Chapter Text
Instead of a personal phone call, Chihaya decides to discuss the topic of her relationship with the two most enthusiastic commenters face to face. She really didn’t have a choice after Kana sent 10 texts in a row, her usual composure reduced to a string of question marks. Sumire had proposed a girls’ afternoon, clearly keen to get all the gossip. So that’s how they end up in Sumire’s bedroom, Kana perched on the stool of the dressing table, Sumire cross-legged on her bed, and Chihaya sprawled on her front across the carpet.
Chihaya had hesitated at first at the thought of spending all afternoon doing their nails – it seems a bit pointless when you have to keep your nails short after all – but Sumire had just rolled her eyes, pointing out that she has years of experience in the matter, and besides, Chihaya can always just remove it if she doesn’t like it.
Sumire, true to her words, is almost effortlessly manicuring her own nails, with the only sign of her concentration the tip of her tongue sticking out between her lips. Even Kana is so intent on multitasking between finding out more and painting her nails a deep plum that she completely forgets to criticise Chihaya’s posture.
“But why didn’t you tell us?”
“…I should have told you first?”
“Yes!” Kana and Sumire say in unison.
“Honestly, I can’t believe that I had to find out from Instagram,” Sumire mutters under her breath.
“Oh. I’m sorry, it’s just that we wanted to keep it quiet to begin with. I didn’t think that people would figure it out from the picture,” she says, keeping her fingers tightly crossed behind her back.
Kana purses her lips as she looks at Chihaya. Taichi has it easy, she thinks to herself. She bets the boys won’t give him nearly as much of a hard time and would just accept it on face value. Talking to Kana and Sumire, on the other hand, is like going through an interrogation. But she owes it to Taichi and all the effort he’s put into this stupid scheme not to crack under pressure. She can’t let his hard work go to waste, or let Sudo force him into permanent club room cleaning duties. She could take whatever punishment Sudo would deal out, but it would be unfair for that to fall on Taichi.
“How did it happen?” Kana asks, with a glint of something like determination in her eyes.
They’d decided to keep it as close to the truth as possible. “It just sort of happened after the tournament the other week. I’d lost and he comforted me, and I just realised how much I’d missed him.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely untrue. If she closes her eyes now, she can see him sat on the chair next to her, a familiar wry smile on his face. After almost two years of no daily contact with him, she had somehow gotten used to making do without him, but the unexpected exposure to his presence made her realise how deprived of him she’d been. She wonders idly whether he’d actually missed her too, or whether he’d still prefer to keep his distance from her. The only reason he’d spoken to her that day, after all, was because of Sudo’s bet.
“Just – don’t hurt him, senpai,” Sumire says. She looks down at her nails as she says it, hiding her expression. But Chihaya can tell from the crack of vulnerability in her voice that she’s entirely heartfelt.
She reaches out, takes Sumire’s non-painted hand in hers and squeezes it. “I won’t.”
Sumire looks a little bit teary as her eyes meet Chihaya’s, but she musters up a smile at her. Chihaya swears she can almost hear Kana smile at the same time, but the sound is quickly muffled by an intake of breath.
“Chihaya-chan, your nails!”
She looks down at their hands, clasped together, and flips them over to see the tacky bright blue polish smeared over Sumire’s hand.
“Oops –” she says, dropping her hand.
Sumire’s eyes widen in horror at the sight for a second, but then she bursts out laughing. “I really don’t know what else I should have expected, senpai!”
There’s a familiar furrow between Kana’s eyes, a look of disapproval at Chihaya’s clumsy ways, but it soon vanishes behind her own giggles.
Chihaya smiles in response, more out of relief that they’d bought her story than anything else. Somewhere, she feels a slight pang of guilt at lying to her friends, but if it means saving Taichi’s student life from whatever hell Sudo might come up with, she’ll push through it. She has to.
The next time she walks into the Shiranami practice room, she’s met with the kind of muffled silence that only happens when you walk into a room which was talking about you immediately before.
She looks around the room, her eyes desperate to find someone who can give her an explanation. But instead, she’s greeted by Harada, moving towards her at an unbelievable speed for someone with knees as old as his.
“Chihaya-chan,” he says, with his usual forceful intensity, before dropping his voice to what he must think is a low whisper. “What is this I hear about you and Matsuge-kun?”
Hiroshi wanders over as well, his arms lazily crossed across his chest. There’s a confident grin on his face as he asks, “Are you and Matsuge-kun…you know?”
She winces. She’d forgotten, after all, that Hiroshi follows her on Instagram. That despite being her senpai and a proper adult, he actually isn’t that much older than her and is “totally down with the kids” in his use of social media (or so he claims). He must have been the one who told Harada and seemingly, just about everyone else in the society, who are now all staring at her.
“Well, um,” she starts, trying to think of a way to answer that question that actually seems natural. But she’s saved from having to fumble her way through it by someone stepping through the door behind her.
“Are Chihaya and I what?” He asks, by way of greeting.
“Taichi!” She exclaims. She’s never been more relieved to see him in her life. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but it’s certainly up there.
Without really meaning, her hand shoots out towards him. He looks confused for a second, but after only a slight hesitation, he takes it. His fingers are wonderfully cool in hers and he squeezes her hand, reassuringly.
“Well,” says Hiroshi, looking entirely too pleased with himself as he glances between them. “That answers that question then.”
Harada’s laughter booms throughout the room. “Good on you kids,” he says, slapping Taichi on the back with extreme force, before he vanishes to finish the arrangements for today’s practice, dragging Hiroshi with him.
“Sorry,” she whispers to Taichi. “They ambushed me as soon as I arrived…” So much for their plan of presenting a unified front.
He shrugs. “We should have expected it.”
“They seem to have bought it, though,” she adds, hopefully. If it really was that easy to convince people, maybe they’d be okay for the rest of the six months.
“Chihaya-chan, you’re playing Hiroshi,” Harada proclaims from the other side of the room. “Matsuge-kun, it’s been too long. You’re on reading duty.”
She shrugs back at Taichi and goes to sit opposite Hiroshi, who’s already got a set of cards out. She starts shuffling them without much intention behind her motions. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Hiroshi staring at her. She wouldn’t put the use of tactics past him, but given the circumstances, it's probably something else.
“I’m sorry, Chihaya-chan,” he says, looking oddly guilty suddenly. “It’s just that I was so excited about being right that I had to tell everyone.”
“About what?”
“That you’d eventually understand your feelings for Matsuge-kun, of course. We had a long-running bet on it – nothing serious, mind you.”
She freezes. She’d understand her what?
He chuckles at her obvious discomfort. “We all knew that you were pretty naïve, Chihaya-chan. But when you asked me to talk to him– that was a dead giveaway.”
But back then she hadn’t liked him like that, had she? Her concern was just that of a good friend. She might have been completely oblivious to his feelings, but she had just hated to see him so miserable and wanted to help in whatever way she could, despite his refusal to talk to her about what was clearly bothering him.
Anyway, regardless of what her motivations had been in the past, Hiroshi’s narrative is built on the shaky foundation of Taichi and Chihaya’s pretence of a relationship. Whatever conclusions he has come to are just influenced by the fact that he thinks they actually are an item. She shouldn’t be swayed by whatever he’s saying now.
But, she supposes, there is no harm in letting him believe it, if it makes their story that much more convincing. So, in turn, she just plasters what she hopes is a shy smile (and not a manic grin) onto her face and gets back to shuffling the cards.
Ten minutes later, she can hear Taichi clear his throat from across the room. He’s got a box of reader’s cards next to him, but she knows that he doesn’t really need them. Still, perhaps it’s been a while since he last read – it’s certainly been a long time since she’d heard him read.
Her mood brightens at the thought of it. Even if it’s been a while, she still reckons she knows his voice and all its nuances better than anyone else in the room.
“Naniwa zu ni,” he begins in a gently lilting tone.
She’s slightly surprised for a second. His voice seems even more confident and clear that it had been the last time he had read for Mizusawa. Maybe he really had been getting in some practice at the Toudai club. Or perhaps he’d gotten reading lessons from Sudo? But the roundness of his vowels, the slightly nasal quality, and the way that every syllable is spoken with such care – those are all so familiar to her.
She smiles for real this time, and settles into the practice match, her ears attuned to his voice.
From: Sudo
Ayase. I hope to see you at Toudai tomorrow evening.
To: Sudo
why would i be there???
From: Sudo
Don’t play dumb. It’s the karuta club practice and Mashima always attends on Tuesdays.
It’s your girlfriend duty to show up.
She frowns down at her phone as she sits cross-legged on her bed. Of course, she knew that Taichi would be going to practice this evening and that she probably would have to show her face. But she did not like the phrase “girlfriend duty”. Why should she be obligated to follow him around everywhere like a lost puppy?
But if it was necessary to appease Sudo, she guesses she’ll have to turn up, despite the voice in her head telling her to spite him.
From: Sudo
And I hope to see physical evidence of your relationship.
She can feel her cheeks colouring at the words on the screen.
She had agreed with Taichi that staying away from PDA was probably a good idea. Still, it was embarrassing to have Sudo suggest it even just over text. Does that mean he had been thinking about the two of them…kissing? Ew. She really does not want to know what goes on in that brain of his.
To: Sudo
why would you
we’re not
that wasn’t part of the bet?
From: Sudo
I’m sure Mashima has said something to you about avoiding Public Displays of Affection.
Smart boy.
But I’m not certain that it will be entirely convincing
Chihaya throws her phone down beside her onto the mattress and flops backwards, her head hitting the pillow.
Curse Sudo and his annoying intuition. That was exactly what Taichi had said, after all. She had agreed, wanting to keep Taichi as comfortable as possible with the situation. He’d said that it wasn’t just their present scenario though - he really wasn’t a big fan of PDA anyway, so it would keep it realistic.
She wonders how he’d figured that fact out about himself. Was it from his first girlfriend, the one who called him Ta-kun? Or had there been other girlfriends in the intervening years? Had their friendship really reached a point where he wouldn’t even tell her about dating someone else?
Her phone buzzes again, dislodging her current train of thought from her mind.
From Sudo:
And if I’m not convinced…
The unspoken threat hangs in the air.
She scrunches up her nose as she considers his message. She’s certain his vivid and often violent imagination could come up with a number of punishments for both herself and for Taichi. Which is precisely what she’s trying to avoid.
Sighing to herself, she realises she’ll have to admit defeat, no matter how stubborn she is.
To Taichi:
how set are you on the no pda rule?
From Taichi:
?
So that’s how Chihaya finds herself standing in the corridor outside of the room that Toudai’s karuta society practices at on a Tuesday evening. Surprisingly, despite the prestige of the place, the corridor looks just the same as any corridor in her university.
She’d arrived slightly before Taichi said they usually finish, so she can still hear the hum of the reader from just behind the wooden door. She’s not quite sure how many poems are left, as she arrived part way through, but she can make out what is currently being recited. Mika, Asaji, Yo no naka yo…
She closes her eyes and slides down the wall to sit on the ground. She wonders how Taichi is doing in the practice, who he is playing against, how many cards he has left. It’s about 5 minutes later that the reader stops, and is replaced by the familiar sound of shuffling on the tatami mat and out of sync “thank you for the game”s. She wants to spring to her feet immediately, but she knows they’ve still got to collect the cards in and review their match. So she waits.
When at last the door opens, she gets up with all the energy she can muster and tries to stand there nonchalantly, like she’d just arrived. Slowly, the members of the Toudai karuta club begin to filter out. She thinks she recognises a few faces from when she came to practice previously, but what is immediately apparent is how many of them recognise her. A few of them even stop in their tracks to stare at her. It’s funny that they must know she is famous for her hearing, and yet, they still have no reservations about murmuring “that’s the Queen” right in front of her.
She tries to awkwardly smile it off. She’s almost used to it by now, given the number of times that she’s caught people whispering about her at tournaments. But if they know who she is, that might make this next part even more uncomfortable.
Taichi is one of the last ones out, trailed predictably by Sudo. She turns a genuine smile towards him and gives him a little wave. He gives the subtlest of glances to Sudo, who has a look of absolute boredom on his face, and walks over to her. He places one hand on her shoulder and then leans in.
They’d practiced this last night, of course. Chihaya had tried to be the kisser, but ultimately gave up when she realised it was more awkward for her to be standing on her tiptoes than for Taichi to bend down. Even then, they hadn’t managed to try more that a couple of times without one of them (okay, mostly Chihaya) breaking into hysterics. There was something plainly absurd about them practicing cheek kissing over and over again in the muffled whiteness of Taichi’s living room.
But now, all she can think about is that if Taichi were an inch to the right, his lips would be on hers. They’re soft against her skin and he kisses her with a delicacy that he hadn’t managed to muster yesterday.
He raises his head to make eye contact with her and she feels something inside of her unfurl itself as soon as they do.
It’s weird to be feeling this way about a simple kiss on the cheek, right? But it probably has something to do with her realisation that this action has brought them physically closer than they’ve been for a while, not since – she refuses to think about it.
“Hi,” he says, in a soft voice.
She’s suddenly conscious again of all of the random Toudai people standing around them, and just about manages to stutter out a reply.
“Get a room, you two,” she hears Sudo say from somewhere far away, and it’s this that startles her out of her reverie.
Taichi removes his hand from her upper arm. She swears she can feel the absence of it somehow, four ghostly fingers and one thumb tantalisingly splayed across her bicep.
“Are you alright?” He asks.
There’s a note of genuine concern in there, so she nods up at him and tries to plaster on a sunbeam of a smile. “Uh huh.”
He heaves his bag slightly further over his shoulder and sticks out a hand (the same one which was on her arm a moment ago). Her fingers interlace with his and he tugs her towards the end of the hallway and the way out.
It’s only when they’ve left the building that she realises that she didn’t pay one bit of attention of what Sudo made of their display of affection and whether it satisfied him.
They settle into a routine. Taichi attends Toudai’s karuta club on Tuesdays and alternate Thursdays, and Chihaya meets him afterwards, in order to prove to Sudo that they’re still following his orders. On a couple of occasions, she’s even been dragged in to play with the handful of members who have gotten over feeling intimidated by her.
Their kiss on the cheek trick seems to have worked, as Sudo stops sending her any more annoying texts. They repeat it a few times, until Chihaya gets a bit bored and insists they mix it up a little. Taichi ruffles her hair one evening, so to pay him back the next evening, she hugs him so tightly that she practically lifts him off the ground.
Chihaya plays at Shiranami most other evenings, but Taichi’s schedule is so busy that he only makes it down to the club a couple times a month. As the threat of Sudo isn’t looming behind them there, they decide not to go in for too much PDA, just enough to remind others occasionally of their relationship status. On the occasion they actually play each other, every time their fingers brush, Chihaya has to fight what feels like the giggles down inside of her. She hopes it’s just from the awkwardness of their present situation.
It’s a lot to remember, all in all. Most of the time though, it’s pretty straightforward for Chihaya. When Taichi emerges from his clubroom, she walks him back to his apartment. Once or twice they’ve even gone for dinner afterwards, on nights where she had to come straight from the library. It’s nice - just like old times really, only instead of their aimless chatter on the train to and from school, they’re walking the streets of Bunkyo or grabbing ramen together. She guesses this is what adulthood is really about, having a routine and spending your evenings in companionable silence.
She tries to leave Taichi some time for himself on the weekend, given the ridiculous amount of studying he subjects himself to, but it’s inevitable that they occasionally have to meet up either to plan their next move or to take additional photos for Chihaya’s Instagram. Most of these are of things – flowers, lattes, even a box of new karuta cards – or places they visit, but Chihaya does manage to persuade Taichi to take one or two selfies together. She thinks they’re kind of cute, even if Taichi does have a hint of a startled, deer-in-the- headlights, look to him in them.
It's on one of these weekends, at Taichi’s apartment, that she drops a bombshell.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “Your parents?”
She winces. “I’m really sorry! I had to tell them – my mum always has tea with Kana’s mum on the last Friday in the month and I thought it would be awful if she found out from her…and the next thing I know, they had invited you to dinner!”
He nods, but slowly a look of realisation dawns on his face. “They - they don’t know that we’re pretending? They think it’s real?”
“It’ll be fine,” she pleads. “My parents love you, anyway.”
“What’s that got to do with the fact that they think we’re actually going out?”
She chews her lip for a second. “My mum’s always thought that you’d make a good son-in-law…so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
He’s turned white as a sheet at this, one hand absent-mindedly in his hair. It’s longer now than it was at the end of high school, but not quite as long as it was when they were in the club together. Still, it’s long enough now for him to properly run his fingers through it. She wonders what it would feel like under her own fingers.
“Chihaya,” he says, interrupting her musings on his hair. “What are they going to say when we have to break things off?”
Ah.
That’s the one thing they hadn’t discussed – how they’d end things. One of the inconveniences of having known each other as long as they had, with all their history, was that it was a lot harder for them to make a clean break of it. Maybe they had deliberately ignored it, knowing it would be too difficult to find the right balance.
“Maybe we should just tell them that it’s a joke?” She says, frowning. It was really unlikely that her parents’ knowledge would get back to Sudo, but she would probably have to explain why all her friends weren’t in on it as well. Was there an easy solution to this?
He sighs, but there’s a note of fondness amongst the exasperation. “No, it’s fine. Maybe we can just say that it was too difficult keeping it up with all the uni work –” they would buy that for him, even if not for her – “so we can still remain friends. We can work on it later.”
Friends. Was that really what they were?
She thinks about the Taichi of two days ago, his features overexposed in the cheap lighting of the ramen shop, looking somehow unfamiliar and all the same all at once. She’d told him a story about visiting Shinobu in Kyoto, something stupid about making a fool of herself in front of Shinobu’s grandmother, and in response he’d laughed so hard that he’d cried. The last time she’d seen him laugh like that was when she had performed her rap at karaoke, that wonderful glorious moment when she could pretend for a split second that nothing had ever changed.
It was the comfortable predictability of it, that he could still laugh at her exploits. In that moment she thinks their relationship had approached something like friendship. But what a contrast it was to the preceding months, when he had ignored her messages, avoided playing her in his rare appearances at Shiranami, and even their friends had become elusive when the topic of Taichi had come up. She didn’t think she could return to that now, not after she’d experienced his laughter again.
If, after all this was over, they could continue to eat noodles in terribly-lit shops then maybe that would be enough for her.
The doorbell rings whilst she’s laying the table, so with a cheery “I’ll get it!”, she bounds over to the door. As expected, it’s Taichi behind the door. He’s wearing a shirt, looking ridiculously handsome in it, and he’s carrying a box of something as an omiyage. He’s every inch the perfect boyfriend meeting the parents for the first time. Except he’s met them tons of times and he’s not actually her boyfriend.
“Taichi! Hi,” she says, enthusiastically.
“Sorry for intruding,” he calls out, somewhere over her shoulder, before stepping inside.
He takes his shoes off and she passes him a pair of guest slippers. He smiles back at her, but it’s tight and doesn’t quite meet his eyes. Her heart sinks. This was too much, wasn’t it? Pretending in front of your peers was one thing, but in front of family, it feels more like lying.
“Are you okay?” She asks, nervously.
He takes a deep breath and she watches him exhale. “I’m fine.”
His smile does seem a little bit more genuine now, but before she can say anything further, her mother is awkwardly hovering over her shoulder.
“Mashima-kun! It’s lovely to see you again.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, proffering her the box.
“Oh! Really, you shouldn’t,” her mother says, practically blushing like a schoolgirl at the act of common courtesy. Chitose is standing behind her and exaggerates an eye-roll at this.
Her father wanders over to join them as well, a broad smile on his face. “Come in, Mashima-kun.”
Taichi bobs his head to each of them in turn and then steps inside, crossing the threshold.
Her mum has made oyakodon again and she apologises for it not being anything fancier, but she remembered Taichi liking it last time he was around. He makes some quip about liking whatever she’d serve him, and sits down next to Chitose on their sofa.
Chihaya is extremely suspicious of whatever Chitose might possibly have to say to Taichi. Chitose had been scarily interested in the topic of her boyfriend when she’d heard about Taichi coming to dinner. But, knowing her sister, Chihaya reckons she’ll probably get bored in about a minute and wander off back to her bedroom until dinner is ready. It comes as a slight surprise then that Chitose looks fully engaged in her conversation with Taichi. From where she’s been enlisted in the kitchen, Chihaya can’t quite hear what they’re saying over the sizzle of the pans – just a handful of words which don’t really seem to make any sense. Seriously, why is Chitose talking to Taichi about her scarf?
Her father notices her distraction and chuckles.
“Chihaya,” he says. “You know that your mother and I would be happy with whoever you brought home. But – I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we’re pleased it’s Mashima-kun.”
“Oh,” is all she can seem to say. She can feel her cheeks heating up, though she can’t tell if it’s because of how terrible she feels at deceiving them or some kind of weird pleasure that they approve of Taichi, so she returns to staring at the pot she’s stirring.
“Right, everybody out,” her mother says, finally, shooing Chihaya and her father out of the kitchen.
She goes over to the table and chooses the seat next to Taichi, who has already sat down. His hand is resting on the table, so as she sits down, she reaches out and quickly squeezes the back of it. He looks startled for a second, but his expression soon softens.
Dinner itself passes remarkably unremarkably. For most of the evening, Taichi seems absorbed in conversation with her father about university and, for some reason unknown to Chihaya, the layout of his apartment. Her mother blushes again when Taichi compliments her food and hastily heaps seconds onto his plate. When they’re all finished, Taichi readily volunteers to help with the dishwashing, and, as he did last time, he chats to her mother whilst he does so. Though this time, Chihaya hopes it isn’t about her own future.
“Stop that,” Chitose says, rolling her eyes once more.
“Stop what?”
Her sister gestures at her whole body. “Being so…anxious.”
Chihaya realises that she’s been jiggling her right leg for the past couple of minutes. Taichi had once told her, putting on what she referred to as his most doctor-y voice, that it was her sure tell that she was full of nervous energy. He was right about that, just as he almost always is when it comes to reading her. She stills her leg with the palm of her hand.
“Mum and dad love him,” Chitose adds. “How could they not?”
She supposes that she’s right. It’s only natural that they like Taichi – he’s smart, caring and attentive. These are all things she values about him too, but what she likes most of all is how they all come together in one person. How Taichi is the most intelligent person she knows, except for the fact that he sometimes bites his nails when he thinks no one’s looking, even though he knows it’s a bad idea. How he’s almost unfailingly kind, apart from when he thinks that other people are being hurt, so much so that his behaviour to Arata when they were twelve was inconceivable to her at the time. How he is always perceptive, paying attention to the slightest shifts in the environment, apart from when he’s studying and he gets so completely absorbed in his books that there could be an earthquake and he wouldn’t budge. All these contradictions are what makes him Taichi.
But what she can’t tell Chitose is that the reason for her nerves isn’t worry about what her parents think of her boyfriend, but something else far more complicated. She stares at his back, which is broader now than it ever was in high school.
In a short while, they finish washing up and Taichi announces that really, he’d love to stay, but he still has to study tonight. Her parents make noises of understanding.
“I’ll see you out,” she says.
Chitose gives her a look which Chihaya has no idea how to interpret. But she follows Taichi to the genkan and watches him put on his shoes.
He turns to wave at her, but something seizes her in that moment and she pushes him out of the door and then leads him down the stairs.
“Chihaya?” He asks, or tries to ask because she puts a hand over his mouth and doesn’t remove it until they’re at the bottom of the steps.
“You said we have to make it believable,” she says, by way of explanation for his shocked expression. “Surprise isn’t believable.”
He puts a hand to his lips, touching where her fingers had been. For a moment, she thinks that she must have hurt him somehow – but she wasn’t that aggressive, was she? When he brings his hand away, he looks at it, as if expecting to see blood.
“And you saying that is?” He counters, but his comic timing is a minute too late. He’s definitely off his game today.
“Is everything alright?” She asks.
“Hm?”
“You seem really out of it. I don’t mean in there – my parents didn’t notice anything, but…”
To someone who knows him like she does, it was more than obvious.
“They can’t hear us?”
She shakes her head. “Not unless they go out the door.”
He sighs and his guard wavers for a moment, until he renews the hard line of his mouth again.
“I’m just tired from uni. That’s all.”
Chihaya’s not the brightest, but even she can tell that there was something else he wanted to say before he stopped himself.
“Taichi –”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says, rolling his eyes at her. “You better go inside before your slippers get dirty.”
The reflection of the streetlights makes his eyes gleam amber, and for a second, she thinks she sees him dip his head a fraction closer, as if he had been about to kiss her on the cheek, entirely unprompted. But it must be a trick of the light, because he never did.
“Goodbye, Chihaya,” he says.
And with that, he’s off and she’s left staring after him, a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’s been left watching him walk away too many times, powerless to stop him, ignorant of what is really going on inside his head.
These days, she reckons she knows herself enough to understand why she feels that way. She hates seeing him miserable and always has. She realises, with a jolt, that this feeling of déjà vu means that she must have been feeling the same way about him, even back then. Then Hiroshi was right – she’s been in love with him for a long time.
The problem unfolds itself in front of her: she would give anything to make him happy, but the cause of his unhappiness is clearly her. She knows she hurt him irreversibly when she couldn’t utter anything more than a “sorry” to his confession on that spring day all those years ago. Nothing she can do now would make up for it. And if she had been in love with him then – then that makes her error even worse.
So she knows she can’t now tell him how she feels. She’s not even entitled to beg him to stay friends once Sudo’s ridiculous experiment is over, because he really would be better off without her. There’s no way she could ask for more than that, even though it’s what she knows she really wants.
She can hear murmuring from somewhere upstairs. Perhaps they’ve realised that Taichi has gone and she’s still standing out here, looking at the place where his back had been, like an idiot.