probably where she was sitting. You interpreted that in your mind as her sitting next to you and that’s what you told me. To you at that moment, that was the truth. But delusions have limits to them in terms of details.”

“So it was all in my head? Is my head that messed up?”

“It happens to everyone,” Irido said nonchalantly. “Some people think they said something another person said, or think that something that happened in a dream was real, or just in general have unclear memories. You don’t have to be so bothered by it.”

“But...”

“Of course, I doubted you at first, but I understood after hearing about your allergy. What you experienced yesterday was essentially anaphylactic shock.”

“Huh? Is that the thing that you get when you’re stung twice by a bee?”

“Yeah. Yesterday night, when I told you that someone else had been in your room, that was the second sting for you. It made your allergy go into overdrive. Every little thing became blown out of proportion and even the slightest touch would make you think that someone had feelings for you. If I’d known that’d happen, I never would have said anything to you. I’m sorry about that.”

A second...sting. But that makes it sound like there was a first.

“Irido... I don’t remember anything, but are you trying to say that I don’t remember the first time Makoto did something to me three days ago?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’? You already know, don’t you? You know that Makoto was in my room, what happened that night, and why I was sleeping basically naked in my room.”

“Well, all I can really say is...” Irido said, stopping as the turnstiles came into view. “Your clothes were in the washer because they got dirty.”

Huh? They got dirty? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Minami purse her lips.

“I can’t tell you any more than that. You would need to ask the person who actually knows about all that.” Irido turned around, moving a little out of the way of the turnstile, the path back to Kyoto. “What’s your choice?”

I... I... I don’t want to be stuck like this without ever being able to move forward. Not one bit. If everything I saw was just a bunch of delusions, then what really happened couldn’t have been as malicious as I thought. I want to know. I need to know the truth.

I took out my train card and touched it against the reader.

Kogure Kawanami: The Reason It’s You

We got back to Kyoto a little after noon. When we got off at Sanjo Station, Irido-san asked if we were hungry, so we had lunch. Though it was a pretty busy station with all kinds of different foods, we settled on something a little more familiar and went to a family restaurant.

“How was the trip, Yume-chan?”

“It was more relaxed than last year. It’d be nice if I became even more used to it. There’s a lot of nature.”

“Yeah, and after a few days you’ll get bored because there’s nothing to do.”

“All you did there was read books like you already do here.”

“Hey, I played some video games this year.”

As the three of them enjoyed their conversation, I sent a message to Makoto.

Kogure: We need to talk. You free?

After finishing lunch, the Irido siblings left. I couldn’t have them sticking around. They knew what I was about to face, but neither of them mentioned a thing about it. They seemed no different than usual when they left.

“See you,” Irido said shortly.

It was rare for him to say bye at all, but it felt like he was trying to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. He was trying to reassure me that it wasn’t over—that my world wasn’t over. I could live today normally, as well as the next day and the day after that. It was really simple what I was doing. I was just going to get the truth. All I had to do was say my true feelings.

“Well...I’m gonna go home,” Minami said, stopping as we walked. “You’ve got another stop before coming back, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s just a stop, right?” It felt like she was worried about me, but maybe that was just me overthinking things.

“Sorry, but I’m gonna give that answer to Makoto first.”

It might’ve been just a stop on the way, but that was where I needed to be right now. Minami seemed to relent, but she looked happy and nodded.

“Yeah, that’s for the best.”

Then I watched as her small back disappeared into the distance before turning around and going to the meetup place. It was the place we’d graduated from long ago. The very same middle school that Makoto and I had both gone to.

I could remember clearly when I’d met Makoto Koyama. In our second year of middle school, the guys and I had really gotten into playing chicken. It was a really stupid thing we’d do where we’d bring our game consoles to school and play as long as we could without getting noticed, since we weren’t technically allowed to bring them to school. It was a weird game, since we could’ve just played games on our phones, which were allowed at school. But even so, we specifically tried playing on our game consoles because the risk was more thrilling.

During lunch, we would go behind the dojo that the kendo and judo club used, since they wouldn’t be there during lunchtime, and neither would any teachers. It was our own little hideout. One day, we were silently playing games with each other as usual when suddenly...

“Hey, what do you guys think you’re doing?”

Suddenly, Makoto scolded us like a teacher would. We jumped and quickly turned around and saw her grinning. “Sorry, you guys just looked like you were having so much fun. What’re you guys playing? Smash?” she asked, very curiously looking at the screen.

With her skirt, there was no mistaking that she was a girl, but she acted so naturally like one of the guys that we were able to easily interact with her and accept her into our group.

We heard later that she wasn’t really getting along too well with her girl friends. Of course, on the surface, she had a group she was a part of and there didn’t seem to be any problems, and they would all seem fine with each other. But after she started hanging out with us, the time she spent with the girls lessened and that didn’t sit well with them.

“I have an older brother and I think because of that I started being more interested in guy things. Even in elementary school, the girls in my class were really into Precure, but the guys were into card games, and so was I. When we played dodgeball, I was the only girl that the guys actually tried to hit like I was one of them,” Makoto said one day.

I realized that she wasn’t really the type to fit into girl groups. That was why when we saw her looking more like a girl now that she was in high school, we got worried about her. We couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing okay. We worried that she might not have been able to find people like us to accept her and she was just lying about who she really was as a person in an attempt to fit in.

That was probably why our mini reunion was even more lively than it should’ve been. That might’ve been why I turned a blind eye to that idiot who brought alcohol. Though I couldn’t really remember, I felt like I wanted to bring Makoto back to how she used to be. That was why what happened after our mini reunion came like a sudden punch in the gut. The wound that should’ve been healed felt like it’d been gouged open once more.

“Kogure...” In front of the open school gates, Makoto slightly waved to me. “Hey.”

I walked to her, my hands in my pockets. “I’m really sorry about yesterday...about suddenly going off on you.”

“No, it’s okay. Your mind can go kinda crazy when you’re sick, right? But you should be more worried about the rumors. Have you heard? There’s no end to the dirty talk about you and Minami-san going off by yourselves,” Makoto said, chuckling.

But to me, it didn’t really seem like she was genuinely laughing. Eventually, her smile faded. “So...you have something you want to talk about?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not asking me out, are you?”

“I’m not.”

“Right...” Her eyes fell to the side and then she turned around and she glanced back at the school gates. “It’s probably better to try to talk inside than the side of the street.”

“Is it okay to go inside?”

“What, so it was okay sneaking to the back of the dojo to play games, but now you’re scared of going back to the school you attended?” she asked, teasing me. “Just kidding. I got permission from a teacher. I told them I was feeling nostalgic and they laughed at me, saying it was just a year and a half ago.”

According to adults, the older you get, the faster the flow of time feels. I could believe that since a year in elementary school feels longer than how this past year felt. But even so, this past year and a half had felt so long. It had been a painful time for me and I could only imagine how lonely Makoto had felt.

“Okay. Let’s go, then. It’s not every day we get to do this, right?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

So we entered through the front gate of the school. Each step felt like we were walking deeper into a different world. Despite us going here essentially every day not so long ago, this didn’t feel like our world anymore. The time we spent here wouldn’t come back. But at the very least, we could get some glimpses into what it’d been like.

“It’s so nostalgic. Remember how we saw Shibayama-san’s panties on those stairs?”

“That’s the first thing you remember?”

“It was the first time I saw someone’s panties like that. It was really memorable to me. It was pretty fun how freaked out you guys got too.”

“It was awkward, especially with a girl next to us who was freaking out over seeing someone else’s panties.”

We had so many nostalgic stories. Every time we passed by somewhere we recognized, Makoto would remember something new. She talked about the sports festival; how I sucked at tennis; how one of our classmates, Sonoda-san, did something during science class. We passed by the school courtyard, the tennis court, the outdoor walkway, the stairs, the science classroom, the art room—all places we’d seen before—in order. I knew exactly where we’d stop. It was the place where we hung out the most: our old classroom, 3-2.

The soft light of the setting sun lay a thin veil over our old classroom. The blackboard and bulletin board had a different schedule than the one that we remembered. The blackboard in the back of the classroom had different doodles on it than when we were in it. The classroom we once knew had changed and now it was updated with traces of the kids that were currently in the class.

Makoto passed by all that and went to the window. As she opened it, a gust of wind blew in, blowing the curtain around her as if she were spreading her wings. It looked like she was being embraced by the summer wind. And then...

“Thanks for coming here with me,” she said, a little sadly, before looking back at me. “You said you wanted to talk, right? I’m ready. Go ahead whenever you’re ready.”

I looked at her face, filled with the determination to hear me out and knew that I couldn’t be roundabout with my words. That was why I just came right out and asked.

“Did you ask me out three days ago?”

This was a very strange question for me to ask and it looked like Makoto was on the verge of tears, but she still smiled back at me.

“I thought so... You don’t remember.”

“Yeah. I don’t even remember what happened during our mini reunion. But...you do, don’t you? You know why I don’t remember anything, right?” Makoto stayed silent. “I probably threw up and passed out after hearing you ask me out, didn’t I? I probably don’t remember anything from the shock.”

It’d explain why my clothes had gotten dirty and been put in the washing machine. This was probably what Irido had wanted me to notice from the hint he’d given me. After hearing Makoto ask me out, I had a strong allergic reaction and threw up on my clothes. That was why I’d taken off my clothes and why they’d been in the washing machine. It was to wash away the vomit. Knowing that, it made me remember something else—the stain on the carpet.

When I went to the living room, I noticed that there was a stain on the carpet. I was now certain that it was from my own vomit. Most likely, my phone had ended up there because I collapsed and it fell out of my pocket. That was the first “bee sting.”

In order to seal away the shock from it, I wiped that entire night from my memory. Later, I received a second “bee sting,” which sent my body’s allergic reaction into overdrive, causing me to create an entire delusion in which I was being attacked.

“Seeing how I reacted, you ran away at first, but then you came back to check on me the next day and came into my room, right?” I asked.

Makoto awkwardly looked away. Though she didn’t say anything, her reaction was enough of a confirmation.

“I was hoping we could just both forget it...” Makoto said softly. “I was hoping we could forget how I asked you out, how I ran away when you were hurting, and how I like you. I was hoping that we could just pretend none of that happened.”

“I saw you leaving my room. I was still half asleep, so I’m not a hundred percent it was you, but...”

“Oh, I see... I guess I stayed a bit too long,” she said, smiling as if to mock her own mistake. She put her hands on the windowsill. “You know, this last year and a half, I’ve been wondering why I fell for you specifically.” I stayed silent to listen to her.

“Like, I have a lot of other guy friends, right? There’s Yamato, Sota, Shoma, but...somehow it was you. But I could never come up with an answer and I could never get you out of my head. There was no way this would’ve ever worked out since you have Minami-san. I’m not so rude as to try and get in between two childhood friends, nor do I have the courage. But all that only makes me wonder even more...why you?” I still stayed silent.

“I don’t have any guy friends in high school. The girl group I’m in has a kinda power dynamic. I’ve gotten pretty tired from how much more annoying maintaining relationships is in high school compared to in middle school. It’s really made me nostalgic for how we used to just laugh at stupid things back then. Then we had that mini reunion and I saw you again, and...” In the next moment, she had a smile on, but she looked ready to cry. “When I heard that you and Minami-san broke up, I thought it was my chance.”

So that’s what started this. It made her feelings that she didn’t let surface in middle school come out.

“When we left your place, I pretended to go home, but then went back, pretending I forgot something, and then in the heat of the moment, as a joke, I gave myself an out, and I said it in such a lame, nervous way...”

I could see the scene in my head. As I cleaned up the mess in the living room, she might’ve helped. She might’ve gotten a reason to stay over that way. I could see her helping to clean up and using the sounds to cover her unnatural non sequitur.

“‘If you’re not dating anyone, then...would you wanna date me?’ Sheesh, hearing it out loud really makes me realize how doomed my confession was before I even tried.” She let out a dry laugh. “And then you went pale as a sheet and asked me if I was serious. At first, I meant to just play it off as a joke because you reacted that way, but I couldn’t back down, so I told you that I was. As soon as I said that, you threw up—I had no clue what was going on.”

“So why did you come back in the morning?”

“I was worried. When I came back, your door was unlocked and nobody answered when I called out.”

This must have been after Minami ran out of my place. It makes sense that it wasn’t locked. “I peeked into your room and saw you sleeping there basically naked. I saw a long strand of hair on your bed and...it all made sense.” She had no choice but to run and that was what I saw. “Why did you throw up? Even if you don’t remember exactly what happened that night, you must at least know why you threw up, right? Do you have some kind of chronic illness or something?”

“No, it’s because of a trauma...” And then, I began to talk about everything I’d been quiet about. “Whenever a girl shows me affection, I suddenly get sick. I’ve gotten a lot better now, though.”

“Now that I think about it, you were in the hospital in our third year because of ulcers. Was that it?”

“Yeah, that was the start...”

“And Minami-san has to do with this?”

“She does.” More than anyone. “She was the one who broke me, and also the one who fixed me.”

She spent an entire year and a half to atone for what she did to me.

“I see...” Makoto let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I can’t win against that...” I still didn’t say anything, but it was already clear inside her. Even if she’d run over to me when I’d collapsed...

“Makoto...you’re an important friend to me. It’s not that I don’t see you as a girl or anything, but...the way I see you just hasn’t changed.”

“Yeah...”

“Also, I can’t forget about the person who was always there for me in my most difficult times. I mean, sure, she’s also the cause of those difficult times, but...she’s also the one who saved me.”

“Yeah...”

“That’s why I’m sorry, but I can’t date you.”

Makoto quietly closed her eyes and calmly nodded. “Yeah.”

I felt like I finally was able to face the fact that within the story of people falling for each other, the story of people falling in love with people, I wasn’t just an observer. I was part of that story.

“You’re a lot more serious a person than I thought, Kogure.”

“Huh? A-Am I?”

“Yeah. If you knew everything, then there wasn’t really any reason to talk to me face-to-face. You could just pretend like nothing ever happened. But you set things straight, you settled everything, and you...respected my feelings,” she said with a sad, lonely, but refreshed smile. “That’s why I fell for you.”

Kogure Kawanami: Answer

A fire blast appeared in the night on a distant mountain, but it wasn’t a Pokémon move. It was the Gozan no Okuribi. My room was on a pretty high floor, and from the balcony I could kinda see the burning Japanese characters in the mountains far away. It was so far away that I could only really tell what it was with certainty if I used my phone’s zoom, but this was loads better than going to a place where you could see it up close and suffering the crowds.

It felt like a signal that summer break was coming to an end. As much as it used to feel like a tribute to the past, right now the Gozan no Okuribi felt more like a tribute to the future. I felt like I could do the things I couldn’t in the past. I was freed from my shackles, as if a curse had been lifted—like a weight had finally been lifted from my shoulders. For some reason, I felt a refreshing sense of empowerment, despite not having done anything specific to achieve it. The way I am now, I feel like I could even give her an answer.

“A-chan,” I said, speaking to the person on the balcony next to me. We were separated by a white partition that instructed tenants to break it in the event of an emergency.

“What?” A-chan, Akatsuki Minami, said while gazing at the Gozan no Okuribi off in the distance.

“You’re the one who undressed me and put me in bed, right?” She didn’t answer. “After Makoto ran away, you found me passed out after vomiting. You took off my dirty clothes, put them in the washing machine, and put me in my bed. The reason you didn’t put clothes on me was because it’s hard to dress someone when they’re passed out, right?”

A-chan stayed silent, but I could tell that she was listening to me. “The reason you were with me in bed was probably to make sure I stayed warm, right? To do that, you needed to raise your body temperature and...that’s why you drank the beer. But since you’re not used to drinking and downed it all at once, you lost your memories of that night, right?”

A-chan didn’t deny anything I was saying. Her silence was enough to confirm my theory. That night, the two of us hadn’t done anything at all. That was the truth. I’d hurt one of my friends and then my neighbor and childhood friend had come to my rescue.

“Thanks. You really saved me. I just wanted to tell you that.”

Irido probably already realized the truth, but he knew that it was better to come from my mouth than his. I couldn’t help but be surprised that a guy like him, who used to shut everyone else out, had learned to be so considerate.

After a long silence, A-chan finally spoke. “I didn’t do anything to be thanked for,” she said as if trying to deny what she’d done. “I just couldn’t win against my desires... It wasn’t because I was worried about you. It wasn’t because I was hoping for your happiness... In the end, all I could think about was myself...”

And then A-chan slowly began talking about everything that happened.