Toradora! Vol. 1 Page 13

  As she muttered, her eyes looked as ill-natured as usual, but she seemed spent. The light that burned in her eyes seemed empty.

  A heavy lump had formed in Ryuuji’s stomach, and now, it dropped.

  Being not-quite together like this was the reason they’d been misunderstood, and Aisaka had been hurt in the same way. In the end, they had both invited this upon themselves. Just like this, by facing each other and always being together.

  But…

  “…I… doing stuff like this… It’s not that…”

  He tried saying something, but stopped. Aisaka was hurt in the same way he was. Because of that, he felt he couldn’t be selfish with his emotions. He couldn’t ask her to confirm that their relationship had caused a misunderstanding. Aisaka opened her mouth in his stead.

  “I’ve…decided…”

  She started playing with the ice in her juice with her straw, but she abandoned that and raised her head to look at Ryuuji face to face.

  “…I’m going to. Confess. To Kitamura-kun. I’m going to lay it out straight, so there’s no room to screw it up… Just a normal, straightforward declaration of love.”

  Even though her eyes shook with anxiety, she once again added, “I’ve decided.”

  Ryuuji sucked in a parched breath. “…Aisaka…why’re you suddenly…? No, really, it doesn’t matter what you do…”

  “That’s right. It doesn’t matter. And…” She trailed off and said to herself, hoarsely, “If we leave the misunderstanding like this, even you…” Then she spoke audibly again, saying, “…And then we’ll end it.”

  “End it,” Ryuuji echoed

  “We’ll end whatever this is,” she said definitively.

  After making that declaration, Aisaka’s gaze became distant. As though she had sunk into water, the outline of her features abruptly became blurry. Ryuuji was speechless.

  “After today, I’m setting you free,” she went on. “And then…you can do whatever you want. I won’t do anything to stop you. Whether you confess your love to Minorin, or whatever else. No matter what happens after tomorrow’s confessions, you don’t need to follow me around anymore.”

  “…”

  “As of now, your service as a dog is over. Starting tomorrow…let’s go back to how things were before the love letter incident.”

  A declaration of emancipation.

  You don’t need to follow me anymore.

  That should have been a moment of happiness.

  But, really, he still felt speechless.

  He wasn’t resentful of the way she’d acted until now, he wasn’t thankful—he just wasn’t anything. There was just one thing, though. That’s right—he just wanted to tell her, Don’t be lonely. But Ryuuji couldn’t get the words out of his throat. Even though he’d held the cold glass so long that the tips of his fingers prickled in pain, even though his fingers were getting so cold they were nearly freezing.

  However, at some point, Aisaka started smiling. Without making a sound, she smiled. She looked at Ryuuji, but also averted her gaze, slightly awkwardly, as she covered her mouth with both hands and looked down.

  “…It’s funny. Why’ve we even been together so much? Even today, we didn’t have any plans, but we still naturally got together, like zombies… It’s funny. We’ve been eating together every day, hanging around doing nothing all this time, and getting into fights…”

  A moment passed and then a faint laugh leaked out from between those small hands. Her large eyes were thin like the shape of a new moon—Aisaka was really laughing. It was the first time Ryuuji had seen her smile directed at him.

  “I didn’t want to go home to that big, empty apartment all alone,” she said. “So, I kept forcing myself into your house and even made you feed me. Really, I was… Yeah, I was really…”

  Hesitating, Aisaka became quiet, and shrugged. Thinking about something, she let her gaze slowly drift away. She quietly shut her thin eyelids. In those eyes, she was closing away something important, something that he’d never seen before—softly, softly, without a sound.

  “I really—ha ha, I wonder how to put this. It’s just…yeah, that’s right. I was lucky I didn’t starve. That’s right, I really am a klutz. I live by myself in that condo, right?”

  She probably wasn’t looking at Ryuuji’s expression of agreement.

  “There’s a terrible story, there,” she went on. “I never got along with my parents and always fought with them. One time I said, ‘I’d rather live anywhere else but here,’ and then they really did just conveniently deposit me in that condo. Before I realized it, I was moving out…but it was too late to back down. So then, once I’d moved, I had no idea how to do any chores… I was in trouble. Real trouble. And no one—no one—came to check up on me, either. And my parents knew I was a klutz better than anyone, but I still left home, out of sheer stubbornness. It’s stupid, right? I’m a klutz, right? Go ahead and laugh; I won’t get angry.”

  Aisaka’s eyes opened.

  After she had said all of that at once, he saw all the strength leave her shoulders.

  What kind of story is that? Ryuuji wanted to ask, but he held back the groan at the back of his throat. Because—that’s right, isn’t it? It really is something that would make you think, What kind of story is that? Right? Because the strange, brief story Aisaka just told was merely the sad tale of an abandoned child. Because those could only be the words of a doll that had been left behind by the king’s household, to live alone in the castle.

  But Aisaka was laughing. It seemed like she wanted Ryuuji to laugh out loud, too. So…

  “Ha…ha ha. Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha! You really are a klutz…”

  “Right.”

  He laughed. He felt like his heart was being torn to pieces, but with her, he laughed merrily, kindly. Never once before had he wanted to laugh at something so much.

  Today was it. Starting tomorrow, it would be like before. Like before—where they didn’t even exchange greetings. Just the Palmtop Tiger no one dared to go near and another fearful classmate.

  If that were the case, tonight he would laugh as hard as he could. In this shabby restaurant, he’d do it and savor the sight of Aisaka’s final smile.

  And then, because of that, he showed it to her. He thought she would get a kick out of it.

  “Hah, all right,” he said. “I’ll show you something good. Do you know who this is?”

  It was an old picture he always carried around in his wallet.

  “Huh? Oh…is that…your dad?!”

  “Yeah, you got it.”

  She blew a huge raspberry and then she laughed. “Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” She laughed so much that she got cold stares from the other patrons sitting nearby.

  “Wh-what is this! A spitting image! Aha ha, it’s great!” Her sides were splitting.

  “Look at his eyes. Two peas in a pod, right—me and this old delinquent.”

  “I can’t—c’mon, put it away! Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

  Contorting her body, crying, Aisaka laughed until she fell over onto the table. Bam, bam, she hit the tabletop, becoming even more of a public nuisance, flailing her feet around. Even when her voice turned hoarse, she kept laughing. It seemed that, using the dread-zilla DNA he’d so thoroughly inherited, he had pushed some button in Aisaka. They were genes he had bemoaned and begrudged, and he was more than a little bitter about them, but if they made her this happy, then there was at least some merit to the inheritance.

  “…I’ve never shown anyone this picture.”

  “Hah, oh boy, it hurts! I’ve never laughed this hard in my life! Your family’s got weird genes!”

  “It’s funny, right?”

  “It’s too funny! All right, then. In return for seeing one of your secrets, I’ll show you something good—I’ll tell you my secret, too,” she said and lowered her voice. “Okay, right…” She pursed her lips, trying not to laugh. Her glowingly rosy cheeks puffed up, and her eyes twinkled with mischief. She beckoned him in, a
nd he brought his ear close to those lips.

  “…They were salty, right? Those cookies.”

  “What?!” At the whisper, Ryuuji raised his voice. How—why did she know about how those cookies tasted?

  “Gah ha ha! You see, as soon as I got them back, I was so frustrated that I ate one! And it was the worst! But you didn’t even give me a chance to stop you before you ate them—and you even lied—”

  Suddenly, she stopped, right in the middle of her sentence.

  She held her breath. Her smile faded. It seemed as though she were searching for the words she’d lost. Then she took one breath. She turned her face down. She hid it from him.

  “You’re… Ryuuji, as far as dogs go, you’re just a mutt. But as a person, you’re…okay. So…because of that, because I get that, now, I’m going to stop. You’re not worthless. You’re really… How should I say this? You shouldn’t be a servant, but I think…someone to stand with, shoulder to shoulder…”

  She paused, then said, “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  And just like that, she unexpectedly cut herself off. The next time she raised her face, she wore her customarily cool expression.

  “Got my appetite back,” she said, as she opened the menu. Ryuuji followed suit. They ordered two Hamburg steaks. They complained about how the Hamburg steaks he’d made earlier were better, which was obvious, and they fought about who would go get the fountain drinks until Ryuuji got kicked out of his seat and was forced to do it. And then, the passing time piled up, hour by hour.

  Neither one faltered, and neither one stood higher than the other.

  After paying the check, they both started walking home in the middle of the night.

  The autumn night was strangely warm, and the crosswind was like something from a dream. It seemed to tickle Ryuuji’s skin until he couldn’t stand being silent anymore. As though she were drunk, Aisaka also seemed oddly talkative.

  They walked along the road for nearly twenty minutes, Aisaka complaining about how her real mother was in another prefecture and how her terrible stepmother was another reason why she had been thrown out of her home.

  Ryuuji talked about living alone with his mother and about how he was poor and how people acted like he was stupid and how Yasuko’s stalker was a creeper. He talked about how he was misunderstood because of his eyes and about how they continued to make the days of his adolescence humiliating.

  That was a wound Ryuuji had never shown anyone. Aisaka, too, had probably shown him wounds she had never shown anyone else. He had enough tact not to ask her, but he was pretty sure that was the case.

  And, just then, he was actually really happy. This time passing by was precious.

  But, no one could stop time, and slowly, it did pass, until eventually, they found themselves below a corner streetlight …

  “Oh, I can’t stand it!” Aisaka vented her anger at the unfortunate, unspeaking electrical pole with an explosive kick. Whack, thump—she acted exactly like a drunk as she released one violent kick after another.

  “I just hate it…! I swear, the world’s built to be cold to kids like us! Why doesn’t anyone understand that we’re dealing with all these things, that we’re worrying about all this stuff?!”

  She practically choked out those words in frustration. They echoed around the neighborhood in the dead of night. Because of that, Ryuuji didn’t stop her; he stayed by Aisaka’s side, nodding and agreeing with her.

  “Seriously. That’s right! Normal people just can’t imagine that those of us stuck with sulky-looking faces like you and me get overwhelmed sometimes, just the same as them!”

  “Yeah, it makes me angry—angry! Angry, angry, angry!”

  Her practiced kicks hit in succession. Suddenly Aisaka turned around, her shoulders heaving with her breath.

  “Hey, Ryuuji… Do you think about Minorin and come up clueless, too? Do you agonize over why it never seems to work out and wonder how you could get her to date you?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  After answering, he thought about it. Now that she said it, for a while now, ever since he started spending each turbulent day with Aisaka, he felt more distant from those sentimental feelings…

  “Then Ryuuji…do you ever cry, too?”

  “…Do you cry?”

  “I do.”

  She opened herself up. And then there was a moment of silence.

  Aisaka slowly looked up at the night sky and tore herself away from the pole. She swept up her disorderly hair so that he could see the white profile of her brittle-looking face.

  “Today, I wondered if he thought that I was weird, and whether I might get closer to him, and whether he has a girlfriend and…lots of other things. I thought about all kinds of stupid stuff all by myself… I’m sure no one else knows I do all of that, but…when it comes to me, no one…”

  The next word tapered off, so quiet that Ryuuji couldn’t hear it completely. Only the echo of her lonely voice passing surreptitiously through the thin clouds of the night sky.

  “…Yeah, if anyone knew about that side of you, they’d probably be surprised,” Ryuuji whispered, as he too looked up into the darkness and searched for the invisible moon. “No one would think you’d cry like that… I’m the only one who knows.”

  “Aren’t you audacious,” Aisaka said. She took a breath, and her gaze shook. “I could say the same thing about you, Ryuuji. I think there are a lot of things only I know.”

  “What do you mean…? Like what?”

  “Even though you’ve got a… a face like that, you’re the type of guy who can barely even talk to the girl he likes. You’re the type of guy who can’t actually get mad at anyone or hurt anyone. You’re the type of guy who can cook, who can clean perfectly… You’ve got eyes so scary that it makes people afraid to come near you, but you’re actually more conscientious than anyone… I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Do I really come off that pitiful?”

  “…I wouldn’t say you’re pitiful. It’s more that you’re…”

  Aisaka turned around. Her hair drifted around her like lace in the breeze of the gentle autumn night. She put up a slim finger and said in a faint, quiet voice, “You’re a kind person.”

  “Aisaka…”

  So that means I’m just a boring “nice guy,” he wanted to retort, but he couldn’t put it into words because he saw pain somewhere in Aisaka’s expression.

  “I’m the complete opposite of you, aren’t I?” she said. “I’m no good. I can’t be kind. Because there’s so many things I just can’t forgive… No, in this world, there’s really only a few things I can tolerate. What I see in front of me, everything, all of it, all of them, everyone…”

  Her skirt lightly turned up. Her white leg extended out magnificently, cutting through the wind.

  “MAKES…ME…ANGRY!”

  She landed a deadly high kick on the serene pole. Ryuuji was so shocked by the sudden explosion of emotion that he couldn’t speak. He took a big step back, exclaiming to himself in surprise. He could only watch the tiger go berserk.

  “It makes me angry, it makes me angry, it makes me so angry! Palmtop Tiger, my ass! Everything is NOT completely fine! Why doesn’t anyone understaaaaaannd?!”

  As though called by the tiger’s roar, the golden moon appeared above the two of them.

  Aisaka’s shadow stretched across the cold asphalt towards the half-dead pole. Ryuuji was just watching, but his shadow also stretched, closing the distance between them.

  Their two shadows overlapped, but their bodies didn’t touch.

  “Everyone, all of it, makes me furious! Stupid Minorin… Why wouldn’t she listen to me?! Kitamura-kun is the same—why did he just swallow whatever Minorin said?! Why won’t he understand?! Minorin and Kitamura-kun both, everyone…every single person, even my mom and dad, all of them, I’ll never forgive any of them! Because they don’t even try to understand…! No one ever understands!”

  Aisaka’s voice choked as she too
k the pole in both hands and kneed it hard. There were probably nights when she worked herself up so much she wanted to cry. On the verge of feverish tears, her breath wavered in frustration, then…

  “U-ugh…!”

  “Whoa! You idiot, stop!”

  She turned around and, with all her strength, headbutted the pole—or at least, she nearly did. Ryuuji dashed forward and put out the palm of his hand, stopping her forehead right before she put herself in danger. Even her forehead wouldn’t win against a pole.

  “But I’m so aaannngry!” she yelled. Then she burst into tears.

  Next to him, like a child, Aisaka kept on crying into the autumn night. There was nothing to be done. Ryuuji made a gut decision. But, still, it wasn’t like anything he could do would amount to much. It was just better than telling her, I understand, and sounding completely shallow.

  “…I’ve got your back,” he declared and sucked air into his lungs. Then he shouted in one breath, “I’m aaaanngrrryyyy!”

  Although he was unaccustomed to it, he threw in a kick, too, and then a roundhouse. He imagined the K-1 kickboxing he’d seen on TV as he precariously balanced himself.

  And just like that, Ryuuji and Aisaka (somewhat unfairly) attacked the pole together. Ryuuji had his own enemies. He felt like a rock placed against the flow of life. Aisaka had enemies, too—at least, he thought she did. She must have had a similar obstacle in her life, embodied by something or other, he thought. That enemy was the feeling of liking someone. It would only get heavier when the time came that she wanted to marry someone. It could probably even be called a psychological complex. Or maybe calling it destiny, or nature, or nurture, or something like that, would be more fitting. Or maybe it was being aware of your own adolescence, of your own helplessness—there were probably a lot of ways to think about it.

  But anyway, whatever it was, it didn’t have a physical form you could punch or kick, and she’d probably have to keep fighting with it for a long, loooong time. If she didn’t kick the pole like this, she wouldn’t be able to get it out of her until she died. It would have been better if it had been a wall or a futon, though… Sorry, pole, you were just unlucky.