Toradora! Vol. 9 Page 8

  “If you’re calling yourself pitiful then…what am I supposed to be?”

  The Palmtop Tiger, who supposedly knew no fear, put her head down.

  “At least you’re looking toward what’s ahead. It feels like you’re thinking about what you can do, like you’re making the best of it. I…I can only see what’s in front of me right now.”

  Taiga’s gaze might have been following the curve the paper plane had traced. The winter sky started to become even darker, and the far-off streets blackened until they looked like waves piling on each other at the edge of the ocean.

  “I’ve just been in denial about who I am for so, soo, soooooo long. I’ve been thinking about why I ended up like this and what I could have done to avoid turning out this way.”

  That’s all I can do, Taiga continued to murmur as she stood up.

  “For example, if my parents were just normal parents…if I could have had a normal life and if the three of us lived in my condo together as a family, I wonder what would have happened? What do you think?”

  She turned her back to Ryuuji, pushing her face against the windowpane.

  “If I’d lived next to you in a normal three-person family, and we met like normal people do when we were put in the same class in April, I wonder what would have happened to us?”

  Ryuuji tilted his head slightly at the word “normal” that Taiga kept repeating. Then he thought about it. In April, he had been so happy about being in the same class as Kushieda Minori. Everyone around him still confused him for a delinquent. What would have happened if he met Taiga then?

  “I wonder if you would have still put a love letter for Kitamura in my bag…”

  “Who knows? I might have.”

  “Then you would have snuck into my house… That’s the kind of girl you are. Well, it doesn’t matter. You would have come to my house, settled things, and then gone home like a normal person—right. If you had a normal family, you wouldn’t come by my place all the time. For starters, you wouldn’t even be able to sneak in because you would have parents to stop you. If that happened, I might have never gotten to know you. You might not have gotten to know me, either.”

  You might not have ended up liking me—of course he couldn’t say that out loud. Ryuuji still thought it as he used his knees to bring up the top plank of the counter that had come loose.

  “But I think things would have been better if I’d just been normal…” Taiga grumbled as though she were speaking to herself. She still had her back turned toward Ryuuji.

  “Oh, right!” She was excited now, as though she had suddenly thought of a joke. “I did want something—I wanted to love someone like normal!”

  “Huh…?”

  BAM! The plank he had been holding fell.

  He fixed his positioning in a fluster, but he couldn’t regain the breath that had flown out of him. What did she just blurt out? Love? Love?! That basically means…

  Basically, she means me?!

  Ryuuji hesitantly brought up his face to look at Taiga. His neck was stiff, and he was shaking to an embarrassing degree. Taiga, what are you trying to start? What kind of expression did she have on her face when she made that explosive declaration?

  “I’d be normal and grow up in a normal house and grow up to be a nice, normal girl and meet someone like normal and get to know them like normal and then we’d have normal…I just wanted to fall in love with someone like normal! I wanted to like someone and have someone like me and for the two of us to just be together. We’d just be together and—” Taiga continued. “…We’d just be happy as long as we were together or something like that. That’s the love I want.”

  Taiga didn’t seem like she was pretending to like someone specific. Her face was contorted painfully, as though her stomach hurt. That expression doesn’t really match what you’re saying, he wanted to quip back.

  Why did she have such a glum look on her face when she was spending time with Takasu Ryuuji, the very person she couldn’t help but like? Her eyes seemed clouded over and dull; she seemed to be gasping with her open mouth, and her eyebrows knit together as though she were in pain.

  Huh? The moment he thought that, the counter’s top plank snagged on a small nail and made a terrible noise. He dropped it, straining his eyes to see Taiga’s face better and suddenly was standing as straight as a rod. A feeling rose up in his chest, like something was oddly out of place. It hung over him like a dark shadow.

  The thought came to him automatically, “Things are going well with your mom, right?”

  He thought about whether she was tending to her wounds, alone and lost in her own thoughts.

  “Why’re you asking that?”

  Grasping at the air, he clumsily stretched out his hand. What? She pushed his hand to the side easily, looking gloomy. He didn’t mind. It wasn’t like he’d know what to do if he touched her.

  He just really did want to ask her about it. Even though her dad was the way he was, even though she was spending time with Ryuuji, and even though she just had her fill of happily spending time with her mother, why did she look like that—why was she making that face?

  She looked as though she had lost everything. She looked even worse than when he first met her.

  “Everything’s going great,” she said. “Swimmingly, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  “No matter what I say, we’re still a broken family. Even if it’s not much, right now, our relationship is a lot better than what’s going on with your family.”

  “It’s not like I’m having a fight with Yasuko or anything.”

  Oh really? Taiga lifted her eyebrows. “That’s fine in that case.”

  She started walking away on her own.

  “Hey, where are you going?! What’re you going to do about the printout?!”

  “I’m going home now. I don’t care about that thing.”

  Taiga didn’t even turn around as she left the room in long strides. The door slammed shut, leaving Ryuuji behind once more. She had batted away the hand he stretched out to her, and he was all alone. It felt the same as when the snow fell out from under his feet in his dream.

  Regardless of that, he couldn’t recklessly follow after Taiga.

  The good kid Takasu Ryuuji-kun needed to fix the windowsill until it was perfect and to tell the bachelorette (age 30) waiting in the staff room that Taiga ran away.

  He went back to the classroom, finished getting ready to go home, and got his bag. After that, Ryuuji opened the staff room door. He wasn’t to blame in the first place for Taiga running home before him, but it still weighed on him slightly.

  Sorry to intrude, he grumbled, lowering his head a bit as he stepped in. It was well past the time to go home, and the teachers were at their desks writing things or talking with each other. He could hear a commotion of several voices behind the partition for interviewing, even from the distance where he was.

  He tried to call out to Koigakubo Yuri, who held a red pen in one of her hands and seemed to be grading a quiz.

  “Ms. Koigakubo, please help convince her, too!”

  A male teacher, who was the class year supervisor, poked out of the interview space and got to her first. Ryuuji swallowed his words and shied away.

  “Kawashima won’t listen to a word we say.”

  “But I told you that I have to turn you down. I told you earlier, too.”

  Oh. Ryuuji’s eyes opened wide in spite of himself. He wasn’t thinking, I’ll destroy this staff room with my evil eye beams! School coup d’état accomplished! I’m in charge starting today! He wasn’t planning anything like that at all.

  “Oh…”

  Ami had appeared behind the class year supervisor and another teacher, and he was just surprised by her appearance. Ami also saw Ryuuji’s face, and her lips parted slightly, but she didn’t exclaim, “Oh, Takasu-kun! ♥” or say anything in her usual sweet tone.

  “Well, we need to respect what Kawashima-san wants… Oh, Takasu-kun! Where’s Aisaka-sa
n?!”

  “Uh, umm, she ran off.”

  “What?! Why?!”

  “I couldn’t convince her no matter what I said… I’m sorry. I’m going home.”

  “Then can I go home, too? I’m heading home.”

  “Uhhh, wait a sec, both of you!”

  The bachelorette teacher looked at Ryuuji, then at Ami, and then at the teachers, who seemed to still want to say something to Ami. She looked flustered. She stood up with her pen still in her hand.

  “Um, uh, just wait right there for a bit, Takasu-kun! Kawashima-san, uh—”

  Ms. Koigakubo, another voice chimed in. It seemed the bachelorette (age 30) was incredibly popular that day.

  “Uh, sorry, wait a sec. Huh? What is it?!”

  “There’s a course content seller here.”

  “Oh, right! Please wait… Th-this is bad, uhh.”

  She twirled the pen in her right hand as she opened and closed her mouth. As the bachelorette (age 30) searched for words, Ryuuji could see Ami glancing at the teachers from the corner of her eyes.

  “Oh, Kawashima!”

  “Kawashima-san just ran away!”

  Ami dashed towards the staff room door in front of her. The moment the teachers looked in that direction, Ryuuji went for the back door.

  “Wait right there!” the bachelorette (age 30) yelled after him.

  They met in the hallway, and assuming that the teachers wouldn’t go so far as to run after them, Ryuuji and Ami took the stairs down one step at a time. They ran to the shoe lockers as though they were racing each other. Feeling like they were partners in crime, Ryuuji tried to pick up and hand a shoe Ami dropped back to her. The first thing she said to him—and he was pretty sure this was the first time they had talked since the school trip—was, “What’s wrong with you?! You’re so annoying! Will you do me a favor and stop following me?!”

  “What?! I wasn’t trying to follow you!”

  “Actually, give that back to me! What were you planning on doing with my shoe?! You sicko!”

  If he hadn’t gotten annoyed about that, he wouldn’t have been human. Ryuuji was overtaken by mostly subconscious anger as his head went white for a moment, and he threw Ami’s shoe with all his might somewhere.

  Fly like the wind.

  ***

  Ryuuji still didn’t really comprehend how the situation had come about, but Ami told him she was officially severing ties with him earlier.

  Ami apparently hated him and herself because, in her own words, they were both “stupid.” Ami mentioned Minori had turned Ryuuji down because of something Ami had said.

  After that, Ami apparently decided to cut ties with Ryuuji. She told him of that decision on the second day of their school trip and it seemed she was still in the middle of ignoring him even now.

  Ami tried to avoid Ryuuji and, when she couldn’t, she very obviously tried to ignore him. He wanted to say something about her attitude or at least get some sort of explanation from her, but he couldn’t even get the chance to ask anything related to that.

  “You’ve gotten real far trying to ignore me up until today.”

  “…”

  “You’ve been ignoring Kushieda this whole time, too, haven’t you?”

  “And what about that?”

  “Don’t act like a little kid. What, are you in junior high? No, this is like elementary school level.”

  “Sorry to say it, but I’m not thickheaded like you and Kushieda Minori.”

  “What did you say? How’re we thickheaded?”

  “I can’t believe you’re acting all friendly with each other like nothing happened even though you got rejected and she was the one who rejected you. The two of you are seriously just revolting.”

  Their faces were right next to each other. They were so close he felt like he could even feel the heat from her breath as Ami spewed venom at him. Then, as though she were trying to cut Ryuuji off before he could even say anything, she yelled, “You threw it all the way over there!”

  Ryuuji had his bag and Ami’s bag in one hand. With his other hand, he held Ami’s elbow to support Ami as she hopped forward on one foot. They were right next to each other and touching.

  The shoe Ryuuji threw had traced an arc and fallen into a gathering of boys on their way home from school. Unluckily, the boys were right in the middle of a futsal match. One of them reflexively applied an amazing volley kick to the shoe, and another guy, who still hadn’t noticed that it was the school idol Ami-chan-sama’s shoe, caught it with his chest. He let it drop to his knee. Shoot! he said as he smacked it back up.

  “Aha ha,” the other guy laughed as he missed it. Ami’s poor shoe cleared a line of sakura trees and bounced off the roof of the bike parking lot, then went beyond the school grounds, falling into the children’s park behind it. In order to go get the shoe they would need to go out of the school gate, do an immediate U-turn on the promenade next to it, and once again head in the direction of the park.

  “This is the absolute worst. Unbelievable. The pits. I just can’t deal with this.”

  “Sorry… Just sit here and wait while I go get it.”

  Ryuuji had Ami sit at a bench near the entrance to the park. He left their bags with her and started walking on his own. Ami’s shoe was stuck in some desolate sand like a moai statue.

  This was just too hilariously terrible. He regretted throwing it. It seemed that violence had rubbed off on him during his time with the world’s one and only Palmtop Tiger. He tried to pat off the sand covering the shoe before he handed it back to Ami.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ryuuji’s consideration to keep Ami’s hands and uniform safe from the sand didn’t get through to Ami at all.

  “Why’re you ogling my shoe…ick. Seriously? No way.”

  “Ick? Why ick?”

  He didn’t know what she misunderstood him as doing, but Ami quickly grabbed her shoe back from Ryuuji’s hand.

  “Takasu-kun, you’re really weirdly persistent about girls’ shoes… There really are some people like that, like actually. Boot maniacs, heel fetishists… I see, you’re a loafer freak…ahh!”

  “I’m not! What’re you imagining?! Here then, get the sand off yourself!”

  “Huh? Was that an order? How did this happen? Who do you think you are?”

  “Fine, right, I’m sorry! It’s all completely my fault anyway!”

  He stole the shoe again from Ami. I’m! So! Sorry! He lashed out at Ami a bit and turned the shoe over to hit it gently on the sole. The sand in it flowed out and clouded the toes of Ryuuji’s shoes.

  The world was in an uproar over declining birthrates. They didn’t see a single child in the park at sunset. Several kids were running around the road at the front, but all of them were wearing alphabet-decorated backpacks from a famous college-bound study hall. They looked strangely solemn as they headed to the station.

  The current inhabitants of the so-called children’s park consisted of a beautiful high school girl sitting on a bench, wearing a navy peacoat that her long, straight hair spilled over as she crossed her legs and exposed the bare sock of her shoeless foot to the open air, and some guy with a face exactly like a demon in a no-name school uniform furiously hitting sand out of a shoe.

  As one more kid with a study hall bag ran by, Ami followed the student with her eyes and muttered to herself.

  “Ahh, I see. Today’s already February the twelfth… The kids trying to get into private school are already in the final stages of their exam schedule.”

  “Why do you know about private junior high school exams?”

  “Because I did them.”

  “I had no idea… So I guess you’re like Taiga. You started private school in junior—”

  “I didn’t get in anywhere, so I went to public school.”

  Was there anything more awkward than that…? Without thinking, Ryuuji almost tried to apologize. Even though she was already in a bad mood to start with, Ami’s expression didn�
��t change as she brushed aside her long hair.

  “Isn’t the day after tomorrow Valentine’s Day?” Ryuuji added quietly.

  “Are you looking forward to that or something?”

  “No, not even a little. It hasn’t got anything to do with me,” Ryuuji replied straightforwardly. He continued to shake the sand out of her shoe. Many of the boys who lived in Japan would have the innocence that danced in their hearts on Valentine’s Day shattered between their fifth and seventh years of school. The generally accepted consensus was that any boy who said, Huh? Don’t normal people look forward to Valentine’s? or anything remotely similar wasn’t to be trusted.

  A smile suddenly passed over Ami’s lips, and her eyes glittered like a chihuahua that found a new toy to play with as she looked into Ryuuji’s face.

  “Oh reeeeally? Is that true? You can’t be thinking that maybe—just maybe—you might get some chocolates from a certain someone? ♥ Oh, but who knows? She’s the most blockheaded girl in the world. Her heart’s all muscle.”

  Despite releasing so much vitriol, she was completely off target.

  “The heart is supposed to be a muscle. Why were you being kept after school?”

  He slipped past her remark like the sand flowing out of the shoe.

  “What does that have to do with anything? Actually, what did you do, Takasu-kun? Oh, maybe you had another bad dream and yelled again~? Were you like, ‘Tigeeeeeeer.’ Hah, that’s sooo embarrassing. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? What kind of dream were you even having? That’d definitely worry Yuri-chan.”

  “What’re you talking about? I was just talking with her about my future… Well, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but everyone seemed pretty upset, and you don’t even know that the heart is a muscle. I wasn’t going to say anything, but your junior high school exams…turned out the way they did. Maybe you’ve got grades like Haruta’s and you got called up—”

  “What?! No way! You’re so unpleasant!”

  Her lips, which glittered faintly from the transparent gloss on them, contorted. Ami glared at Ryuuji. They weren’t too different in height, and though the glint in her eyes was terrible, he felt pretty shocked that she was the one telling him he was “unpleasant.”