Toradora! Vol. 9 Read online

  Her grown-out bangs reached the tip of her nose, and the line from her forehead to her chin glowed faintly white. He didn’t know where she was looking with her downturned eyes, but her expression as she did so was unexpectedly mature. Even her fingertips, touching the window glass, were devoid of any child-like roundness. Her slender fingers tapered elegantly to her long, rounded fingernails.

  The doodle of the praying mantis had formed into droplets on the window and long dripped entirely away.

  Kushieda will never like me. If he tried telling her that again, would Taiga deny him? There’s no way. Minorin likes you—would she say something like that again? Minorin must have just gotten the wrong idea about the relationship we have with each other.

  What if I said that Kushieda knows that you like me, so she’d never like me…?

  He thought Taiga would instantly reply back, Then I’ll stop liking you. It’ll be fine because I’ll pray to the Patron Saint of Broken Hearts for my feelings to disappear.

  Her prayer hadn’t been fulfilled, then. Right, it was during New Year’s, when she was with Kitamura… No, it must have been when she had gone shrine-visiting with Kitamura. In order to cheer on Minori and Ryuuji more than she already had been despite the fact their bond had been severed on Christmas Eve, she had decided to erase her own feelings.

  Ryuuji was still speechless. Taiga’s beautifully maintained nail tips were thin and transparent. He just stared at the light shining through them.

  When Taiga went missing, he thought everything was so straightforward. He would never let go of Taiga’s hand again, no matter how it looked to everyone else. If that was how terrible letting her go would make him feel, then he would never leave Taiga’s side.

  “Koigakubo Yuri, you’re late…” Taiga swung her feet as she let the complaint slip out.

  Ryuuji closed his eyes and tried to pull through the sudden blizzard that chilled his whole body.

  Taiga had abandoned him to fend for himself in that place.

  It was Taiga who let go of his hand, and who was leaving him further and further behind.

  The sound of his own heart echoed hotly in the back of his ears. Because of that, his ears and throat hurt. His face felt strangely hot, and he tried to act natural as he held his cheeks in his hands.

  “Seriously, what is that spinster doing after she was the one who called us out here like this—whoa?!”

  “Ahh?!”

  It happened in that moment.

  CLATTER! An even louder ruckus than the last echoed as the top plank of the windowsill tilted forward, tossing Ryuuji and Taiga down onto the floor. Unable to withstand the weight of the two high school students, it finally broke.

  “Wh-wh-wh-what just happened?!”

  Taiga made a full rotation and plopped on the ground in a seated position. Ryuuji, being Ryuuji, made an abrupt landing on his knees and was rubbing his incredibly numb kneecaps. In times like these, the differences between their reflexes really became obvious.

  “Hhhhhgh!” Ryuuji wailed soundlessly as the door opened in front of his eyes.

  “Sorry for making you wai…oh! You broke the furniture!”

  As she came into the interview room, Koigakubo Yuri’s mouth gaped wide open, and the bachelorette (age 30) seemed to purposefully drop the writing instruments she held on the floor. She had a taste for relics of the past century.

  “We didn’t! It was just a poltergeist!”

  What a shame! Taiga made a huge deal out of it as the bachelorette homeroom teacher grabbed Taiga’s hand, pulled the girl up to her feet, and sighed. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she muttered as she glanced at the misplaced middle plank. “Really now. Ahhh, I can’t believe you did this! You two sat on it, didn’t you?!”

  I have no idea what happened, even Ryuuji and Taiga’s breathing were in sync as they both identically waved their hands rapidly in front of their faces. However, the lines of doodles on the window were unshakable evidence, and even though nothing remained of the doodles except vestiges of water, Koigakubo Yuri had already seen through the whole tragedy. She looked at the two problem children as though exasperated.

  “Oh well… Here, take a seat!” Her tough face was three times more intense than usual.

  “I don’t want to! Oh, it’s already past four! It’s time to leave, so I’m going home!”

  That face seemed to have no effect on Taiga.

  “No, no, you can’t! It’ll be really fast!”

  Taiga sulked like a child as the bachelorette teacher grabbed her hand and made her sit in the chair next to Ryuuji. Taiga reflexively braced her feet and turned her head away to face the window. The bachelorette sat across from them and scowled.

  “You know what we need to talk about, right? Why haven’t either of you turned in your future aspirations survey yet?”

  “I’m—well, sorry, I still haven’t been able to come to an agreement with my mom…” Ryuuji uneasily replied. Taiga remained silent as she scratched a spot right below her nose. Her expression said that she considered the whole situation to be somebody else’s problem.

  “Takasu-kun, Aisaka-san, you both have good grades, so at least just choose whether you want the humanities or science course. I think you would both automatically get into the class you want.”

  “Wait, about that… Please wait a second. Just actually take a moment.”

  “Takasu-kun, you said you were hesitating because of your financial situation, right? This is ultimately just a survey to split the classes. This paper isn’t going to decide what recommendations for colleges you get, or anything like that at all. You don’t need to worry so much.”

  She spread out new printouts in front of them and placed two pencils on top of the desk. It seemed the single teacher was telling them, “Write something down right now.” However, Ryuuji obstinately pushed the paper back at the homeroom teacher.

  “But…if I actually went to college because of this, and actually got into a public school, I think I wouldn’t be able to change my mom’s mind. Actually…right. Next year, my mom really will expect me to go to college, and I’ll really be in hot water.”

  That was just his current situation. If he took the college exams and got slammed with real bills, just how much more work would Yasuko try to take on?

  “I don’t want to get her hopes up and then betray her. I don’t want her to go through all that trouble. That’s why I want my mom to actually accept that I’m not going to college anytime soon. I don’t have a dad, and I don’t want to cause any more trouble for my mom.”

  “Is the only hurdle your financial situation? It’s not as though everyone who wants to go to college is rich. If you want to go, you could get scholarships or a low interest student loan. We have national aid just exactly for kids like you.”

  “Please give those to someone who wants to go more than me.”

  “Then in other words…”

  Koigakubo Yuri leaned back slightly and locked her eyes directly on Ryuuji’s face.

  “You yourself, Takasu-kun, want to go straight into the workforce? Your mom hopes you’ll go to college, but you’re saying that’s impossible because of your financial situation?”

  “I think that’s what’ll end up happening in the end… My mom’s just got her head in the clouds, and she’s insisting on the impossible. I can’t get through to her at all, so I couldn’t get my thoughts together until now.”

  “Takasu-kun, um, there’s just one other thing I want to bring up.”

  When the teacher tapped a pen against the desk, Ryuuji’s eyes went to her hands automatically.

  “In the last few years, this school’s employment rate has been zero. Some kids didn’t get work or just fell flat on their face, but we haven’t had a single student graduate in March with a full-time job lined up for April. Other schools have career guidance or job offers from companies every year or qualifications curriculums to get third year students jobs by spring, but that’s not our school. I’d like you
to consider that.”

  In other words, she was probably trying to say, Going to this school isn’t going to get you a job. Ryuuji couldn’t clearly see the intent behind what his teacher was saying. He felt a bit overwhelmed.

  “I’m not even thinking of anything big like that… It’s not like I want to do something specific or anything. It’s just, when I finish school, I want to get a stable income as soon as possible. That’s it.”

  “If that’s really what you want to do, Takasu-kun, then I’ll try to help you as much as I can. You could start a part-time job after the midterm tests. I think it’d be good if you got some work experience.”

  “A part-time job—well…right.”

  “But, Takasu-kun, I can’t help but think…you haven’t ever rebelled against your mother up until this point, right?”

  “Huh…? What? Rebelled?”

  Ryuuji tilted his head to the side quizzically. He thought that she would continue to explain what she meant, but instead she continued, “So based on what we’ve just talked about, Takasu-kun, I’d like you to think this over again. So then—”

  Koigakubo Yuri turned to the next problem child, Aisaka Taiga.

  “What about you, Aisaka-san? What are you thinking about for your future?”

  “I don’t want to say this right after Ryuuji’s said that about money, but…” Taiga glanced at Ryuuji’s face before she muttered in a low voice, “I’m rich. I don’t need to lift a finger for the rest of my life, so there’s no reason for me to study. I don’t have anything I want to do, either. When my parents pass away, they’ll probably leave me with money, so I’ll just live on that until I die. So…I don’t have anything to write on this piece of paper.”

  “Why are you…both so…”

  Koigakubo Yuri held her head and practically fell over on the desk.

  “You don’t want to do anything—anything at all…? You can put down whatever you want. If there’s anything you’re interested in or that’s aspirational… For example, you could even write ‘I want to be a singer!’ You could write that you want to draw manga or that you want to make traveling your job. Right, you could even be a schoolteacher, ha! How about that? Huh? You don’t like that?”

  Taiga pouted in silence, exchanging a look with Ryuuji from the corner of her eyes. The three of them were silent for a bit. Eventually, Ryuuji was the one who bit the bullet.

  “Is deciding not to go to college really that weird or crazy?”

  Not at all! The bachelorette shook her head vigorously side to side.

  “That’s not the issue. It’s just…look inward a bit more and focus on how you’d like to live for yourself in the next ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty years. All I want is for you both to think about it. You can’t blame anyone else, and no one else can take that responsibility.”

  “I’m fine with this.”

  Ryuuji made up his mind once and for all as he took the pencil and smoothly wrote words in the blank space. His hope was to take the “science course.” After graduation he “wanted to work.”

  The issue was just that he hadn’t gotten consent from his mother—but that was probably fine at this point.

  He had tried his best to make Yasuko see the truth, and even tried talking to her about it more than once. If she didn’t get it even after that, he wasn’t going to be so gung-ho about getting parental permission. He would decide things for himself and work toward everything himself. That was all he could do. He believed there wasn’t any other way.

  If someone said that wasn’t what he “wanted,” then what did he want? He didn’t even have a place to go or a direction he was heading in, so where was he supposed to set sail to fulfill his desires?

  Nothing would come of it. This was all he could do.

  “Yasuko…my mom refuses to acknowledge that I have to give up on going to college because of our financial problems, and I think that’s what’s holding her back. She’s been trying as hard as she can to be a good parent for me until now, and she’s done everything possible to keep me from being worried. I don’t want her to have to tough it out anymore. That’s what I hope for.”

  2-C, Takasu Ryuuji. He signed the printout and pushed it towards the teacher. The teacher’s lips, which were lined with a beige-ish shade of pink, moved faintly as though she wanted to say something, but instead she replied, “I see… Then I’ll take this.”

  She put the printout into a binder. Taiga watched that with bright eyes.

  “Then do something about the window, have Aisaka-san write something, and then you can go home. If you can, please bring the printout to the staff room.”

  Koigakubo Yuri left the interview room with those parting words. Ryuuji sighed. He felt incredibly tired, but he still needed to do physical labor. He certainly was at fault though, so he had nothing to complain about.

  “Ah well, I’ll work on this stuff, so you just hurry up and finish writing something up.”

  “I’ll help with that, too.”

  “If you help, it’ll take way longer, you klutz. If you want to hurry and get home, write that up.”

  Hmph, Taiga reclined in her chair.

  “Who cares about the future? It’s stupid… What’s going to happen if I write something on this paper? I can’t believe you’re being such a goody-two-shoes about this. You’re going to work? Like really? You haven’t even had a part-time job before.”

  “That’s what I came up with after seriously thinking about it. I just never had a part-time job because Yasuko would have stopped me… You’ve gotta think about this stuff, too. You’ve got to think about yourself seriously every once in a while.”

  He decided to place the thin inner metal plank in first. Luckily, the board itself hadn’t folded over or warped at all, so all he had to do was watch his fingers and stick it back in. Ryuuji picked up the somewhat hefty plank and swallowed his breath. “Oof,” he supported the plank with his knees and stuck it back into the middle of the sill.

  Taiga was silent for a while as she watched him, but then slowly pulled the printout over to herself and crouched over it. He thought she had finally gotten in the mood to write something down.

  “Tah-dah!”

  “What do you think you’re doing?! Hey, wait a sec! Stop that! Why you!”

  Taiga had a simple, folded paper airplane pinched in her right hand. Before Ryuuji could even stop her, Taiga stood from her chair and opened the window.

  “Fly with the wind!”

  “Ah!”

  She aimed the airplane out into the midwinter air and threw it out past the dripping praying mantis. The plane drifted on the wind better than expected and eventually did a somersault in the dark skies before falling straight to the ground.

  “You…idiot! How could you do something like that?! We’re going to get it! Are you serious?!”

  “It’s fine, I don’t need that thing. Just leave it.”

  Taiga was still looking out the window as though it had become someone else’s problem. She wasn’t looking for the now out of sight paper airplane. She snorted haughtily, so that Ryuuji could see the white puff of her breath.

  “I don’t need that thing. Who cares about the future? Who cares about having interests? Nobody knows what’ll happen with that stuff. No one can see what’s going to happen in the future—not even me. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do like they know. What am I supposed to write? What am I supposed to hope for? Even if I have aspirations, they won’t come true anyway. Even if I do everything I can, I fell off a cliff, and all I did was cause problems, didn’t I? I realized that while I was licking my own wounds.”

  At the intensity of the words she spat out, Ryuuji didn’t know how to reply. But the things he had been thinking and Taiga’s words had suddenly synchronized.

  “Thinking about it is useless…but I know you’re going to tell me ‘Don’t say that’ anyway.”

  “I’m not.”

  Taiga turned around at Ryuuji’s words.

&nbs
p; “I’m thinking…the same thing as you,” he said.

  Taiga watched Ryuuji nod as he spoke. Her large eyes grew even wider. I don’t want to say this, but, he prefaced his words before he continued, “We’re weird, aren’t we? I’m poor, and you’re rich. We’re in completely opposite situations, but I guess the end result is the same.”

  “Why… But didn’t you want to go work?”

  “If someone asked me whether I actually wanted to work, well, I can’t say yes. I think Miss Single is telling me all this stuff because she knows. This is just how reality is. Because of how reality is and because doing anything else wouldn’t result in anything, I just thought it’d be better if I chose to work. I thought that had to be the ‘right answer.’ That’s what I ‘want.’”

  When he tried saying it out loud, he backtracked, That’s pretty irresponsible. He understood why his teacher had reason to worry.

  He was sure that once he failed, he would just end up saying, “But that was all I could do right then!” He was doing it for Yasuko’s sake, so he was right.

  He knew he was planning out an escape route before he even progressed forward. He really was doing this for Yasuko, but he also knew that he was just justifying his choice. He was trying to put himself in a safe zone. He was escaping into the protection of overwhelming righteousness. He wanted the world to think, “Takasu Ryuuji made the right choice.” “He’s a good kid.”

  In actuality, he knew. Ryuuji just didn’t have the courage to look into the hollow cavity that was a gaping, terrifying maw inside of him. He knew he didn’t have the courage to face the powerlessness he felt from not having a place to go.

  He wasn’t tough enough to watch and believe in the trajectory of the ball he had thrown with his own hands. He also wasn’t brave enough to just send his future flying right into the midwinter sky. That was all this was.

  “Don’t you think I’m pitiful? Why don’t you criticize me for it the way you normally do?”

  “You…”

  However, Taiga didn’t insult him. She didn’t yell You dog! or You pig! at him or call him an insect or a pile of dung or a lecher. Her mouth twisted, and she dropped her eyes to her own toes. Her voice got low.