Seishun Buta Yarou Series - Volume 11 - Chapter 2.3

3

The class started at seven and wrapped up exactly eighty minutes later, at 8:20 PM. Sakuta erased the formulas on the whiteboard and left the learning room.

Kento always left his chair askew, but this time Sara had straightened them all out.

He spent ten minutes logging what he’d taught today in the teacher’s room. The principal caught him and asked about Sara, which took about five minutes. Then he hit the locker room to change, saw Rio at her desk and said, “Bye,” and was out the door twenty minutes after classes ended, at 8:40.

He should make it home before nine.

Mai was coming over to cook dinner, so the sooner he could get home the better.

The elevator arrived, and he stepped on board, hitting the button for the ground floor.

“Oh, wait!”

Sara slipped through the doors as they started to close.

“Safe!” she exclaimed.

“I’m afraid you’re out,” he said. He’d reached for the OPEN button but retracted his hand at the last second.

The doors closed, and the elevator began to descend.

“Azusagawa-sensei is far too long. Can I call you Sakuta-sensei like Yamada does?”

“He really doesn’t make that seem like a term of respect.”

Kento’s attitude was more like he was talking to a friend.

“Then I’ll just call you Teach!” she said with a giggle.

“How’d I get to be so approachable?”

“You don’t seem like a teacher. In a good way!”

“If you say so.”

The elevator reached the ground floor.

Sakuta followed Sara out. Both turned toward the station.

“You take the train from here, Himeji?”

“I live over by Kataseyama, so my mom picks me up. I should hear from her any minute.”

Sara pulled her phone out of the pocket on her satchel. As she did, the hand towel in the same pocket fell out.

“You dropped something,” he said, kneeling to grab it.

“Oh, I got it,” Sara said, hastily bending over to do the same.

By the time he realized the threat, it was too late.

There was a loud clunk that echoed through his skull. They’d both bent down and thumped their heads together, hard.

“Owww…,” she said, clutching it with both hands.

There was a throbbing pain in his forehead, too.

“You okay, Teach? My head’s like a rock!”

“It feels like mine split in two.”

“Oh no! Let me take a look!”

She put her hands on his shoulders, stretching as high as she could. This was a pose that could easily be misconstrued.

“You’re totally fine,” she huffed, then laughed.

“Here,” he said, handing her the towel.

“Thanks. Oh, it’s my mom.”

Her phone had started ringing, and she picked up.

“Mm, I’m outside. Be right there,” she said. Then she looked at him. “Okay, Teach, gotta run!”

She bobbed her head and ran off toward the roundabout, leaving him with an aching head.

“She was right about the rock thing…”

He gingerly prodded it and found a lump forming.

Alone again, Sakuta headed home, walking a bit faster than usual. The fall air was chilly, so a speed that worked up a sweat felt pretty good.

He crossed the bridge over the Sakai River, waited at a light, and then went up the gentle slope beyond. Once past the park, he was almost home.

He caught his breath before heading in.

Inside the building doors, he checked the mailbox, then took the elevator to the fifth floor.

He turned the key in the lock and heard voices from within.

“I’m home,” he called, opening the door.

There were more shoes than usual in the entrance. There was almost nowhere left to stand. He managed to get his sneakers off, and a girl in an apron came out to see him.

“Welcome home! Do you want dinner? A bath? Orrrrr…”

“What are you doing, Zukki?” he asked, interrupting her clichéd routine.

It was Uzuki Hirokawa, in the flesh, a ladle in one hand.

“I heard they were making curry, and I simply could not stay away!”

A fitting reason for Uzuki. He couldn’t exactly call it a good one, but if he argued the point, he’d likely be stuck at the door for quite a while. No thanks. This was his house.

“Zukki, you’re on the cusp right now. You don’t want a media circus,” he said, moving down the hall.

“If anyone takes pictures of this, the headlines will just be ‘Uzuki Hirokawa’s Curry Night’!”

“Maybe that’ll net you a curry commercial.”

With that, he poked his head in the living room.

“I’m back.”

“Welcome home, Sakuta.”

Mai was standing in the kitchen. She wore high-waisted wide-leg pants and a sweater that was just on the brink of exposing her shoulders. On top of that was an apron.

Two more voices greeted him, and he turned to find Kaede and Nodoka sitting in front of the TV, only their heads looking his way. The screen was showing a tokusatsu hero show that aired on Sunday mornings. A familiar-looking villainous minion was cackling on-screen. One of Sweet Bullet’s many members, Hotaru Okazaki.

Nodoka must have brought the recording to share with Kaede.

“Quite the homecoming, huh?!” Uzuki cried, slapping his shoulder enthusiastically.

He glanced around the crowd.

“Sure are a lot of you,” he said. This was his honest impression.

“You’re the last arrival, so go wash your hands and take a seat.”

“Aww. I thought I’d get to spend some time with you, Mai.”

But he stumped off to the washroom, rinsed his hands, and gargled.

“And you will—when we eat,” Mai quipped.

He took her at her word and sat down at the table.

“Here,” Mai said, putting an oblong plate of curry in front of him.

It was very runny.

More of a soup curry.

The scent of the spices was tantalizing.

It consisted of pretty basic ingredients. Just chicken and fried veggies—potatoes, eggplant, and zucchini.

“Everyone helped chop the veggies,” Mai said, taking off her apron and sitting down across from him. She kept her promise to stay with him as he ate.

He scooped up a lump of potato. It was a decidedly square piece.

“Toyohama handled the potatoes, I see.”

“Don’t grumble. Eat.”

“That doesn’t even count as a complaint.”

Whatever the shape might be, the hot potato matched the spiciness of the soup perfectly. Even Nodoka’s handiwork couldn’t ruin that.

His next spoonful of soup featured the eggplant. It was not well chopped, just roughly quartered. But it had absorbed some oil while frying, and that made it glisten appetizingly.

“Kaede did the eggplant?”

“Will you shut up and eat?”

“I haven’t said a bad word yet!”

There was an old saying about not letting your wife eat autumn eggplant, and he could see why they wouldn’t wanna share.

The last vegetable sampled was the zucchini. The green definitely gave the brown soup some much needed color.

“Hirokawa did the zucchini? Oh, because you’re Zukki?”

“Bingo!”

Uzuki was clapping enthusiastically.

After he savored the flavors of the vegetables, it was finally time for the chicken. The thigh meat had been simmering for a long time to achieve maximum tenderness, and he could easily split it apart with his spoon. He filled the split with soup, and the tingle of the spices and the umami of the meat filled his mouth with delight. It was hard not to wolf it down.

“Mai, this is amazing.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She had her cheek cupped in her hand, watching him eat with a smile.

“My Mai is adorable again today,” he said.

If it had just been the two of them, this would be perfect. But there were far too many interlopers.

“Oh! I brought something for you,” Uzuki said, already interrupting.

She started rummaging around in her bag. “Mm? Where’d they go!” She ended up dumping the bag out.

“There they are!”

She came up with two slips of paper, which she brought to the dining room table.

“We’re doing a concert next Monday at the school festival. You should come, too, Mai!”

Uzuki put the slips of paper down. They were unmistakably concert tickets.

“Which school festival?”

“Ours,” Nodoka said, deep into the couch’s cushions. She treated this place like it was her house.

Peering closer at the tickets, he saw that they did bear the name of their college.

“Sweet Bullet is a special guest at this year’s festival!” Uzuki said, throwing up a peace sign.

“Making your triumphant return already?”

Uzuki had—of her own accord—dropped out of college a week ago. Naturally, this must have been arranged before that happened, and her sudden withdrawal probably horrified a number of people involved.

“Why don’t you know about this?” Kaede asked.

“Nobody told me.”

“I thought Uzuki had.”

“I thought I had!”

Nobody bought Uzuki’s excuse. It was more of an admission of guilt.

“Well, I’ll certainly take the tickets, but…Mai, are you working?”

That was the first and greatest hurdle.

“I left that day open so the two of us could make the festival rounds.”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“I held my tongue in case a last-minute job came in, forced me to back out, and then left me stuck doing whatever you dream up as payback. How’s your schedule Monday?”

“Kaede, can you take my shift at the restaurant?”

“Can’t. Komi and I are hitting the concert.”

She proudly flourished her pair of tickets. These were obviously also a gift.

“Guess that leaves Koga.”

“Should I ask her for you?” Kaede reached for her phone.

“Please.”

“Just a sec.”

Kaede started tapping her screen. She was probably messaging Tomoe that very instant.

“She’s writing back!”

“She would be fast.”

Tomoe was a very modern high school girl, and her phone was her best friend.

“She’s got a hankering for the cream puffs from the shop by the station.”

“Tell her I’ll buy her ten.”

“She already added ‘One is plenty.’”

She’d known exactly what he’d say. That was Laplace’s demon for you.

“Can’t wait to have a campus date with you, Mai.”

“At least mention the concert!” Nodoka snapped, vaulting to her feet. “Mai, Uzuki and I are heading back first. We’ll run the bath.”

“Oh? Thanks.”

The little hand was almost at ten. “Bye!” Nodoka waved and headed for the door.

“Kaede! Sakuta! Thanks for having me! Mai, you still will be.”

Uzuki went after her. Sakuta got up to see them out.

“Zukki. You’re staying at Mai’s place?” he asked as she put her shoes on.

“Mwa-ha-ha!”

He got a mysterious chortle in return. No doubt she was boasting.

“This bath is the perfect excuse to see how Nodoka’s grown!”

“I’m not bathing with you, Uzuki.”

With that curt remark, Nodoka was out the door.

“Aww! We gotta share!”

Uzuki threw her arms around Nodoka’s back.

“Oh, Kaede, see you later!” she yelled, waving through the closing door.

“Uh, right!” Kaede managed to wave just before the door fully shut.

With their exit, the house felt quiet again.

Normalcy had been restored.

He locked the door and headed back to the living room.

Mai was already clearing the table.

“Mai, I’ll do that.”

“Can you make some coffee instead?”

“Got it. You want any, Kaede?”

“Nah, I’m gonna take a bath.”

With that, she disappeared into her room. She soon came out carrying her pajamas.

“Oh, Kaede.”

“Yes?”

“Gonna borrow your laptop later.”

“Don’t use it for anything weird.”

“Just looking some stuff up.”

At this point, she was undoubtedly far better with computers than he was. The whole remote-learning thing had turned it into a useful tool—after all, her school was on the computer.

“That’s fine, then,” she said, and she vanished into the washroom. The door shut behind her, and he heard the lock turn. She was at an age where these things mattered.

“Looking up the dreaming hashtag?” Mai asked, drying her hands. The dishes were taken care of. He’d told her about last night—and the mixer—over lunch at school.

“Can’t hurt to read a few more.”

He picked up two mugs of coffee and followed her out of the kitchen. The mugs were part of a set with animal pictures on them. Mai’s was the bunny, and Sakuta’s was a tanuki. She’d picked that for him on the grounds that their eyes looked alike.

There were two other mugs from that set on the shelf. The panda belonged to Kaede, and the lion was Nodoka’s. They’d bought all four in the spring when they went to see the pandas at the zoo together.

He put the bunny and tanuki mugs down on the dining room table, then took a seat on the couch in front of the TV. Kaede’s laptop was on the coffee table, and he opened the lid.

As he pressed the power button, Mai said, “Oh, Sakuta, take this.”

She handed him a blue envelope.

“Kaede said it came today.”

It was addressed to Sakuta Azusagawa. The neat handwriting alone told him who’d sent it. For one thing, nobody else sent him letters.

He opened it up, took out the missive within, and unfolded it.

Has autumn arrived for you yet?

We’re still stuck in summer.

I’ve included a photo to show you Shouko. See what I did there?

Nice and short.

“Photo?”

“In there.”

Mai picked up the envelope he’d dropped on the table and took out the picture.

“Here,” she said, holding it up for him.

Mountainous clouds against the blue of the sky. The clear waters of the southern seas too beautiful to look real. Shouko was standing barefoot on soft sands, smiling. She had the hem of her T-shirt knotted on one hip, healthy legs peeping from below short culottes. She had her hands up, framing a heart-shaped rock out in the surf.

Without question, quite a lot of work had gone into placing the camera and the angle of the shot to make it look like that. And she’d written I love you! next to the heart.

“Shouko’s becoming more and more like the bigger one.”

“That she is.”

The way she acted was one thing, but she’d also grown quite a bit since her move to Okinawa. Her face was shifting from little Makinohara to the older Shouko. When they’d met, she was in her first year of junior high, but now she was in her third. How time flew. And time naturally led to growth—and knowing she had that time gave him warm fuzzies.

“I can’t let my guard down,” Mai said.

She put the photo down and reached for the coffee mug on the dining room table.

“Mm?” he said, not sure what she meant. This earned him a cross look.

“She’ll turn into your first love before long.”

In the photo, she was already starting to look like her.

“Oh.”

He nodded.

“Thrilled?” Mai asked, settling down next to him on the couch.

“Sure. I mean, this spring, she’ll be in high school. Like she dreamed about.”

The odds had been against her surviving junior high.

Despite the doctor’s warnings, she’d lived and was now on the cusp of high school. That meant more for her than Sakuta’s own higher education—he’d been born with a healthy body.

Shouko’s life now had a future. She was living that out.

How could he not be thrilled?

“Now I sound like the bad guy…” Mai stuck out her lower lip, then took a sip from the mug in her hands. “You put in too much. It’s really bitter,” she grumbled.

That somehow made him laugh. They could bicker like this because they had each other. And savoring that modest pleasure, Sakuta put the letter and photo back in the envelope. By this time, the laptop had finished booting up, so he turned his attention to the screen.

To search #dreaming.

He clicked the tag and got a whole stream of posts.

He skimmed them but didn’t spot anything odd. Most were just vague memories of dreams. Highly unrealistic, few that formed any sort of story. Just accounts of what they’d dreamed the night before.

But buried in that morass, he found a few with clear dates and times, set apart from the rest by weirdly vivid details.

The specificity itself felt odd.

Most dreams didn’t come with a time stamp.

Sakuta had only experienced that in one dream—the time he got caught up in Tomoe’s future simulation. Which he’d believed was real…

Perhaps this was what Ikumi had latched on to.

“Sakuta, how do you feel about your old classmates now?”

Mai had her legs crossed on the couch and was resting the coffee mug on her knee.

“Now…?”

He didn’t exactly have an answer ready off the cuff.

“You don’t really talk about junior high,” she said.

“I guess I don’t feel much of anything.”

At some point, he’d just stopped thinking about that stuff entirely. So he meant what he said. He had no doubts at all.

“It just led to too much.”

“Like meeting your first love.”

Poking him while acting all innocent.

“And encountering a wild bunny girl.”

“High time you forgot that.”

“And just…a lot happened.”

“Yeah.”

“Going to Minegahara, making friends with Kunimi and Futaba. Then you were there, and Kaede got better…so somewhere along the way it just stopped bothering me.”

It wasn’t like he’d forgotten everything that went down. No one there had understood him, and that left him ostracized and deeply depressed—that kind of thing sticks with you.

But afterward? He’d met people who mattered. Gained more than he’d lost. He didn’t have any reason to stay hung up on the past.

New bonds and time spent with the people he cared about gradually made the darkness of those memories fade. All kinds of new experiences mingled with the old ones, turning them to shades of gray.

“So you’ve forgiven Ikumi Akagi for her part in it?”

“Forgive…?”

He’d never held anything against her in particular.

All he had to do was say that.

Yet the words wouldn’t quite come out.

“……”

He’d found a tiny little sore spot deep down inside. Like the past had left a splinter slumbering at the bottom of his heart.

“……”

When Sakuta fell silent, Mai said nothing more. She just leaned her shoulder against his, reminding him that she was here with him. Her touch gave him comfort.

“Acceptance is hard,” she said.

“For you, too?”

“I struggle every time you make friends with another girl.”

She made that sound like a joke, but one glance in her direction made it clear she meant it. The way she put it was gentle, but her warning was sharp as any nail.

“I’ll try to be more careful.”

“Not getting my hopes up.”

“Aww.”

“If you’re that confident, then promise you’ll do a thing for me for each new girl you add.”

“Like what?”

“I know this one famous actress makes her husband build her a new house every time he breaks a promise.”

“Maybe I should go apprentice myself to a carpenter.”

“Or maybe just don’t cheat?”

She leaned on him harder.

“And she’s not having him build them himself.”

Sakuta had been well aware.

“Well, I’m not gonna cheat, so there’s no problem here.”

“Yet your thoughts are entirely on this Ikumi Akagi.” With that bit of spite, Mai sat back upright. “Or should I say Touko Kirishima?”

The scales had probably leaned toward Ikumi since Halloween.

“I dunno. Akagi’s just on my mind.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Not like that.”

“Then like what?”

Three reasons.

“Touko Kirishima said Akagi had Adolescence Syndrome, too.”

That was the first.

“Then there was the Akagi I met in that other potential world.”

This was the second. In that world, Akagi and Sakuta had both gone to Minegahara. If he hadn’t seen her there, when she spoke to him at the college entrance ceremony, he probably wouldn’t have recognized her as an old classmate and definitely wouldn’t have known her name.

“And I guess her being in the same junior high is a factor.”

The third reason was the least concrete. It was just a fact; there was no real connection between them because of it. None at all. Yet despite this, if they hadn’t gone to the same school, he was sure he’d never have taken an interest in Ikumi at all. Even if Touko Kirishima had pointed her out as having Adolescence Syndrome, he wouldn’t have cared.

It was the least significant reason, yet also the thing that refused to leave him alone.

They’d gone to the same junior high.

Their relationship was no more and no less than what that phrase implied.

But looked at another way, perhaps that meant their roots were entwined.

Sakuta had gone to public elementary and junior high schools, so his first glimpses of the world at large came from those places and their satellites.

Most kids who grew up in that area had played in the same parks, begged their parents for candy at the same supermarket, and been yelled at by the same scary old man who lived on the corner.

These days, Fujisawa had become his neighborhood of choice, but the streets of the Yokohama suburb he’d grown up in would always be a part of him. Even if they were all too typical and devoid of distinguishing features.

It was still where he came from.

And Ikumi had been a part of that place. She’d been there all fifteen years he was. That number still represented the vast majority of his time alive.

Perhaps that was why going to the same junior high meant more than the words implied, more than going to the same high school or college did.

“I guess I can’t quite call her a stranger.”

That’s what it felt like. They’d talked a lot about where they’d come from at the mixer, too. “I know that junior high!” or “I’ve been to the shop by that station!” Shared memories of local neighborhoods made them all feel closer together.

“Maybe you’re right, Sakuta. I wouldn’t know—I really don’t remember anyone from back then.”

Mai’s child acting career had been her priority during those years. She’d mentioned barely ever actually going to school.

“I wonder if she feels the same way about you?”

“Yeah…”

He started to reject the idea. His role in junior high had hardly been typical. But even if her perspective was different, she had been there. In that neighborhood, in that school, in that class.

If Mai hadn’t pointed it out, it might never have occurred to him.

When Kaede was getting bullied, when Sakuta started yelling about Adolescence Syndrome…what had his classmates thought? What had they made of it?

In his mind, it had all been about him. He’d never stopped to wonder how anyone else felt. That seemed so trivial compared with what he’d been going through.

He’d fully believed he was the only miserable one.

But that may not have been true. All thirty or so of his classmates had feelings of their own. And in that moment—they’d likely not been amused or entertained.

The mood in the room had been bleak as hell.

Kaede’s friend Kotomi Kano had told him about it once. After they moved away, there’d been a witch hunt, targeting the girls who’d been mean to Kaede. They’d all wound up dropping out and moving away.

The class had banished evil and then closed the door on the matter.

Then they finished out their junior high years, acting like it was all forgotten.

Sakuta’s classmates hadn’t even waited that long. They’d graduated and left, like third-year students do.

He had no idea what they’d gotten up to at their respective high schools. Three years might have been enough for some of them to cleanse their emotions. Had most of them put Sakuta out of their minds entirely? He figured they had.

Ikumi Akagi alone had run into him again.

And honestly, he couldn’t imagine what that had been like.

But he presumed it had meant something.

Even Sakuta still registered her as a junior high classmate. She was significant enough to earn a label.

And that label had existed before his girlfriend, Mai, before his friends Yuuma and Rio, and before his first love, Shouko.

He had a sort of latent affinity with her. Perhaps a lingering resentment that just resembled affinity.

And Mai’s question had helped him finally start to see why he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

“I dunno if meeting you again has anything to do with what she’s doing,” Mai said. She gazed into her mug as if staring down memory lane. “But the two of us know a few things.”

“We do.”

He knew exactly what she meant.

“Just how hard and painful changing the future can be. If that’s for someone who matters, I won’t—can’t—say not to.”

Doing so would go against what the two of them had done. It would be an insult to everything that girl smiling in the Okinawa sun had been through.

“But, Mai…you’re against these heroics.”

“We know all too well that one person’s happiness is another’s misfortune.”

“Yeah.”

All those tears and suffering. Struggling, fighting, scrambling—for nothing. And finally getting their hands on what they had now.

And that was why they didn’t need to spell it out. Their feelings were linked.

Ikumi’s choices weren’t wrong. Saving the Little Red Riding kid from the falling lantern was a good thing. But there was no telling what might be in store for that kid in a few days or even years because she’d avoided that fate.

There was no telling what Ikumi’s actions might cause.

Saving that kid changed the future. And no one could be sure the outcome wouldn’t be far worse.

“But that makes me sound like a villain trying to thwart the hero’s deeds.”

Mai’s eyes turned to the TV screen. It was still playing that tokusatsu hero show. Hotaru Okazaki had shown up as a new minion of evil and was siccing a horrible monster on the heroes.

“Then we’d better make like villains and start an evil society.”

Mai had given him the motivation to reach for the laptop again. It was still showing that social media site. He picked a username and password and made an account. He chose a picture of Nasuno yawning for the profile icon.

“Appointing you leader, Nasuno,” Sakuta said.

She just meowed sleepily.