9
However, Haruno Yukinoshita spake thus.
Sticking a bookmark into the book I was reading, I tossed it down on the table and lifted my head. From the sidewalk café near Chiba Station, I had a good view of the people coming and going.
The month was coming to a close, the skies were cloudy, and the temperature was low, so then why would they bother making this café outdoors? I got my coat back on with a resentful glare. The person I was looking at was the one I was waiting for, walking toward me while waving. She quickly bought a coffee at the register, then came over to the seat in front of me.
“Sorry to make you wait!” said Haruno Yukinoshita, just as cheerfully as she had the night before when she’d suddenly called me on the phone.
I don’t answer unknown numbers on principle, but if someone calls me over and over, don’t be surprised if I break. Maybe it’s some kind of emergency, I’d thought and reconsidered. And then when I had answered, she had told me only the time and place where we were meeting and then hung up, and now here we were. When I’d tried to call her back to refuse, she wouldn’t pick up…
“…Uh, how did you know my phone number?” I asked her.
“I got it from Hayato,” Haruno said all cutesy wootsy with not a shred of shyness.
Oh yeah, guess I did tell Hayama before, huh? Bastard… Just handing it over to the number one person he shouldn’t…
But now that she knew, there was nothing to be done about it. Firmly swearing that from this point forth I would set her calls on refuse, I decided to ask her what her business was in calling me there that day. “Did you want something?”
Haruno seemed displeased by the way I cut straight to the point, puffing up her cheeks in a pout as she glared at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re so cold! And when I finally got a date with you! Your attitude is sooo different from that time with Gahama-chan.”
“Da— Uh, that wasn’t what that was, and this isn’t that, either,” I replied, stuttering.
She chuckled smugly, unbothered, and pointed at herself. “You hate pretty older girls like me, Hikigaya?”
“You might be pretty, but if you’re saying that stuff yourself, it’s no wonder someone wouldn’t like you,” I answered.
Haruno nodded, hmm-hmmed, then, with upturned eyes, offered me a stinging reply, “But you hate girls who won’t admit they think of themselves as pretty, even when they do.”
“…True.” Suddenly, she’s convinced me… I really didn’t think highly of girls like that.
Well, if I’m to be honest… If anything, I love both pretty girls and older girls!
However, when the subject was Haruno Yukinoshita, other feelings won over.
I’m scared of her. Of her perfect outer mask, and the intensity underneath that she doesn’t try to hide if you see through to it. And also of those eyes, which seem like they have something hiding in their depths. That’s why I slid my gaze away and asked once again, “So anyway, what is this about? Why’d you go to the trouble of calling me out?”
“Ah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to check your answers. Did you ask Yukino-chan about her course selection?”
“…I do know what it is, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to say.”
“Oh my, how dutiful of you. But she did actually tell you. Huh… She trusts you quite a lot, huh?” Haruno smiled brightly as if to say, How nice.
It was weirdly embarrassing to have her appraising me. And that reminded me of that conversation in the health room, too. I found myself fanning my face. “…Trust? That’s not what that’s about.”
“Oh, so you do understand.”
I was struck silent. Though I hadn’t meant that answer as anything serious at all, Haruno Yukinoshita replied without a smile, as if this was so tedious to her.
She took a gulp of her coffee, then traced the rim of her cup with her finger as she looked at me with dark eyes. “Yes, that’s not at all trust… It’s something more cruel.” Her soft-looking lips smiled pleasantly but not her eyes. Her cold voice had a ring to it that made her sound like an entirely different person. “Nothing’s changed. And she thinks that’s fine, you know. Just one of her many cute traits, but…I really don’t like it myself.” Her pretty face twisted callously. Her eyes were looking at me, while in fact she wasn’t actually seeing me at all.
I wanted to withdraw, even though my thoughts had still not yet come together. “If it’s not trust, then…what is it?”
“Who knows? But at the very least…” Haruno offered a dramatic shrug, and for just a moment, her smile returned, and her eyes focused on me. “I wouldn’t call it something real… That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
It was true; I had said that. Even I couldn’t grasp the meaning, the significance, of those words. They had no solid concept behind them—only faith.
Something real. Something to call truth or possibly honesty. Fidelity even. I still don’t understand what it is, exactly.
“Is there such a thing as something real…?” Haruno muttered, looking up at the winter sky covered in a thick layer of clouds. Her question had just the slightest lonely ring to it, and I wondered where it was directed.
It made me think back. A certain person had called it a closed happiness. Another person had asked me if I hadn’t noticed. And now before me, Haruno Yukinoshita doubted its existence in the first place. If there was such a thing as truth or honesty at all.
My hand felt like it might tremble as I reached out to the paperback I’d left on the table to touch it gently.
Having been blasted by the outside wind all this time, the book had gone cold, and it made me hesitate to read the rest, to know the conclusion.
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