The Future We Will Walk Towards
The first time Mahiru was met with clear hostility was when her age entered the double-digits.
“You’re so unfair, Shiina-san.” A classmate suddenly blurted out on the way home from school, when they found themselves alone together. Usually, Mahiru walked home with some of her other friends, but today, since they had other plans, she ended up walking with another classmate of hers, a girl whom she didn’t interact much with. They just so happened to be heading in the same direction.
Mahiru interacted with everyone around her, and as such, didn’t find it a difficult task to talk with the girl. They had been engaging in a harmless conversation on their way home when she voiced this unexpected comment. It was only natural for Mahiru to be confused.
“I’m ‘unfair’? How?”
Not having specified what was unfair, Mahiru was puzzled as to what the girl meant. As she waited for her classmate’s explanation, the girl seemed to mistake her composure as arrogance and glared at her. The sudden hostility from a girl typically calm and reserved took Mahiru by surprise, leaving her unsure of how to respond.
Mahiru always conducted herself well at school. She never ostracized anyone and always made efforts to be friendly and keep a smile as she talked to others. Moreover, she didn’t treat this classmate any differently than anybody else—she even tried subtly to include the girl when appropriate to ensure she wouldn’t feel left out.
If she was upset about that, Mahiru could perhaps understand her feelings. However, the word the girl used was ‘unfair,’ which as far as Mahiru could tell, didn’t seem to indicate any negative feelings about the way she interacted with her classmates.
Completely clueless, Mahiru’s ignorance was apparent. Frustrated by this, the girl’s eyebrows arched in a clear display of her irritation, her lips trembling as she tried to spin her words.
“Like, Suzuki-kun’s just all over you,” she explained, her tone of voice too sharp for her to just be sulking. Noticing that, Mahiru now understood the root of her dissatisfaction. But she still couldn’t fathom why the girl deemed it ‘unfair.’ This ‘Suzuki’ the girl mentioned must have been a male classmate of hers. This boy was the only ‘Suzuki’ that had been interacting with Mahiru as of late.
Indeed, Suzuki had in fact talked to Mahiru on several occasions and even teased her at times, but in her eyes, it was nothing more than that. However, the girl seemed increasingly angered by Mahiru’s seemingly indifferent attitude.
“He’s always chatting with you, always trying to spend time with you, and always laughs when he’s with you!”
She was correct that Suzuki, being the mood maker among the boys, and Mahiru, being prominent among the girls, had opportunities to talk. But that was the only reason. Although Suzuki was indeed giving her a fair amount of his attention, Mahiru, who responded uniformly to everyone, felt it was unfair to be attacked for something so trivial.
“Suzuki-kun fell for me first! Could you not just take him away from me!?”
“I’m not trying to,” Mahiru responded. She wanted to add that Suzuki wasn’t even ‘hers’ to begin with, but she sensed the girl wasn’t in the mood to listen, so Mahiru had kept her reply brief.
“Why do you keep talking to him, then?” the girl questioned. “If you don’t actually like him, then just stop it.”
“I’ve only ever spoken to him as a fellow classmate,” Mahiru replied, stating it as a simple fact.
“You’re so lying!”
There was no lie behind Mahiru’s words. She had only told her the truth as she saw it, but to the girl, the story must have appeared differently. No matter how Mahiru explained her perspective, it seemed the girl wouldn’t be convinced, which left Mahiru in a troublesome situation. To her, Suzuki was just a classmate, and she hadn’t the slightest romantic interest in him at all. In fact, he was actually the kind of person she had a hard time dealing with.
Mahiru, while behaving well and being friendly, was actually a quiet person by nature who moved at her own pace, and she preferred not to have that pace disturbed. Mahiru couldn’t bring herself to like someone who, despite not being on close terms, approached her as if they had always been good friends, especially when they didn’t understand her disinterest and kept pushing forward.
But I see why she might think that. Mahiru contemplated that perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable for the girl to misunderstand, given how he was always overly friendly and pushy with everyone, and that Mahiru had always interacted with him in a non-confrontational way.
I still don’t remember acting like I was interested in him, though, Mahiru then thought. She felt a bit exasperated about the situation, which was unavoidable given the circumstances.
“Whatever. Just stay away from Suzuki-kun, got it?” the girl pressed.
Mahiru sighed in response. “If that’s what you want, Inoue-san.”
Though she felt somewhat bossed around, Mahiru had no particular desire to talk to Suzuki beyond being classmates, so she accepted it readily. She was perfectly content to maintain a certain level of distance from him. The girl snorted at this, seemingly satisfied with her answer, and pushed past Mahiru, running off as though she no longer had any use for her.
Left standing there, Mahiru watched the girl dash away, her school bag swaying all the while. “Wow,” she muttered. While she wasn’t well acquainted with her, the girl, who Mahiru thought was quiet and kept to herself, turned out to be hiding quite the intense temper. Reevaluating her impression of the girl, Mahiru continued on her way home as she usually did.
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