When I returned to my seat in the reading room, I got a LINE message from Sekiya-san.
Sekiya Shugo: You coming today?
Sekiya Shugo: Kurose-san isn’t here. It’s the perfect opportunity to use the study room.
If Kurose-san was going to continue studying here, then perhaps I could go to Ikebukuro by myself. Knowing that she wasn’t coming would let me study in peace.
However, for some reason, I didn’t feel like going. I ended up studying across the table from her for about two hours after that.
Before I knew it, it was already five. I hadn’t eaten much since lunch, so I was hungry again and figured it was time for me to go home, when...
Without any prior indication, Kurose-san began to put her things away.
“Are you going home, Kashima-kun?”
“Y-Yeah...”
“Me too.”
And so, we ended up leaving the library together for no particular reason.
When we stepped outside, it was already starting to get dark. I hadn’t noticed it on my way here earlier, but the pond had leaves floating on its surface. They were already starting to turn crimson, giving the scene a bit of an autumn feeling.
“Do you always go home at around this time, Kurose-san?” I asked.
“Yeah, I did when I came here on my way back from school. If it gets any later, I might run into molesters on rush hour trains again.”
“Oh... I see.” I was flustered to hear something like that so casually.
Molesters, huh. I didn’t have the nerve to do something like that. And even if I did, I wouldn’t do it. There sure were some wicked people out there.
“It’s probably fine today because it’s not a weekday...and I have you with me.” Kurose-san looked at me and gave me a small smile.
She looked so cute that it made me jittery. I could feel my heartbeat rise a bit.
While it wasn’t intended to cover up the guilt I felt over that, I decided to bring up Runa. I wanted to tell her the things I’d missed my chance to say earlier in the cafeteria.
“Shirakawa-san wears that earring,” I said.
Kurose-san seemed confused for a split second, but a look of understanding immediately appeared on her face.
“She said she only wears it when she doesn’t have school because she doesn’t want it confiscated. I didn’t see if she wore it today or not, but she did the other day. I was wondering about yours earlier since it looked familiar.”
Even though I wasn’t being very clear, Kurose-san seemed to have understood what I was getting at.
She looked downcast. “I see... Runa always loved accessories, makeup, and all that stuff,” she began quietly, as if talking to herself. “Dad wasn’t very happy about that. He always told Mom that she looked best without makeup too. But even Mom didn’t stop wearing eyelash extensions and trendy makeup. They’re a lot like each other, Mom and Runa.”
Kurose-san spoke with a distant look in her partly closed eyes. “I did as Dad told me and didn’t wear makeup or do my nails. Because I wanted him to think I was cute.” She then bit her lip in frustration. “But the one my dad loved was Runa, not me... It’s no wonder. After all, he married Mom because he loved her. So I should’ve done what my mom did too, just like Runa.”
“I’m not sure Shirakawa-san was trying to copy your mom... I think she just liked that sort of thing from the start.”
“I know,” Kurose-san replied flatly. “That’s why it pisses me off...” she added quietly. “I couldn’t escape like that.”
The word “escape” bothered me and gave me pause. “What do you mean?” I asked.
A sardonic smile appeared on Kurose-san’s face. “You think girls become gyaru because they like the fashion? Sure, maybe some do, but I don’t think that’s true for Runa. At the very least, it didn’t look like that was the only reason to me.”
I waited for her to continue, wondering what she meant.
“We had different personalities from the start, so we didn’t share interests either. But that only became apparent when our parents started talking about divorce when we were in our fifth year of primary school or so.” Kurose-san had a grim look on her face—perhaps she was recalling those days. “To escape my bitter reality, I became absorbed into things like manga and games. It was more comfortable to spend time as someone else...”
The desolate ambience of the evening in Arisugawa Park fit Kurose-san’s tone. It was heart-wrenching.
“Runa, meanwhile, got hooked on gyaru fashion. At one point, she even wore makeup to primary school and Mom got summoned there as a result.”
Really...? I had no idea she’s been a gyaru since primary school...
“I don’t think people see gyaru as delinquents these days, but I’m pretty sure there’s an element of that to it. After all, if she really just liked the fashion style, why not wear that look in secret, on days when she doesn’t have school? Makeup, nails, and dyed hair are all against school rules.”
What Kurose-san said made sense to me, so I didn’t interrupt and went on listening.
“If you break the rules, adults will scold you and start keeping an eye on you, right? Isn’t that stupid? That’s why, I think, Runa actually wanted that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She wanted teachers to see her. If the teachers called our parents, even said parents would shift their attention to her, right?” Kurose-san gave me a sardonic smile again. “We were scared. Lonely. Our parents fought almost every day. What if our environment was going to change a great deal? The fear of it was so crushing that we had to find something we could do about it.”
It pained me to think that all of this had happened to two girls who were only in their fifth year of primary school.
“I looked for salvation in the world of fiction, but Runa tried to fight her solitude and anxiety in the real world. Her becoming a gyaru was a manifestation of that, I think.” After saying that in a matter-of-fact tone, Kurose-san got a distant look in her eyes. “Somehow, it felt that way to me.”
Perhaps it was something that only Runa’s twin sister could’ve noticed. I recalled the mixed feelings Runa had toward her family, which occasionally cast a shadow on her usually cheerful face.
“While I escaped reality by retreating into myself, Runa tried to fight loneliness on the outside. Maybe she was a bigger adult than me for it.” Smiling in self-deprecation, Kurose-san put on a serious look. “Though it’s more like... Maybe Runa wanted to become an adult as soon as possible.” She then nodded, as though becoming convinced she had it right. “She’s an adult...so maybe she’ll forgive me. After everything I did...”
“She has,” I replied. “After all, Shirakawa-san joined the festival committee and volunteered to work on pamphlets because she wanted to rebuild her relationship with you.”
I didn’t want to get in the way of Runa’s plan, but it seemed safe to tell Kurose-san that much.
Kurose-san looked at me for a moment before hanging her head. “I thought so. She’s not suited for that job at all.”
“But then...”
Why does she have to be so irritable with Runa? Why not approach her in return, at least a little bit?
I felt like telling Kurose-san that, but before I could, she spoke again.
“But I still haven’t forgiven myself. Every day, when I find myself alone...I end up thinking about lots of things.”
That was surprising to hear.
“So... I don’t have the courage to get along with Runa yet,” she added weakly, and then hung her head.
“I...see...”
I’d thought Kurose-san still felt animosity toward Runa. That wasn’t the case?
“But I still haven’t forgiven myself. Every day, when I find myself alone...I end up thinking about lots of things.”
These twins really were polar opposites of each other.
“I’m not good at thinking about things.”
Recalling Runa’s words, I strongly felt that way.
I guess their voices really are the only thing they share...
“Ah!” exclaimed Kurose-san at the sight of something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I see a bubble tea café. It looks really delicious.”
“Huh...?”
Her excited voice raised my heartbeat for a moment.
We had been walking away from the park and toward a subway station. Now, as Kurose-san looked at the sign of a fancy café that was by the roadside, her eyes were sparkling.
“You like bubble tea...?” I asked.
“I do.” After giving me a nod, Kurose-san seemed to give it some thought for a bit, and then stuck her hand in her bag and pulled out her wallet. “Love it, actually. I’ve resolved to keep drinking it even if everyone in the world becomes tired of it.”
“H-Huh...”
My heart was pounding.
Bubble tea had started trending only a few years ago—it must’ve happened when the two sisters were already estranged. And yet they’d both gotten hooked on the same thing without any awareness of the other.
As I stood there, secretly being deeply moved, Kurose-san disappeared into the café that served bubble tea made with regular milk.
I waited outside for some time, and Kurose-san eventually came out with a plastic cup in her hand. A thick straw was sticking out of it.
“I paid an extra fifty yen to get a larger size.” Kurose-san had the smile of a child who’d secretly done something bad.
“We don’t have much money.”
I’d been worried after she’d said that earlier. Perhaps she thought that way because she compared herself to her well-off friends from School T, but her reality seemed to be different from my mental image of a poor household. I felt relieved.
“Sorry I didn’t get one for you,” said Kurose-san.
“That’s okay. I have a bottle of tea with me.”
We started walking again. This quiet street that ran alongside the park was interspersed with embassies and fancy stores.
“You don’t like bubble tea?” asked Kurose-san.
“I do like it. But I prefer the kind with milk and brown sugar. Like, isn’t the taste pretty bland when it’s just regular milk tea with tapioca pearls?”
Remembering how I’d previously made Runa speechless with my extensive thoughts on bubble tea, I gave only a short summary this time.
“Huh...” Kurose-san uttered indifferently as she sipped her bubble tea with regular milk.
I was glad that I hadn’t given a long speech about it.
Then, Kurose-san released the straw from her mouth. “You must be considering bubble tea a dessert and thinking about how well it works that way.”
“Huh...?”
“It’s not a dessert. It’s a drink, at the end of the day,” continued Kurose-san as I blinked in confusion. “The tapioca pearls are just something to kill time with. If you drink regular milk tea, once there’s nothing to drink anymore, that’s it. But when there’s boba in it, it lasts for a while. You drink a bit of the milk tea and chew the boba in between like they’re gummies. I think bubble tea became popular with high school girls because it’s the kind of drink you can enjoy for twenty to thirty minutes as you chat with your friends.”
“Makes sense...”
The scales fell from my eyes.
So bubble tea with regular milk is just a drink, and the boba’s there to kill time with. I never looked at it from this perspective.
“You know, it’s interesting to talk to you,” I said.
Talking with Runa raised my pulse, cheered me up, and was fun.
But talking with Kurose-san, on the other hand, was highly interesting because it made me realize new things. Perhaps this was because she was the kind of person who thought about things a lot, just like me.
“Really?” Giving me a surprised look, Kurose-san smiled. “I’ve never had a guy say that to me before.”
For some reason, she looked a little happy.
Thus, the two of us continued heading home together until we reached the main street past the traffic circle outside of Station K.
Kurose-san was the first to stop walking. “Are you continuing this way, Kashima-kun? I’m going that way.”
“Ah, yeah...”
“See you tomorrow.”
As I gave her a light wave, she turned her back toward me and began to walk.
Yeah... I guess this must be how partings go with girls who aren’t your girlfriend. Though it’s a bit anticlimactic after the exciting conversation we just had on the train, recommending gaming YouTubers to each other.
It just felt strange because I’d never had any female friends before. It was no different from being friends with a guy.
Still... Was it really okay to treat her the same as a male friend?
“If it gets any later, I might run into molesters on rush hour trains again.”
She’d been casual about it, but she must’ve hated it when she’d dealt with one of those.
The sky was already completely dark, like it was late at night. We were still in front of the station, so there was plenty of light and people around, but I had no idea if that would last all the way until she reached her place. Trains weren’t the only places you could run into a molester or the like.
What if she encountered someone like that after parting with me...? The thought of it made me uneasy, and before I knew it, I was running.
“I-I’ll walk you home!”
As I approached her again, Kurose-san looked surprised. She’d walked quite the distance while I’d hesitated, so by the time I’d caught up to her, I was out of breath.
“Huh? You don’t have to,” she said with an amazed look. She then lowered her eyes. “It won’t be fair to Runa if we spend too much time together...”
“But I’m worried about you.”
Kurose-san went silent at that. Her cheeks turned red before my eyes and she adjusted her hair to cover her ears as if to hide her embarrassment.
“Okay... Thank you,” she replied quietly while looking away from me.
Kurose-san’s place was a fifteen-minute walk away.
“Sorry. It’s far, right? Usually, I ride a bike to the station, but they said it would rain sometime after noon today,” she said apologetically.
It was true that this morning’s weather forecast had said it would rain. There had been clouds, for sure, but that seemed to be it for the day.
“We’re almost there. It’s that building.”
Kurose-san pointed at an apartment building seven or eight stories high that was ahead of us and off to the right. We were walking along a narrow street with little pedestrian traffic. There was a small unmanned Shinto shrine in front of us too.
Seeing numerous posters on nearby utility poles and notice boards saying “High rates of bag-snatching in this area!” I shuddered. I was glad I’d decided to walk her home.
“It’s on the second floor here. Thank you,” said Kurose-san at the entrance to the building, trying to lead things to a goodbye.
“I’ve come this far, so I might as well stick around until you get to your apartment,” I said.
We stepped inside the building together. There was no automatic lock on the front door, so anyone could get in. Since I’d spotted those posters outside earlier, I felt safer walking her the rest of the way.
There was only one elevator in the building, and it was on the eighth floor right now. Kurose-san chose to take the stairs instead.
And as we got to the second floor...
“Ah, Maria!”
The voice that I heard made me doubt my ears.
“Runa...!” Kurose-san was surprised too.
There, in the second-floor hallway, was Runa.
That said, I hadn’t seen her myself yet. Kurose-san had gotten there first, while I was still on the stairs behind her with just one foot on the second floor. From where I stood, the wall was in the way of me seeing the whole hallway.
“Runa... Why’re you here?” Kurose-san asked, glancing at me for a moment before looking at her.
“I kept calling the intercom but nobody answered. I don’t have a key, so I can’t get in,” replied Runa.
“Ah, Grandpa is at the hospital right now... I think Grandma will be home at any moment now. It’s about time Mom got back too.”
“Huh? Is Grandpa okay?”
“Yeah. It’s the usual thing.” Giving brief replies, Kurose-san looked at Runa once again. “I asked why you’re here, though.”
“Ah, you see...” began Runa in a slightly reserved tone. “After the get-together, I went to Shin-Okubo with Akari to hang out. But ever since we made croffles at my place the other day, I really got hooked on them, and I had some at Shin-Okubo which were made by pros and those were, like, crazy good, super delish. So I got some to-go because I wanted you to try some.”
I could hear a sound like a plastic bag rustling.
“Since, you know, we had the same taste in food and all. So I was sure you’d like them too...”
As Runa spoke, I heard footsteps approaching.
“Eh? W-Wait, Runa...” said Kurose-san.
I could tell she was flustered.
“Huh? Is someone with you?” asked Runa.
Her footsteps came even closer. And then...
“Ryuto...?!”
I ended up running into my girlfriend, whom I’d parted with a few hours ago, and in front of her sister’s home, of all places...
“Ah, yeah, Kashima-kun walked me home,” Kurose-san explained in a bit of a panic. “We ran into each other at a library after that and studied together.”
“A library?” asked Runa, her face clouding over in worry. “Not the study room? The one in that Cram School K at Ikebukuro where Ryuto goes...”
“Huh?” This time, it was Kurose-san’s turn to be surprised. “Kashima-kun, you go to Cram School K too...? And in Ikebukuro...?”
Kurose-san had turned around and was looking at me in disbelief. At the same time, Runa was patiently waiting for me to speak. I didn’t know where to even begin explaining myself.
This couldn’t get any worse...
Looking up above, I cursed fate.
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