Toradora! Vol. 8 Read online

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t say ‘Huh!’”

  He knew.

  Taiga was obviously trying to distance herself from him. Why are you doing this?! he wanted to shout.

  When he was hospitalized, she would help out, since Yasuko couldn’t not go to work. She would bring him clothes, go shopping, and gallantly help with all kinds of things for Ryuuji’s care. But once Ryuuji was discharged, Taiga flat out wouldn’t come over to the Takasus’.

  She would make up whatever excuse she could and refuse breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even on days when she shouldn’t have been busy, she would leave her condo without so much as showing her face to them. When he finally did see her, like now, she was happily eating cup ramen. If she’d only come over to the Takasus’, there was plenty of food, and he had told her to come and eat. Even when she said she didn’t need it, he made enough for Taiga every day. He would save the food for her. Yasuko was waiting, too.

  “I wonder what’s gotten into Taiga-chan lately. She won’t come even when you invite her?”

  Even Yasuko was a little down.

  They’d even put out the sitting cushion Taiga monopolized where she normally sat.

  “That’s right—you just think I’m gloomy after being rejected by Kushieda! Ah, that must be right. I’m depressing! I’m so sorry about that!”

  His voice went hoarse as he shouted, and his face looked like that of a demon crawling from hell. He knew that he was being disgraceful and uncool, but feelings brewing in his stomach wouldn’t stop now that he’d found a path to release them. He flung his arms around and kept howling.

  “Ahgh, I don’t care anymore! I just don’t care! In the end, you’re abandoning me for being such a letdown! That’s right! Ahh, you could’ve just said so! You just want to throw your relationship with me away like trash! I’m just a nuisance, and you don’t need me at all! I get it, I get it all. It’s fine, I’d just rather you tell it to me directly, I’d rather hear it from your mouth…oh!”

  “Shut up, you foolish bug.”

  She was a second faster than he could finish. She threw one of her chopsticks like a dart, aiming right for the middle of Ryuuji’s forehead. It didn’t pierce him, but the force with which it hit hurt quite a bit, and Ryuuji was left speechless despite himself.

  “You really are a stupid bug. Don’t you go getting deranged on me, you insolent pest.”

  Taiga tried to snap the other chopstick in half but broke a third of it off instead. She clumsily used the pieces to chug the rest of her ramen, her large eyes fixed on Ryuuji. She had gone beyond scorn and had become pitying.

  “Do I need to explain it to you from the start?” she said.

  “Explain what?”

  “I’m doing all this because of you. The heavens must be in an uproar right around now. They’re so shocked that someone like me, more merciful than the gods or Buddha, has appeared. In the past, I was like, ‘Ryuuji’s an idiot, an idiot, an idiot, an idiot, a suuuuper big idiot,’ but—”

  “Did you really think that little of me?”

  “—but seeing you sink this low is really just shocking. You must be the king of idiots.”

  “You avoid me, don’t come over to eat, don’t show your face, and ignore me… Are you saying that’s all supposed to be for my sake?”

  “That’s right. But actually, it’s for you and for Minorin’s sake.” Taiga inhaled and looked at Ryuuji for a moment. “Listen. You know, I thought about it while you were hospitalized and I was watching you sleep.”

  She dipped her head like a drooping flower bud, brought one hand up to her own chest, and shook her head with sorrow. “Ahh, your face was so terrifying, I just couldn’t help but want to do something—bwa ha ha!”

  Unable to keep a straight face any longer, she began to splutter. Ryuuji slammed his window closed. No way! That was a joke just now! Open up! He could hear Taiga wailing in a way that would bother the neighbors.

  Given no other choice, he opened the window again to yell at her. “I’ve really got my back up against the wall when it comes to my mental state! If you joke around this time, I’ll really, definitely, just drop dead!”

  “Okay, okay. I got it. I’ll be serious. Right…serious. After all that happened, I was thinking. And that’s when I understood it. I understood completely from the bottom of my heart, like an idiot.”

  “Are you referring to me?”

  “No. I mean me.”

  Taiga twisted her lips as though mocking herself and shrugged. She closed her eyes to declare that the joke was over and she was being serious.

  “I thought, what was I even doing? Like, I was being such an idiot, wasn’t I?”

  The shadows of the night reflected darkly in the eyes she slowly opened. She tangled her fingers in her hair and combed it out. She put her elbows on the windowsill and looked up at the starless sky. The line of her chin seemed to glow white even in the dark.

  Her quiet voice slid slowly into the stillness of the night.

  “I said I’d support you and Minorin being together, but I was always hanging around your place. Of course Minorin took that the wrong way. Even if I told her not to, it’s not like she couldn’t think that was what was going on. That’s normal, isn’t it? I can’t believe we… Well, I can’t believe I didn’t think about it. I was just clinging to you. I really am an idiot.”

  Taiga smoothed her bangs, which had been ruffled by the freezing wind, and then smiled faintly at him. Their eyes met directly, and Ryuuji felt just very slightly at a loss.

  “In other words, you—” He averted his eyes as he put his next words together. The cold wind stung his skin. “—you think that the reason Kushieda rejected me was because she still misunderstood our relationship?”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Taiga nod.

  “So, our co-living situation is now over. I’m starting up on my own. I’m not just saying it this time. I’ll really try to do it.”

  “…Kushieda might misunderstand, so you won’t come over anymore?”

  “Yeah. I’m not coming over anymore.”

  Silence fell over the two of them. The icy night seemed to have frozen over into an unendingly dark and motionless state. Though he was silent, Ryuuji didn’t agree with Taiga. Instead, he licked his dry lips.

  “You stopped coming over, and… So you’re saying this because you actually want me and Kushieda to be together? You don’t think that Kushieda just doesn’t like me?”

  “I don’t.” Taiga’s answer, however, was filled with conviction. “I think that Minorin does like you. I can tell just by looking, but she’s just hung up on me. That’s the only reason I can think of. Why do you think that Minorin rejected you? Do you actually think she doesn’t like you?”

  “I…”

  Ryuuji was touched. He held his breath for a moment and scratched at his head. He didn’t know whether it was okay to say this, even as he squeezed out the words.

  “I don’t know if that’s right or not. When I say I don’t know… I mean that I really can’t avoid thinking that Kushieda might not have liked me at all. I just can’t accept that she rejected me to the point she didn’t even let me confess to her, actually.”

  He closed his eyes and thought of her—of Kushieda Minori.

  “In other words, I thought like she did have slight feelings for me, too. But it might be shameless and self-centered for me to think that…”

  “Taaakaaasuuu-kun! Hey, yo, my man!”

  The Minori in his mind smiled brightly. She breakdanced in the air. Her eyes, which contained something unknown to Ryuuji, looked straight at him. Sometimes they wavered, sometimes they saw right through him, sometimes they were hard. Those eyes had captured Ryuuji and wouldn’t let him go.

  “But then she rejected me so easily. Well, she didn’t so much reject me…as just not even let me tell her I liked her. I’m such a mess… I can’t just give up. I think.”

  He knew that her fingertips were as hot as fire. Even n
ow, he couldn’t forget that heat or the time she asked him to buy the Lucky Man race picture where they were holding hands. He could never forget the tone of her voice. He couldn’t forget the soft vibration hiding behind the faint tremor in her words.

  Through their normal, everyday conversations, hadn’t Minori tried to slowly shed light on the secrets of her heart?

  Ryuuji couldn’t forget her eyes, her voice, her expression. There had to have been something more to it than what he could see. She must have had some feelings for him. There must have been a small chance that she did…

  He was pitiful, and he knew it, but he still couldn’t abandon the idea. He held his head and groaned.

  “I-I-I…I don’t know. I have no idea. Maybe it was my imagination? Maybe it was all a convenient delusion? But I can’t…believe that. No matter what, I can’t think that’s how it is.”

  “Me neither…” Taiga whispered in a low voice. “I don’t think it was your imagination, either.”

  Ryuuji opened his eyes slightly. Taiga was still looking straight at him. Her eyes let off a strong light. They didn’t falter or waver, and her gaze stayed trained on him.

  “Don’t run away.” Her voice echoed around them. “You still like Minorin, don’t you? You believe that Minorin has feelings for you, don’t you? Then you can’t run away. You need to keep thinking of Minorin, and once she sees that I’m not hanging around and living with you, she’ll definitely give you a different answer. That’s what I think. So you can’t get all gloomy and worried like that. You can’t say you’re just fine with this, either.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’m actually really sort of afraid of seeing Minorin, too.” As though trying to fake out of the end of her sentence, Taiga snorted.

  “Why?”

  “You don’t get it? Who was the one who got Minori to go to the place where she rejected you?”

  Oh. Ryuuji remembered the details of that night he had wanted to forget. Right. The angel Taiga had convinced Minori to come to the party and, at the party, she had rejected him in one fell swoop.

  “And this is what ended up happening… Since then, I haven’t even seen Minorin. Minorin had softball this whole time, and after that, she went to stay at her grandmother’s house with the rest of her family for the end of the year. I haven’t heard Minorin’s side of what happened on Christmas Eve. I was insistent about her going to you. She can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

  At that point, Taiga bit her bottom lip slightly. She rubbed roughly at her forehead as her white breath puffed out. “Ugh.” Her whisper seemed aimed at herself, and it was filled with regret she couldn’t hide.

  “If I hadn’t forced Minorin out because I was so excited about Christmas, this wouldn’t have happened. Don’t you think that?”

  “Like I would.”

  His low reply was how he really felt. He had been afraid of what would happen, but the one who wanted to confess, who decided to, and who ran back to school during the night was all Ryuuji.

  But Taiga continued. “It’s what I think.”

  Sorry, she was saying. It wasn’t like her.

  After having that done to him, and being apologized to, and her trying to take the blame on herself, he didn’t know whether his heart could beat harder. His already-damaged pride had been smashed even further into pieces, but Taiga didn’t know that. If she’d been sitting in a corner of that dark, small room with him, he would have hit the top of her head really hard and said, “You don’t understand the subtleties of the heart!”

  But right now, he couldn’t even do that.

  “But! I won’t run away! So—” Taiga’s finger suddenly pointed straight at Ryuuji’s heart. “You can’t run away. You can’t run from this situation. I know it’s hard, but…if you run away, then it’s really over.”

  He felt like his heart had stopped. Then it’s really over… He held his breath for a moment at the impact of those words.

  “Answer me, Ryuu-flea.”

  “Who’s Ryuu-flea…?”

  “Have you prepared yourself to not run away?”

  Ryuuji somehow nodded. Seeing that, Taiga seemed to prepare herself for something; the edges of her mouth pulled back faintly.

  “From here on, you don’t need to wake me up in the morning. I don’t need a bento or dinner. I’ll figure things out myself somehow. I’ll do all the housework by myself, too. Minorin thinks that I need you. That’s why I want to prove to her that I can make it alone. I want to show that to Minorin. And then, we wait for Minorin to give you a different answer.”

  She said it simply and abruptly, and then slapped her own cheeks. It seemed she really meant it. Without realizing it, Ryuuji blinked, as though he had seen something blinding while he looked at Taiga.

  Taiga, apparently, really was tougher than he was.

  He wanted to kick himself for complaining. He wanted to slap himself for thinking that he would be lonely. Feeling himself cheering up, Ryuuji nodded for her.

  He didn’t really think that things with Minori would go well if he and Taiga spent time apart. It wasn’t that simple, but that also wasn’t the important part. Now that Taiga was finally acting more like an adult and trying to stand on her own, he didn’t want to show his pitiful face to her. He didn’t want to be overtaken by Taiga as she grew up, or be left behind.

  He didn’t want to be a wimp who had been rejected. He didn’t want to stagnate while dilly-dallying around.

  He didn’t want his long-unrequited love to end like that.

  “I got it. I’ll do what I can. But…please just don’t burn the place down.”

  Taiga thrust out her chest, filled with as much confidence as the continental shelf. “Yeah, it’ll be fine. I swear I won’t use the stove. I swear I’ll eat takeout forever!”

  She had said something that was so low level, it was embarrassing. Ryuuji sighed despite himself.

  “I wonder how long that can last…”

  “What?! It’ll work! For eternity and beyond!”

  He looked at Taiga, who was breathing roughly. Even though her cheeks and nose were red from the cold wind, there was a fearless smile on her face, and she seemed absurd in her pride.

  “I’ll be fine now, so anyway, you do what you need to. Okay? First you need to find out Minorin’s true feelings. I’ve already prepared an opportunity for that.”

  “An opportunity?”

  “Yeah. It was a lucky strike of fate.” Taiga nodded and then coolly closed her window. “Good night.”

  Or at least, she tried to do it coolly. She got four fingers caught in the window, and her shriek echoed loudly in the silent night.

  He wouldn’t run.

  And then, he would find out how she really felt.

  He was prepared, but it was far from morning and the world was dark, so he couldn’t even see what he wanted. He didn’t know what the opportunity Taiga spoke of was, either.

  Ryuuji still couldn’t fall asleep, so he wrapped himself in the heavy blanket and stared vacantly at the ceiling. Once morning came, it would be a new semester. He didn’t have any say in that. They would see each other again at school.

  If only morning would never come. Did thinking that also count as running?

  ***

  “Mooorrrrrnnniiiiinnnggggg!”

  Ryuuji trembled slightly.

  “Inko-chan, how excited you are right in the morning…”

  Normally, the Takasus’ house was dim in the mornings. And cold. Even though they were indoors, their breath would be white, and the hands they used to refill Inko-chan’s water and food would be numb.

  Despite the gloomy winter morning, Inko-chan was happy about something. She spread her scaly, plucked wings inside her cage and yelled. “Mooorrrnnniiiiinnggg! Moooorrrrnnniiiiinngggg!”

  The cloudy whites of her eyes had a green tint to them, covered by the mesh-like pattern of blood vessels. Her mulberry-colored beak gaped open unreservedly.

  “Morning! Morning! Morning
! Morning!”

  “Oh, wait! Inko-chan, hey, stop! Stop that! Ah!”

  The parakeet slipped past Ryuuji’s hand and escaped from the cage. Inko-chan went at a speed that might have been fast enough to break the sound barrier. Do do do do do do do! She slipped past him, kicking bamboo splinters from the tatami, and ran as fast as she could. She was like a frilled lizard sprinting across a desert. As if trying to make a fool of her owner, who was chasing after her on his knees, she juked to the right and left.

  Why is this happening first thing in the morning? Ryuuji’s wrinkles might have been as deep as the Fossa Magna. At that point, a light bulb suddenly switched on in his mind. That speed. The suddenness of her turns. That artistic footwork. He felt he had seen it somewhere before.

  “Zidane! This is Zidane’s Marseille Roulette!”

  Ryuuji’s sanpaku eyes opened wide, and he covered his mouth. He’d never imagined that the ugly parakeet he was raising was a member of the Galacticos.

  “Just kidding…ha ha.”

  Unable to keep going with the joke he himself had started, Ryuuji simply sat down. He really wished morning hadn’t come. He had prayed and prayed and prayed, but in the end, here it was.

  On the other hand, Inko-chan, aka Takasu Zidane, was in a state of excitement whose cause was unknown. She circled her owner, who was emitting a dark aura, with amazing speed. She switched tracks and slipped right through the cracked sliding door into Yasuko’s room. Shooooom!

  Ryuuji heard various shrieks that he wouldn’t have thought had come from a person. “Hngaaat? Ungggha!” He also heard the sound of a scuffle on top of the futon bed.

  “Faaaaaaaaaaah! Now I’m aaaawwwwwaaaaakkkkkeee!”

  There it was. Someone wearing a tracksuit soaked head to toe with the smell of alcohol, and her curly hair poofed out like an afro, crawled from the bedroom’s open door. Ryuuji scowled in surprise.

  “A country bumpkin…”

  “Fueh?”

  Grasped in the hand of his mother, who had come home drunk that morning, was Ryuuji’s Zidane. Inko-chan flopped over.

  “Ahh wah! If you hold her that hard, she’ll die!”