Toradora! Vol. 8 Page 15

  Ryuuji was on the verge of crying, but he couldn’t stand them pulling a Chushingura without him. He ran after his friends as fast as he could.

  ***

  “We’re coming in, girls! Be good now and open this door… Wait, it’s already open?!” The door just popped open as Kitamura grabbed the cheap-looking doorknob.

  “We got hella lucky! Hey, gals! I don’t know if you’re changing or doing something else, but you’re the exhibitionists for not locking up!”

  “We’re heading in, Kitamura, Takasu!”

  Haruta opened the door without hesitation and dove in. He pushed Kitamura before him and grabbed Ryuuji’s arm. Noto followed after them. As they rushed into the room, Ryuuji froze up, automatically preparing himself for shrieks and denunciations.

  “Huh? What? No one’s here!”

  “Yeah…they’re just careless. Actually, what even is this?!”

  Ryuuji looked around the eight-tatami mat room and scowled like a medium possessed by a spirit. Could this room really have the exact same layout as theirs?

  The girls’ five people’s worth of bags were laid out right on the floor. The ones that had their zippers closed were in a better state, but there were several that were wide open, their contents spilling out. Brushes, hot curlers, phones with too many key chains on them, pouches, magazines, and girly stuff that he didn’t recognize were scattered all around. They had dropped their still-damp gear wherever they wanted, and the only things they’d put up on hangers were two jackets and four skirts.

  To top it all off, there was just a single sock thrown into a corner. Ryuuji really just could not stand socks in uneven numbers.

  “This is so gross! Ahhh!”

  “Hold back, Takasu! You can’t clean this!”

  As Kitamura held him back, Ryuuji’s body shook. Incidentally, under Ryuuji’s instructions, the boys had put all their bags into the cupboard and put their uniforms up on hangers. Their gear was already wiped down and drying by the window. He even had a rule that everyone had to put their personal belongings back in their bags after using them.

  These eight-tatami mat rooms had to have four to five high school students stuffed into them, after all. If they didn’t clean it up right, they wouldn’t be able to keep their own zones of privacy. Plus, messes always invited friends. If one thing was left out, it would immediately contaminate the area around it. If a place was messy, the minds of those living in it would also be scattered. Actually, if he had to live in such a small, messy, chaotic room like this, Ryuuji would probably have gotten sick.

  How did they even do that…? Why wouldn’t they want to live in more comfort for the two nights and three days they would be there? He at least wanted to do something immediately about that gear and those uniforms. The gear would get smelly, and the pleats of the skirts would get all messed up…

  No. He couldn’t. Ryuuji bit his lip and desperately turned his eyes away from the area he wanted to clean.

  “They left the room unlocked when it’s like this… I wonder if they thought it’d lock automatically behind them? Maybe they’re at the baths? Just how many snacks did they bring?” Noto also seemed exasperated as he looked around the room. Then, he exclaimed, “Oh!”

  “What’s wrong, Noto-chi?”

  “I saw it! I saw a camisole! It’s blue!”

  “I found a whole bunch of damp towels! Whoo!”

  Haruta raised the treasures he had found. Class 2-C’s conscience, Kitamura, admonished them. “Hey, stop that you two! And even you? Takasu, stop!”

  “Oh no…I’m not doing that. That’s not what I meant.” Ryuuji quickly hid that unbearable, single dropped sock behind his back.

  “Seriously, even you, Takasu? You can’t touch other people’s personal stuff. Now, put it back! Oh no, I stepped on something. What is this… ‘Aroma cream’? Oh…so it’s a type of hand cream, and you can put it on your face? Ohhh…yeah, that’s an aroma. It smells like what you’d imagine for an aroma.”

  “Lemme see, oh…”

  “Yeah, this is it. It’s an aroma…”

  “Ohh…it’s kind of a sexy smell, hee hee.”

  Kitamura had squeezed a tiny bit of the cream from the tube onto the back of his hand, where everyone sniffed it. Kitamura rubbed it in and said, “Yeah, it’s smooth.” How was this the conscience of class 2-C?

  “Hee hee…”

  Suddenly Haruta laughed.

  “If anyone were looking at this scene right now, we’d really look like perverts. This is the kind of thing you end up in cuffs for.”

  “Stop being stupid. We just came here for revenge, right? Our final goal was to be diehards.”

  That was right. Ryuuji and Kitamura nodded at Noto’s words.

  “But we look kind of outrageous.”

  Well, they might have looked weird from an outside perspective.

  Haruta had a towel someone else had used around his neck. Noto still had the camisole in his hands. Ryuuji was still hiding the sock. And Kitamura was being allured by the fragrance of the cream he’d rubbed on his hand.

  “You’re right that it might look like that,” Kitamura said. “We might look a little dangerous, but we’re not perverts, and we didn’t come here aiming to mess with the girls’ stuff. How about we put everything back before the girls come in, and then start over, my friends?”

  It was a splendid idea. Everyone agreed, but just then…

  Clack. The door the perverts had come in through to mess with the girls’ personal things began to open.

  ***

  Out of anyone it could have been, it was Taiga.

  The boys just barely managed to jump into the small closet, their hearts racing. Out of all the girls, the most savage and unreasonable one had come back to the room alone.

  They lined their eyes up to the slightly open sliding door, where a line of light spilled through, to see the room.

  “This is bad. This is bad…”

  Shhhh. They hushed Haruta’s wail, but Ryuuji, too, felt overwhelmed with despair and was close to peeing himself. This went two steps beyond just playing around with people’s personal belongings while the owners weren’t present. They couldn’t say, “We’re diehards” or “We’re getting revenge,” anymore. There was absolutely no way they could say any of that now.

  Still unaware of the fact Ryuuji and the rest were watching from their hiding place, Taiga threw her key onto the tatami. It looked like she hadn’t even noticed that the door had been open.

  She’d probably just finished taking a bath. She was wearing a parka and, unusually for her, matching pants. Her long hair was still soaking wet. Her face was red, and she was breathing loudly.

  Taiga wiped her hair with the towel around her shoulders and grabbed a dryer that she had left sitting right out in the middle of the room. She pulled on the cord as she let her eyes wander around. It seemed she was looking for an outlet. There was one right before her eyes in an easy-to-spot location, but Taiga seemed despondent.

  “Guess there isn’t one…” she muttered, and her shoulders slumped.

  Ryuuji slipped. If his butt hadn’t fallen onto Noto’s leg, he probably would have made a sound.

  “Takasu!”

  “Sorry!”

  Ryuuji couldn’t help it—Taiga was just too much of an idiot. She hadn’t even noticed the outlet right in front of her! She gave up on the dryer, tossed it aside, and then trotted across the room as though she’d remembered something. She opened the room’s refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of tea she seemed to have brought with her. Perhaps she was feeling thirsty from her bath. Taiga put a hand on her hip and heartily tipped the tea back.

  “Gah-hah!”

  She coughed hard, and in that moment, spilled tea all over the place. “Oh, ew.”

  Don’t say ew… Inside the closet, the same sentiment bloomed like a cloud. Ryuuji felt like grinding his teeth as he looked at the tea spilled on the ground. If they didn’t wipe it up quick, it’d form a stain.

/>   As though Ryuuji’s thought had made its way to her, Taiga immediately bent down and started wiping the tea off the tatami. But—she used the towel she had been using on her hair. What was she going to do with her wet head now?

  As Ryuuji watched, disturbed, Taiga did the unthinkable. With that very same towel, she once again started drying her hair.

  Whaaaaa?! Even Haruta made a low noise. Ryuuji nearly fainted. Oh, Taiga—why are you so careless?

  Despite that, when Taiga started drinking her tea again a bit more carefully, her profile really looked exactly like a doll. She looked like a princess from a fairy tale.

  “Guff!”

  Stop… Don’t burp either, please.

  Taiga capped the bottle and held it in one hand as she started wandering around the room. She wiped her hair with the tea towel as she walked.

  “Ah!”

  She tripped on someone’s bag. BAM! She fell onto her face. And then, out of all the things that could have happened…

  “Ow!”

  …the bottle that had flown out of her hand landed right back down onto her head.

  “…!”

  “Oh…” The boys wriggled, covering their mouths before they could blurt anything out. The klutz god had descended to earth right in front of them. That said, this was probably an everyday occurrence for Taiga.

  “Ugh, what’s with this…ngh…”

  Taiga held her head but stayed calm. Still on the ground, she rolled over onto her back and lay splayed out on the tatami. She yawned. She arched, and her back cracked loudly. Then she closed her eyes and began to hum.

  Vrmmmm vrmmm. ♪ Vrmmmmm vrmmmm. ♪

  Her humming sounded just like a mass of cicadas. That was Ryuuji’s limit.

  “Bwah ha!”

  “Huh?!”

  Within the closet, three fists hit Ryuuji in the back. However, the sound he’d released could no longer be taken back. With her usual cat-like reflexes, Taiga leapt up. She held her bottle like a bat.

  Her pale face looked like a Noh mask, and her large, emotionless eyes were open so wide they seemed like they might split at the seams. Taiga scanned the whole room and somehow, now of all times, came to the correct conclusion. She stared at the closet.

  Bottle held high in her right hand, and poised to defend her face with her left, her footwork was obviously far from amateur as she stepped towards the closet.

  And then, something unthinkable happened.

  What if Tiger locked the room and went to sleep?

  Unbelievable! But when it comes to Tiger, I’d believe it.

  Aha ha ha ha…

  They heard the sound of four people laughing. They heard Maya and Ami’s voices approaching them through the thin walls of the closet. They were close. They were almost there.

  And then, right before them, Taiga’s hand was on the sliding door.

  “Ahh! To hell with it!”

  It was his fault for making a noise. Ryuuji sent up a quick prayer to heaven and then, faster than Taiga could reach out her hand, he suddenly threw open the sliding door. BAM!

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeep…”

  It seemed that when people were truly afraid, they couldn’t even scream. Taiga made a noise like a strangled baby monkey as Ryuuji appeared before her eyes and grabbed her legs, making her fall backward onto her butt.

  “Please, please, be quiet, please! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, please, forgive us!”

  “HAGBHAABABABARYURYURYU…”

  Ryuuji grabbed her frozen arm and pulled her into the bottom half of the closet while apologizing, his face in full-on possessed-medium mode. Taiga was halfway to fainting.

  “I’ll explain things later,” he said, as if he were a husband caught cheating. The timing was dangerous and last minute.

  “Huh, it’s still open. Hey, Tiger, you’re so careless!”

  The door opened with a clack, and Maya’s voice echoed through the room… Just as Kitamura quietly closed the sliding door.

  “Hel…!”

  …lp me! Taiga probably tried to yell.

  “Please…just this once…please…please, okay…”

  Ryuuji had become an actual pervert. He whispered hotly into Taiga’s ear as he begged her, pinning her arms behind her back with all the strength he could muster. He could feel the warmth from her skin through her parka and pants, as though she were a child who had just come out from the bath.

  This really could land him in jail. On top of that, even as he apologized, he covered her mouth. Taiga tried to bite him like a wild animal, but he somehow stopped her from screaming. Her wet hair flailed, and her hard head hit his chin. BAM!

  Even then, Ryuuji didn’t yell. He couldn’t make the same mistake again. He noticed the thinness of the arm he held so tightly, and weakened his grip, but then she butted his chin again hard enough to make him feel like he might die. Her strength weirdly reassured him. He felt something that was a little different from guilt, but it dispersed with his pain.

  “Huh? Taiga’s not here…but she said she’d come back first to dry her hair.”

  “The key is over there, so maybe she went to the bathroom? Ahh, that was a nice bath. It wasn’t a hot spring, but it’s nice when it’s that big.”

  “I so agree. I want to go in again later. We can go as many times as we want before lights out, right?”

  “Nanako, you seriously love baths. But if you’re going, I’ll go, too. I want to get thinner. Actually, Ami-chan, why don’t you become a pinup model? I think you’d seriously be a hit! For sure!”

  “You think so? It’s not like I want to become an entertainer, though.”

  As soon as they entered the room, Minori, Ami, Maya, and Nanako immediately started talking. They were bustling around, asking to be handed their toner, eating snacks, and turning on the TV. No one had noticed the secret sexual harassment feud in the closet, but Ryuuji couldn’t hold back the Palmtop Tiger all by himself forever.

  Just when he thought it was only a matter of time before Taiga escaped, Maya spoke.

  “Hey… Maybe Tiger went to the boys’ room by herself? Maybe she’s with Maruo-kun right now.”

  Maya wrapped her long hair with a towel and plopped down cross-legged. Taiga’s body froze as her name was said. Kitamura probably jolted, too.

  Across from Maya, Nanako smiled, putting cream on her face (the same one Kitamura had been rubbing on his hand). She sat down, as well.

  “Tiger? Go to the boys’ room by herself? No way. You’re overthinking it.”

  “Oh, but maybe she’s doing something with Takasu-kun, and Yuusaku will come by, and there’ll be a situation,” Ami said. “That could happen.”

  “What do you mean, they’re doing ‘something’?” Nanako poked fun back at Ami. Ryuuji agreed with Nanako, too. What are we supposedly doing? he thought.

  “What?! It’d be so terrible if that actually did happen! Actually…what is it with Tiger, really? Is she actually after Maruo? No matter what anyone says, the one she’s really the closest to is Takasu-kun, isn’t it? Back when we went to Tiger’s house, Takasu-kun was doing the dishes. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Maybe the whole Maruo thing is just a misunderstanding, and in the end, she’s really after Takasu-kun? Honestly, that’d be nice!”

  That was the point at which Taiga stopped resisting. Even if she got free of Ryuuji’s arms, this newest development put Taiga in a situation where she couldn’t really jump out and say, “I’ve been here the whole time!”

  She stopped moving and looked up for a second at Ryuuji’s face. He felt like her lips were moving to mouth something. Remember this…

  “Hey, Kushieda, what’s going on with that? You’re close to Tiger, right? Who is Tiger really after, Takasu-kun or Maruo? It’s Takasu-kun, right? Right?”

  “Well, that’s hard for me to say, partner. Why don’t you ask Taiga directly when she gets back?” Pinning up her washed hair with a clip, Minori cocked her head.

  “What?! It’s not like Tiger would tell us! Act
ually, Kushieda, you’ve been kind of quiet since earlier? What happened?”

  “You think so? I might have skied too hard. I’m kind of sleepy.”

  “What?! We’re not going to let you sleep tonight! We’re having girl talk! Actually, if Tiger would just like, hurry up and get Takasu-kun already, we wouldn’t have any problems!”

  “Oh, that stings…and then Minori-chan pleads the fifth. ♥” Ami smiled suggestively.

  For a moment, the air in the room froze. The air in the closet froze in the same way.

  “Huh, what? What do you mean? Ami-chan, I wanna know. You do, too, right, Nanako?”

  “Yeah, of course. Actually, Ami-chan said something that only Kushieda got a while ago, too, right?”

  “Ohh, you two heard that? Sorry, Minori-chan…you pretend to be oblivious so often that I’ve said too much, now.”

  Minori turned to face Ami. Ami was blinking her big Chihuahua eyes, acting purposefully cute as she smiled and looked back at Minori.

  “Look, don’t just talk to each other through your eyes. Just say it, Ami-chan!”

  “Maya’s asking, but should I say it? Should I let it out?”

  Minori tilted her head. “Say what?”

  Ryuuji swallowed. Putting aside the dangerous topic at hand, it was Minori’s expression that got to him. Her eyes were a little narrowed, and her chin was raised. She was looking right through Ami.

  He’d seen that face once before. He could never forget it. It was during the practice for the culture festival. Minori had asked him about Taiga’s dad, and her face now looked exactly the same as it had back then.

  In other words, it was her face when she was actually angry.

  But Ami wasn’t cowed. She put a placid smile on her face. Then she said:

  “Minori-chan rejected Takasu-kun when he tried to confess to her on Christmas Eve. Did you forget? No way, that’s how precious popular girls are! You’re so calm about it! How cool! Like you don’t even remember that you rejected him! Aha ha!”

  “Huh? What? Whaat?! Takasu-kun tried to confess to you?! Seriously?!”

  “And then you rejected him?! On Christmas Eve?! No waay! Actually…how do you know that, Ami-chan?!”