Volume 6 Interlude

There are all kinds of people at a university.

Students and professors.

People from other universities show up sometimes too.

Because it’s that kind of place, it wouldn’t be strange to run into someone you never expected to meet. Still, the probability is extremely low, practically nonexistent. In fact, nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I hadn’t even bumped into someone I vaguely knew from the same high school and ended up becoming friends with them. Dramatic encounters like that don’t happen very often.

That’s why I was so shocked.

Sendai-san was at this university.

I stare intently at my smartphone.

Inside it is the contact information for Sendai-san that I was given just a little while ago.

“Maika?”

Called by Shiori, who’s sitting in the seat next to me, I lift my gaze.

“What is it, Shiori? What’s up?”

“What’s up? That’s my line. You’ve been glaring at your phone for a while now. Did something happen?”

Something did happen.

But I can’t tell Shiori about it here.

The fact that I ran into Sendai-san earlier, and the decision we made there, I can’t talk about any of that until Sendai-san comes over to my house. For now, I have to focus on the lecture that’s about to start.

“I dropped my phone on the way here. I was just worried it might be broken.”

I hadn’t dropped it at all. In fact, I’d gripped it tightly the entire way to the lecture hall so I wouldn’t drop it. But I couldn’t say I’d been thinking about Sendai-san, so I had no choice but to lie.

“Eh, are you okay? Did it break?”

“It seems fine. Anyway, Shiori, what are you doing today?”

“Like I said this morning, I still want you to let me stay over.”

“Got it.”

“Sorry…”

Shiori makes a guilty face, so I smile and tell her, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks.”

I look at Shiori as she says that with visible relief.

I don’t mind her staying over.

That part doesn’t bother me.

But still, I’m pretty shaken up.

I feel like my emotions are slowly sinking, and I have to tie a rope around them and yank them back up, swallowing a sigh.

Shiori had kept telling me that she was living with a relative.

There had been several suspicious points in her story all along, so I wasn’t particularly surprised to learn that she was actually rooming with someone who wasn’t a relative, but…

I never imagined that the person she was living with was Sendai-san.

Shiori and I are best friends. In high school, we were practically always together. Well, saying “always” might be a slight exaggeration, but we were together so much that it felt that way. And yet, she had never told me the truth. The mere fact that Shiori and Sendai-san were friends in the first place had already given me quite a shock.

Last year, I had the chance to speak directly with Sendai-san and asked her whether she and Shiori were friends. At the time, she had answered that they weren’t. That question had simply been me voicing a small accumulation of discomfort and doubts that had been nagging at the back of my mind. I hadn’t asked it with any real conviction. So I accepted Sendai-san’s answer.

But I hadn’t fully believed it.

At the same time, I hadn’t completely disbelieved it either.

I had simply left it at that.

And yet today, I learned that they really had been friends all along. Because of that, I couldn’t properly organize the things I had heard from Sendai-san earlier. It felt like I had just finished cleaning my room only to kick over the trash can, scattering everything again, and now I have to start cleaning all over from scratch.

Once again, I push those thoughts aside and tell myself it’s fine, yet now small buds of doubt begin sprouting one after another inside my heart, making me want to cast a suspicious gaze at everything.

“......Maika. Maika, hey.”

A light tap on my shoulder pulls me back to reality.

“Ah, sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

I look at Shiori, even though she hadn’t said anything at all.

“That’s fine, but are you okay? You’ve been spacing out a lot. You’re not feeling sick or anything, are you?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“......Hey, this isn’t my fault, is it?”

Shiori asks hesitantly as she looks at me.

“Eh?”

“I mean, I suddenly showed up and have been staying over this whole time.”

“Ah, no, no. It’s not your fault, Shiori.”

I smile as I say it, but my thoughts drift back to our high school days.

They settle on last year’s winter break, when Shiori and I studied together, just the two of us.

Back then, I asked Shiori if she was close with Sendai-san.

Her answer was the same as Sendai-san’s. They said they weren’t close.

But in reality, they were already good friends back then, and now they’re living together as roommates.

“Really?”

Shiori asks, still sounding uneasy.

I think I should’ve asked more thoroughly back then.

I should’ve asked her to tell me the truth.

But even if I had…

No, that wouldn’t work.

It’s not good to keep thinking about this in my current state.

“Being home alone is boring anyway, and I’m really glad you’re here, Shiori. It kind of feels like we’re room-sharing, doesn’t it?”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, yeah. Oh, what’s actual room-sharing like?”

As if I’ve just remembered, I put away the smartphone I’d been holding the whole time and turn my body toward Shiori.

“Eh? Why are you suddenly asking about room-sharing?”

“I’m just curious. I want to know what it’s like living with a relative. Tell me, for future reference.”

“Maika, do you want to try living as roommates?”

“I might someday. You never know.”

“It’s normal. We don’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

Shiori answers in a matter-of-fact tone.

I don’t expect to hear much from her. She barely talked about her roommate situation the entire time she’s been staying over, and I don’t intend to press her. Why she didn’t tell me the truth, or why she hid the fact that she was friends with Sendai-san—

Those things can wait until after today’s conversation is over and the strained relationship between Shiori and Sendai-san has gone back to normal.

I know that, but I figure it’s fine to ask this much.

“Since you live together, you must get along pretty well with that relative, right?”

The frustration of not being told anything as her best friend, along with a fairly strong curiosity, moves my mouth.

Even if I piece together the fragments of information I’ve gathered, they won’t form an accurate picture. If I only listen halfway and fill in the blanks myself, I’ll definitely end up with the wrong answer. So this is just for reference.

“Well, yeah.”

“I didn’t know you had relatives you’re close enough with to fight with. Shiori, you never told me anything like that.”

“There just wasn’t an opportunity to talk about it.”

“I see. Does that person look like you, Shiori?”

“Why would you think we look alike?”

“Because you’re relatives, I thought you might resemble each other.”

“I don’t think we look alike.”

Her clear voice reaches my ears.

“Then what kind of person are they?”

“Hmm, let’s see... She seems kind, and she has long hair.”

“Isn’t that a bit of a vague description?”

“Because that’s just how it is.”

“Heh. I’d like to meet her sometime.”

“If the chance comes up.”

Shiori says it with a troubled look, then smoothly changes the subject. “Oh, right. About the assignment we got today…” I hold back the urge to press her a little more and instead ask, “What about the assignment?”

“There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

Her voice sounds uncertain.

I guess that’s as far as the talk about her relative goes.

We’ve spent so much time together and talked about so many things, but we don’t know everything about each other. Everyone has things they don’t want to talk about, and I believe there’s no need to force out secrets someone desperately wants to keep hidden.

There’s a “reason” behind everything.

A reason they can’t say it.

A reason they don’t want to say it.

Precisely because Shiori is my best friend, I should respect her “reasons.”

Shiori isn’t the kind of girl who’d tell lies that hurt people.

That’s why I think I should wait.

“Ah, the teacher’s here.”

I’d been answering mechanically, but at Shiori’s voice I reply, “We’ll continue this later,” and turn to face the front.

It’s been almost two months since I started university, and May is almost over. I’ve gotten used to this environment full of new things, but today the ninety-minute lecture feels especially long. It just won’t end.

I glance at Shiori, who hardly ever talks about the person she’s room-sharing with.

Unlike back when we were high school students, she’s listening to the lecture seriously.

There are other things that have changed since then.

The piercing hidden by her hair right now is one of them.

She didn’t have it back in high school.

It’s not strange that I now have piercings when I didn’t before, but when I invited Shiori, who also didn’t have any, to get matching ones, she didn’t give me a clear answer. I once thought the reason this same Shiori suddenly decided to get piercings might’ve been her boyfriend’s influence, but it could’ve been Sendai-san’s influence instead. I wonder if Sendai-san had piercings in her ears too. I was so shocked to learn that Sendai-san was at this university that I don’t even remember. Thinking back to our high school days, it wouldn’t be surprising if Sendai-san had piercings, but my memory of what kind of clothes she was wearing today is already vague.

I shift my gaze away from Shiori and look forward again.

No good.

The more I try not to think about it, the more my mind turns to Shiori and Sendai-san.

For one thing, those two have so little in common that I can’t understand at all why they’re room-sharing, which makes it impossible not to look back on the past.

But I can’t find anything that connects the past with the present.

Sendai-san had said the reason she was living together with Shiori was because they were friends. However, in the end, both the reason she had lied about not being friends back in high school and the catalyst that brought them close enough to start living together remained unclear, as the conversation shifted entirely to Shiori’s story. 

There were several other points that kept bothering me too.

If I really wanted to clear everything up, it would be faster to question Shiori, who was sitting right next to me, rather than pressing Sendai-san for answers.

Not that I had any intention of doing that, though.

I let out a heavy sigh and nearly collapsed forward onto my desk, but stopped myself at the last moment.

This was still during a lecture, after all.

I straightened my back and fixed my gaze on the teacher.

No matter how much I thought about it, I kept going in circles without making any progress. Before I got so dizzy I felt like I might collapse, I forcibly pulled my thoughts away from Shiori and Sendai-san and focused on the lecture instead.

The length of time itself hadn’t changed.

Still, I concentrated on the teacher’s voice so I wouldn’t think about anything unnecessary.

✧✧✧✧✧

After a long, exhausting day at university, I finished up, had dinner with Shiori at a family restaurant, and then we headed home together.

I opened the front door and called out, “I’m home,” as I stepped inside. Shiori’s “I’m home” followed right after mine.

I think this kind of thing is really nice.

I’ve never shared a place with someone before, so I don’t really know what it’s like, but having someone else in the same space puts me in a good mood. Of course, that’s only because that person is Shiori. I even catch myself thinking that living together with her might not be so bad.

That’s how much I see Shiori as a precious friend.

And that’s exactly why I’d wanted her not to hide the fact that she was sharing a place with Sendai-san.

“Shiori, want something to drink?”

When I looked at Shiori sitting on the rug, she replied, “I want orange juice.”

“I’ll get it for you now, so just stay there.”

I took the orange juice from the refrigerator, poured it into a glass, and set it on the table.

“Thanks.”

Shiori smiled brightly at me.

As I sat across from her and we chatted about nothing in particular, my smartphone rang. When I checked the screen, I saw a message from Sendai-san that read, “I’ll be there soon. Is everything okay?”

Today, I had invited Sendai-san by saying, “Come over to my place after your part-time job.” That one remark was meant to help Shiori and Sendai-san make up, and it was the biggest thing I had to accomplish today.

The two of them were currently avoiding each other.

Shiori kept staying over at my place and refused to return to the home she shared with Sendai-san. Meanwhile, Sendai-san, who had her tutoring job, wouldn’t come over to my place either, instead telling me to pass along, “Hurry up and come home.”

There were tons of things I wanted to ask and say to both Shiori and Sendai-san, but it was better to focus on bringing them together and sending them back home.

I replied to Sendai-san with “It’s fine. I’ll be waiting.” Then I shifted my gaze from my phone to Shiori.

“Shiori, are you really sure you don’t need to go home?”

“Yeah.”

“I think the person you fought with is pretty worried, you know.”

I asked while picturing Sendai-san’s face.