Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatte Iru - Volume 4 - Chapter 5

5

All alone, Yukino Yukinoshita gazes up at the night sky.

From the washing area came the classic kapon sound of the bath. I’ve always wondered what that noise was supposed to mean. The sound of a water bucket hitting the tile? I quickly washed my head, body, and face and then slipped all the way into the water.

This was a hot spring, they’d said. I was all refreshed after rinsing off the sweat, and I felt like the water was saturating me.

There was a big bathhouse in the visitor lodge. As is often the case for most field trips, camping trips, and other school events, when students stay overnight, they allot separate times for the boys and girls. This time, though, I was soaking in the regular bathroom in the manager’s building.

Since our discussion earlier had gone on so long, there was only time for one group to use the big bathhouse, even though they clearly needed time for three: the boys, the girls, and Totsuka. After some negotiations, they let the boys use the regular bathroom. But, well, this tub wasn’t much bigger than the one in a normal home, so we were going in one at a time. Most of the guys probably wouldn’t be keen to share a bath with other guys anyway, so it all worked out.

Maybe if Totsuka and I bathed together, we could have both fit in at once, but in that case… Well, it’d be kinda like, you know, sorta… I mean, if on the off chance that Totsuka was actually a girl, my Gae Bolg would be sure to activate, and if he’s a guy and my Gae Bolg went off, one thing might lead to another, and I’d have to remove the Bolg part…

So this was for the best.

When a guy has a bath, he finishes up as quickly as a crow in a birdbath. If Totsuka had bathed right before me, I’d be taking a slow soak, but it was Tobe and then Hayama, so I finished up quick. I toweled myself nice and dry in the small changing room and then groped around in my clothes basket. “Underwear, underwear…huh?” My hand encountered my boxers just as the door opened. In other words, even if I did put it on right that instant, I wouldn’t have made it in time. Hawawa! Master, the enemy is here! >.<

The door slid open, and Totsuka’s face greeted me. “Oh, Hachi…”

“ ”

And time resumes.

“Ah! Ah-ah-ah-ah! S-sorry!” Totsuka stammered.

“U-uhhhhh… U-uh, sorry, I guess!”

Flustered, Totsuka swiftly closed the door, and I swiftly got dressed. I got my underwear snugly Pilder-On and followed up with my T-shirt and shorts. All told, it probably took less than ten seconds.

“Y-you can come in now,” I called.

The door opened slowly and extremely hesitantly, about three centimeters wide. Totsuka peeked through the gap, checking to see if it was safe. Letting out a sigh of relief, he entered the changing room. “S-sorry. I thought you were already done…” Totsuka apologized with a bow. But when he raised his head and his eyes met mine, his face flushed bright red, and he immediately looked away.

…Why is he blushing? Now I’m getting embarrassed.

“S-so…I’ll be taking a bath now,” he said.

“Y-yeah,” I replied, and then we silently considered each other for a while more.

“Um… I’m going to…get undressed, so…”

Totsuka gazed up at me, eyes moist and almost accusatory as his hands grasped the hem of his shirt. “It bothers me a little…if you’re watching the whole time.”

“Oh, I see. Sorry, sorry. I’ll go.” Well, even if we were all guys here, it wouldn’t be very pleasant to have someone stare at you while you change, I suppose. Closing the door behind me, I began to walk with the sound of running water behind me in my ears.

But man, that sure was nothing like the bath events I’m familiar with. Are the gods idiots? They wanna die?

If our positions had been reversed, at the very least… No, that would have been stupid, too.

Hayama and Tobe were already in the bungalow. It didn’t look like they had much to do, seeing as they were mostly tapping away on their phones. Hayama was swiping along on some kind of tablet. Those cool, modern gestures make you look like you know what you’re doing. People are so smug about those. I’ve said this before, and I don’t know if anyone actually believes this, but they still need to wake up and realize it’s the device that’s amazing and not them.

There was a deck of cards lying at his feet, but they obviously weren’t going to play with me. Occasionally, the two of them chatted between themselves. I made an autonomous decision to occupy the farthest corner of the room, laying out my futon and sliding under the covers. I rummaged around inside my bag, but there didn’t seem to be anything in particular I could use to kill time. Even Komachi wasn’t capable of preparing that much on such short notice.

Well, these days, you can do almost everything with just your cell phone. So I played around with mine off and on as I waited to get sleepy. Behind me, I overheard their conversation.

“Hey, hey, what’re you looking at, Hayato? Porn?” asked Tobe.

“No, just books for studying. It’s in a PDF,” Hayama replied.

“Whoa, here comes the brainy vocabulary!”

I don’t think there was a single brainy word in that whole exchange.

I suppose it is convenient to carry around schoolbooks as PDFs, huh? Lugging a pile of books all over gets really heavy, and then you end up forgetting one…

“You’re so smart, Hayama,” I said. I was talking to myself, and it didn’t matter to me if anyone heard. Loners often make statements like that.

But of course, Hayama, incarnation of misplaced kindness that he was, had to respond. “I’m not really that smart.”

“No way, man,” said Tobe. “Your grades are, like, sick, Hayato! Like, you’re up there in the humanities!”

I think sick generally carries a negative connotation, but I guess youngsters these days mean it as a good thing. It’s just like saying, I don’t like you at all, Big Brother!

“Well, I do have decent grades,” Hayama replied with a vague smile, as if he was a little embarrassed.

Oh, is he one of those mildly obnoxious types who distinguish between test scores and intelligence?

“Decent?” said Tobe. “You’re top of the class, aren’t you?”

“Yukinoshita beats me, though,” he replied.

…

Oh, I get it. It’s all becoming clear. I understand now why I’ve been forced to accept my third-place ranking all this time. It was because first and second place were already permanently occupied. So he had the looks, the personality, and the brains, huh? A combination worthy of despair, like a Potara-fused Goku and Vegeta. Like, why are these guys alive? Can’t you just let me win in Japanese, at least?

Right when I was ready to go to bed in a huff, I heard the clack of the door opening. “Phew… I’m out of the bath.” Totsuka was back, closing the door behind him with one hand. As he dried off his damp hair with a towel, he passed by me, trailing the gentle scent of shampoo behind him. He sat down with a soft thump and began to blow-dry his hair with a dryer he pulled from his bag. The contrast between his damp hair and his flushed skin, fresh out of the bath, was oddly sensuous. Before I knew what I was doing, I was zoning out and staring at him.

After giving his hair one final ruffle to check it was dry, Totsuka let out a satisfied sigh. “I’m all done, so…”

“Let’s get to sleep, then,” Hayama replied.

Tobe and Totsuka both started getting ready for bed. I had already put down my futon, so I had nothing to do. What foresight I have.

With some effort, Totsuka hauled his bedding over and laid it out next to mine. He glanced over at me, giving his pillow a couple of thumps. “I can…sleep here, right?”

“…Sure.” As we stared at each other, the awkwardness of our earlier encounter in the bathhouse came rushing back. That was a mortifying recollection. Totsuka had seen everything… I believe at this point there may be no other option but for him to take responsibility and support me for life.

Totsuka didn’t seem to be bothered by it, though, and he snuggled into his futon without any evident suspicion toward me. Hey, c’mon. From that position, if you roll around in your sleep, we’ll end up kissing.

Hayama, done with his bed, reached out to the light switch. “I’m turning off the lights,” he said, and with a click, the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered out.

“Hey, Hayato,” said Tobe. “Kinda feels like we’re on a field trip, huh?”

“Yeah, sure does.” Hayama gave a lukewarm reply. Maybe he was tired.

“…Let’s talk about our crushes.”

“Let’s not.” Surprisingly enough, Hayama shut that down stat.

Totsuka laughed a little uncomfortably. “Ah-ha-ha… I’d be kinda embarrassed,” he said.

“Why not?!” Tobe demanded. “Come on, let’s talk! Fine, I get it! I’ll go first!”

He had undeniably brought up the subject because he wanted to talk about his.

A pair of rather tired sighs suggested that Hayama and Totsuka had reached the same conclusion.

“The truth is, I…,” Tobe began. There wasn’t much point in listening. He was going to say that he was into Miura. “…I think Ebina’s kinda okay…”

“…Seriously?” I blurted out. That had been unexpected.

I think Tobe couldn’t tell for a moment who had spoken, as his response was hesitant. “Huh? …Y-yeah. What, you were listening, Hikitani? You were just lying there, so I thought you were asleep!”

“Hmm. I’m surprised, though. I thought you liked Miura,” I replied.

“Aw, I can’t make a move on Yumiko… She’s too scary.”

So you’re scared of her, too, huh? That meant that by my reckoning, practically all the guys were afraid of her. Come on, I mean, even with ghosts or something, not everyone believes in them. In other words, Miura is natural-disaster level on the scale of terror. “For being scared of her, you sure do talk to her a lot. More than Ebina.”

“Y-yeah…that’s just ’cause, like, you know that saying? Like, if you wanna shoot the general, first shoot the horse.”

“Uh, I think Miura is clearly the general in this situation,” I replied. But I had a surprising amount of empathy for him. The more you like a girl, the less you can converse with her. As a guy, I get that.

“Yui is pretty nice, too, but she’s kinda dumb, you know?” he continued.

Ah, that’s true. She is dumb. But I don’t think it’s quite so bad that it gives you the right to say that.

“Plus, she’s kinda popular, so there’s a lot of competition.”

……Well, I’m sure that’s true.

Guys like nice girls. Loser guys interpret their kindness as interest—they fall for that horrifyingly often—so Yuigahama was sure to catch plenty of fish. No other lure could even compete. Even Grander Musashi would blanch at such a huge catch. I’m not really surprised or bothered, so I don’t think it’s unusual or startling, and it doesn’t bother me at all.

What the hell, this is really getting to me.

Tobe ignored my sighs and went on. “Ebina is, like, well, lots of people are weirded out, and guys, too, so I guess it sorta made me wanna go for her instead?”

He had a point—as you would expect of a member of the upper caste, Ebina was cute. But guys tended to avoid her because of her special interests. Actually, I got the feeling that advertising her interests so openly was her own attempt at a defense strategy. I think if she were the real deal, she would hide it. Well, I may be analyzing it too deeply, though.

Tobe must have realized that he was the only one sharing, as he turned the question on us. “What about you guys?”

“Do I like any girls? …Girls, huh… Mmm, not really,” said Totsuka.

He doesn’t like any girls. S-so what about boys? For some reason, my heart was pounding.

Tobe skipped over me, though, and moved on to Hayama. “What about you, Hayato?”

“I… No, forget it.”

“Hey, hey, hey, Hayato, come on! You’ve got a crush, don’t you? ’Fess up.”

“…”

“Even just her first initial!”

Hayama gave a resigned sigh. “…Y.”

“Y? Wait, so then do you mean—?”

“That’s enough. Let’s go to sleep.” Hayama refused any further probing. He sounded angry, for once. Hayama’s the kind of good guy who’s nice to everyone, so I doubt he shows irritation often. To take a different perspective, perhaps that means he’s willing to share another side of himself with Tobe.

“Now this is bugging me so much I can’t sleep! If I die from insomnia, it’ll be your fault, Hayato.” Tobe casually deflected Hayato’s anger with humor. It was a social technique often employed to prevent things from getting serious, a conventional method used to avoid turning relationships sour or making things awkward.

I stared blankly into the quiet darkness. Who was that Y that Hayama had been referring to? A number of options flashed through my mind.

The room felt oddly tense, so despite the silence, I couldn’t fall asleep. I rolled over and found Totsuka’s face right there in front of me. His slow, even breathing told me he was asleep.

“…Nhn.” He sighed. A ray of moonlight pouring in through the window softly illuminated his face. His glistening lips were moving very slightly, as if murmuring someone’s name. He looked happy, smiling softly and gently.

The restlessness I’d been feeling transformed into a coil around my chest. Now that I had noticed Totsuka’s lips, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I was hyperaware of every sound he made as he stirred in his sleep, every light breath he took. “I’m not gonna get to sleep here…” Peeking at the cell phone by my hand, I was surprised to find it wasn’t even eleven. I guess once you get away from the city, time passes more slowly. There was no clatter of trains or brilliant streetlights. It was a quiet night.

Going outside to get some night air would probably calm me down. I stood up quietly, so as not to wake the other three, and left the bungalow. A night in the highlands. The tranquil cool gradually stilled my heart…

Or so I thought. It was actually just terrifying. Like, there was something hooting, and just a few leaves rustling was enough to make me squeak. Trembling on this inside, I scanned the area. I thought I could see a figure among the trees… Something incorporeal… Or maybe just arboreal. Yeah. The alternative would have been too scary.

Anyway, the point is that it was not a tree spirit, or a dryad, as they say in English. I don’t even know if dryad is English in the first place. Among the trees stood a girl with long, flowing hair. Something about the scene was removed from reality, like a vision of a spirit or fairy of some sort. Under the gentle rays of moonlight, her white skin seemed to glow. With every puff of wind that blew past, her hair fluttered and danced. She looked like a fairy as she bathed in the silver light, singing quietly, oh-so-very quietly.

In the dark, chilly forest, her whisper-like melody sounded oddly pleasant in my ears. I only watched her. If I took even one step forward, I would shatter that little world that she had created all by herself. I was reluctant to make a sound. Figuring I should go back, I slowly turned around to return the way I had come. But when I stepped forward, my foot broke a twig with a snap.

The singing instantly ceased.

“…”

“…”

One second, two seconds, three seconds passed as we tried to identify each other in the darkness.

“…Who is it?” The voice belonged to a normal girl, Yukino Yukinoshita.

I could have tried meowing like a cat, and maybe she’d be like, Oh, did a cat hear me sing? but this is Yukinoshita, so she would probably actually have been like, Oh, it’s just that thing.

So I resigned myself and approached her. “…It’s me.”

“…Who?”

“Why are you repeating the question? You know who I am.” Don’t give me the quizzical head tilt. The cuteness factor just makes it even more aggravating, come on.

“What are you doing up at this hour?” she asked. “You need to get your eternal sleep.”

“Could you not pronounce my death by pretending to be concerned for me?”

Yukinoshita looked away as if to say she had no further interest in me, lifting her head toward the sky instead. Following her lead, I gazed up into a clear and starry sky.

“Were you looking at the stars?” I asked. You could see them so well out here compared with in the city. When there’s no other lights around, the stars shine clearer. In that case, I bet loners shine extra hard, since there are so few others around them. Oh man, my future is bright.

“Not particularly,” she replied.

Oh, so she wasn’t doing the At the Mercy of the Sky thing? So was this the Heaven’s Lost Property thing, then?

“Miura sort of came after me…” Yukinoshita’s head drooped in despair.

Oh-ho, that’s a rare sight. I was sure no one could talk her down. I’d expect nothing less of Miura. Confronting the queen of fire is a date with defeat indeed.

“I argued her into the ground for half an hour and made her cry. It was immature of me…”

Her Majesty of Ice is far too powerful. Never mind a Date with defeat, she’s a Nobunaga with defeat. “So of course things got awkward, and you went outside, huh?”

“Yes. I didn’t expect her to cry… Yuigahama is consoling her right now.” Perhaps tears were too much, even for Yukinoshita. She seemed a tad remorseful.

Damn, I might as well cast my inhibitions aside about bawling my eyes out in front of her, too. Lame.

Yukinoshita smoothed down her hair, and as if that were some kind of signal, she changed the subject. “We should…do something about that girl.”

“You seem awfully gung ho about helping some kid you don’t know.”

“The Service Club has done nothing but help people I don’t know. I don’t reach out just because I’m personally acquainted with someone. Plus…don’t you think she’s…somehow like Yuigahama?”

“Oh?” I didn’t, not at all. She bore a far closer resemblance to a certain someone else.

Yukinoshita looked up at me, a trace of sorrow in her eyes. “I think she’s probably…had an experience of that nature.”

Oh, if that was her meaning, then I got that. Yuigahama was certainly more conscious of class politics than anyone else was. I don’t really want to think much about it, but…I’m sure she’s gotten sucked into the mob mentality once or twice.

And that was why she got it. She understood those feelings of guilt. Yuigahama’s kindness was not blind benevolence. Her compassion was born of her awareness of the repulsive, ugly, and cowardly nature of humanity, and she nevertheless reached out without averting her eyes.

“And…” Yukinoshita hung her head, gently kicking a pebble at her feet. “…I’m sure Hayama has been concerned, too.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised.” I guess you could say he’s got a certain disposition. Like some kind of legendary end-of-century leader. He might just have a predisposition to being a hero. He was probably raised on classic manga from Shonen Jump magazine. He wouldn’t have had an easy and sheltered upbringing like me.

“That’s not what I mean…,” Yukinoshita hedged. But whatever she was going to say was overpowered by the rustling of the forest. After that, it was silent.

“Hey, is there something going on with you and Hayama?” I asked, a little curious. Yukinoshita had been giving him some serious attitude. I got the impression that she was especially cold to him. She’d been that way ever since the first time Hayama had come into the Service Club room, and this camping trip was just highlighting the issue.

“We just went to the same elementary school,” Yukinoshita replied coolly, as if it were nothing to her. “His father is the legal advisor for my family’s business. By the way, his mother is a doctor.”

“Huh.” Perfect grades, all-round athletic, elite family, good-looking, normie, and has a pretty girl as a childhood friend.

Hmm…I’m not sure how to put this, but maybe he won’t slaughter me in this competition.

I’ve got an okay face, a knack for the humanities, a hatred of team sports, an extremely cute little sister, and that’s about it.

…Okay, we’re even! I want to know defeat.

If he had a little sister, I’d be in trouble. I was nearly destroyed there.

“It must suck, having your families push you together,” I said.

“I suppose.”

“You make it sound like it’s not your problem…”

“It’s my sister’s job to handle those sorts of social obligations. I’m just a stand-in,” she replied. The treetops murmured and swayed in the breeze. The sound of rustling leaves undulated out in the silent night, like ripples on the surface of water. But as the forest stirred, I could still hear Yukinoshita’s voice. “Even so,” she said, “…I’m glad I could come today. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.”

“Huh? Why?” I turned toward her. I wasn’t sure what she meant. She was still studying the stars, though. It was as if I had said nothing at all. Still, I waited for her reply. A particularly zealous insect gave a long, buzzing chirp. Maybe it was the late hour and the chilly air, but the ensuing gust of wind felt like autumn.

Maybe she had been waiting for that. Yukinoshita turned toward me. A hint of a smile was on her lips, and she said nothing. She gave me no replies and asked me no questions.

The quiet moment soon ended, though, and she stood upright. “I’m going back.”

“…All right. See you, then.”

“Yes, good night.”

I never did probe further. I wasn’t interested in trying to force her to say something she didn’t want to. I think part of it was the comfortable relationship we’d built by not knowing each other very well.

Yukinoshita walked with sure steps down the unlit path, and I watched her gradually disappear into the darkness.

Now alone, I glanced at the stars above, the very same sky that Yukino Yukinoshita had been so closely watching. I’ve heard that the light of the stars is actually from the distant past. Through the eons, they’ve radiated the ancient light of an age gone by.

Everyone is caught up in the past. No matter how much you might intend to move on, with just one upward glance, those experiences rain down upon you just like the light of the stars. You can’t laugh it all away or erase it. You just keep carrying it in one little corner of your heart, only to find it all flooding back when you least expect it.

It was like that for Yui Yuigahama, Hayato Hayama, and probably Yukino Yukinoshita, too.