Toradora! Vol. 7 Read online

  The girl, who was unaware she had narrowly escaped death because of Taiga’s good-girl week, reverently bowed her head to Kitamura.

  “I can’t find the courage to confess… Please help me…”

  Then Kitamura, the patron saint of broken hearts, said, “Hmmm… It’s okay. Have faith and your dreams will come true. Don’t hesitate and go for it!”

  “But…I don’t have confidence in myself…and I’m not even pretty…”

  “Don’t think about it! Go for the soap!”

  “The wha? …Huh?”

  “Don’t think too deeply about it.” Kitamura mumbled, chanted something over the girl’s head, and bowed. The girl bowed back and left.

  “Huh…?” Taiga tilted her head so steeply that her face almost seemed to rotate completely. She couldn’t figure out what had happened at all.

  That was right. While Taiga had been out on suspension, a lot of things had gone down at school.

  “What is this, Ryuuji…”

  “Well, actually, since Kitamura made that huge confession earlier, he’s been kind of like the leader of a love cult—it’s like, he’s what people believe in when they want to confess to someone else…”

  Oh, is he really?! Taiga was surprised, but she immediately followed with, “But he got rejected!”

  That certainly was true. A rarity for Taiga: the gears in her petite brain had turned and worked it out.

  “That’s exactly why he’s a patron saint. It’s kind of like Kitamura absorbs all the bad stuff.”

  “So it’s basically like an exorcism.”

  Noto poked his head in and continued the explanation. “Well, the old student council really had some character to it, right? So, it’s kind of like he’s giving the council a new look by really pushing himself as the ‘patron saint of broken hearts.’ That’s been two today. It gets ridiculous after school. They make lines in front of the student council room. The council’s even getting into it. They made this shrine-like thing in the doorway. It looks like they’re really getting him into the role of a patron saint.”

  “Whaat~?! Really? I had no idea! Isn’t Kitamura kind of amazing?!” said Haruta.

  “What did you think Kitamura was doing up until now?” Noto poked fun at him. Completely ignoring Haruta, Taiga had a weird look on her face. She watched quietly as the patron saint of broken hearts returned to the group.

  “…How about we try giving it a go?” Ryuuji whispered into her ear.

  She nodded slightly.

  “Yeah.”

  Taiga and Ryuuji sneakily put their hands together as though they were praying. They bowed their heads slightly to the patron saint. Of course, each of them was thinking about—

  “What, even you guys? Is there someone you want to confess to?”

  “Oh, guess you spotted us,” said Ryuuji. “I don’t, but I thought ‘Hey, why not?’”

  “Same,” said Taiga. “Why not?”

  “Okay! Get the soap!”

  Like I will… Ryuuji closed his eyes slightly and Taiga scratched her nose. Looking between their faces, suddenly Noto said, “Actually, Tiger, you kind of seem quiet today. Are you laying low because it’s your first day back from suspension or something?”

  He measured the distance between them as he carefully said those words.

  “Oh, you noticed?” Taiga replied. “That’s right. I’m being a good girl right now.” Ehee! She smiled at Noto with an extra helping of cuteness.

  Noto might have been surprised or scared. “Wow,” he said. His glasses slipped down his nose; he seemed incredibly startled.

  “It’s almost Christmas, so I decided I would be a good girl. Because, look, Santa is definitely watching…DAH-EH!”

  Taiga was suddenly flung straight forward. She knocked desks and chairs into disarray and got entangled in several people, Noto included, before she rolled over onto the ground, the butt of her tights completely visible.

  “Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha. ☆ Isn’t that stupid?! Santa! She’s going on about Santa! I can’t believe that word is coming out of your mouth~! It. Doesn’t. Suit. You! Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! ☆ Actually, it’s been a really long time since I’ve seen you~! I heard your suspension was super hilarious~!”

  Ryuuji didn’t have to look to know who the culprit was.

  She had sent Taiga flying by hitting her in the butt with her bag. Her hair flowed smoothly as she pushed it up and laughed.

  The beauty’s name was Kawashima Ami. Her slender, perfect proportions were made for modeling, and every feature of her incredibly petite face was perfectly shaped in exactly the right way. Every part of her was radiant and smooth. She sparkled with the aura of a gem as she walked over.

  Ami, however, had an overwhelmingly bankrupt personality. To Taiga, who was reputed as being the strongest, most terrifying presence at school, Ami could be called an old rival. After being hit in the butt and sent flying, of course it would have been Taiga’s turn for revenge next. But…

  “It’s been a while, Dimhuahua…”

  “…Oh?”

  But Taiga greeted Ami as she got back up. Of course, she wasn’t smiling, but she did peacefully wave her hand. It wasn’t that she was waiting for a chance to strike with the sharp knife hidden up her sleeve. Or with a poison needle between her fingers! Or with a frog in her ballet shoes! Or with a metal basin coming from above! She wasn’t trying to do any of those things.

  Taiga stubbornly kept her grace and poise.

  “Dimhuahua, it’s almost Christmas. If you keep being a Badhuahua, Santa won’t visit you. See, I’m a good girl, so we’ll compromise. We’ll pretend you just gave me a morning greeting and let it go. So, don’t fight until Christmas. I love Christmas. During this precious, beautiful time of year, I don’t want to have a fight for no good reason.”

  “Kyaah!”

  Ami screamed when Taiga grasped her hand and desperately shook it off. As though her right hand had rotted in Taiga’s grasp, she looked at it and shrieked, shook it around, and opened her eyes wide enough for them to seem like they were about to pop right out.

  “You’re definitely acting weird! Did something happen to you while you were suspended?! You’re weird, weird, weird, weird, weird! There’s definitely something fishy going on! Oh, I know! Do you have one day left to live or something?! No way, that’s miserable!”

  “Why are you saying the same thing as Ryuuji… Why do you all think I’m sick or dying when I’m trying to be good? I don’t understand you at all. I’m just doing this because it’s almost Christmas. I think you should stop acting like that, Dimhuahua. Because look, Santa is going to be flying over Japan soon…”

  “Nooooooooooooo!”

  Ami’s genuine scream echoed throughout the classroom even louder than Taiga’s words. Then, she genuinely gagged.

  “Why are you talking about Santa like you believe in him? It’s gross, gross, gross, gross! Actually, oh! I figured it out! You’re trying to use this as an opportunity to change how people see you, aren’t you?! Uwah! That’s scary, you mongrel! We don’t have an opening for an angel here! And like, next week I was planning on saying, ‘I love Christmas. ☆ I’ve believed in Santa even through junior high. ☆ Aren’t I stupid?! ☆’ What do you think you’re doing, stealing my thunder?! Huh?! It’s seriously damn scary when you’ve got your eyes wide open like that, you harebrain!”

  It’s okay, Ami-chan, it’s good that your purity’s all fake, it’s good when the ferocious real side of you comes out every once in a while, ahh, crack your whip, use it to tie us up and make our lives a living hell…

  Ami ignored the whispering boys who had slipped in behind her.

  “Ha! Actually…I get it now!” She lifted her face and gulped. “You’re on drugs…”

  She started to pretend to shake uncontrollably.

  “That’s it! That’s what it is! It’s drugs! You’re on drugs! No waaaaay, that’s soooooo scary! That has to be it! No way, ahhh, that’s terrible! What’s gotten into yo
oooouuu~?!”

  It seemed she had decided what was going on for herself. She twisted her body around and let her large eyes glisten with tears. She put her hands on her cheeks and her ironclad cute girl mask evaporated. Her mask changes were on an entirely different level from Taiga’s apprentice-level “good girl” act.

  “Come to your senses!” said Taiga. “…Just kidding. Oh, Dimhuahua, what are you doing?!”

  “So, I’ll examine all your belongings. ♥ This is definitely, definitely suspicious. Let me see…”

  Ami grabbed Taiga’s bag, which had been lying on the ground. She pulled it open, but her movements were overexaggerated as though she were joking around.

  “Oh no, oops!”

  “Ahhh! Seriously, what are you doing, Dimhuahua! I’ll kill you…or not.”

  She had let the contents of Taiga’s bag fall all over the ground. No waaay, no, no! Ami quickly crouched down and started gathering all the stationery and other materials from the floor. Even Ryuuji couldn’t help but take part in the terrible spectacle.

  “Seriously, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “You’re basically happy that your fighting partner Taiga is back at school, right? Just be honest.”

  “No way, Takasu-kun. Good. Mor. Ning. ♥ Why are you saying something so gross? I’ll. Kill. You. ♥ Actually, would you please get that~?”

  With an angel’s smile, Ami had Ryuuji go after a pen that had rolled all the way to the wall. Then she handed the restored bag right over to Taiga.

  “Oh, this, too. I’ll put this right here.”

  At the very end, Ami stuck Taiga’s student notebook into the back pocket of her bag. Taiga muttered something grim and exasperated to herself.

  “Wait,” she said, “no, I can’t do that, good girl, good girl…” She forced a flimsy smile onto her face and took the bag from Ami.

  Someone came up behind Ami.

  “Oh, wow… Ami-chan, you really are super nice…”

  Kashii Nanako, who had come with Ami to school, smiled wryly as she whispered to Ami.

  “Huh~!” said Ami. “What are you talking about~? Oh, come to think of it, I brought that limited-edition lip gloss. Nanako, you’ll try it on? Oh, right. Maya, you said you wanted to see it, too, right? ♥ Let’s try it.”

  “Oh, I do, I do! Maayaa, let’s go!”

  Beckoned by the two of them, Kihara Maya passed by Minori’s seat and exchanged words with her.

  “Huh? Why do you have a bald cap, Kushieda? That’s so funny!”

  “You want to put it on?” said Minori. “Wanna borrow it?”

  “Actually, why do you sound so nasally? That’s super funny!”

  “I was crying earlier.”

  “Why were you crying? That’s actually so totally funny!”

  Pulling at Maya’s arm, the usual group of three boisterous and beautiful girls moved to Ami’s seat. Like normal, the sweet and energetic voices of class 2-C’s official gorgeous trio brilliantly filled the classroom before school began.

  Chapter 2

  “So, then I asked the associate professor, ‘Where are you right now?’ He said he was at the café in front of the station. And then he said, ‘There’s something I really need to finish right now, so can we push back the time?’ But when he replied, I was already at that café… I thought it was weird, so I tried to casually ask him if he had gotten a good window seat, and then he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ He said, ‘I’m sitting at a great seat by the window, ha ha.’ …But I was already sitting at the only window seat…”

  “Oh ho. So he’s already lying for no reason. That’s no good.”

  “I was thinking he was probably meeting other women or something. At the same time, it wasn’t like we were actually dating yet, so I couldn’t just ask him about it out of the blue. I thought he might make great boyfriend material, plus we’re around the same age. I was thinking he might have been sorting things out

  before we could go official. Anyway, he told me he’d be late by an hour, so I knew I couldn’t stick around the café.”

  “You didn’t want to let him know you were on to his lie.”

  “Right. We weren’t at that stage where I could rock the boat. So, anyway, I left the station and stepped into the rain. If I had an hour, I thought I could go to a bookshop or look at clothes to pass the time. Um, it was that Saturday when it was freezing…”

  “Ahh, it was cold that day. The rain was so cold it was practically close to turning into snow.”

  “Right. I only had a small umbrella, so my clothes and shoes got soaking wet, and while I was walking, I was thinking, ‘Well, what do I do now?’ and then…I saw him!”

  “Oh ho! Where was he and what was he doing?!”

  “He was gambling on slot machines!”

  Uhh…

  There was a slight commotion in class 2-C as they murmured in low voices. The students had been chowing down heartily during lunch but automatically stopped at the incredibly strange conversation currently being broadcast over the loudspeakers.

  “This is it, right? He should have been reading at the café, but you caught him on the slots. He was playing slots even though you were supposed to meet, to the point that he made his own date wait for him.”

  “So then I was thinking, ‘This is way too much.’ There are limits to what you can ignore. I didn’t want to hear his excuses, either, or hear him lie, so I decided to wait for him to leave the building.”

  “You didn’t think of marching in there?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t do that. I’m an adult. I just stood in the rain, but he never left. An hour passed, but he still didn’t leave. I was just glued to the ground. There wasn’t even an overhang. I was in the middle of the street at eight o’clock at night. Thirty minutes passed and he still didn’t come out. He was already an hour late. I was like, he’s not even going to bother to tell me? Actually, were slot machines more important than me to begin with? But the more I waited, the more I felt something dark building up in me, and I couldn’t bear going home frustrated and sad like that… It was so cold, and I was more pitiful and miserable the colder it was, so I thought he’d at least feel bad if he saw me…”

  “Hmmm… So, you didn’t get in contact?”

  “I did…with my girlfriend. I was telling her, you won’t believe what the associate professor did to me, and I’m crying, what do I do~? Then I realized something that changed everything…”

  “It must have been a development that put you at the edge of your seat, right?”

  “Apparently Japanese universities don’t even have associate professors anymore… They call them senior lecturers now. Suddenly, I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ right?”

  “Right. It’s like everything you knew about him was suddenly overturned.”

  “So then he ghosted me. But I finally got why everything was so weird. It’s because Mercury is in retrograde!”

  “Oh…Mercury is…”

  “Right! Mercury is! When Mercury is in retrograde, your computer breaks or things you thought would happen end up coming late! So once things are back in order—oh, it’s supposed to be at the beginning of next year—I think he’ll get in contact with me again! Don’t you think he will? You think so, too, right?”

  “Well…yeah, that is something, honestly I think…maybe you should pass on this guy?”

  “If there ever is a next guy! But that’s not the point! It’s not! En-nee-way, I just wanted to give him a piece of my mind! Hraagh!”

  “Oh. Oh, ahh…if you strain yourself like that, you’ll make yourself hyperventilate…”

  “Right?! And then he came out of the gambling parlor, right?! And then he saw me, right?! And then he isn’t even surprised or awkward about it, and the first thing that comes out of that guy’s mouth is, ‘So you were following me?! So that’s the kind of person you are! You’re the worst! That’s why you’re still single at your age!’ That was what he saaaaiiid! That’s what I wanted to say to him! Like what are you
doing pretending you’ve got a better job than you actually do at your age?! What is it wit’ chuu?! …Ha ha…I’m talking like Shimura…ahhh…ughhh ahhhhh…”

  “So, we’ve gotten to the end of your story. Let’s hope Mercury goes back into alignment. Let’s end this here today. Thank you very much. Here, take a tissue… You have afternoon classes, so wipe away those tears. Your makeup is…uhhh, I’m here on the radio with Sin Gle-san (age 30).”

  “It’s Y-chan.”

  “Oh, sorry. So Y-chan (age 30), if you have anything else you’d like advice about, please come to the ‘Patron Saint of Broken Hearts Restaurant’ any time and let us hear your story. The student council is cheering on your love. So at Y-chan’s (age 30) request, please listen to this…”

  A weird, nostalgic winter song came flowing through the speakers.

  Finally, someone reasonably muttered, “Kitamura, what are you doing making our homeroom teacher cry…?”

  Since Kitamura had his awakening as the patron saint of broken hearts, he started occupying the broadcast room with the student council. The speakers streamed a student council-controlled broadcast throughout the school called “Cheering on Your Love.” Kitamura would somehow find students who would anonymously ask for romantic advice or start talking about his own love story. That day’s topic was about not being married and a familiar guest had successfully gotten a call back—class 2-C’s homeroom teacher (K)gakubo (Y)ri (age 30, (S)ngle). The show’s painful rating was going up by the day. The class started sympathizing with her.

  “We’ll pretend that we didn’t realize it was Yuri-chan.”

  “…Yeah.”

  Even the usually juvenile girls were acting like adults. On the other side of things, though…

  “Hey, hey Ryuuji… I wonder where they’re keeping the master tape for this broadcast. If we can figure that out, we can sneak in in the middle of the night, get it, and edit just the parts where Kitamura is talking…then right before I sleep everyday…na-haa…”

  …there was one girl hugging herself and getting hot and bothered. Her large eyes glinted with ambition and her rough breathing made her nostrils flare. Across from her, with his bento spread out, Ryuuji said, “Here it comes.”