Toradora! Vol. 1 Page 10

  He hadn’t gotten through to her at all. Reflexively, Ryuuji also felt like making a fool of himself. But that was Kitamura’s role as Maruo and thus, he stood firm on both feet and said, “…Tomorrow is fine arts—so, be sure you don’t forget anything! Rise! Bow! Goodbye!”

  “Goodbyyyee,” everyone said in a chorus, followed by, “Let’s go home, let’s go home.”

  They ended homeroom on their own. The unmarried person also (almost) seemed fine with it. She obediently left the classroom but sobbed a bit as she said, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this line of work…”

  “A-Aisaka—”

  Ryuuji stood up and followed Aisaka with his eyes. Aisaka stood up quickly.

  “Awah!” Flustered, she dropped her own bag from the top of her desk.

  How clumsy can you get? Ryuuji turned to look for Kitamura.

  “Ohh, it’s already so late… I’m going to get in trouble with the president again.”

  Lightheartedly holding his shoes, Kitamura started quickly running to the classroom door. This was bad. They needed to catch him before he went into the student council meeting. After that, there wouldn’t be another window to catch Kitamura by himself. Panicking, Ryuuji rushed to Aisaka.

  “You don’t need shoes! Hurry up and go stop him!”

  “Ah, uh…! Ki. Ki—Ki…”

  What are you doing? He scratched his head. Aisaka stood up, but though she reached a hand out towards Kitamura’s back, she couldn’t call out his name. Kitamura-kun. It seemed she had magically forgotten those five syllables. Her face distorted, as though she were about to cry, and she opened and closed her mouth.

  “Ugh, he just left! We’re going to run!”

  “Ah—okay!”

  Ryuuji gave Aisaka’s small back a strong hit and forced her into a run. He followed after her with long strides. This clumsy girl—if he left her alone, he didn’t know what stupid thing she might do.

  Holding the package of cookies to her chest, Aisaka jumped out of the classroom to pursue Kitamura. Ryuuji went with her. Down the hallway, they saw the back of their target for a moment as he turned a corner.

  “Over there! After him!”

  As the flow of students began heading for the entrance opposite their direction, Aisaka increased her speed. He thought it would be difficult for her to part the sea of people as they were heading home, but…

  “Get out of my way!”

  With just those curt, violent words, the people standing in Aisaka’s way exclaimed:

  “Look out! It’s the Palmtop Tiger!”

  “Everyone get out of the way! Danger, incoming!”

  They parted themselves to the right and left as though she were Moses. After she’d passed by, the people divided in her wake began to return to their places, until…

  “Sorry! Please let me through!”

  At Ryuuji’s very normal words, they panicked again.

  “Look out! It’s Takasu!”

  “The second villain is coming through!”

  Thus, it was another Moses-moment. It seemed that word still hadn’t gotten around to the other classes that Takasu wasn’t really a thug. He paused in a momentary depression, but this was not the time for that; he immediately started following behind Aisaka again.

  In that one moment of delay, however, he had lost track of Kitamura. He just barely glimpsed Aisaka’s hair as she went up the stairs. Kitamura and Aisaka were both unexpectedly fast. Mediocre Ryuuji was out of breath. Using all his strength to get up the stairs, he quickly followed them to the second floor.

  But suddenly, he realized he didn’t actually need to catch up with them. If Aisaka could successfully stop Kitamura, and he could just confirm that she got to him, that would be good enough.

  “…Haah, haah…”

  Holding his heart, which felt ready to shred apart, he stopped climbing the stairs to catch his breath. Then, he looked nonchalantly upwards—what a terrible coincidence. Reflexively, he shouted.

  “Aaaaaaaaaah!”

  At the very top of the stairs, Aisaka slipped trying to take the last step. Pow! She threw out her arms. Somehow, she had come into Ryuuji’s field of vision at the very moment she began to fall.

  He screamed—and a superhuman strength awakened in him.

  With unthinkable speed, Ryuuji flew.

  “…!”

  He got her with a sliding catch. Ryuuji, who had jumped out onto the landing, miraculously stopped Aisaka’s fall. But he couldn’t stop the momentum. Still holding her small body, Ryuuji crashed into the wall.

  “Guh!”

  The noise he made was right out of a manga. He opened his eyes wide in pain. Then, right before his eyes, he saw a familiar package fly out of Aisaka’s hands. It traced an arc through the air and fell out of the open window.

  They were three stories above the ground.

  What fell were the four cookies she had struggled to make.

  “Eek!” he squeaked out. Aisaka, still in the position she had fallen in, reached a hand toward the window. But it was too late—they had probably already hit the ground.

  “…Ah.” Aisaka, he tried to say, but his voice wouldn’t come out. He had lost his breath when he had hit his back.

  “Ryuuji!”

  The small voice immediately followed his. It seemed Aisaka had noticed. Her face changed color as she clung to Ryuuji. She was at a loss for words, but settled on a scowl. Like she’d been paralyzed with poison, her face froze in that expression for some time.

  But, it wasn’t a big deal—Ryuuji somehow regained his breath, then waved his hand to show her it would be okay. It wasn’t as bad as her expression made it out to be.

  More importantly—the cookies. And Kitamura. He pointed at the stairs and window in turn.

  “Ch-chase after him. Pick that up…” Somehow, he managed to squeeze out his voice and push off Aisaka. He still had spirit. She had struggled so much in making them, and since he had helped get them done, he wanted to see them delivered to Kitamura, too.

  She’d put in so much effort—he wanted the object of Aisaka’s desire to understand just how she felt.

  But Aisaka didn’t even try to look where he was pointing. “Ryuuji, are you okay?! Argh, ugh, how could this have happened…?”

  She was frantically feeling Ryuuji’s neck and ankles, checking for broken bones. Even the violent Palmtop Tiger was disturbed when someone got hurt protecting her. His back ached, so he really wanted to stay sitting a while longer, but…

  “I’m fine, so… Here, see? I’m not hurt.”

  Ryuuji stood up and stretched for her, forcing himself to put on a healthy face. Luckily, he didn’t hurt anywhere else, and he could still move his whole back. It seemed like he really was fine. Seeing him like that, Aisaka finally breathed in.

  “Ryuuji…I-I…”

  She stretched both her hands out to Ryuuji. Wearing an expression he hadn’t seen before, she opened her mouth to continue speaking but was interrupted.

  “Heyyy! Which student just threw something out the window? Hurry up and get down here, right now!”

  “Guh.” She shut her mouth. It was the voice of an infamously strict teacher, a professional guidance counselor. With that happening, all hope of getting the cookies to Kitamura was lost.

  “…Bad luck. Oh well, better go down to get the cookie and get yelled at. I’m going to wait in the classroom.”

  “But…at least let me walk you back, first.”

  “It’s fine, I can walk by myself. Hurry, or she’ll make a scene.”

  He pushed on her back to encourage her to leave, but Aisaka frowned at Ryuuji and looked over several times before she finally went down the stairs.

  In that time, the teacher’s voice heated up even more. It would have been good if Aisaka hurried up, he thought. But was there really anyone in the world that could shepherd the Palmtop Tiger?

  Ryuuji walked slowly, muttering to himself in a small voice, “…Heh. I used it up…”

  He was thi
nking back to something Yasuko shared with him when he was in elementary school. According to her, she was apparently “sliiiightly psychic,” and until the day of her death, she had the power to warp—no more than three times. At any rate, Yasuko had used that power twice already. Once when she was a kid, she got in a traffic accident. She was thrown twenty meters into the air, but because she warped just before crashing into the ground, she’d been fine. And then, the second time, she used it when she ran out of the house to deliver Ryuuji, heading to the man she loved (who had a magazine stuffed under his shirt). Although she didn’t tell him much about it, she had, of course, safely gotten to him because of that miraculous warp.

  And then, as for the last warp… “I’m going to give it to you, Ryu-chan! Your mother doesn’t have anything she wants to use it for,” she said. Then she went “Pah!” at Ryuuji, who was a kid back then, and gave it to him. She said, “If something dangerous happens, you have to use this power and come back to me.”

  Instead, Ryuuji had used it to save Aisaka. He’d wanted to use it several times before, when he was running late—but it was good he’d saved it.

  Sorry, Yasuko, he thought.

  ***

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Completely. We’ve already had this conversation a hundred times.”

  “Then, that’s okay… Even if you are a dog, I wouldn’t be able to sleep right if you really got hurt.” Softly muttering, Aisaka placed her forehead against the window’s glass. That’s nice, coming from someone who came to kill me with a wooden sword, Ryuuji nearly retorted, but somehow kept his mouth shut.

  Since she had picked up the cookies and come back to the classroom, Aisaka’s voice had no strength in it. Her spirit seemed extinguished.

  The silent after-school classroom was deserted—only Aisaka and Ryuuji were there. No one could see this profile of the Palmtop Tiger except for him.

  “…We’ve made mistake after mistake. Not a single thing went right.”

  She talked to herself, voice seemingly bereft of the energy it had earlier that day, hoarse and fading.

  “It’s only been one day since we started the plan, right? It figures it wouldn’t go perfectly.”

  “…Is that all that’s wrong? If I didn’t make those mistakes, it might have almost… And I got you hurt. Not a single good thing came out of this…I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Aisaka turned her back to the window, slid down, and squatted. She cradled her knees and sat on the ground by Ryuuji’s feet while he stood beside her.

  She pulled at her long hair with her fingers. As though wanting to hide her expression, she buried her face in her hair. “In the seventeen years up until now, I never realized…but, I finally get it. I’m a klutz.”

  The hands pulling on the hem of Ryuuji’s pants were like a child’s.

  “Even you…even you think that, don’t you, Ryuuji? You must be so tired of me—of this hopeless klutz.”

  When he looked down, Aisaka stared up at him. Their eyes met. She pushed her cheeks against her cradled knees, and her thin eyelids fluttered, as though from some hidden hurt.

  Her usual aggressive intensity was subdued, replaced by a rush of self-hatred that seemed to overflow from her eyes.

  “During PE, that was my bad. The plan itself was flawed,” Ryuuji said.

  “That’s not the only thing…that I failed at.” Aisaka closed her eyes as though exhausted, remembering their train wreck of a day.

  Third period PE. The unlucky lunch. And then that horrible failure just now.

  Once she knew it was Aisaka who dropped the package of cookies, the guidance counselor apparently hadn’t been able to provide much guidance, and so Aisaka pretty much immediately came back to the classroom where Ryuuji was waiting.

  He was glad it hadn’t turned into a big deal, but…

  “…Even though I put all that effort into making them…I just… Haah.”

  As Aisaka muttered, he saw a small scratch on her chin, left by a sleeve button during his rescue. While touching the cut gingerly, she brought out the newly returned cookie bag from her pocket. Inside remained the scant few cookie crumbs that hadn’t fallen out.

  “When I wrote the love letter, I put it in the wrong bag. When I broke into your house, I collapsed out of hunger. When I played basketball, I got a ball right to my face. When I tried inviting him to lunch, he had something to do with someone else. When I baked cookies, I burned them and fell down and dropped them, and I’m just… I’m really…tired of it…”

  “You forgot one. Remember the empty envelope?”

  “…You’re right.”

  He had meant it as a joke, but it came out badly. Burrowing deeper, Aisaka put her head between her knees again and remained silent.

  “A-Aisaka…”

  No answer.

  Still sitting strangely, she curled up into a small ball, like a snail withdrawn into its shell. She didn’t move in the slightest. She grabbed onto her skirt-covered knees, slim fingers faintly trembling. As her delicate shoulders tremored with her breathing, a strand of her hair slowly fell down.

  I definitely said the wrong thing, Ryuuji thought. Girls are so unfair.

  Even though she normally acted so arrogantly, and caused people so much trouble, when he saw her in this state, as a guy, he couldn’t help but feel his chest ache—because he couldn’t stand a sight like this. Because it was absolutely, completely intolerable.

  Ryuuji scratched his head vigorously, then his eyes honed themselves to a sharp point. He briefly went back to his seat. Then he got down next to Aisaka and sat the same way she was.

  “…Let’s trade, Aisaka.”

  “…?”

  He poked her shoulder; she looked up. Pretending not to notice the moisture around her eyes, he put a bare, foil-wrapped package on her knees. Then, in exchange, he plucked the cookie bag Aisaka was holding from her.

  When he opened the torn bag, he found nothing but crumbs, but there were a couple pinches remaining.

  “Uh, wai…Ryuuji. You know that’s already been on the floor, right? A-and, uh—”

  “I only got the burned ones, so I wanted to know how they turned out,” he asserted bluntly. Heedless of the wide-eyed Aisaka, he took a pinch with his fingertips and tossed it into his mouth. Then…

  “…”

  Silence.

  The burnt cookies she’d thrust into his mouth had been hot and bitter. They’d choked him and were forced on him besides, so he pretty much spat them out in disgust. This was the first time getting a real taste of the cookies she had made. But…he was pretty sure she had mixed up the sugar and the salt…

  “Is… i-is it good?”

  “Yeah, it’s delicious!”

  Aisaka’s eyes, which had been trembling with worry, became round.

  “Yeah, you made them really well,” he went on. “It’s just too bad you didn’t get to give them to him. Next time we get a chance, let’s try and do better.”

  He pulled through with the poker face of a lifetime. He urged her to eat the cookies he’d given her. Opening them hesitantly, Aisaka once again seemed surprised, and turned to Ryuuji.

  “Wow…they’re amazing.! These cookies turned out perfect! Are you sure? You want me to eat them?”

  “I’m the kind of guy who was just going to take them home to his mom, so it’s fine. Go ahead and eat them all.”

  The thin cookies, glazed in butter and sugar, were specially made. Aisaka spent a while staring at their perfect glaze.

  “…De-li-cious! They’re great!”

  She stuffed them into her mouth, and her eyes opened wide.

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard the word ‘delicious’ out of your mouth.”

  “But this is amazing! They’re better than the kind they sell in stores!”

  “I speak from experience: things you bake at home generally are better than what’s sold in stores. I have my own favorites, but I think that’s particularly true if y
ou like stuff that’s fresh and soft.”

  “It really is… Wow, these are great. Super yummy!”

  As she was absorbed in eating cookies, Aisaka’s profile looked exactly like that of a regular girl. Delicious, delicious. Her cheeks stuffed full, she licked the sugar around her lips. “If only I had tea, this would be perfect,” she said quietly to herself.

  Just who knew?

  Other than him, who knew of this Aisaka Taiga?

  It was a really strange feeling. Up until the day before, he, like everyone else, had been afraid of the “Palmtop Tiger”—and not just afraid of getting bitten, but also fearful of engaging in her world. He’d had no idea that Aisaka Taiga was this kind of person.

  But in truth, she was this kind of person: She had a rough temperament and was either the daughter of a thug or a karate master; she was mean enough to call other people dogs but couldn’t even say the name of the guy she liked in his presence; and she was unbelievably clumsy and so ashamed of her clumsiness she could get completely depressed over it and cry almost immediately. Plus, on top of all that, she was always hungry and had a particular weakness for anything delicious or sweet.

  What a weird girl. She was a nuisance. A troubled person.

  But Ryuuji didn’t particularly dislike her oddities, he suddenly realized. He was glad he’d met her. That was the only way he could think of it. Right then, at that moment, it felt strangely comforting.

  That was right. She was perplexing, maddening, and a nuisance, but when she was hurt, he wanted to console her, to a certain extent. When it came to Aisaka, he felt…

  “…Hey, Ryuuji, I figured it out.” She jumped up.

  When he came back to himself, Aisaka Taiga was looking at Ryuuji’s face from a very close distance. Even though she was small, her features were deeply set, well balanced. When she blinked, stars seemed to fall in her large, transparent eyes. They were exquisite. Even though her body was small, she didn’t have a baby face at all. That realization surprised him, and a shudder ran down his spine.

  Ahem, he cleared his throat. “…I-Is something wrong?!” He could only manage a strange, flustered response.

  “We’ve been failing because you haven’t been working hard enough! You’re really a bad dog! You mutt!”