Toradora! Vol. 7 Read online

  “…”

  “No…please stop…please stop looking at me like that…Don’t look at me! I know that it’s just a waste of money, too! But-but-but! If I don’t do something to get myself energized, then I won’t have the strength to keep living! I don’t even know what I’m working for! Waaah!”

  “…”

  “Ugh uh, it’s extravagant, isn’t it… I might be alone for my whole life, and I need about 70,000,000 yen for retirement, so squandering 300,000 yen on some show-off brand wouldn’t even allow me enough money to die in the green…but, look. Look, if I worked hard to save up my money and didn’t buy all the things I wanted to, and if I get to the point where I’m like, yay, I saved up 100,000,000 yen! What if Japan with its hyperinflation turns those savings into scraps of paper? Then what do I do? No really…huh? I see, maybe…maybe…I should buy a condo?!”

  “…”

  “I-I see… If I were to get a loan and buy a condo, that would be a perfect countermeasure against inflation, wouldn’t it?!”

  “…”

  “Right, right, this is it! I don’t have time to be buying brand-name stuff! I’ll get together the down payment and buy a condo! I’ll get a condo that’s good for someone single, near the station. I’ll get a fashionable new one! If I get married later, I could just make it a rental! Kyah ♪!”

  “…”

  “Well, I might spend the rest of my life living there and end up dying alone and being found as a corpse…”

  “…”

  From behind the bachelorette (with Mercury currently in retrograde…sob), Ryuuji saw the painful illusion of cold, powdery snow falling. He couldn’t find words to say. He felt the absolute zero snow blowing from the eternal tundra called nihilism that ate away at the hearts of the glacier generation of Japan.

  “That’s the last one! Ryuuji, I got them all! Let’s hurry and get to the gym. Kitamura’s waiting!”

  “Oh, ahh! Right!”

  Once more holding the cardboard box, Taiga barked at him. She stamped in place telling him to go faster, faster. Ryuuji finally found his opportunity to run, bowed, and held his own box as he ran down the hallway after Taiga. Ah! Don’t run! The voice of the bachelorette who had a hard time living, but planned to survive, echoed after them. They went down the stairs as if they were running from a curse.

  They headed to the gym’s storehouse with a box of confetti each. There, Kitamura’s student council team should have been working on organizing the manufactured props. They originally meant to buy the confetti, so Taiga’s group had to make up the full day of work that their handmade decoration ate up. Hurry, hurry, she muttered and urged herself along.

  “Yo! Well, isn’t it Taiga?!”

  He noticed that surprised voice. This time, Ryuuji was close to scattering the confetti.

  “Oh, Minorin! What a coincidence! Are you out here for softball?” Taiga stopped and answered with a smile. The stealthy wink she gave Ryuuji was probably meant to say, Yay, aren’t you lucky?

  “Of course, we were just weight training at the gym up until now. Kitamura-kun and everyone else was there, too. They looked busy.”

  Minori also smiled and stopped. She was a little sweaty, judging by the apples of her cheeks, her hair was in a messy bun she had slapped up, and she was in her tracksuit. She was with several other second-year girls who were pulling on her sleeve.

  “Kushieda, we have to hurry and go, or the coach will tell us off!” one cried.

  A girl who stood behind Taiga where she had stopped also spoke to her in a hurried tone.

  “Aisaka-senpai, we need to get going!”

  Oh dear, oh my, you’re quite right! See ya! Practically at the same time, the two of them started walking and reluctantly parted. Then, with that…

  “Well…we only ever get to see her in passing lately.”

  “Yeah…”

  They saw what looked almost like a flash of light.

  It was a gaze that hit him directly from the front, one he couldn’t avoid.

  He was sure Kushieda Minori was looking at him. He tried giving her a quick, immediate reply, but he couldn’t get his face to settle on an expression, so his mouth twisted. When she saw that—when he was sure she saw it, Minori made a strange sound, as if she were joking around, “Ha heh.”

  As she turned around and he saw her back, he desperately squeezed something out from his throat, which had been hardened by nerves.

  “Th-the party! On Christmas Eve! It’s definitely going to be fun! So you should come by, Kushieda!”

  She might have heard him.

  She should have heard him.

  Minori turned around a little. She seemed somewhat distressed and like she was about to say something.

  “Hurry!”

  A girl pulling her along almost immediately grabbed Minori’s arm and yanked her away. Based on her expression, the words Minori had wanted to say, but had not been able to, probably weren’t the response that Ryuuji had been waiting for. But she must have heard him. Ryuuji must have delivered the words he desperately had said to Minori.

  We only ever get to see her in passing lately—it was true, all they did was pass by each other. It wasn’t just lately either—it was for the last few days. They were separate in the morning, in the afternoon, and after school. Minori didn’t come to the study group and she didn’t go to her shifts at the family restaurant. The days where they passed by each other just stacked up.

  But, even so.

  Even so, Ryuuji believed.

  He believed that if Minori would only come to the party, everything would fit into place.

  Minori had said she was down. If she were festive, it wouldn’t have been a good example for the others in the club, she had said. Somehow, he wanted her to get into the mood to at least drop by. All he could do was awkwardly invite her when they saw each other for a moment and prepare for when Minori did appear. Of course, he wanted to do a lot more. If there were something he could do, he would do it. He wanted to, but he didn’t know how, so he could only watch Minori leave. He could only dwell on the full extent of his own uselessness.

  But he at least had hope. He believed it from the bottom of his heart.

  Minori would come on Christmas Eve, the party would be a success, everyone would be excited, and if everyone could smile—if they could do that—Minori would go back to being happy, and go back to her usual mood, and would even smile at him. Then, Ryuuji would be happy seeing that smile. Yes—basically, in the end, he wanted Minori to be happy. Ryuuji just wanted Minori to have a smile on her face and for her to turn a smile to him. That was more important and special than anything else.

  He wanted Minori to be happy.

  Right. At some point, his goals and the means of getting to them had switched places.

  It wasn’t “He would work on having a Christmas Eve party and wanted to invite Minori because she was down,” but “He wanted Minori to be happy again, so he would invite her to the party so she could have fun.” At that moment, those were Ryuuji’s true feelings.

  You deserve to be rewarded. The words whispered by the adult on their side echoed low in his chest like a blessing. That really was right. He really did want to be rewarded. He would do anything to work towards that, no matter how much sleep he lost. No matter how anxious he was, he would work hard. He could overcome several days of only seeing her in passing.

  When he remembered that Minori’s smile was just waiting for him in the coming days, he could overcome anything. Yes, anything—

  “Ryuujiii! What do you think you’re doing, you lazy useless oaf… I mean, you slightly ignorant, somewhat leisurely guy! Hurry up and get over here!”

  “Right!”

  “You’re late! What were you doing? You really are a lazy useless oaf.”

  In the storehouse of the gym, which was filled with the smell of dust and sweat, he found Ami. She was sitting with her legs stretched out over the stack of mats as Kitamura and the rest of the student council
were busily milling around beside her.

  He spotted Murase, who was writing something on the whiteboard. “Hey.” Ryuuji hit him on the butt.

  Murase smiled and turned to him. “Yo.”

  He had met Murase from class A under rocky circumstances during the student council election, but after that, they got along better than expected and were now close friends. Murase poked and twisted the back of his pen into Ryuuji’s armpit. Stooop iiiit. Ryuuji wriggled.

  Behind the two boys, who were as foul to watch as they looked, there was another conversation happening.

  “Hey, we just had an accident! What a hypocrite… Actually, what are you doing here, Dimhuahua? Don’t you have work to do? Are you skipping?”

  “I’m part of the division with the student council first years that’s making ornaments and small touches. I’m assigned here and doing painstaking work on these. See, look at this! Aren’t I amazing?”

  From her sitting position on the mats, Ami lifted a strand ornament of small bells on a long line. We’re going to wrap them around lights and put them on the tree. What do you think? Ami waved it around with pride, but at that moment…

  “Uwah?! Hey, hey, no! Why?!”

  …several of the bells that she had painstakingly tied on, and should have been secure, chimed as they fell to the mat. Ami panicked as she tried to gather the rolling bells and several more rang as they fell. Taiga helped her pick them up.

  “Kyaaa ha ha! Of course you’d do that, Dimhuahua! You’re a klutz, a klutz! Yeah, you’re back to the drawing board!”

  “Hey…are you even allowed to say stuff like that?”

  “…It was a regretful accident.”

  Oh, what a tragedy. As though she were acting in a play, Taiga went to her knees and held the bells out to Ami with a kindness that rivaled Santa’s. Ryuuji pushed Taiga aside and took a look at what was in Ami’s hands. He also sat down next to her, where she was making the ornaments with her eyes glued to the craft book. They looked easy enough to make.

  Ami sat cross-legged. She puffed up her cheeks. The pose she sulked in made her look like the head of a prison gang.

  “Chi, why did it end up like this? Ahh, it took an hour to get this far… I guess this simple work just isn’t for me! Right, I, Ami-chan, should be in a role that lets me be flashy, stand out, and show off. I should be in a role that lets me radiate how brilliant, gorgeous, sweet, beautiful, cute, and pure I am…”

  She flopped down on her back as she muttered nonsense. She was wearing shorts with zero sex appeal under her skirt, so she safely avoided flashing her panties, but her back cracked and made pitiful noises. Next to Ami, Ryuuji sat down and poked at her pale knees, which were still stuck up in the air.

  “If you have the time to grumble about it, then fix it. See, get up. Look. Right here. You didn’t tie them right. You have to put it through this ring or the rest of them will fall off, too.”

  Ryuuji pulled the line skillfully through the top of the bell, tied a neat knot, and showed her how it was done. Huh? Ami pulled herself up and tilted her head.

  “How did you just do that? What did I do wrong? I couldn’t see it because it was so fast. Do it again.”

  “Okay, here…this goes…like this.”

  Ryuuji used his long, skillful fingertips to slowly do it so Ami could easily see. Ami came close enough that he could smell her hair as she earnestly looked at his hands.

  “No way, that looks like so much work… Actually, you mean I have to redo all of them? You can’t be saying that I need to undo and redo them all?”

  “If you don’t, they’ll all just drop to the ground like they did earlier.”

  “Kyah! No way?! Seriously?! This is the wooorst! I thought this would be the easiest thing to do though! Hey, Yuusaku! I definitely can’t do this alone!”

  “What?” When he heard his childhood friend’s shriek, Kitamura poked his head out from the very back of the deep, L-shaped storage room. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and pushing up his glasses. He’d acquired a thick coating of dust on his head, taken off his school jacket, and turned up the sleeves on his shirt. For some reason he carried a rusty track hurdle. This was what he had come to after the teachers had forced him to organize the storage room in exchange for using the gym. Of course, the patron saint of broken hearts was a newborn when it came to being class president and didn’t have the bargaining skill of the former president when it came to the teachers.

  “What? Is it that hard?”

  “It’s super, super, super hard! It’s too hard! I definitely can’t finish this alone!”

  “Uhhh…then, sorry, but Takasu, can you help Ami? I’ll have Aisaka and everyone else start working on this stuff before you.”

  As Kitamura said that, Taiga had already secured some scissors and glue. She was assigning the first-year underlings work beside him. She looked at Ryuuji as though she had just noticed what had happened and blinked several times.

  “Huh, Ryuuji is? He’s not working it with us? But we’re going to start making stars now—a ton of ’em.”

  From behind her, Kitamura kindly stooped down to be at her level and explained it to Taiga with a smile. I was thinking I’d have Takasu help Ami out. It might have been because Taiga hadn’t had the time to turn red with how busy they had been for the last few days, or because she had gained immunity, but she was unexpectedly calm. Her eyes, however, were still bright as she nodded. I see, got it.

  Casually, Kitamura took the scissors from Taiga’s clumsy hands and handed her some ridiculously much-too-large, star-shaped pattern paper. Right when she seemed in danger of dropping it, she overcame it and smiled. They seemed to smile at each other for a while and then Kitamura and Taiga went along into the back of the storeroom.

  “Uh…”

  You deserve to be rewarded.

  Before he could think anything, the earlier echo of the thought resurfaced in his ears. He momentarily forgot what he was going to say. He even forgot that he thought it.

  You deserve to be rewarded. That was exactly it.

  Taiga’s work needed to be rewarded, too.

  “Oh wow,” said Ami, “they look really close. Yuusaku and Tiger-chan. They seem pretty good for each other.”

  “Don’t ramble like an idiot. We’re doing this. Anyway, you undo all the stuff you’ve already done.”

  Geh, Ami scowled and disagreeably stuck out her tongue. Unlike Noto, Ami’s face was cute when she did that, even at a time like this. Without minding it, Ryuuji sat next to her on the mat and skillfully pulled out more fresh line. He immediately started briskly tying small bells to it and kept going. Ami gave him a rude poke to the back with the knee of her crisscrossed leg.

  “Hey, hey, how about we skip out? They wouldn’t notice if we did it now.”

  “No. What’s with you, ‘Ami-chan?’ You don’t have any motivation. I thought you were putting your heart into getting everyone excited for this.”

  “I am putting my heart into it. Everyone’s going to be excited. Well, you just watch. I’ll show you how amazing. I. Really. Am. But you know what, I’m just so tired today, and the air is stale in here, it’s super cold and smells like B.O., and it’s so noisy because of the sports clubs coming in and out. Just earlier, the girls from the softball club were carrying around barbells and making so much noise… Right, right, you missed them exactly—it was like they switched places with you, Takasu-kun.”

  “I said, let’s get to work.”

  Kya ha. ♥ Ami smiled as she watched the others busily moving for a while. Her large eyes turned to Ryuuji.

  “You were so close. If you’d have just come a little earlier, you would have met a certain someone…ow.”

  He put a bell on his palm, flicked it, and hit Ami right in the nose. Ryuuji narrowed his eyes. I can’t hear you, was what he basically meant by that. Ami grabbed her nose, and he turned his back to her.

  “You’re the worst. I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’d do somethin
g like this. I hate it when guys vent their anger. Venting it out on me won’t do anything just because you’ve been estranged from Minori-chan lately. It’s not my fault, anyway.”

  “Of course it’s not. Who said it was your fault?”

  “You’re in such a bad mood. It’s not a good look.”

  “It’s because you’re skipping out on the work.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll do it. Look, see, I’m working. Well, it’s not like I don’t understand why you’re in a sour mood. You keep only seeing the girl you like in passing, and on the other side of things it looks like Tiger-chan is all cheerful. It’s like, now that you’re all left behind, Takasu-kun, you’re just a tragic loner…ow ow ow ow!”

  Poke! Poke! Poke! With three pokes to the head, he silenced her and then flicked her again for good measure.

  “Was it you?!” he said. “It must have been you! You must have spread the weird rumor to our classmates!”

  “Whaat?! What’s wrong with you?! I don’t understand what you’re trying to say!”

  Not backing down to the beautiful face that glared at him, he brought his own face closer to her. Ryuuji brought his voice as low as it could go.

  “Like I said! That…Taiga…that Taiga l-likes Kitamura! Everyone’s been trying to push them together! So it must have been you—”

  “Like I know!”

  She smacked him straight in the middle of the head with her fist. Ryuuji clammed up. It had been the first time he had been hit by a girl in a while. Come to think of it, it had been a week since Taiga had stopped beating him up. Ow. Ami shook her fist as though she were in pain. She snorted in dissatisfaction.

  “Seriously! Why would you assume I’d do something like that?! Actually, I know what everyone’s saying, of course, but I’m not gonna go cheering Yuusaku and Tiger on. In the first place, I don’t care what they do, and Maya’s all lovey-dovey ♥ about Maruo and about to blow her fuse. It’s just, well, I agree with the class that they suit each other better than I expected. Hmph, they’ll probably just move on right into dating, won’t they? Then what’ll you do? Would that upset you?”