Toradora! Vol. 1 Read online

  Chapter 1

  “…Damn it.”

  It was 7:30 AM in the morning. The weather was fair, but the room was dark.

  He was on the second floor of a wood-walled, two-story rental. The south-facing, two-bedroom apartment was a ten-minute walk from a private rail station. The rent: 80,000 yen.

  “I give up. This is useless.”

  Resigning himself to his annoyance, he vigorously rubbed a fogged-up mirror with the palm of his hand. The shabby bathroom was still humid from the shower he’d taken that morning, so the mirror quickly clouded over again, right where he’d just wiped it.

  But it wasn’t the mirror he was annoyed at.

  “What bogus advice.”

  “Soft bangs for a softer look!”—those words had frolicked on the pages of a style magazine catering to current male fashion trends.

  Takasu Ryuuji’s bangs were definitely “soft” right then. Just like the article instructed, he’d pulled his hair all the way out, used a dryer at full blast to make the bangs naturally stand on end, and then worked them to the sides with a light-hold hair wax. He had done everything—everything—just as the article said in order to get it looking exactly like the model’s hair. All that work was the product of waking up thirty minutes early in the hopes of fulfilling his desire.

  All that work—for nothing.

  “It’s not as if I’ll really change just from doing my bangs,” he said. “That was probably wishful thinking…”

  He took that effeminate magazine, the one that he’d swallowed his pride to buy, and half-heartedly tossed it at the waste bin. He cringed—a miss. The bin toppled and spewed out its contents, and the magazine he’d just discarded flopped open to a page of fashion tips, laying there amidst the trash.

  It read, “Soft or Wild?! What you can still do to declare your transformation for the new school year! Our authoritative guide to your debut!” If he could say one thing in response to that, it would be that he never wanted a “debut.”

  But he did want a transformation. Yet it had ended in failure.

  Out of complete desperation, he used a wetted hand to muss the softened bangs he’d just spent so much effort making until they reverted back to his usual straight hairstyle. Then he kneeled on the floor to gather the trash.

  “Wha—?! Wh-what is this…? There’s mold… it’s growing mold again?!”

  He’d discovered black mold along the wooden baseboard near the bath.

  There was mold, even though he was always careful to wipe away excess moisture. Just the previous week, he’d held a mold-cleaning rally (a competition for all things water-related) for a whole day. Apparently, not even that level of effort could vanquish the run-down house’s poor ventilation. He bit his thin lips in frustration, and as a last-ditch effort, tried scrubbing the mold with a tissue. Naturally, it didn’t come off; the tissue just came apart in bits that added even more mess. An exercise in futility.

  “Damn it… I just used the last of the mold remover, too. I’ll have to buy more again…”

  Right, then. He couldn’t do anything but leave it as it was. I’ll destroy you for sure, he thought, fixing the mold with a sidelong glare while he cleaned up the scattered trash. He took the opportunity to give the floor a cursory wipe with the tissue. After disposing of the fallen hair and dust, he wiped all the moisture from the washbasin, lifted his head, and finally took a deep breath.

  “Whew. That’s right, I need to feed her… Inko-chan!”

  “Yahh!”

  A shrill reply returned the high school boy’s rough call. Good, she was awake.

  After regaining his composure, he entered the wood-floored kitchen, still barefoot. He prepared the feed and a change of newspaper, then headed to the tatami mat living room. He removed the cloth covering the birdcage filling one corner of the room and was thus reunited with his beloved pet, whom he hadn’t seen since the night before. He didn’t know what other owners did, but at the Takasu household, that was how they took care of Inko. When sleeping, her face was downright unpleasant, so they hid her until she woke in the morning.

  “Inko-chan, good morning.”

  Inko-chan was an inko—a yellow parakeet. He spoke to her while replenishing her feed, as usual.

  “G-good… good morn…” Although her eyebrows twitched creepily—like she didn’t even understand what she was saying—the ever-clever Inko-chan managed to answer in Japanese. She’d just woken up, but she was in high spirits. This side of her was a little cute, he had to admit.

  “Inko-chan, say thank you for the food.”

  “Thank—ank—you—thank you for the food! Thank you for the food! Thank! You!”

  “That’s it, that’ll do. Okay, let’s see if you can say that today. Can you say your own name? Say ‘Inko-chan.’”

  “I-In-Ini-In-nnn… Inn.” Summoning all the strength in her body, Inko-chan waved her head, contorted her posture, and jerkily swung open her wings.

  “Iii…” Her eyes narrowed, and her ashen tongue peeked out from her beak. Today might be it—her owner clenched his fists. But…

  “…Iiidiot.”

  Ah, the intelligence of birds. As expected of a one-gram brain.

  With a sigh, he gathered up the dirtied newspaper into a plastic bag. But as he consolidated it with the rest of the trash and prepared to head to the kitchen, he heard something.

  “Where’re ya goin’?”

  It was coming from behind the sliding door, barely ajar. It seemed the other idiot had woken up.

  “Ryu-chan, whaddya wearin’ your uniform for…?”

  He quickly closed the trash bag and turned to the owner of the voice. “I’m going to school. I told you yesterday that today was the start of the school year, didn’t I?”

  “Ohhh… Then… then…” Sprawled on the futon, she spoke as if on the verge of tears. “Then, what about my lunch…? What about my bento…? I can’t smell that bento smell! Ryu-chan, didn’t you make me one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wahhh! What’ll I do when I wake up? There’s nothing to eat!”

  “I’ll be home before you’re awake. Today’s just the opening ceremonies.”

  “Oh…that’s all, huh?” She laughed, knocking her feet together. Clap clap clap clap! She used her feet to give him a standing ovation…or maybe a sprawling ovation.

  “The opening ceremony, huh? Congratulations! That means you’re a second-year student, starting today.”

  “Never mind that. Didn’t I tell you to at least wipe off your makeup before bed? You kept saying it was too much trouble, so I even bought you those easy-cleaning wipes… Argh, there’s foundation all over the pillowcase again! This stuff doesn’t come out in the wash, you know! And who knows what’ll happen to your skin—you’re old enough to know better.”

  “Sorrryyyy.”

  She got up as-is, fully exposing her leopard print panties, large chest jiggling. Wavy, mostly-blonde hair fell across the valley of her chest in a tangled, disheveled mess. She oozed “femininity” as she brushed up that hair with her long-nailed hands.

  But then she said, “I drank so much that I only got home an hour ago… Sooo sleeeepy… Yaaawn… Oh, right… I brought back pudding!”

  While yawning, she rubbed her mascara-laden eyes, then crawled toward the convenience store bag she’d unceremoniously dumped in a corner of the room. Those manners, that puckered mouth, the mumbling of pudding, pudding, her plump cheeks, her round eyes—it was all embarrassingly childish.

  This strange woman, who many might call a beauty…

  “Huh? Ryu-chaan, I can’t find the spoon!”

  “The clerk probably forgot to put one in.”

  “Nu-uh, I’m sure I saw him do it… Huh…”

  She was,
in fact, Takasu Ryuuji’s biological mother: Takasu Yasuko (alias Mirano), thirty-three years old (but eternally claiming twenty-three). She worked as an entertainer at the town’s one and only hostess bar, Bishamon Heaven.

  Yasuko inverted the bag, rummaged around the corner of the futon, and tilted her small face in disappointment.

  “The room’s so dark… No way can I find it like this. Ryu-chaan, can you open the curtains a little?”

  “They are open.”

  “Whaa? Ohh, right. I forgot since I’m usually not awake at this time…”

  In the dim room, the mismatched parent and child both breathed a small sigh.

  Their apartment had one large, south-facing window. In the six years since they started renting it, they’d come to completely depend on the bright sunlight that flooded in from the south. With their entryway on the north side and neighboring buildings to the east and west spaced just dozens of centimeters away, they only had southern-facing windows. Since the apartment got such amazing natural sunlight, they hadn’t needed to turn on the overheads from sunrise to sunset. The morning rays were particularly strong; rainy days excepted, they lavished illumination upon Ryuuji when he made their lunches and also on Yasuko, while she slept out of exhaustion.

  “Sure is a huge condo, isn’t it…?” she said.

  “I wonder what kind of people live there… Should I turn on the light?” Ryuuji asked.

  Last year, a ten-story, ultra-high-end luxury condo went up just a few meters from their apartment’s south window. Naturally, the sunlight stopped coming in, which tormented him with all kinds of maddening frustration. First, the laundry wouldn’t dry. Then the corners of the tatami mats swelled and bubbled with moisture. Mold had started growing, and the condensation was terrible. The wallpaper’s peeling edges were no doubt owed to the moisture, as well. Ryuuji tried telling himself to calm down, since it was just a rental, but he was a high-strung guy. He couldn’t help but find such unsanitary living conditions intolerable.

  Now, the two of them could only peer open-mouthed at the white bricks of that luxury condo, bound together in squalor.

  “Wellll, it’s probably fine,” Yasuko said. “I sleep right through the mornings, anyhow.”

  “Complaining about it won’t change anything, either…and hey, the rent did go down by five thousand yen,” he said, as he brought Yasuko a spoon from the kitchen. Ryuuji scratched his head. This was no time to have a family moment. It was nearly time for him to leave.

  After throwing his randoseru backpack on, he stooped down from his newly grown-up height to put on socks. Then, once he made sure he had everything he needed, he noticed the slight throbbing in his chest.

  That’s right, he thought, remembering again. Today is the first day of the new school year. Opening ceremonies first, and after that—the class assignments.

  He’d failed to change his image, but that didn’t mean he was depressed. A faint feeling of hope, or anticipation, or something along those lines, fluttered in Ryuuji’s stomach, even if he wasn’t the type to show it on his face.

  “…I’m off. Remember to lock the doors and change out of your pajamas.”

  “Yuuup. Oh, hey, Ryu-chan, hey.” Still sprawled on her futon, Yasuko bit down on her spoon with her back teeth and smiled like a kid. “Ryu-chan, you’re kinda looking fired up! You’d better do your best as a second-year student! You’re going places I never got to.”

  Yasuko had dropped out of school as a first-year in order to have Ryuuji, and so she didn’t know anything about the world of a second-year high school student. For a moment, Ryuuji started feeling sentimental. “I guess so.”

  He smiled a little and raised a hand. It was his way of showing gratitude towards his mother, but it backfired. Yasuko let out a squeal and rolled around enthusiastically—then she said it. She said that.

  “Ryu-chan, you’re so cool! Every day, you look more like your daddy!”

  “Tch!”

  …She’d said it.

  Ryuuji mutely closed the front door, and then instinctively looked up at the sky. His vision spun around and around; he felt as though a deep whirlpool surrounded his feet, drawing him downwards. He hated it. No, he thought, no, stop it.

  That was the one phrase he never, ever wanted anyone to say to him.

  Especially on a day like today.

  You look like your daddy.

  It seemed Yasuko couldn’t understand how much that fact troubled Ryuuji. It was the whole reason he bought that magazine and tried out softer bangs.

  On the way to school, Ryuuji’s face twisted into a sullen expression. His high school was well within walking distance of their house, but he still moved at a fast clip, taking long, straight strides.

  He sighed and unconsciously pulled on his bangs. He hid his eyes out of habit. Yes, his troubles lay in his eyes.

  They were bad.

  It had nothing to do with his eyesight.

  It was the way they looked.

  Though his facial features had rapidly grown more masculine in the past year, that hadn’t made him extraordinarily handsome, or given him out-of-this-world good looks. Well, he wasn’t bad-looking, either… Not that anyone would say that out loud—but he thought he didn’t look too bad, at least.

  His eyes were appalling, though. They were so awful, there was no way he would ever be considered handsome.

  He had angular sanpaku eyes. The kind of eyes ringed by white on all sides. On top of that, his eyeballs themselves were huge; the blue-tinged whites threw off an intense, garish light. His dim, small black irises moved swiftly, as if trying to cut straight through whatever was unfortunate enough to be the target of their gaze. Despite Ryuuji’s intentions, his eyes seemed to possess the ability to strike panic into anyone that saw them… He understood that. He understood it all too well. It was so bad that even he had become flustered after seeing a kid with an absolutely livid expression in a group photo—until realizing he was looking at himself.

  It wasn’t just his eyes, though. Thanks to his curt personality, his way of speaking probably also came off a little rough. Sometimes he got high-strung, too. More than that, though, was the fact that he was the type of person who struggled with the fine line between jokes and sarcasm. Because he lived alone with a woman like Yasuko, he’d probably also lost any innocence or meekness he once had… Really, he considered himself the real parent out of the two of them.

  But even so, scenes like these kept happening…

  “Wh-what, Takasu? Are you disobeying a teacher?! S-someone hold him back! Hold him back!”

  You’re mistaken. I forgot about part of the presentation, so I just came to apologize.

  “S-s-s-s-sorry, it wasn’t on purpose, I bumped into you because he p-p-p-pushed me.”

  Who would get angry from just being brushed on the shoulder?

  “I heard that damn Takasu guy crashed another school’s graduation in junior high and holed himself up in their announcement room.”

  I’m not that bad an apple.

  “…I guess I should start being more proactive about clearing up misunderstandings,” Ryuuji said, sighing at the bitter memories he’d unearthed.

  His grades weren’t bad. He was never late or absent. He’d never hit anyone—he’d never even had a heated argument with anyone before. Long story short, Takasu Ryuuji was a very ordinary young man. But, simply because he had a fearsome look in his eyes (and maybe because his only parent was in the bar business), everyone believed he was a terrible delinquent.

  If anyone stayed in the same class with him for a year, those stupid misunderstandings would eventually be resolved. But a year wasn’t short, especially not to a high school student, and today he would have to start all over again. On top of all that, his attempted image change had been a failure.

  Nonetheless, he looked forward to the class rotation. There was someone in particular he wanted to share a class with. But when his thoughts started running through the hardships that lay ahead, his hopes s
eemed to whiz away and deflate to half their size.

  It was all because of that unwelcome comment Yasuko had made… No, that wasn’t right. It was all because of the unwelcome genes branded into him by his father.

  “Your daddy’s in heaven, now. He was so cool—he had a coif with shaved sides, and he wore these really pointy patent leather shoes that he always shined… And on his neck, he had a gold chain, like thiiiis thick, and a baggy suit, and a Rolex. Oh, and he always layered a weekly magazine over his stomach. When I asked him what that was for, he said it was so he’d be safe if he ever got stabbed. Ahhh! He was so exciting.”

  He remembered Yasuko’s enchanted expression when she recounted all that. Afterwards, she’d shown him the only picture left of his father.

  His father looked exactly as Yasuko described.

  He stood posed with his legs spread arrogantly wide. He had a carrying case under his arm. He wore a white suit with an incredibly showy open-neck shirt, several gold rings glinted on both his hands, and a diamond stud adorned one ear. His lower jaw was thrust out, as though jeering towards the camera. One of his hands groped at the breast of a younger version of Ryuuji’s mother. She held an enlarged stomach, and her carefree laugh was almost audible from the picture: “Ha ha!” His father’s front teeth were gold.

  He was really kind, and sincere, and never raised his hand against a civilian even once, and on and on Yasuko would go. Yet, a person who was kind and sincere wouldn’t join the yakuza to become a mobster, nor would they get what had likely been a much younger high school student pregnant. Beyond all that, however, were those sharp eyes of his.

  They were eyes that would make you drop your wallet without a fuss if ever they stared straight at you. Just his gaze by itself threatened unreasonable violence. An unpleasant thought had risen to Ryuuji’s mind: That same look is stuck on my face… Ordering people not to get the wrong idea was probably impossible. After all, even Ryuuji imagined his father as a scary man, and he had no memory of him.

  All that said, his father was probably still alive. According to Yasuko, he’d been turned into Swiss cheese while saving an underling and had been dumped into a Yokohama harbor somewhere—but there was no grave. There was also no memorial shrine. There were no ashes or earthly possessions left behind, or Buddhist tablets, either. Ryuuji had no memory of any of that happening. And when Yasuko was drunk, she would sometimes put on a sly smile and say, “If daddy suddenly came home, what would Ryuu-chan doooo? Hee hee hee hee, I wonder.”