Toradora! Vol. 9 Page 9

  “People call me ‘considerate Takasu’ though!”

  “No one calls you that! You’re never considerate towards me! Actually, they asked me to be the model for the uniform picture in the school pamphlet this year, and I turned them down!”

  “Oh, that’s it? Why don’t you just do it? That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

  “No, that’s not it! I just said okay without thinking about it the first time they asked, but…I’ve changed my mind now. I don’t want to do it. Ever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know how long I’ll be at this school.”

  “That’s—”

  That’s—what?

  Without thinking, Ryuuji left his mouth half-open, and he lost the rhythm of their argument as he looked back at Ami’s face. Tch. Ami clicked her tongue, and her face obviously showed that she’d said too much. Her forehead furrowed.

  Ryuuji froze up. He forgot to ask her what she meant. She basically just implied she would be quitting school…hadn’t she?

  He recalled Ami and Minori getting in a fight at the school trip. Their argument had escalated, and they started saying stuff they never should have. If his memories weren’t mistaken, Minori had said some harsh words during their argument.

  “You didn’t take it seriously when Kushieda told you to ‘go back to your own school,’ did you…”

  “Nooo. That’s not what’s going on. Ahh, this is becoming such a chore.”

  Ami seemed peeved as she shook her head at him. She rudely put her sock-clad foot on top of her other knee, grabbed her ankle, and hunched her back. As though trying to take stock of the conversation, she made a motion with her hand like she was grabbing a box and pretending to set it aside, but he had no idea what it meant.

  “That’s not what this is—whatever that girl said to me has nothing to do with this. Someone like Kushieda Minori wouldn’t ever affect my life at all.”

  “Then why are you suddenly saying you’re leaving?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that…for a while. It’s been a long time coming.”

  As she said that, Ami reached out her hand like she meant to take back her shoe that Ryuuji was still holding. He automatically held his arm high so that she couldn’t reach. Ami sighed as though exasperated, but it seemed she didn’t intend to force him to give the shoe back to her. He almost thought that he might as well send it flying again.

  “Takasu-kun.”

  “No.”

  “Seriously!”

  He absolutely would not hand over the shoe she needed to walk away from him in that moment. Like he’d let her have a half-baked conversation with him and then go back to ignoring him. He wasn’t happy about Ami leaving school either. He was tired of being the only one left behind.

  “I was really supposed to leave after the first trimester ended. That was the plan when I transferred. I thought that once the whole stalker thing died down, I could go back to my old school or finish my degree from home.”

  “After one trimester… You didn’t mention that to anyone. Were you just planning on disappearing after summer ended when we got back from the villa?”

  “I was.”

  “You…Kawashima!”

  “But I didn’t. Back then, I decided to stay here for a little longer. I was thinking I’d stay for the next day and for the foreseeable future… I thought if I did that that, maybe something would change. I thought that I might be able to change myself, too.”

  Back then—Ryuuji was trying to recall what Ami had been like during the past year’s summer. She had been just as spiteful and beautiful as she was now. She had been wicked on the inside, and he just hadn’t really gotten her as a person, and…

  “I’m regretting that I ever thought that now.”

  Then what was going on with her this whole entire time… Ryuuji couldn’t help but turn his eyes away from Ami’s beautiful face.

  Ahmin sure has changed, he remembered Minori saying when they talked during the culture festival.

  That was right—Ami and everything around her seemed livelier than usual since summer ended. She got in fights with Taiga whenever they were in contact or approached each other, to the point he couldn’t ever tell if they were getting along or not. Whenever they did that, though, it sent the class into laughter. Though they all praised Ami’s beauty, they had all also accepted her dark underbelly and bad mouth at some point. They humored her despite her personality—no, it was more like they’d whole-heartedly embraced it, making a huge commotion in the process.

  Ami’s position in the class changed because she started showing her real personality to everyone. She stopped trying to hide, to make things up, or to dupe them, and leapt into their midst with her true feelings on display. Or so Ryuuji had thought, at least, but it seemed that after Ami took stock of everything, she regretted the days they spent with each other.

  “Are you saying that you regret everything you did with us up until today, like all the stuff you did with Kihara, Kashii, Kitamura and everyone…and with Taiga, Kushieda, and me?”

  “I’m really grateful to Maya and Nanako, and everyone else. I never thought they would all be so friendly to me. There were a lot of things that happened in elementary, junior high, and my old high school, but this might have been the first time I actually made friends with anyone. Things went okay every once in a while at my old schools, but it was just okay. Actually, no one’s talked to me since I transferred here.”

  “Is that really true?”

  “You’re surprised?”

  When Ami asked him that, he nodded. He had thought that someone as beautiful as Ami would end up becoming the heart of a group whether she wanted to or not, that she would be popular, and that she would end up the center of attention.

  “How could someone who thought of school as just a place you’re confined to temporarily make friends? How could someone who thought she would forget everything after graduating, who just thought of this all as a fleeting moment and as fleeting relationships, make actual connections? How can you make friends when you think your real place is at work, that your real self is your model self, and that school was just something to put up with for years? Anyone could see through that, even a kid. But I stopped being that person here, and everyone accepted me… I was so happy about that. I had lots of fun, and I treasured that so much.”

  “Then…why don’t you do that—treasure it?”

  “It’s too late now. I made mistakes—tons of them.”

  She caught him by surprise and took back her shoe. In a show of laziness, Ami bent down to put on her shoe while still sitting on the bench. Her long hair slipped down from her shoulders.

  “There we go… I wonder how I can say this… I think you’ll think this is weird when you hear it though. Um…I saw Tiger when she was hurt. I understood her feelings, and I decided if no one else would notice her, I’d be the one to save her… That’s what it was—back then.”

  Ryuuji was speechless.

  Kawashima Ami really might have seen everything.

  “Back then, I didn’t just see Tiger unravel, but a whole bunch of other things, too. It was like everything was going to pieces…right. I really wanted to do something about all of it. I wanted to fix all of it somehow and make sure I protected the place I belonged.”

  Ami pulled up her socks after putting on her shoes and stood up from the bench. She combed her hair down with her slender fingers and looked down on Ryuuji.

  “On the other hand, I also got hurt, but I thought no one would notice. Why was it always me? Who’s thinking about me? Like, who would notice that I existed?”

  Sorry—Ryuuji thought of saying in that moment. He wanted to say What hurt you? Tell me, we’ll go back and fix it, but he couldn’t, and even if he did, he knew that Ami wouldn’t accept that. There was no way to go back and redo things, anyway.

  “I want to appreciate where I am now. I thought that was why I needed to think about that stuff, but it got
bigger and bigger, and I didn’t know whether I could hold it back, and I ended up panicking because of that, too. My mistakes started piling up, and I couldn’t do anything about it… In the end, I figured it out.”

  I’m just an outsider. I’m in the way.

  Even though everyone accepted me, I messed up, and that’s what I ended up turning into.

  “That’s not true…obviously!” Ryuuji jumped up and practically yelled. “Who’d say something like that?! Don’t mess around! You’re the only one who thinks that! If someone actually said that, I’d never forgive them!”

  For just a moment, Ami looked at Ryuuji after he yelled. She raised her eyebrows, and her face contorted as though she were going to cry. When the wind sliced between them, she sniffled instead.

  “But…that’s just how it is.”

  She regained her composure.

  “Things were going fine without me, then I came in. I was like oh, I need to do something about that, and of course I need to do something about this. I stuck my nose into things thinking that I needed to fix everything. I did so many things I shouldn’t have, and because of that…I made a ton of things go wrong. You getting rejected by Minori-chan happened because of that, too. Minori-chan and I had that huge fight, and now we can’t go back to the way we used to be. Plus on top of that, because we got into a fight, Tiger…Tiger almost died. Things turned out like that, so right now I—”

  As the words gently flowed from her lips, he could see them tremble.

  “I was so, so, so lonely—just so alone. I felt so by myself, I couldn’t help it.”

  You idiot, he wanted to say.

  Ryuuji was so overcome by the rush of emotions coming to him, that his mouth couldn’t keep up. His shoulders shook. What was he supposed to say first? How could he put the emotions he felt into words after Ami said that because of him?

  “You…”

  Somewhere in his head, he remembered how Taiga looked earlier. She was so lonely and regretted things she couldn’t do anything about, and also—right, she looked almost as miserable as himself.

  It wasn’t just him and Taiga. Everyone looked the same. Everyone might have been in the same boat.

  Something wouldn’t go right, and it would happen without anyone knowing or attempting to find out.

  “I can’t believe you’re throwing away everything you have and running away like that just because you made a mistake! You’re refusing to look at anything and going on and on about how you’re so lonely—what is that?! Don’t you think the people you’re leaving behind are going to be lonely, too?!”

  He yelled at her in vain again, unable to understand her or get across to her. The pain they were directing at each other was vividly clear, though.

  Everyone must have felt the same. Him, Ami, and Taiga. Noto and Haruta must have, too, and even Kitamura—Kitamura had been crouching down and frozen at one point, too, hadn’t he? Even Minori, who was a forward-facing powerhouse, said she had been suffering alone because she’d been caught up in what-ifs. None of them had been able to reveal their pain and suffering to anyone else.

  “In your eyes, who’s supposed to be doing fine?! Everyone is thinking about things, doing tons of stuff they shouldn’t be, making mistakes, feeling embarrassed, doing the wrong thing, and living! You can make mistakes, too! You can just be embarrassed and leave it at an ‘Oops!’ Why can’t you do—”

  “Do you even have the right to say that, Takasu-kun?!”

  Ami’s voice went high and cracked. She pushed him, and he pitifully staggered.

  “Whenever I was lost or hurt, you never, ever noticed! You never noticed me!”

  “How should I have known?! I had no idea! I’m not perfect either!”

  Just how old and how mature did a person need to be before they could keep pathetic things like that from coming out of their mouth? Would he ever be able to come to an understanding with another person, sympathize with them, and actually tell them his feelings?

  “Then don’t say stuff you don’t need to! You’re just so…! I would have been better off never meeting you…!”

  Would he ever be able to go through life without hurting someone he really cared about? Would he be able to go without getting hurt himself?

  “I really should have left school back then!”

  As Ami yelled at him with a shaking voice, she rubbed her tears away with the back of her hand and ran off. He thought of how he could stop her, but he didn’t know what to do.

  He stared as Ami left the park. Then Ryuuji also started moving. He left the park and started walking in the opposite direction Ami had run off to.

  By the time he noticed the voicemails on his cell phone, he had already gotten more than ten missed calls.

  Chapter 4

  “Was the landlady awake~? What happened~?”

  “I said don’t worry about it. She said she’d bring up super concentrated essence that’ll make your skin feel bouncy next time.”

  Ryuuji, who had come back from the downstairs landlady’s home, responded to Yasuko as he quickly reordered the three people’s worth of scattered shoes at the entrance. Even his landlady, who normally would already be putting out her bedding at this hour, seemed to have been waiting to get word back from Ryuuji to make sure things were fine. He was glad he had some nice-looking mandarins that were good enough to give away as a gift.

  He came into the apartment and peeked into Yasuko’s room. Yasuko saw her son’s face as he came back in and smiled. “Hee hee.” Her face was white, as though it had been bleached. The normal flushed color of her lips and eyes had been robbed from her.

  “I really worried the landlady… I wonder what’s going on with the shop. I should call in…”

  “No, you can’t!”

  The one who stopped Yasuko from trying to get out of bed to reach her cell phone was none other than Taiga, still in her school uniform. “You need to stay in bed. Your blood pressure will drop again.” She held Yasuko’s shoulders down and pulled the blanket back up.

  “I just called the shop, so you’re okay. I got the owner on the phone,” Ryuuji said.

  Looking up at Ryuuji, who was still standing on the other side of the sliding door, Yasuko sighed, Oh no.

  “He said you should just rest today. He said he’d call tomorrow at noon.”

  “Did he say that this was why he shouldn’t hire older women~?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Did he say that Mirano is an old hag and that he should have left things up to an energetic, youthful girl?”

  “I said he didn’t say anything like that. Anyway, don’t worry about anything weird like that and just sleep. Even the doctor said that if you just take a break and sleep for a night that you’d feel fine after. I’ll get dinner ready, so if you feel like you can eat, you should.”

  “Night, Ya-chan…”

  Ryuuji watched Yasuko bury herself in the blankets as she heaved and sighed, then he turned off the room light. Taiga also stifled her footsteps as she got up and left the room, then slowly and quietly closed the sliding door.

  It seemed that even Inko-chan had, in her own bird-like way, sensed that something was wrong from the living room. Bluish-green blood vessels were showing in her eyes, which were half-filmed over. Her legs were scaly (it was winter, so her skin was dry) as she hung upside down in her birdcage like a bat. “How’d it go?” she said in a creepily human-like voice, but Taiga stared at her and said, “Shh.” Inko-chan nodded and went silent. It wasn’t as though she understood human words, so the coincidence was alarming.

  “Sorry… I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Taiga brushed Ryuuji’s apologies aside and sat down on the edge of a floor cushion. It was facing the TV and to the right, which had previously been Taiga’s designated seat. She seemed a bit uncomfortable as she stretched out her legs and looked at the tips of her own toes.

  She said she had seen Yasuko when she casually glanced into the Takasus’ win
dow after she went home early. It seemed Yasuko had just come back from her lunch job, and Taiga waved a hand from her bedroom window as Yasuko came into the living room. Then, Taiga noticed Yasuko’s strangely blue face when she stood stock-still without replying. The next moment, she flopped right to the ground without even cushioning her fall.

  Taiga left her condo right away and ran over to the Takasus’, realized she forgot her spare key at the condo and, according to her, went into a “maddening panic,” and banged on the landlady’s door downstairs like a “rampaging taiko drum.” Luckily, the landlady was home and opened the door, and once they saw Yasuko pale and collapsed, called a doctor immediately.

  While the doctor came to their home, Taiga nursed Yasuko, and the landlady tried to get hold of Ryuuji. At that time, Yasuko’s idiot son had been throwing his female classmate’s shoe, getting in a fight with her at the park, and making her cry.

  “I wonder if Ya-chan will be okay… She will, right? They said it was just anemia.”

  “She’d better be…”

  “She looked better than before.”

  “I think so, too.”

  He had been panting and running as fast as he could. By the time he arrived at home, he felt like he might collapse, too. The landlady was waiting for him at the front doorway the whole time. Yasuko was in an even worse state, and her face was surpassingly pale. She looked green, and her mouth wasn’t moving right. A man and a woman he didn’t recognize were next to her, and they had their hands on Yasuko’s chest and arms. To Ryuuji, it looked as though she’d been caught by some villains and was being dissected. The people weren’t even wearing white and didn’t seem like doctors, and if Taiga wasn’t sitting there, he might have even screamed in his confusion.

  Yasuko moved only her eyes as she noticed Ryuuji had come home and then moved only her lips as she apologized, I’m sorry for ending up like this.