Volume 2 Episode 10

 It's awkward.

The air between Miyagi and me can only be described with that word.

On the last day of summer vacation, I touched a place I’d never touched before and heard a voice I’d never heard. Well, it was just her chest I touched, and I didn’t exactly hear much of her voice.

Even so.

Even so, it’s awkward.

We’re just doing our homework, flipping through textbooks, but we’re spending this time stealing glances at each other’s expressions.

“Say something already.”

I toss an eraser at Miyagi, who’s been silently refusing to open her mouth.

The air in her room, the first time I’ve been here since that day, feels strange and unsettling.

“Why don’t *you* say something, Sendai-san?”

Miyagi responds curtly, throwing the eraser back. I pick up the eraser that rolls across the table from the opposite side and erase some text I don’t even need to erase.

Today, Miyagi is sitting across from me, not beside me like usual.

The end of summer vacation doesn’t mean the end of summer itself.

Even after that day, our summer has continued, and even though it’s September, the hot days persist. Yesterday and today, ice cream still tastes great, and the air conditioner is still a necessity.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this room is currently kept at a temperature that’s not worth complaining about. There’s no excuse to take off Miyagi’s clothes because of the heat, nor for me to strip down. Of course, I haven’t touched Miyagi’s body, and there’s been no opportunity to do so.

Even though a few days have passed since the new semester started, I’m out of sorts just thinking about such obvious things. Today, Miyagi and I aren’t doing *that* kind of thing.

There’s no atmosphere for it.

That’s only natural.

We’re not in the kind of relationship where we’d have sex, and it’s not like that kind of mood would just happen.  

—So why?

I won’t deny that I wanted to do that kind of thing back then, and I’m not surprised to realize I had those desires. Sexual desire is something everyone has, isn’t it? Surely Miyagi has it too. So, wanting it isn’t all that strange.

What I should be concerned about is that those desires were directed at Miyagi.

“Why are you staring at me?”

Miyagi says in a voice colder than usual.

Her icy gaze doesn’t exactly feel great either. I know her tone and look are deliberate, so I shouldn’t let them get to me. But they weigh on my heart, heavy enough to make me feel like I’m sinking.

“Is it wrong to look?”

I ask in as flat a tone as I can manage.

“It’s wrong.”

“Then I won’t look.”

I drop my gaze to the textbook.

'Do your homework.'

If she’d given me an order like that, it might’ve distracted me, but Miyagi is focused on her own homework. I’m supposed to do the same, but I can’t concentrate on the problems in front of me. Before I know it, I’m replaying memories of Miyagi in my head.

I can forgive myself for being like this, but accepting it is hard.

To so clearly recognize my desire for Miyagi was unexpected.

The sensation of her chest still lingers in my hand.

I clench my right hand tightly.

I grip it so hard that my nails leave marks on my palm, then release it. I look up and roll the eraser toward Miyagi.

“Hey, is it okay if I look at you after all?”

“You’re already looking, aren’t you? Why do you even need to ask?”

“Because you told me not to.”

“Then stop it and just do your homework seriously, Sendai-san.”

The eraser doesn’t come back.

Miyagi is making an openly displeased face.

“I said it’s not okay, didn’t I?”

“You said it’s 'wrong', not that it’s 'not okay'.”

When I deliberately correct her, Miyagi furrows her brow. Then, with a clearly annoyed expression, she stands up, grabs a manga from the bookshelf, and returns.

“If you’re not in the mood for homework, just read this.”

She places the manga on the table.

“It’s the one I bought yesterday, so you haven’t read it yet.”

Apparently, she’s saying if I’m going to look at something, it should be the manga, not her face.

I find this kind of reaction from Miyagi cute.

But there’s no reason for it to stir any desire.

Miyagi is just an ordinary girl you’d find anywhere, nothing particularly special about her. Last year, she was the unremarkable, plain girl in my class, and now she’s the unremarkable, plain girl in the class next door. Well, to be precise, she’s an unremarkable, plain girl who’s just a *little* unusual. Ordinary girls don’t order you to lick their feet or bite hard enough to draw blood.

When I think about it like that, it’s kind of harsh.

To feel desire for someone like that, I must’ve been missing a few screws of rationality.

I’m sure I won’t feel that way again.

I want to touch Miyagi, but even if I did, it wouldn’t lead to *that*. That’s what I believe. I don’t want to think about why those screws came loose, and I don’t need to know. Besides, even if I wanted to touch her, she’s sitting frustratingly far away.

“You’re not reading it?”

Miyagi tosses the eraser at me.

“I’ll read it next time I come.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“That’s for you to decide, isn’t it?”

“That’s true,” Miyagi says, closing her textbook. But she immediately starts flipping through it again and mutters under her breath:

“…I thought you wouldn’t come today, Sendai.”

Her words, ignoring the flow of our conversation, hang in the air.

The sound of her flipping through the textbook echoes and fades, filling the sudden silence.

“Why’d you think that?”

“Because of what happened.”

“I thought *you* wouldn’t call me over anymore.”

Today, Miyagi invited me over.

That felt unexpected.

I’d thought that even after the new semester started, she wouldn’t reach out.

“We didn’t break any rules.”

Her textbook, which she’d been flipping through, snaps shut.

When I think about it, that day was just an attempt that didn’t go anywhere. Since we didn’t go all the way, we didn’t break the rule about not having sex.

“Then why are you sitting over there instead of next to me?”

Seizing the first real conversation we’ve had today, I ask about something that’s been on my mind.

“Because I can’t trust you, Sendai-san.”

Her blunt words make me silently agree.

I can’t deny that I’m untrustworthy. But Miyagi didn’t exactly push me away either.

I want to say that, but if I did, she’d probably clam up again, so I swallow the words.

“Let’s do our homework.”

It’s rare for Miyagi to say something so serious, but my mind is more focused on her than on filling my notebook. My eyes want to look at Miyagi, not the textbook.

I spin my pen on my finger.

Miyagi opens her textbook, as if to banish me from her sight, and starts writing in her notebook. Naturally, her eyes are fixed on her work, not on me.

I spin the pen again.

This time, it falls from my finger with a clatter. But Miyagi doesn’t look up.

“Do your homework, but come over here.”

I tap the empty space next to me, calling her over.

“I’m not going.”

She answers without looking up.

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“No way.”

“Is that an order?”

When I ask, she finally looks up.

“It’s an order.”

Her firm tone stops me in my tracks.

If it’s an order, I have no choice but to back down obediently and look at my textbook.

I’m always saved by the word “order.” While I keep pushing Miyagi to give me orders and confront me with choices, I use those orders as an excuse to back off. Truthfully, I’m as spineless as Miyagi says.

Just like I didn’t have the courage to decisively change our relationship that day, I don’t have the courage now to defy her words and sit next to her. And I’m sure Miyagi doesn’t have the courage to come sit by me either. That’s probably why there’s this distance between us today.

“Sendai, I don’t get this part.”

I look at Miyagi, called by her curt voice, and see her pointing at her textbook with her pen.

“Here.”

“It’s hard to see from over here.”

I can tell what part she’s pointing at.

I know what kind of problem it is.

Looking at a textbook filled with numbers from the opposite side isn’t a big deal, but it could be an opportunity to close the empty space between us. But Miyagi silently turns the textbook toward me.

“Stingy, Miyagi.”

I scribble on the textbook out of spite, though I have no real grudge against it, and she quickly erases it.

“Stingy how?”

“That’s just how you are.”

“Don’t say weird things and just explain it.”

“Fine, fine.”

I answer carelessly and look at the textbook. As I write a formula on the edge of her notebook and explain how to solve it, Miyagi, with a face that seems to half-understand, starts writing numbers on the page.

If we’d continued that day.

I’ve imagined it a few times over the past few days, but I think it’s something best left to the imagination.

I don’t carry such a pure and spotless conviction that nothing should be done unless you’re dating, but if we had gone all the way, we wouldn’t be sitting here doing homework together like this. Thinking of it that way, I should praise myself from a few days ago for not going further. Sitting in this room studying together, or reading books side by side like this, has to be more enjoyable than a one-time physical encounter.

Or so I tell myself.

“...Is this right?”

Miyagi, having worked out the answer, looks up.

“It’s right.”

When I check the words she’s written in her notebook and tell her so, she immediately lowers her eyes back to the textbook.

“So, Miyagi. Any other orders?”

I ask as if to pull her thoughts away from the textbook, but there’s no reply. She only sits there in silence, her face showing displeasure.

I can imagine why Miyagi won’t open her mouth.

If she carelessly gives an order, it will be as if she is dragging up summer vacation again. Commands that once were harmless—like read me a book or do your homework—have, before either of us noticed, become precarious things. If she were to give the same kind of order now, it would sound like she was demanding a continuation of summer. On the other hand, if she only gave some halfhearted order like don’t come closer and nothing else, the five thousand yen would end up without a purpose.

I don’t need the five thousand yen anymore.

I could say that, but if I admitted I didn’t need it, then I would lose my reason to come here. And I don’t want to say that.

In my line of sight, Miyagi flips through her textbook as if searching for the words she ought to speak. But there is no way the answer she is looking for is written there. With her eyes still lowered, she speaks in a quiet voice.

“Go home when you’ve finished your homework.”

“That’s your order?”

“Yeah.”

But Miyagi’s face doesn’t look like someone who truly means yeah, that’s fine. I know her well enough by now to see through it. She only said something that sounded plausible because she felt she had to say something.

“Choose another order.”

“Why is Sendai-san the one giving me orders?”

“Because the homework will be done soon.”

There really isn’t much of it. We could finish in about an hour, and compared to the time I usually leave this house, that would be quite early.

“Your order, the same one as before okay?”

I can guess that Miyagi will come up with a different order, but I ask anyway.

“...Do my hair.”

Miyagi mutters in a low voice.

“Your hair?”

“You said before that you’d do my hair, remember?”

Before—something I myself had said.

Tracing back through my memory from Miyagi’s words, I quickly find it. The day we first met again after that kiss in May, when I was flipping through the magazine I had bought for Umina, I had said it then.

“How do you want me to do it?”

I remember what I said, but I don’t remember the girl in that magazine—neither her face nor her hairstyle. Maybe because I never had enough interest in those magazines, bought only to have something to talk about with Umina, to keep them in my memory for long.

“As long as it’s not weird, anything’s fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just make it look good somehow.”

Her request is vague, thrown out carelessly, and yet she doesn’t move.

Still sitting across from me, she just looks at me.

“Miyagi, come over here.”

I’m no psychic, and my arms don’t stretch, so unless Miyagi moves, I can’t touch her hair. She should know that, but she shows no sign of standing up.

“Do you really think I can reach your hair from here?”

I could go over to her, but I know full well she wouldn’t like it.

“Miyagi.”

I call her again, and with a reluctant face she finally stands up, comes to my side, and sits down at a slight distance. She doesn’t have to be that cautious.

I’m not going to do anything, I tell myself inwardly, pulling a brush from my bag.

“Turn your back this way.”

I tap her shoulder, and she gives a small jolt. Even so, she obediently turns her back to me, and I touch her hair, long enough to reach her shoulders. This time she doesn’t flinch, but I can feel the tension radiating from her back.

This is hard to do.

Just as she says she can’t trust me, the air around her is taut, and that tension spreads to me.

“Your hair is really pretty.”

Hoping to soften the stiff atmosphere even a little, I give the most ordinary sort of compliment. Not that it’s false—the black hair is silky and smooth, my fingers sliding easily through it.

But Miyagi doesn’t answer.

With no choice, I brush her hair in silence.

I still can’t recall the girl’s hairstyle from that magazine, and Miyagi’s request is so vague it’s no help. Abandoning memory and abandoning her unclear request, I gather her hair and begin braiding it.

“A braid?”

Miyagi straightens her back and half-turns her face toward me.

“Yeah. Do you want something different?”

There are plenty of cute hairstyles.

I could look through the images on my phone and find something that would suit her. But I keep braiding her hair.

“Anything’s fine. ...But the hairstyles in that magazine were different.”

For someone saying anything’s fine, she doesn’t sound like she means it.

“I’ll make it cute for you.”

I don’t want to admit that I don’t remember the girl from the magazine.

And if I braid it, I get to keep touching Miyagi’s hair longer. That thought, I definitely don’t want to say aloud.

“It doesn’t have to be cute.”

Miyagi faces forward again and answers. Then she continues, “You know...”

“What?”

“I’m going to keep calling you over, and giving you orders.”

“I know.”

“Then, until graduation, whenever I call you, you have to come here like always.”

For the first time, the orders have a clear time limit. I had also thought I would only be here until graduation. I had always figured that would be the right amount of time. But hearing the remaining time spoken aloud—

“So, about half a year?”

“Yeah. Until then, your after-school time belongs to me.”

Miyagi says it as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and the taut air between us loosens just a little. The word tension, clinging tightly to her back, peels away by about a third.

I undo the braid I had made and redo it.

Miyagi remains seated quietly, without complaint.

Her silky hair still feels so pleasant under my fingers.

The same fragrance as from Miyagi’s bed brushes my nose. A shampoo scent unlike mine, unlike Umina’s or Mariko’s, pulling me a little closer to her without realizing.

“Half a year, huh... Feels short.”

I let the words slip out like a murmur. My fingers keep braiding her hair.

“Yeah.”

Miyagi’s voice comes, flat and without emotion.