Toradora! - Volume 10 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Of course, they didn’t have a plan.

Like someone who hated spiders but rushed headfirst right into a nest of them without realizing it, like someone who hated snakes but stepped on one, like a murderer bumping into a detective, Ryuuji had flipped directions and simply made a break for it. If he really were facing a spider or a snake or a detective, he might have actually been able to go into fight rather than flight, but the one standing in his way had been his own mother. He couldn’t bludgeon her with a club (not that he had a club, anyway)—no, his words had already hurt her much more than a blunt weapon could. His mother—Yasuko—had turned white as a sheet and sat down.

But he still ran without looking back. He did that.

“Ahh!”

“Whoa?! Careful!”

He promptly gripped Taiga’s hand as she lost her balance. Taiga’s wide-open eyes emitted an intense light for a second. He heaved up the hand he held, and Taiga somehow regained her footing in the melting snow on the road. He wouldn’t let go of her hand again.

Still umbrella-less, the two of them stumbled forward as they earnestly fled through the night snow. Taiga was just as frantic, he was sure. Their breaths were desperate and white as they focused on running. For the time being, all they could do was escape from that place.

Yasuko’s selfish parental desires made Ryuuji feel like his existence was meaningless if he didn’t do as his mother wished. Taiga’s mother was also an obstacle; she’d tried to separate Taiga from Ryuuji. They were all enemies to him, so in place of beating them with a club, he beat them with words, and then turned around and ran. It was all he could do.

Taiga was by his side.

He gripped Taiga’s hand again. He did it firmly, not even trying to hide his sweaty palms. 

The moment he had tried to run, his hand had sought only one thing and only one thing had sought his hand—Taiga’s. That was all. He’d thought to run away with Taiga, and Taiga had thought the same. 

Their mothers were probably following after them in the car. That was why, for the time being, they chose to dive into narrow roads that cars couldn’t enter, running through residential back streets. They wandered aimlessly, and then—

“We’re crossing the bridge. Careful of the cars.” 

“You mean the large bridge…”

“Let’s cross it and get on a bus in the town over. If we stick around here, we’ll get caught. If we take a train, we’ll probably be tracked down right away.”

All he wanted was to ask Taiga about her feelings and tell her about his complex and overflowing emotions. That would have been enough for him. He wanted to hear from Taiga’s mouth, in her own words, how she actually felt about him. He wanted to tell Taiga how he felt about her. He wanted to ask her about it. He wanted to tell her about it. That was it.

He was sure that if he just did that, the world would take on new colors, like it was shedding its skin, and something new would begin. Ryuuji was sure he felt his heart beat like it were about to leap out of him.

So why had things ended up like this?

When he breathed in the sub-zero air, the very cells in his lungs hurt. Beyond the snow that fluttered down ceaselessly from the sky, two rows of streetlamps shone on the promenade of the bridge, the outlines of light blurring around them. The bridge straddled the flowing river, which looked black in the night, and led to the next town over. 

Moving across the promenade, which was hidden by dead grass, Ryuuji pulled on Taiga’s hand. They crossed the two-lane roadway, keeping an eye out. Obscured by the sound of a small truck engine heading the same way, they slipped onto the large concrete bridge.

But…

“Oh, we need money!”

In order to ride the bus, they needed money. They thought of that simple concept a third of the way across the bridge.

“Oh crap, you’re right. We don’t have any money!” Ryuuji said.

He scowled. Ouch. This failure stung after getting this far. He only had change in his wallet, he hadn’t brought along the family cash card, and to make matters worse, he had thrown the envelope with his pay from Alps at Yasuko’s feet. 

“It’s okay! I’m pretty sure I have a lot!” Taiga pulled her sequined cat-face wallet from her coat pocket as she ran. She took back the hand that had been holding his and opened the fastener with her seemingly numb fingers. “See, I have one ten thousand yen bill, two…”

“I can’t believe you’re doing that here. That seems kind of risky, you’re going to trip.”

“But I need to check! You’re worried too, aren’t you? I also have a thousand yen bill, two, three, four…but I don’t have any change.” She started to count the bills she had clumsily pulled out. “Oh, there’s something rustling in my pocket. Maybe it’s another bill? …Ugh, what is this?”

Just a receipt, she pouted. In that moment, a gust of wind laced with snow made the surface of the river warble and assaulted them on the middle of the bridge by blowing right through them.

It took just a moment for the twenty-four thousand yen she had pulled out of her open wallet to be swept away.

“…”

“…”

They couldn’t even make a sound.

The bills surfed on the strong wind, dancing as they blew higher and higher. They flew to the right and left, as if mocking them. 

“Ah, ah, ah.” 

“Oh, oh, oh.” 

Taiga and Ryuuji stretched out their hands and hopped up and down as they tried to catch the bills fluttering through the sky. The wind seemed to ridicule the two idiots giving chase as it whirled through the bridge, changing directions.

“Ah, ah, ah, ahhh…!”

“Oh, oh, oh, ohohoh!”

Following the wind, they crossed the carless street in three bounds and practically leapt at the guardrail. They clung to the rail side by side.

The opportunity to nearly touch the bills immediately in front of their outstretched hands was expressly robbed from them as the twenty-four thousand yen fluttered and flitted—onto the dark surface of the river.

Their hands cut through the light snow in the air and stretched down futilely. As they turned their gazes downward, they realized they were already out of ideas. Cry or shout as they might, the flow of the river continued endlessly, and was steadfast and merciless on top of everything else.

They looked at each other at the same time.

“…”

“AHHHHHhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhhh!”

“…”

“Why youuuuuu?! How dare you act all calm, like you’ve reached enlightenment or something?! What are you going to do?!”

“…”

It wasn’t that Ryuuji had attained enlightenment—he was just dumbstruck. This must be what it means to be struck dumb, he thought. He couldn’t make a single sound as, holding onto the guardrail, Taiga screamed at him.

What is this?

Guess it’s that.

My so-called divine punishment—what people call karma.

Watching the flowing river that seemed to swallow up the falling snow, Ryuuji was unable to so much as move a finger.

Flat out telling his mother “That was a mistake,” after she sacrificed her own life to give birth to him and raise him must have been that heavy of a sin. It was the truth—he really should have never been born—but even daring to say it out loud had led to this sad state of affairs. Did this mean he’d never have a decent life if he didn’t resign himself to his fate? Was that it for him? He couldn’t even ride a bus?

Is it that terrible a sin?

“What are we going to do?! What do we do…?!” Taiga held her head in both her hands. She ended up putting her face down on the guardrail, looking as though she were about to doze off in class. 

Standing like that next to each other, they fell into silence.

Next to Ryuuji, who still couldn’t move, the shoulders of the white angora coat froze as though Taiga was holding her breath. The snow came down and down. On those shoulders. On the cashmere scarf covering her head that Ryuuji had wrapped around her earlier. On the wavy hair that flowed down her back. On the shoulders of Ryuuji’s down jacket, his back, and his cheeks…

…on the bridge that continued from the promenade of the riverside…

…at 8 PM on Valentine’s Day.

A layer of thin, faint ice started to build up on the ground like sherbet. They had stopped walking entirely.

They turned their eyes beyond the bridge. It was an ordinary residential area. The bright lights of the houses and condos blurred with their white breath. Separated by the soundless snow that fell ceaselessly, the other end of the bridge felt like an incredibly distant universe to them.

If they didn’t have money, they couldn’t ride the bus. They couldn’t ride the trains, either. They couldn’t go anywhere. Maybe it was because of how cold they were, but they couldn’t stop shivering. All the time they spent standing there petrified had made their joints freeze up, and a Porsche might still be following after them. They couldn’t stay standing there.

They belonged nowhere in the world.

Ryuuji looked at Taiga’s small, rounded back. He thought about what Taiga could have been thinking in that moment. Was she anxious, despairing, remorseful? She had to at least be cursing her clumsiness. She was gripping her head, which was protected by Ryuuji’s scarf, hard enough to make her thin fingers shake. She probably actually wanted to pull at her hair until it was a tangled mess. 

“What are we going to do, Ryuuji?”

Still unable to respond, he stood paralyzed in the snow. What do you want to do? He couldn’t just ask her that. He couldn’t ask her that, because it could imply Taiga was to blame. It would be like saying he wasn’t in the wrong because he just did what she wanted. He would be the guy who blamed their running away on the girl—no.

But also, it was because part of him was scared of asking, “Taiga, what do you want?”

Taiga had taken his hand in order to run away with him. And she actually did run away with him. That was enough to convince him that she wanted to be with him too, but…

He was afraid.

He knew why he did it. When Taiga’s mother appeared and said she would be taking Taiga, he couldn’t have done anything except run away. He just couldn’t live in a place without Taiga. Even if someone asked him why, all of his answers would only come retroactively. When he had decided to run and abandon the home he shared with his mother, his hand had grabbed Taiga’s. 

But he didn’t know why Taiga had run with him. And the reason why he was scared and couldn’t ask her and wanted to avert his eyes was that…

“Taiga.”

His gut told him there was a deep, red, gaping wound right there.

He hoped he wasn’t right but knew he probably was.

“Let’s walk, anyway… There’s nothing we can do just standing here like this.”

He squeezed out his voice and once again touched Taiga’s fingertips. He took her delicate fingers and grasped them in his hand.

Taiga swayed like a pendulum. “If we walk, how far will we even get…?” She swung back to where she had been. His gut feelings were inching closer towards reality.

He felt like the outline of what she was about to tell him was being etched out clearly, little by little, just by the way her body swayed and through the earnest echo at the end of her words. It was why Taiga abandoned her place, why Taiga was forced to abandon her condo next to the Takasu’s house, why Taiga couldn’t accept the place she belonged with her spontaneously appearing mother—and, whether all of it happened for the same reason, why Taiga’s mother was trying to separate them.

His gut was right.

Ryuuji was so scared of the wound, he shook.

Taiga slowly raised her face. She still held his hand. “We…don’t have money anymore.”

She looked into Ryuuji’s eyes.

“We don’t. We really don’t.”

“I know… Didn’t you just throw it all away?”

“So, about that. Look. Well…” She gently let go of his hand. She pushed up the hair that touched her cheeks and then thrust her hand into her pocket. “There’s something that I need to tell you.”

The scene he feared might be about to begin. Ryuuji almost instinctually tried to avert his eyes from Taiga’s. He was scared of Taiga’s eyes, blotted with darkness, turning towards him.

“We really don’t have a single cent. What was in my wallet was really the last of it. Even my account is empty. I haven’t had a deposit this year. I had a lot saved up, but then money started to slowly get withdrawn from it. First one hundred thousand, then two hundred thousand, and after that happened a couple of times, it’s mostly—”

“Uh.” Ryuuji felt as though white flames were blowing from his eyes, ears, and nose.

So that was why.

Of course.

Of course, of course, of course that’s what caused it! His shivering grew more intense, until he felt like he was about to explode. 

“What! Does! That old man! Think he’s doing?!” The shout spilled from him like vomit, like he’d drunk poison that made him sick. It splattered around foully, probably tainting Taiga too, but the hate rising in his throat was too much to hold it back.

Would he try to get involved with her again? Would he make her suffer again? Would he hurt Taiga in the same way he did before? Well, if he did, then Ryuuji wished he’d just die already. Just die already! 

Taiga turned her face down slightly. “He hasn’t contacted me,” she said faintly. “Apparently, he lost, after all this time. He’s been getting sued for a while now.”

The bangs that spilled over the tip of her nose quivered as snow fluttered down and clung to them.

“So, my dad ran away with Yuu. It was all because he had to pay a huge amount of money. Apparently, it’s the kind of thing he has to pay no matter what. It won’t go away even if he declares bankruptcy. He doesn’t have a company or a house, and the car and everything else is all gone, too. The condo isn’t ours anymore, either. I’m squatting in it illegally.”

On the thick, white earth were eyes like marbles, a nose like dried leaves, and a mouth like the branch of a tree. Inside the ellipse drawn in crayon were round eyes, a triangular nose, and a square mouth. The face was bloodless and without warmth.

That was Taiga’s face.

“My dad ran away. What’s going to happen? Will he eventually get arrested? I have no idea. In the end, I didn’t even know what kind of job he had or what kind of work he did this whole time…and I didn’t think that was weird. I didn’t even know things had ended up like this. Until my mom came by during that school trip, I had no idea. I didn’t even know my mom had ended up like that.”

Why didn’t you tell me anything? He didn’t recognize the voice asking that question as his own. The voice felt like an echoing siren in the far reaches of another dimension.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. I’m really sorry.”

What had she been planning on doing, then?

Her words slurred as she grew flustered, like she was saying it in a dream.

“My mom said that she would take custody of me, so I told her to buy the condo, then. That I would live there, and she could just deposit money in my account like my dad. I said that if she couldn’t do that, then she should just leave me alone. Even though I’m a klutz, I would find a job, and I would do anything to make a living. But it didn’t work. She said it was impossible for her… It was like my mom wanted to completely cut ties with my dad. She said that ‘her own daughter’ couldn’t also be ‘Aisaka Rikurou’s daughter.’ She said that she would take me away. She said she would take me somewhere where no one could follow. I kind of feel like I should have been grateful for Yuu—”

Ryuuji thought about Taiga’s face until that day. She had been trying to pass it off by lying the whole time, but those empty eyes peered into true despair at times. He thought of her voice when she yelled in the lecture room—of the feelings that she should have been able to convey…

The feelings she wanted to convey.

“—Ryuuji.”

Defeated by all of it, Ryuuji broke. He covered his face and crouched at Taiga’s feet. He tried desperately to swallow the sob that overflowed from behind his hands by holding his breath. Crying wouldn’t help anything.

There was nothing he could do.

“Ha ha ha…”

He heard Taiga’s voice.

He felt something fluffy and warm be put on his head. It was the scarf he’d lent to Taiga, warmed by her body heat.

“I’m weird, aren’t I?” Taiga stooped down to wrap him with the scarf, and with herself. She wrapped her arms around him, and her whisper quivered at the back of Ryuuji’s head. Her long hair, which pushed into his nose, was cold. The faint snow fell on top of them, on the surface of the flowing water, on the town. “Things like this just always seem to happen to me…”

Protected by the scarf and Taiga’s heat, tears wet Ryuuji’s cheeks. If you’re weird, then I’ve got to be weird, too. He couldn’t form that into sound. If the unbreakable Aisaka Taiga is weird, then, I, Takasu Ryuuji, have got to be weird, too. He couldn’t get the words to come out. The maddening sob just burned at the back of his throat, and he couldn’t even scream. He had no place where he belonged. He had no place to go. He didn’t even have a place to go home to.

Ryuuji desperately got up and stretched out both his arms. No matter where he tried to be, no matter where this place was, he would never change, and he wanted to make sure Taiga knew that. With every ounce of strength he had, he hugged Taiga back.

“Why are you…still staying by my side?” she said.

You idiot! Instead of shouting, he raised his face. He buried his chin in the top of Taiga’s hair and looked up to the heavens the snow fell from. His wet cheeks immediately chilled and froze.

“You don’t know?! You really don’t know?!”

The night sky was starless, and he couldn’t even find a constellation to guide him. He didn’t even know where he was. He just knew that here, in his arms, he had Taiga. He was wherever Taiga was.

That was the only thing that was certain.

“Where else am I supposed to be except for here?!”

Huh? He blinked. It was here all along? Ryuuji gently let go in surprise. The answers to the questions that he hadn’t understood to ask had all been here. They were all here.

Separated by half a step, he brushed the hair in Taiga’s face behind her ear. He leaned down and peered into her pale face. When she asked, “Here?” he nodded as he touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. Her cheek was firm, even warm from the flow of her blood.

“Yeah.” Ryuuji didn’t hesitate as he looked at Taiga with resolve he could not take back. “That’s right. It’s here.”

I don’t know why or how, but that’s just how it is. I’ve decided. The faint sherbet snow melted and collected at his feet in loose layers. He noticed the guardrail of the bridge had also collected a thin layer of ice and bumps of snow. So had Taiga’s hair. 

If she didn’t want this, she probably would have kicked him, punched him, headbutted him, or run away or something. Though she was palmtop sized, she was still a tiger. Even as he thought that, though, he didn’t want her to get away. So he executed a feint. Ryuuji took off the scarf and cocked his head to the side, pretending he was putting it around his neck. Then he took a giant step forward.

They weren’t father and daughter. They weren’t big brother and little sister or big sister and little brother. They weren’t friends. They weren’t landlord and freeloader. They weren’t just classmates, or schoolmates, or neighbors. They weren’t master and servant, or pseudo-family, or the best friends of each other’s unrequited loves. He knew those flimsy relationships would be broken by this, and he knew they would lose the comfortable, convenient cushion that had separated them. But regardless of that, he wanted to touch her.

Ryuuji wanted to kiss Taiga.

Time, which ticked by one second, then two seconds, was the same as the falling snow. At the same rate that time progressed, the distance between them shrank. 

Lips touched lips.

Taiga hadn’t noticed Ryuuji’s approach until they made contact, and in that moment, her warm breath leapt slightly. Ryuuji grabbed the back of Taiga’s head with his right hand. He pushed his mouth harder into hers.

He did it in order to make sure she didn’t get away, in order to make sure their lips didn’t part.

His spine quivered. He knew anyone could kiss like this, but did it feel like this for everyone? It was terrifyingly soft, and hot, and the feeling of their lips was too acute. Only the sensation exchanged by their lips, so vivid it was sweet, ran through his brain and made him feel as though he were melting. He was at the point that the pulsing of his heart couldn’t keep up, and lances of electricity seemed to pierce through his skin from the inside out. Just as science class had taught him, touch really did come from electrical impulses. His cranial nerves were sparked by a rush of lightning, and blooming flames scattered in the back of his eyes.

Humans were capable of doing something as amazing as this.

It made him feel…

“We ki—”

…keenly aware it couldn’t last.

“—we kissed?”

Taiga took just a single step away from him and, like a beast, looked at Ryuuji with glistening, brightly shining eyes. She covered her lips with both her hands, like they were a treasure. Her hair fluttered.

“We did…”

They had.

“W-w-w-we did…?”

“We did, we did, we did!”

They had, they really had.

Nodding so hard he shook, Ryuuji also covered his lips with a hand. There was no way this could be normal. Was it because it was just intense the first time? Was this something people just got used to eventually, too? If he tried to do it again, maybe it would go a little better. No—it might be even more amazing. 

He took a step back. It felt he was being torn in two, but he didn’t want to test it any further. And yet, he wanted to see where this path went. Don’t go, you fool, he thought as he took a second step back. At the third step, he shook his head. He couldn’t let himself fall into his bottomless desires.

Tottered perilously, as though he were drunk, he wandered back till he felt the hard shape of the bridge’s rail at his back. Ryuuji clung to the snow-covered rail. He saw Taiga’s boots coming his way, entering into his wavering vision.

“W-w-wait! Stop, stop, stop! Don’t come near me!” he yelled with desperation that Taiga probably couldn’t comprehend. He climbed up onto the base of the railing, which was shaped like a concrete step. The upper half of his body tilted, and he groaned. Ryuuji bit his lip firmly. He needed to forget about the sensation that felt as though it were melting his brain in that moment, or he wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore.

Remember. The adults were trying to rob him of the place where he had decided he belonged. He and Taiga had closed the distance that separated them. They had directly touched each other’s skin. But even so, the adults were trying to tear them apart.

No. He didn’t want that. Ever. He grabbed his hair in both his hands. It was cold enough that the snow that had dampened it had refrozen. The smell from the dark, flowing river nearly two meters below his feet was cold to his nose. What was he supposed to do? How could he push through this? Where was their way out? 

“ERGAAAAAAAAAAH!” Taiga roared.

“BWAH!” Taken by surprise, Ryuuji was nearly blown off the railing as he staggered. He tried to cling to the rail with both his hands, but—

“J-j-j-just how much of an i-i-i-i-id-id-id-idi-idi—” Taiga grabbed Ryuuji’s collar with one hand.

“Wh-wh-wha, wait, ahhh!”

“You idiot! Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot! Idiotidiotidiotidiotidiot!” Balling up her fists, she hit him. Slap! Bash! Thud! Thump!

“Stop…really…ow…ahhh…”

“Just how! Much of an idiot! Are you?!”

“Calm down, really, you’re…GAH!”

“I’m sorry for slapping you and stuff!” Taiga’s voice was hoarse. “But the hand I slapped you with hurts more than the slaps!”

“That’s not even close to true?! Whoa…!” Ryuuji repelled her right hand as it came back to slap him.

“Just you try to jump to your death again! Definitely not ever, ever, ever…”

“Gweeeeh…?!” 

Taiga’s hands locked mercilessly onto Ryuuji’s collar to strangle him. She quivered with the genuine brute strength of a growling beast. “Never! I’ll kill you if you do…!”

He couldn’t avert his eyes from her ferocity any longer. Blood rushed into Taiga’s cheeks, which had been cold and pale. The savagery of her hot, white breath blew at the tip of Ryuuji’s nose. 

“I’ve thought it would be better if I never existed! I have…more than once! Ugh…” Taiga’s voice leapt, and then her tears finally overflowed, streaming down rosy cheeks. Her soft lips quivered and contorted. The pale hand gripping Ryuuji’s collar wouldn’t stop shaking. “But I’m alive…and that’s…!”

Ryuuji finally understood the misunderstanding that had caused Taiga to rampage, but he couldn’t console or rectify her when she was strangling him. Besides, just how stupid could Taiga be, really? How klutzy and rash and violent could even she be? How bad was she at listening to others? The only thing certain about her was that she was strong, and—

“That’s because you’re here!”

And just how honest was she?

Taiga didn’t turn her eyes away from him. Her face was a mess as she hit him with the genuine, real truth. 

She bet her life on love.

“Because I care about you!” Taiga roared.

Like fire. Like a dart. Like a tiger. Like a bullet. Like light. Taiga’s voice struck Ryuuji’s heart like all of that. It pierced through him and then lit him on fire. It was painful and hot and difficult—and—

“Are you trying to kill me…?!” Ryuuji shouted as loudly as he could.

“Maybe I should! That’s right—I’ve been so mad at you all this time! What was that just now?! What was that you just told Ya-chan?!”

“Th-that was—”

“No making excuses, you idiot!” She shook his collar, which was still grasped in her hands. Vertigo on the verge of forming into a concussion made Ryuuji feel dizzy. “Don’t you dare ever say that again! I won’t forgive you if you do! I need you to be here! I was fine with you liking whoever you wanted and living out the rest of your life with whoever you chose! The only reason I’m here is because I wanted to see you, Takasu Ryuuji! That’s all! I didn’t care if I didn’t mean anything to you, I was fine just living near you… That was all it was! But…but then you kissed me, so I…because of that! I want to be by your side! I decided that I would be! So! S-s-so now…! You have to understand…!”

Her violent fingers pulled away from Ryuuji’s down jacket. Ryuuji reached out as if to hug her, but the moment that he took a step forward— 

“WHOA?!” Through what could only be called bad luck, the bottom of his sneakers slipped on the loose snow, and…

“Hey! So do you get it now?!”

“I—”

Taiga jumped at him. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to cling to him or punch him, but given the timing, Ryuuji could only think it was dispensation from heaven. They ran into each other and Ryuuji’s body weight shifted all at once to the left. When his slipping soles couldn’t support him, he reached out to the railing, but his hand slipped on the cold sherbet snow, which yielded zero resistance. Then Taiga also slipped and fell to the ground, and her swinging arms dealt the decisive blow. She hit the back of Ryuuji’s neck and sent him flying with a lariat move.

“AHHHHHHhhhhh!”

Ryuuji went over the railing.

This really must be divine punishment.

No, maybe it’s karma.

As he fell for what seemed like eternity, Ryuuji thought he glimpsed the face of Kannon, the deity of compassion, weeping. And then he sank back-first into the freezing river. He saw a column of water splash up. His breath stopped in that pitch dark, and a hush settled on him. 

I must definitely be dead, he thought. It was neither cold nor not cold. It neither hurt nor didn’t hurt. It was as though all his senses had frozen.

Ahhh! This is so baaad!

Even Taiga’s shriek, coming from the top of the bridge, seemed to echo in slow motion. I’m done! Ryuuji’s arms and legs thrashed madly on reflex, and he immediately reached the bottom of the river—actually, the river was shallow enough for him to sit in it on his butt.

“HGAWBABUHBUHBUH.” He practically sprung to his feet. “BMAHGAHZUBOA…BAH! BWAH!”

He coughed, struggling to replenish his oxygen. He would die. He would actually die. 

Takasu Ryuuji, on the verge of death, decided to take down all God’s creatures, big and small, with him. He had become a self-destructive bomb that could blow up the entire planet. His frantic, glinting eyes stared into the end of nothingness, and a gruesome smile played on his lips. His single black wing soared as a flash of light released from his chest. He would be reincarnated as a demon king in a thousand years’ time. It would be a most frightful millennium—though, of course, that wasn’t the case.

“See…we end up in situations like this…”

The true terror in this situation was Taiga, Ryuuji thought as his vision shook to the point it blurred. She watched him from up on the bridge and then nodded like she’d realized something.

“I’m glad you were fine. But, well… You’ve learned through experience, right? You better not jump a second time. There’s no easy way to go out in this world.”

“Y-Y-Y—”

“You want to say, ‘Yes,’ don’t you? Good. If you understand, then…” She rubbed away her tears, “Can you climb back up?” 

…What are you talking about?! thought Ryuuji. I mean it!

“YOUUUUUU, y-y-you were the one who pushed me offfffffffffff!”

“Huh? What? Can’t hear you.”

“I-I-I-I wasn’t trying to jump!”

“Huh? You weren’t?”

“I-I-I can’t believe you got the wrong idea and went violen-n-n-n-t!”

“Oh no! Then you should have hurried up and said so.”

Submerged knee-deep in water, Ryuuji sucked in air to say who-knows-what to Taiga, who was looking down at him. The snow fluttered down onto his wet and freezing body, and he had already completely lost feeling in his hands and feet.

“Hey, are you okay?” Taiga leaned out from the railing and rubbed roughly at her tear-stained face with the back of her hand as she looked down at him.

“O-of course I’m not okay… I-I-I-I-It’s cooooooold!”

“This won’t do…”

“Well, it’s all your fault!”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t on purpose, so…”

“‘It wasn’t on purpose…’ Then what was it?! Why you—you—you…you klutz! Klutz! Klutz! Klutz! Klutz! You’re violent! A ruffian!”

If he didn’t say more, he wouldn’t be able to calm down. He couldn’t calm down, but because he was on the verge of freezing to death, the melting, runaway furnace in his gut began to quiet. He looked up at Taiga as he breathed out white and rubbed roughly at his numb face with his numb fingers. As he did that, feeling came back to him; his blood was slowly starting to flow again.

His brain registered at that moment precisely how much distance there was between him and Taiga. Even if he stretched out his arms, he could never reach the top of the bridge from in the river. 

“That’s why I said I was sorry.”

“You never said that…”

Taiga pouted. Her soft hair danced loosely in the wind where the snow fluttered. The reality that Ryuuji wouldn’t be able to touch that hair, her face, and her lips was already unbearable. He wanted to be near her, just closer to her, and to always, always be by her side.

He didn’t want anyone to steal the place he had decided to live.

And if he didn’t want it to be stolen from him, all he could do was fight. And the ones he had to fight were mainly adults, so to win against them, all he could do was become an adult himself. 

In other words…

“Hey…Taiga.” Ryuuji waved his hand to get Taiga’s attention. 

In order to be properly recognized as an adult by the adults, he needed to do things according to the ways of the adult world. He would quit being a kid who could be jerked around at an adult’s convenience. Animals all did that, didn’t they? The beasts of the ground, the birds of the sky, the fishes of the ocean and streams, and even the bugs of the trees—all of them—stood their ground when they matured into adults, saying “This is my spot.” They would rear their heads, release loud cries, and fight for their lives.

“I’m seventeen.”

Taiga was silent for a bit and then nodded. “Well…we are in the same grade together…”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” It might not just have been because of the cold that the fingers Ryuuji reached out toward her were quivering. “I’m almost eighteen.”

They would get through this Thursday, get past Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and gain distance—they would run and run and run and wander, and their destination would be Ryuuji’s birthday. When that happened, he would plant his feet and yell, I’m going to live here! 

But until then, he and Taiga could only run. Until the day he turned eighteen. 

That was why he caught his breath as he looked at Taiga.

“Marry me.”

Taiga’s white coat was blinding under the line of lamps that lit the bridge, and he felt like it was made of light itself.

“From now on, for all my days, through everything that happens from here on out—for all of it—I’ll do it together with you. Let’s live together—forever, starting now.”

Before his quivering, outstretched fingers was the light he had been so, so, so wishing for. He would grab that star with his own hands. 

“Are you…trying to save me?” However, Taiga’s face contorted, and her voice was like ice. “You’re doing that because you pity me… Is that supposed to be compassion? Sympathy? Kindness? Are you just so caught up in being a good kid that you get the warm fuzzies from sacrificing yourself? Is that why you’re saying that?”

Her ferocious, glinting eyes didn’t so much as falter as they pierced through Ryuuji, and her talons quivered. Blood hotter than magma rushed through Taiga’s whole body. In that case, I’ll tear you to pieces. If you’re careless, I’ll tear you apart and eat you, her body language said. 

“Aghhhhhh, seriously…damn iiiiiiit…it’s coooooooooollllllld!” Ryuuji yelled.

If she was putting her life on the line, he was, too. Ryuuji looked up at her. It was like he was standing on the very edge of a cliff, with the flames of love closing in after him. He shook uncontrollably, and both his eyes opened wide. He bit his frozen lips and desperately, with every ounce of strength he had left, stretched both hands toward Taiga.

“You can think whatever you want! But you’re my one and only!” He yelled loud enough to make his voice hoarse. “I love you! That’s why I’ll fight anyone trying to steal you! No matter who it is, I’ll fight them!”

“You…love me?”

“It’s cold! It’s cold, cold, cold! I feel like I’m going to die!”

“Ryuuji, you love me?”

“Ahhhhhhh, it’s cold! It’s cooooooooooooold!”

“You said you love me. You said it, you said that, you did… You said that. You definitely said that. I heard it.”

If she heard it, then why was she questioning it? His hands relaxed. His knees suddenly buckled, too. Ryuuji turned his face down.

“I love you,” he muttered. He felt like he had vomited the entire contents of his heart, till it was wrung dry. In the end, that was what it was. That was exactly all it was. After all that commotion, he had finally squeezed out everything he’d been holding in.

“I can’t bear to see you dealing with anything that makes you sad. I don’t want to suffer anymore, either, but if all of that sad stuff and hard stuff and unbearable stuff brought us here—if it brought me to you, if it made you come to me, then it’s all precious to me. The effect your existence has on my whole world—”

…is what was keeping me together, I think.

As Ryuuji muttered that, he saw something unbelievable. Taiga disappeared for a moment from the other side of the railing, and—

Stepping over it, she was trying to jump over.

“Wait. W-w-w-wait, stop hey, whoa, ahhh…”

With an “alley-oop,” Taiga jumped. Her skirt puffed up and spread. Ryuuji thought it looked like a dome.

“I can’t catch you! I can’t catch you! Whooaaaaa!” In the next second, he was intent on grabbing Taiga’s weight. She hit him in the shoulders, back, and hip, bringing up a giant splash of water. Ryuuji veered dangerously and staggered. “Ahh!” he thought he heard himself yell.

“Well, now I’ve come to you.” Taiga clung to him as he staggered, about to fall. “No take backs. I can’t be returned. I won’t let you go. It’s too late.”

“A-are you a monkey or something?!” 

Taiga clung to Ryuuji’s torso with her hands and legs, entrusting her entire body weight to him. She rested her chin on his shoulder and yielded everything to Ryuuji’s arms. Under his ears, her front teeth touched the carotid artery beneath his thin skin as though she were nibbling on him. Ryuuji shivered from the warmth of her tongue.

“Who cares if I’m a monkey or whatever, you can’t return me anymore!”

“That’s exactly what I want. Who would give you up?”

But he really couldn’t support Taiga’s weight. A second later, the two of them tumbled right into the middle of the freezing river. A column of water splashed up, followed by their screams.

You, why you! Look what you did! Idiot, idiot! Stupid, stupid! Klutz, klutz! Ahh! 

***

“Oh wow, wow, wow…” Ami groaned, rubbing her eyes. It definitely is them.

She had hidden herself in the shadow of a streetlamp. From her vantage point on the riverside sidewalk, she could see the two suspicious shadows making a huge commotion and raising splashes of water in the snow. Hiding her mouth with the oversized sleeve of her sport coat, she turned a cautious gaze on them.

Ahhh, it’s cold! I’m gonna die! My leg’s stuck! Ahhhh! Pull me out! I can’t reach you! Taigaaaaa! Ryuujiiii! AGHAHHHH! 

After getting to this point, her disinclination to get involved was at its max. They seemed unexpectedly energized, and she was almost ready to go home, but…

When her feet tried to cold-heartedly change direction, she couldn’t do it.

“Tch…”

In the end, her feet wouldn’t move.

Ami clicked her tongue and flipped her phone open. She stomped her feet in the cold beneath the lamplights and counted the number of times the phone rang. If he didn’t pick up after five rings, she was definitely going home. She noticed that the toes of her mouton boots were damp and cold, wrinkled from the fallen snow. No waaay, she thought, contorting her face just when her childhood friend came on the line.

“Yo, hello! I’m in front of Takasu and Aisaka’s houses right now. I tried ringing the doorbells, but of course no one was home in either place. Where are you?”

“At the riverside… Actually, I found them. They’re by the big bridge. They’re in the middle of the river. I’m horrified.”

“What?! You’re serious?!”

“Yeah. They look like they’re in big trouble.”

Ami brushed off the snow that had collected on her shoulders, thinking how she should have at least brought an umbrella. She stuck one of her hands deep into her pocket and leaned back against the streetlamp. 

“They couldn’t be doing that, could they?! I’m scared to even say it out loud—are they doing that thing we talked about, like, th-that double suicide thing, were things that serious?”

“Nah, it’s more like they’ve lost their minds.” When she glanced at them again, the crazy couple were continuing their midwinter bath.

“So they’ve lost their minds! Anyway, I’ll head there right away!”

“Can I gwo home now?” Her voice sounded nasally, not because she was faking it, but because her nose was actually stuffed up. She felt like she was coming down with something; she had been thinking of going to bed early that day. With the snow, she hadn’t felt like going on her daily jog and was thinking of sinking into a nice long bath with a proper face mask on.

She hadn’t been planning on thinking about what those two were doing after that, but…

“You can’t! If they’ve gone mad, you have to hurry and bring them back to sanity again! I’ll be there right away, okay? Oh, and let Kushieda know, too!”

“What? I don’t know her phone number anyway.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true, though… Hey, he hung up! I’m telling you not to mess with me… What is this, seriously?”

Her childhood friend had made things sound so alarming, so urgent, that she had stuck her feet in the new boots that were already out in the entryway and run out like this without so much as an umbrella. Cursing to herself, Ami unlocked her phone with her numb fingers. She searched her address book and hit call. She heard the phone ring. The person on the other end came on after just two rings.

“Oh, hello.” She spoke as dispassionately as she could. “I found them near the big bridge by the riverside. Yuusaku said he’d come right away,” she said quickly. 

The person on the other end finished her reply in just four phrases—no way, seriously, I got it, I’ll be there. It sounded like the girl was running, her breath uneven.

Ami put her phone away in her pocket and breathed pure white into the night sky, thinking about what to do next. There were still shrieks of deathly agony coming from the middle of the river. Actually, if they could make that much noise, they had to be fine. She decided she would just watch them for a while longer, like an outsider.

The roads she’d run on to make it here had been deserted, so quiet it frightened her. She looked at the blinking lights from the opposite side of the river, where the idiots were making a huge commotion, thinking that it was probably quiet there, too. The snow, which came down from the heavens without pause, started to feel like a soundless curtain. She felt cut off from the world. 

Which side should she be on? Was it here with the incredibly idiotic racket where the shrieks echoed, or there, the place that was so far away it seemed to blur?

“Oh?! It’s Dimhuahua!”

“Whoa?! You’re right, it’s Kawashima!”

No way… Ami cautiously turned around. She hadn’t misheard. They were there, half-alive and half-dead, looking desperate as they paddled through water up to their knees in the middle of the river, dripping with so much water that they might have been sporting icicles. Takasu Ryuuji and Aisaka Taiga were waving their hands fervently at her.

“Diiiiiiiiiiiiimhuaaaaaaaaaaahuaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Kawashima! Heeey! Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!”

She pretended she didn’t understand them. I wonder if a snow fairy is talking to me? Her expression suggesting that she was seriously considering something of the sort, Ami turned the other way. She did so because she was very obviously afraid.

“Ahhhh! That Dimhuahua is pretending like she can’t heeeeaaaaar us!”

“Ahhhhhhhhh, you’ve got to be kidding, we’re practically on the verge of freezing to death!”

You devil! You devil! They yelled at her, but she didn’t have the faintest idea what they could have meant. She knew there was a classy princess of a celebrity here, a natural beauty who was the prettiest of them all, kinder than them all, but she didn’t know about any devils. 

“Oh, it’s so cold,” she said, “maybe I’ll go grab a coffee.”

“Whoa, she’s actually planning on leaving! Wait, Dimhuahua! I said wait! Don’t leave! I said don’t leaaaaaave! Help meeeeeeeeeeeee!” Maybe because her reputation had turned to embarrassment and her pride was shattered, the Palmtop Tiger, at long last, half-cried as she sent out an SOS. The cheeky, arrogant Tiger called for help. 

Ha ha. Ami snorted, in spite of herself. Tiger should have done that to start with. She stopped walking and turned around.

“Kawashima Ami-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, the model! Ka-wa-shi-ma-Ami-saaaaaaaaaaaaan! Don’t abandon your friends when they’re about to freeze to deeeeeaaaaaath! Look, Ryuuji’s freezing, too!”

“Nice! Excellent, Taiga! Kawashima Anna’s daughter Ahhh! Miiiiiii! Saaaaaaaaaaaaan! Are you just gonna leave us here?!”

“No no no, wait wait wait wait wait! Seriously, stop that! I said stop!” 

This wasn’t funny. Ami planned to keep using her name in the entertainment industry for the next sixty years, and she wasn’t going to let them turn that name into a weird city legend. “Don’t mess with me! What are you saying?! Why are you just yelling people’s names out there like that?! Are you an idioooooot?! Actually, why don’t you just say ‘help me’ like a normal person?!”

“So you really did hear us?! Eek, help!”

“Help us!”

Half-sliding in the snow, Ami ran down the slope of the riverside. As she got closer, the two of them looked even more terrifying. They were wet up to their heads, and the color of their faces was shading from blue to green. Even their lips were turning dark purple. She lost the will to snap at them.

“Actually…how did you end up like that…?”

“A lot happened… It’s a long story. Ah, ahhh! My boots are slipping off…”

“W-wait a second Kawashima, please, give us a hand! The river bottom is so soft that we can barely walk!”

“Fine!” Ami stood on a concrete block that just barely touched the river water. “Oh dear, too bad, looks like I can’t reach.” She just waved around her hand up to her elbow, putting no real effort into it. 

“Why youuuuuuu!” the Palmtop Tiger shouted grudgingly. 

Ami just snorted. “I’m joking, of course,” she said. “Eek! That’s! So! Cold~!”

She grabbed Takasu Ryuuji’s hand first, using all her strength to pull him up, and then took Tiger’s small hand. Their hands were so cold that she just about shrieked. 

“Yuusaku, and she… Kushieda Minori said they’re coming right away. Actually, aren’t you both really in trouble? Your faces don’t look a normal color.”

“I-I-I-I-I feel like I’m in trouble. I’m r-r-r-r-really s-s-s-s-seriously feeling it.”

“W-w-w-we’re both feeling it. W-w-we’re idiots-s-s-s-s.”

“You’re lucky to be alive. So, you’re fine?”

They didn’t seem composed enough for her to ask what had happened, so for the time being, she took off the coat she was wearing and put it on their heads. The chill that permeated her knit turtleneck made her whole body break out in goose bumps. She should have been doing better than the two who were soaking wet and frozen, but…

“I feel like I’m the one most likely to catch a cold.”

I’m the one who’s alone here, she almost said as she looked at them, huddling in the coat and shivering, but swallowed her words and took a breath instead. Ahh. In the end, wasn’t she actually the most pitiful one here? 

At just a single phone call from her childhood friend, she’d gone running, found them, and on top of all that, even lent them her coat. And the truth was, she wanted others to do the same for her.

The truth was, she wanted someone to treat her the same way.

That’s so silly. Rather than biting her lip, Ami put her finger to her cheek. She then pouted her lips like a duck, and instead of swallowing her words, made her voice sound sweeter. “When heaven gave me the most beautiful face there ever was, they must have given me the greatest hardships to match… Eeeeeeeeeeek!”

“Ahh, Dimhuahua, you’re so warm…”

Her deep pain, which no one could comprehend, blew off into the unseen beyond as the sopping wet Palmtop Tiger firmly latched on to Ami with all four of her limbs. She thrust her hand into the back of Ami’s knit shirt. The chill of that hand paralyzed Ami’s whole body.

“You’re really so warm, Dimhuahua. You’re a lifesaver…”

“YAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

In the moment she was struck immobile, those cold-as-ice hands made their way under the extra undershirt she was wearing, stealing more of her body heat. Ami screeched like a pirate’s war cry.

As though summoned by that scream, her childhood friend ran toward them, waving his hand. “Oh, there you are! Hey!” He skillfully slid down the snow-covered slope in his sneakers. “Were you just yelling like a pirate?!”

Another person arrived moments after him. “Found you! You guys! Wait, ahh!”

It was Kushieda Minori. But when she tried to slide down the slope in the same way as Kitamura, she slipped, landed on her butt, and then just skidded the rest of the way down until she arrived at the bottom of the river. When she stood, she said (of all things), “Ahmin, were you just talking about pirates?!”

“That’s not what she said!” they all cried at once. 

“Sorry, I misheard!” Minori stuck out her tongue. “Actually, what’s going on here?!”

She pointed with both hands at the sopping wet duo. They looked at each other, and neither Ryuuji nor Taiga could find anything to say. They simply shook uncontrollably and intermittently breathed out white breaths.

“Actually, what happened to you, too?!” Minori suddenly pointed a finger at Ami.

“Huh?” Ami let her true face peek out as she looked back.

“The way you’re dressed! What’re you doing wearing barely anything!”

“M-M-M-Minorin, th-th-th-th-this is Dimhuahua’s coat. Sh-sh-sh-she lent it to me. Right, D-D-D-D-D-Dimhuahua?”

Minori replied before Ami could nod. “Ahhhhhhhhh! Seriously, just looking at all of you makes me feel cold! Are you okay?!”

She reached out to Ami without hesitation and rubbed roughly at her arms. “Get off!” Ami said without thinking, but Minori didn’t pull back her hands.

“First off, you two take off your wet coats. Here, hand them over to me.”

“Takasu-kun, you actually put on Ahmin’s coat. And then Taiga, you put on mine. And then, Ahmin, you take this! You’re sniffling, hurry up, hurry up!”

A wide checked scarf like a stole came to rest on Ami’s shoulders, which were only covered in a knit shirt. Without thinking, she ducked her head at the sudden warmth.

“I’ll take that.” Her childhood friend reached out his hands and stole the scarf. In its place, Kitamura pulled off the duffle coat he was wearing and offered it to Ami and Minori. “Here, you two both wear this, you’ll get cold.”

Kushieda Minori took it and grabbed Ami’s elbow. “Come with me! Hey, come here! Come closer!” She jerked Ami into the wool of the duffle, which wasn’t very warm.

“…” Ami coughed to pretend her voice hadn’t caught. Pretending like nothing happened, she continued, “A bath. You guys will probably die if you don’t get in a bath. For now, at least.”