Toradora! Vol. 9 Page 5

  But when he reached the middle of the breezeway that continued on to the gym, Ryuuji felt like he couldn’t breathe. He opened the window and breathed in a lungful of air so cold it made his lungs sting, and flapped his mouth open and closed like a koi fish.

  No matter how much he breathed in, he was in agony. Even when he stuck his head out the window, he still felt caged. Everyone else was moving forward, and he was perfectly aware he was the only one at a standstill. That applied to his future, too. He felt like he was being left in the dust in a lot of ways.

  None of this was okay. He knew that. It was like he was just haphazardly patching problems as they came apart at the seams. He wasn’t actively fixing a single thing. He wanted to do things the right way, but he didn’t know how.

  Maybe the cogs in his head really were out of place. He was the son of Takasu Yasuko-chan, after all. His screws and springs and who knows what other things might have been falling out without him even noticing.

  “Maybe…maybe I really am a failure of a person?”

  The lone, ill-favored boy talked to himself as he crouched by the window frame. He noticed the dust and small dry leaves jammed into the window gutter and realized that if he kept his face pushed up against it, he might break out in hives. Ryuuji pulled a tissue out of his pocket and wrapped it around his index finger without skipping a beat. Then he scrubbed at the gutter like someone’s mother-in-law.

  What a depressing person I am… He was at least self-aware of that much.

  A person who was the exact opposite of himself came to his mind. That was Kushieda Minori.

  He’d thought she was a bright person ever since he met her. She smiled at him without batting an eye, even though he had a face that made him look like some fishy delinquent. He kept his head down to hide his sinister face from people’s eyes, but Minori was always open and honest, looking up at the sun. That was why he had loved her.

  In that moment, he realized once again just how tough Minori was. She wasn’t just bright, kind, and cute, but also had the will to firmly continue down her own path. Sometimes she hurt those around her (like me!), but she never turned back and also never stopped. What he had thought was an admirable sunflower, turning up its lively petals to bask in the light of the sun…was actually more like an iron missile aiming to blow the sun out of existence.

  The reason he’d decided to end his unrequited love for Minori was because he had witnessed her up close and decided he couldn’t follow along with her. He didn’t mean that in a bad way, though. He just didn’t think he could keep up with the speed at which she went through life. However, even after snuffing out the flame of his love, he still wished he could have been more like her.

  “Kushieda, you…”

  In the end, what he adored was an idea. In his mind, his desire to live like she did hadn’t changed.

  “You probably see me as nothing but some big tit…”

  “Of course I don’t.”

  “Whaaa?!”

  Ryuuji was so surprised, his body couldn’t keep up with how quickly he spun around. His indoor slippers squeaked stupidly against the ground as he fell right onto his butt.

  “Wh-when did you start listening?!”

  “‘Kushieda, you probably see yourself as Seabiscuit and me as the War Admiral…’ is the part I walked in on.” She looked serious, her forehead wrinkled and her unyielding eyes gleaming jet-black. “Like I said, I don’t think that. We’re not horses.”

  “What’s wrong with your ears…?!”

  Ryuuji couldn’t exactly call what his heart was doing right now “fluttering,” but it was helplessly astir that day. Why had Minori appeared now? On top of that, she wasn’t making any sense.

  “So you’re saying you want the mustang special, huh?! Naahh!”

  “Get yourself together! You’re dangerous! Calm down!”

  Minori pranced in front of him. Ryuuji spread his arms automatically. He had jumped out in front of her very accurate depiction of a rampaging horse, but if she were running around the school like that, she was sure to cause an accident.

  “What? Why are you stopping me? I was just trying to go back to the classroom like normal.”

  “What kind of person runs around inside a building like that?! That’s definitely not normal!”

  “You finally said it,” Minori sang in a high-pitched voice. She switched direction, swung her arms around, and started dancing the robot. Ryuuji was at a loss for words. He had forgotten it recently, but this was the kind of person Minori was…

  “Whaaat’s going oooon, Takasu-kun? Don’t stand around drooling ectoplasm. You gotta go back to the classroom, too. What were you doing hanging around this remote region in the first place?”

  “What are you doing around here? You’re not stalking me, are you?”

  He’d put everything he had into following Minori’s devoted jests with a joke of his own, but, in that moment, Minori suddenly came back to her senses.

  “What’re you saying?”

  She seemed exasperated as she looked back at Ryuuji.

  “I was at the gym teacher’s office to give back the meeting room key. I was just coming back. The mystery is the reason why you’re here, Takasu-kun.”

  “I—”

  I’m here because I can never become like you.

  It’s because I can’t plow forward through the days like you. I’m trapped by all kinds of things, and I’m going to be stuck here forever—he really couldn’t say that.

  “I just had Koigakubo tell me that the cogs in my head are messed up, so I was here dealing with the shock from her saying that to me.”

  “What? Your cogs? Wh-what did she mean?”

  “It’s because I didn’t submit the future aspirations printout. Plus, there’s yesterday’s…outburst from when I was half-asleep. Apparently, I’ve got her really worried.”

  “Oh, right, the dream and the yelling.”

  Minori didn’t seem to be making fun of Ryuuji at all. She came to the window, and her breath turned white as it mingled with the cold outside air. She turned to Ryuuji.

  “Isn’t it great that Taiga came back home safe? So, so, so, so great.”

  Her mouth turned up slightly in a smile.

  “So, about that time. If you two hadn’t come with me, Takasu-kun… If I had gone to look for Taiga on my own, I wonder where we would be now. Taiga might not have been the only one in trouble. I’ve been imagining all kinds of ‘what ifs’ and I feel like I might dream-cry sometimes, too.”

  “You, too…?”

  Of course. Minori, in her Minori-like way, nodded ambiguously.

  It was so cold. Ryuuji kept some distance from Minori as he placed his elbows against the window. They were in the same pose. Their shoulders rounded up, and they shivered.

  The light, frozen clouds dotted the sky like sorbet, and the weather was clear, though the northern wind seemed to be lethal that day as well. Not a single building obstructed their view beyond the window, and they could see far down into the streets of the town. The inconspicuous color of the residential buildings, the roofs of the detached homes, and the apartments continued on until they were interrupted by the river, before continuing even further on to the garbage facility’s two chimneys. Smoke billowed from the gigantic, red and white-striped cylinders that turned to the skies. Was that really healthy for the environment?

  “I thought I could save her by myself.”

  Ryuuji saw Minori’s words come from her lips and mix with her white breath next to him.

  “But actually, she’d fallen down that cliff. I really couldn’t have saved her on my own. I’m glad that I didn’t misjudge that back then… I never would have been able to find Taiga on my own. You did a really great job figuring out where she fell, Takasu-kun.”

  “About that—”

  Something glittering had led him to Taiga.

  “—That was because I saw the hairpin dropped in the snow.”

  Minori stretched her neck to peer
out the window. Their eyes met, and Ryuuji turned away in spite of himself, but Minori wouldn’t look away from him.

  “That hairpin wasn’t a present from Taiga to me, was it? You were trying to give it to me, but couldn’t, and then Taiga gave it to me, right? Isn’t that right? If I were to guess…it was when we met at Christmas Eve, and maybe you were trying to give it to me as a present?”

  “Uh.”

  As though she had already predicted Ryuuji would be speechless, Minori nodded. He’d actually neglected to take the hairpin with him during their meeting on Christmas Eve, so her guess was technically wrong, but he of course couldn’t tell her that. Ryuuji could only look back at Minori’s face.

  Of course she wouldn’t know everything. He felt that deeply as he spoke.

  “How did you…”

  “I reasoned it out. Actually, sorry. I really didn’t know at first. I really thought that it was a present from Taiga.”

  Ryuuji couldn’t understand what she was sorry about. “Are…are you trying to apologize for wearing that hairpin or something?”

  “I am.”

  I have amnesia. I don’t remember what happened on Christmas Eve. So, Takasu-kun, just follow along with me and act as though nothing’s changed… That had been her attitude until now. Now, for the first time, Minori was talking about the night of Christmas Eve. The night she hadn’t acknowledged Ryuuji’s feelings.

  “I wanted to apologize. I’d decided I wouldn’t accept it and ended up hurting you, but then I still wore it in front of you, Takasu-kun. I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

  “You don’t have to…” She’d finally acknowledged that she hadn’t forgotten what happened. “Are you suddenly apologizing now because…Taiga came back to school?”

  Minori didn’t answer Ryuuji. Her eyes just glittered under the sky in the middle of winter. The wind blew at her hair.

  Minori might have been the same, Ryuuji suddenly thought. Even Minori, who looked like she was plowing her way forward, might have felt like she was at a standstill like him. Maybe she had ever since that Christmas Eve.

  Then, because Taiga returned safe and sound, she had decided to settle things.

  “Where is that hairpin now?”

  When Minori asked him that question naturally, Ryuuji tried to answer her naturally, too. “It’s in my room. You want to use it?”

  “No. I won’t. I won’t take it.”

  I thought you would say that.

  He wanted to smile and say that to her. You decided to make things right, Minori, and that’s made things right for me, he wanted to tell her.

  “I’m…”

  But his breathing was off.

  “…jealous of you.”

  He still couldn’t take that great leap. He wanted to move forward like Minori, but he still couldn’t. He couldn’t walk that easily. He couldn’t crawl out of that blizzard.

  As long as he couldn’t forget that voice, Ryuuji couldn’t move forward.

  “What’s wrong? What’s with the outburst?”

  “I feel like I’m trapped…like I’ve been left behind. There’s something I want to forget, but I can’t. So…”

  The blizzard still raged on in his mind. The madly swirling ice fragments were under his weakly closed eyelids, as well as the tears that spilled from under his eyelashes.

  “I can’t stand how much it hurts.”

  The voice echoed in his ears.

  Amid endless loneliness, Taiga had decided she would live alone and silence her feelings forever. That might have been the one time she let her true feelings slip though.

  “The thing I want to forget that I can’t is—”

  Boof. Minori’s fist made slightly rough contact with the side of Ryuuji’s downturned face.

  “The moment you decided you wanted to forget about it guaranteed you’d never forget about it, obviously. People don’t even remember the things they can forget. It’s because you can’t forget it that you want to forget it. I think if you’re hurting because of it, there’s not much you can do about it.”

  “But…I need to forget it. I think they want me to forget…” As though pushing back on Minori’s fingers, Ryuuji turned his face to her. Minori didn’t ask “what” or “who,” but just listened as he talked to himself. “That’s why I want to forget.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. It wasn’t as though Taiga wanted him to forget. She hadn’t intended to tell him in the first place. Taiga’s thoughts on the matter were that things would be fine if she never told him and kept everything closed up inside forever.

  That was why—that was why. That was why he needed to forget—

  “I’m jealous of you because you look ahead. It’s because you actually move on. How can I look forward like you?”

  Minori was silent for a while. Eventually, she puckered her lips and blew out a breath of white air.

  “It’s about deciding.”

  A grin spread over her face.

  “You have to decide the direction you want to go. If you can’t do that, you wouldn’t be able to tell where forward is, right? Takasu-kun, where are you headed? Is there a place you want to be? If you don’t have that, you can’t move on.”

  A place he was headed.

  A place he wanted to be.

  When she told him that, Ryuuji once again realized he didn’t have a reply for her.

  Even he didn’t know where he was headed or where he wanted to be. He might never have had a destination in him to begin with.

  Ah, I see—I just can’t move forward. Of course I’d never end up anywhere. I didn’t even realize it, but I’ve just been staring up at the sky.

  “Kushieda, do you know where you’re heading?”

  “Of course!” Minori didn’t hesitate to reply. She danced out behind Ryuuji and hopped lightly, ignoring how her skirt flipped up with her exaggerated movements as she deftly motioned as though to throw a ball. It was an underthrow. Her hair bounced over her shoulder. Minori’s eyes seemed to follow the path of the distant ball.

  Ryuuji was more jealous than anything of how her eyes could look like that.

  Quite a few students passed through just before the lunch break ended. Ryuuji and Minori had talked too long and froze themselves to the bone, so they were both shivering as they made their way down the stairs. They saw the person at pretty much the same time.

  “Oh. Ahmin!”

  Kawashima Ami had just come out of the staff room.

  It seemed as though she alone floated out from among the throng of students. Her long arms and legs, her slender figure, her height, her white skin—everything about her stood out from the passersby. Ryuuji was firmly reminded again of how different Ami’s presence was from the rest of them.

  Her beautiful face, which seemed to have a faint glow to it, turned to them when she heard Minori’s voice. Minori lifted up a hand and waved it at her.

  “…”

  Ami acted as though she didn’t notice. Without even looking at them, she left. Minori silently put down her right hand.

  “Are you still fighting?” Ryuuji asked.

  “I’d say we’re in the middle of making up…or at least I am.”

  Minori didn’t stop. She kept moving forward in the hallway Ami had just walked through.

  It seemed that even Minori had unfinished business.

  ***

  “We juuust talked about this yesterday, didn’t we?” As she mixed her natto beans, Yasuko’s already round eyes became even rounder. She looked quizzically at her son, who was sitting across from her. “You just gotta write ‘Imma work hard at studying!’ Why didn’t you turn it in?”

  “We’re not done with this conversation yet.”

  He had prepared dinner earlier than usual and waited until they were eating to talk.

  “I want you to really think about it seriously.”

  “I am sooo serious.”

  “Even if I go to a public school that’s close to home, I’ve talked to a ton of people, and it’ll a
pparently cost about ten million yen for four years. If I only get into private schools, it’ll cost even more. How’re we going to do that?”

  “Huh? There aren’t any good places around that you can get to from home. You can’t do that! You’ve got a good head, Ryuu-chan, so if you can get into a private school you should. You should aim for a good one in Tokyo!”

  Natto explosion! Whoo, it’s so stretchy-wetchy! Yasuko pushed a natto bean, followed by a trailing thread into Inko-chan’s birdcage.

  “Ahhh!” Inko-chan turned around, slobbering, and took the bean in her beak. Their bird could even eat natto.

  “Like I said, that’s not what we’re discussing.”

  Yasuko’s bowl, the table, the birdcage, and even Inko-chan’s beak were connected by a stretchy string of natto. Ryuuji grimaced as he twirled his chopsticks in the air and reeled in the thread. Yasuko had no makeup on and was in a fleece jacket from Uniqlo, and, of course, still had her hair up in a bun as she happily slurped at her miso soup. Her eyes were glued to the TV. She probably intended to sing at the store today, but was humming a pop song that was likely two generations obsolete.

  “Ah!”

  Ryuuji turned off the TV.

  “The point is, with the way our finances are, it’ll be tough for me to go to college.”

  “That’s so not true!”

  Yasuko pouted and tried to take back the remote, but Ryuuji quickly hid it under his sitting cushion.

  “It’ll be tough. Accept that.”

  “Why? That’s not true. Next year, you’re a third year, and after that, you have four more years, right? It’s not like my salary’s going to get lower or something.”

  “How can you be sure? For starters, what’re you going to do if the store goes out of business?”

  “It won’t. We’ve got tons of customers.”

  “Maybe the owner will make a mistake with another store.”