Seishun Buta Yarou Series - Volume 7 - Chapter 3.2

2

Sakuta and Mai took their time and ended up with three snowmen. Two of them were maybe thirty inches tall, the result of a competition between them. The biggest of them was as tall as Sakuta, and that had required the two of them to work together, rolling massive snowballs around.

But at this size, the two of them had been unable to get the head up on the body, so in the end they convinced Rio to come out and help. The head alone was a good thirty inches across, and even with three of them, it had been too heavy, so when Yuuma’s team took a break, they’d grabbed him, and the four of them had finished the snowman together.

It was entirely frivolous. They could just as easily have quit while they were ahead. But standing before this giant snowman gave them a real sense of accomplishment.

They placed the snowmen next to the entrance, like they were watching over the students as they came in.

Mai took a picture on her phone, looking thoroughly satisfied.

On the train back, Mai flipped through the photos she’d taken and happily showed them to Sakuta.

The two of them with the snowmen. A bunch of shots with Rio and Yuuma, too. Nothing remarkable, just a bunch of fun photos.

“It’s very ‘high school,’” Mai said. She was in high school, so this should have seemed odd, but it made perfect sense to Sakuta.

“Totally,” he said.

It fit the stereotype exactly. It was like one of those happy memories from a flashback on a TV show about teenage drama. It slotted right into that formula.

They were still going through the photos when the train reached Fujisawa Station.

They went out the gates and across the bridge toward the JR building. But halfway there, Sakuta stopped.

Mai noticed a moment later and turned back.

“Sakuta?”

“That dog…,” he said.

He was looking at a large dog lying at the end of the passage. A Labrador retriever.

There were two women with it—one in her forties and one in her twenties—wearing light-green staff jackets, collecting money to train Seeing Eye dogs.

He’d seen people fundraising here any number of times before. He’d even seen this exact Labrador lying there before.

But this was the first time he’d ever stopped.

He took out his wallet and emptied the change onto his palm. Maybe two hundred yen total.

Carrying it, he went over to the older woman and said, “Here.”

“Thanks for your help!” she said, holding out the box. He dropped the change in. “Wow, big spender!” she said with a smile.

“It’s less than it sounded like,” he said.

“We’re grateful for any support you can offer.”

The woman clearly meant that. There were a slew of people streaming past behind him.

“He’s happy, too, see?” she said, pointing down at the Lab. It was wagging its tail. Those eyes peering up at Sakuta were so pure it made him feel guilty.

He didn’t think it was benevolence that had driven him to donate.

Sakuta knew better than that.

He’d chosen a life with Mai over Shouko’s future.

And it was the lingering residue of that choice that motivated him.

Like doing something good would earn him forgiveness.

Like doing something good would lead to little Shouko’s recovery.

What he could offer was hardly a fair exchange, but this amounted to a prayer to whatever gods might be watching.

Next to him, Mai dropped in a few coins, too.

“Er, wait, are you…?”

The twentysomething girl recognized Mai Sakurajima and held out her hand. Mai shook it.

“Are we allowed to pet the dog?”

“Yes. He’s being a good boy, so please let him know.”

Mai patted the Lab on the head. It closed its eyes, looking happy.

“Hey, is that…?”

The crowd around them was starting to notice the celebrity in their midst, so Sakuta and Mai quickly left the Seeing Eye dog behind. They crossed the JR station and went out the other side. They were quickly lost in the throng of people.

“Nothing’s ever simple,” Mai murmured, staring straight ahead.

He wasn’t sure she’d meant for him to hear. It felt kind of like she was just talking to herself.

“I agree,” he said. He was well aware she hadn’t been looking for an answer. But he was sure they felt the same way.

There were people out there in need of help. People they didn’t know and had never met. That had made it easy to forget. They might see suffering out of the corner of their eyes but that was all too simple to ignore as somebody else’s problems.

But knowing how little Shouko was forced to wait for a donor heart meant they were involved. It would always matter to them. Meeting Shouko had taught Sakuta that maybe it would be his future self who ended up saving those in need.

Like Mai said, things could never be simple again. Knowing how Shouko’s condition made her suffer had opened their eyes. They were glad to have made this discovery, but given the implications for Shouko…it was impossible to be happy without reservation.

But some realizations only came like this.

If they were easy, fewer people would have hurried past that Labrador without a second thought.

And maybe the circle of organ donors would be a lot bigger. Little Shouko might have had her operation ages ago and already be healthy.

But that wasn’t how the world worked.

Too many things were lost without anyone realizing, without anyone getting the chance to notice, without anyone knowing. Nobody even realized this was happening.

Nobody was to blame for it. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. People just weren’t made that way. Sakuta himself had been clueless until he was personally involved.

Everyone had things they had to do or wanted to do. And they were busy giving it their all, or were already doing everything they could, or were too engrossed to pay attention to anything else.

They might have homework or real work that had to be done by tomorrow. They might have videos they had to catch up on so they could talk to their friends. They might have texts they had to respond to. Shopping that had to be done before dinner. Rooms to be cleaned before their parents yelled at them.

All of these were trivial compared with someone’s life. But to the people concerned, the scale of the problem didn’t matter; these were still things that couldn’t just be ignored. And it was human nature to focus on the problem at hand.

If everyone were focused on the problems of others, that would actually be kinda creepy. Seven billion people worried about all seven billion other people would be exhausting. No one would ever be able to keep up with so many worries.

All Sakuta could do was what he wanted to do and what he felt he should do.

No grandiose expectations and no wallowing in futility.

If he kept that in mind, he could manage.

And this moment settled everything.

“Uh, Mai…,” he said, stopping in his tracks.

“Hmm?”

“I wanna make a stop before we head home.”

“Going to see Shouko? I’ll come, too.”

She started walking toward the hospital. Sakuta quickly caught up, and Mai took his hand.

He knocked on the door of room 301, but there was no answer.

“…Coming in,” he said, and he slid the door open.

The room was dark and quiet. The sound of silence. The low hum of the minifridge, the rushing of blood in his ears, the sound of his own steps, the rustling of his clothes, and the sound of his own breath.

The lights were out, and the curtains drawn. Guarded by silence, the air in the room felt stagnant and old. Like this hospital room had been left behind in the distant past.

He looked to the bed, but Shouko wasn’t there. She was in the ICU. Without special permission, only her family could visit.

On the empty bed stood three beautifully wrapped presents and a teddy bear with a big bow. Christmas presents from her parents and the hospital staff.

“I totally forgot,” he said.

Yesterday, he hadn’t thought he’d live to see December 25. Until he experienced Mai’s death, he’d assumed today would never come. It had never occurred to him to get her a present. That had been way beyond his capabilities.

“I hope Shouko gets better,” Mai said, setting the teddy bear upright.

“Yeah.”

If she got better and was released, she could bring Hayate over to play. They’d wash the two cats together, get shampoo all over them, and laugh themselves silly.

Maybe he had no right to think like this, not after destroying her chance at a future. He felt like he didn’t deserve to wish for her recovery.

But he couldn’t stop himself.

No matter what anyone said otherwise.

From the bottom of his heart, he hoped—prayed—that Shouko would get better.

Sakuta had even poured that prayer into the snowman they made.

Please save Makinohara.

Those feelings, too, were genuine. If there was a way for her to survive, he wanted that more than anything. Sakuta had been given a chance to save her. But that had proved to be the one choice he couldn’t take. Doing so would mean he couldn’t make Mai happy.

Mai, meanwhile, had found something on the side table and picked it up.

“Whatcha looking at?”

“This.”

She held out a piece of paper. A printout from school, browned with age. He’d seen this before—Shouko’s schedule for the future.

She’d been given this as an assignment in the fourth grade. But knowing full well her condition didn’t leave her with much of a future, she’d been unable to bring herself to fill it out completely.

The doctors had told her that without a heart transplant, she was unlikely to graduate junior high. So how could she make plans beyond that?

Shouko couldn’t imagine herself in high school and college or all grown up.

Sakuta scanned the schedule, reading what she’d written there.

“……?”

He immediately noticed the irregularity.

It had changed.

He remembered there being a lot more here.

The penciled writing ended in the middle of junior high. Before she even graduated.

The last time he’d seen it, it was filled out all the way to college. That was why Shouko had wanted his opinion—because she didn’t remember writing the later entries.

And this wasn’t just a lapse of memory. The first time she showed him the schedule, it was filled out through high school. But when he looked again a few days later, he’d seen the college section filled out, too.

And there were traces of that on the page in his hand.

It looked like she’d written all the way to college and then erased it. He could still see faint traces of the letters.

Graduate junior high.

Enter a high school with a view of the sea! (Minegahara High is my first choice!)

Meet the boy I’m destined to be with.

Graduate in good health!

Start college.

Reunite with the boy of destiny.

Tell him how I feel!

He could make out just enough of the entries to tell they were what he’d remembered.

But he didn’t know why they’d been erased.

Or what was happening.

Looking at this just reminded him of how Shouko’s actual future had been erased, which hurt. He remembered how she’d struggled to smile. How she’d smiled anyway, not wanting to worry her parents or Sakuta. Struggling against fears far bigger than her own body. Frustration got Sakuta’s tear ducts going again. Any second now, they’d start pumping out the waterworks. But this was the future he’d chosen. He couldn’t cry here. Not in front of Mai, and definitely not in Shouko’s hospital room.

“I’m gonna go get us some drinks,” he said.

He handed Mai the printout and left the room alone.

He moved down the empty hall, keeping his head high.

His eyes on the two rows of unadorned fluorescent lights.

Pointlessly counting them seemed to help stave off the tears. He took an elevator to the first floor—just to be extra sure, he’d picked the farthest possible vending machines.

By the time he reached the row of them by the gift shop, he was in better shape.

He took a thousand-yen note out of his wallet and fed it into the slot.

He first pressed the button for warm milk tea. That was for Mai.

Then he bought a blue-labeled sports drink for himself. The sixteen-ounce bottle fell with a thunk.

Would Mai praise him for remembering to buy something for her? Would she laugh because he’d picked the one she did commercials for? Imagining how she might react, he bent down to grab the drinks.

And something wet dripped onto his hand.

“Huh?”

Caught off guard, he made a weird noise. He looked down at his hand, doing a double and triple take. His hand was definitely coated in clear fluid.

A moment later, he realized this was relief. All he was doing was buying one drink for Mai and another that she advertised, then imagining how she might react when he brought them back—and the tiny joy of this everyday action had left him in tears.

Shedding tears over something totally commonplace. A slow, gentle warmth was wrapping its arms around him. There was no way to resist it. Nothing could stop tears of joy. He certainly couldn’t. Why would he even want to?

Unable to grab the drinks, he leaned against the machine, curling up in a ball. His shoulders heaving. He didn’t want to worry any strangers, so he stifled his voice…and waited for this gentle embrace to pass.

And as he did, he realized something.

Something very simple.

“I’m already happy.”

If he could cry like this…

And that fact brought a new wave of tears.

“I’m…already happy,” he whispered. It was for himself. He wanted to hear it out loud.

Mindful of the small happiness close at hand.

Mindful of the happiness he already had.

Reminding himself that this was what happiness really was.

He’d taken quite a detour, so when Sakuta got back to room 301, a good half hour had passed.

He was carrying the milk tea and the sports drink, as well as a snowman small enough to hold in one hand.

“This one’s for you, Mai.”

He handed her the tea. It wasn’t exactly warm anymore, but Mai didn’t mention that or how long he’d been away.

Instead, she looked at the snowman. “Christmas present for Shouko?” she asked.

One glance at his eyes would make it obvious he’d been crying, but she pretended not to notice.

He put the snowman in the empty freezer of the minifridge. Then he grabbed a sticky note and wrote Snowman Storage on it. The last thing he wanted was for the nurses or Shouko’s mom opening it unawares and freaking out.

Mai took a swig of her tea, and he undid the cap on his own drink. The snap of it was oddly satisfying. He’d lost a lot of fluids crying, so he chugged half the bottle in one go.

“You look like you want a reward,” Mai said, raising an eyebrow.

“Just stay with me forever.”

“Is that all?”

Judging from her smile, she’d really liked that answer.